Voices of Ash

by Jill Zeller

“Nurse Del Mar.”

  Hank gazed at Joseph, dumbfounded. What did she have to do with all this? What did Joseph mean? He followed Joseph back to the patio where they sank back into their chairs. Picking up the groceries, Carl shrugged and went into the house.

  “Why Luz? Why her?”

  Joseph had closed his eyes, opened them again. “She’s in charge of the memories, dear Hank. She stirs the ashes, finds the threads.” He cocked his head, as if reading Hank’s confusion on his face. “She was the one who showed Susan how to mix ashes into the glazes, you remember?”

  Joseph picked up a small figure from the table. It was a man in a business suit. Then another, a chef; and a baker, and a doctor. “All these. Guys I went to war with. I have a stash of their ashes. I woke up in the hospital in Italy with all these little bags tucked in my kit, with names written on them with indelible ink. ‘Flannel Suit’, ‘Chef’, ‘Donut-boy’, and ‘Quack’. I don’t remember their real names any more, but ‘Donut-boy’ was the crazy lieutenant I told you about.” He rotated the baker-figurine in his hands. “I know they died. I know I was the only one to get out of there. But that is all I know. Luz, she was very interested in my stash. She helped me talk about them, the only person who asked me about them. Not one of those self-satisfied, over-rated Army shrinks asked me about them.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Hank felt all the hope drain out of him. Luz was the key to the memory, the only key that would open this particular lock.

  “Is she coming over?”

  “Beats me.” Joseph picked up Hank’s half-drunk beer, swallowed the remainder. “I thought you had brought her.”

  Carl grilled, showing no sign of wanting to ditch these odd companions for the headier attractions of Hollywood. Joseph plugged in the Christmas lights and put a record on the record player. Hank took a plate in to Susan, set it on the empty stool beside her.

  Luz’s stool.

  The racer was taking shape. She had squared him so he looked as if he and the entire bicycle were at top speed; she cleverly embedded the wheels into a ceramic stand. Now she was painting on the slip, and this she would carve and etch with her distinctive flowing details.

  She paid no attention to him, so he left, wondering who would summon Luz. But he soon had his answer. Joseph was checking his watch as he and Carl shared a bottle of good whiskey.

  “She should be here by now,” Joseph said. There had been, apparently, a prior arrangement that Luz return in the evening for the ceremony with the bowl. Hank said nothing, just sank into his chair and took the bottle from Carl. He didn’t want to suggest that it might be his fault Luz wasn’t coming at all.

  But he was wrong, and happy to be wrong. A few minutes later she appeared around the corner of the house, coming up the driveway.

  She wore slacks and a light jacket; her hair was tucked in a cap. She carried a shopping bag over her shoulder. When she saw Hank, she gave no indication that his being there made any difference to her whatsoever.

  Hank and Carl got to their feet. Joseph also tried to rise, but Luz went straight to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “No bother. I see you are ready. Hello, Hank.” Luz put her bag on the table.

  “Hello, Luz. This is my brother, Carl.”

  Luz shook Carl’s hand. Carl’s lips parted and for once he seemed incapable of speech. As Luz turned away, making for the studio, Carl caught Hank’s eye and waved his hand under his own chin as if he had just been scorched.

  Luz said from the studio door, “Joseph, I’m sorry I’m late. The car wouldn’t start and I had to take the street car and walk from there.”

  Hank cursed himself. He could have gone to pick her up, if he had known she was intending to come even though there was a high probability that he would be here and she might not want to talk to him at all.

  Joseph struggled to his feet and Hank gripped his hand to help him. Joseph’s skin was cold, clammy. He really believes he’ll get that memory back tonight. Hank was half-believing, because he believed in Luz. But it was crazy to think firing of human ash into a glaze could resurrect lost memories.

  The three men stood in the doorway. Luz’s back was to them as she and Susan murmured over the quality of the mixtures. A moment of silence, then she left Susan, pushed past the men, and went to her shopping bag.

  Crickets filled the silence. Laughter came from somewhere down the block from one of the houses on the canal. A fragrance, flowery, heavy, floated across Hank’s nostrils. But a moment later he saw that Luz had lit a wad of herbs and laid it in a lopsided soup bowl that had an ill-experience in the kiln.

  “Will someone bring me the bowl?”

  Joseph reached for it, but stumbled. He still wasn’t steady on his recently healed ankles. Carl shook his head, and it fell to Hank to take the dark sky moon bowl of Chagall to Luz.

  She took it from him, her finger brushing his. She did not look at him.

  Squatting beside the low patio table, she tipped ash from the burned herbs into the bowl. Looking over her shoulder at Joseph, she motioned him to sit beside her.

  He lowered himself to the ground. She waved smoke from the herbs over him, urged him to inhale the odors from the bowl. She had laid multi-colored beans and kernels of corn in the bowl, along with dark powder.

  Picking it up, she placed it on the still-glowing grill.

  The bowl would crack, break, and be destroyed by the heat. But it sat there as the ingredients inside scorched and burned and filled the yard with obnoxious smells. Hank hoped none of the neighbors would feel compelled to call the fire department.

  Then Luz picked up the bowl with her bare hands.

  Carl and Hank yelled “Don’t!” at the same time, but she smiled and shrugged at them. She carried the bowl back to Joseph, who lay on his back on the grass, staring at the stars as if he had never seen stars before.

  “Dip your fingers in the ash,” she instructed. “Smear it on your face. Taste it. It is the taste of memory. No locked doors can withstand this. It goes to all places. It finds every shred and brings it back to you.”

  Her voice was soft, sing-song, and slightly accented. Joseph obeyed, striping both cheeks and his forehead with black as he lay on the grass.

  Luz sat next to him, leaned forward. Hank and Carl sank onto the chaise lounge, side-by-side. Maybe he was drunk, maybe they both were drunk, but Hank could feel magic on his skin, taste it on his tongue. He glanced at his brother, whose face was open and staring like a child.

  Even the crickets had fallen silent. It was as if they were suspended in a glass globe enveloped by space and stars. The earth fallen away.

  Joseph closed his eyes. The outlines of his face were sharp as if trimmed with moonlight. His breath accelerated. Luz watched him, eyebrows close together, seeing everything. Hank wondered if she could see his memory, watch it like a movie on a screen.

  With a grunt Joseph sat up. He stared ahead, almost gasping to catch his breath. Seizing a cushion Luz propped it against the chair-legs and Joseph leaned into it, closed his eyes, opened them in astonishment.

  The Christmas lights gave dim illumination to his face, the strange whiteness vanished as Joseph began to speak, recite the text as if from memory, which it was.

  “It was black night, no moon. He made me drive with the lights off. I was sure we were going to die right then and there, in the truck; it could fly right over the edge of the cliff. Those hills, sharp and steep, all of rocks and olive trees. Mountain goats were always falling off those rocks, much less people in machines.

  “But he was crazy, Donut-boy. He carried hair from German soldiers wound in a string around his neck. He says he shot an American lieutenant once, killed him dead in a fire fight.” Joseph licked his lips. Carl handed him a beer from which he took a long swallow. Hank leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands so tightly clasped his thumbs began to cramp.

  “But we got there, alive and well, and scared enough to mess our pants. This castle, a ruin of a castle, actually, but a good hideout,
hard to get to. I said, why don’t we just phone in and ask for artillery, but no one had brought a field phone. This Sargent, he loved pointing out the futility of my ideas. The others just laughed.

  Joseph looked them all in the face, his eyes wide as if he had just woken up from a twenty year sleep. “I determined then that I was going to live. These guys might get iced trying to storm a medieval castle full of starving, insane Krauts, but I wasn’t about to join them. Castles were built not to be taken. They had slots for arrows and battlements for dropping stones and boiling oil. But I didn’t say this to Donut-boy. He could not be reasoned with when his mind was made up.

  “So we start up there, Donut-boy in the lead, Chef and Baker and Flannel Suit fanning out behind, and me, myself, and I taking up the rear. I had a rifle, but I was a lousy shot—barely passed gunnery school. That’s why I was a driver.”

  He ran his hand through his hair, fingered his beard. A movement in the corner of Hank’s eye told him Susan had come out of the studio to listen.

  “Some of them had hand grenades. The idea was to creep up close enough and lob grenades inside there. Inside of what? The wall we were approaching was four stories of solid rock. If they were in there, and we threw the grenades over this low place beside it, they would know we were there and shoot us dead. They had a machine gun up in there.

  “But that was Donut-boy’s plan, right? I hung back. Let them get killed. I was only the driver.”

  Hank understood how Joseph felt, but he also wondered if Joseph could really stand by and let his fellow soldiers die.

  “So, they go up, I’m halfway down the slope, watching that castle. And sure enough, Chef lobs a grenade in the low place, followed by Baker. Donut-boy gave a whoop as the things exploded.

  “Then silence for a long time. Probably only a few minutes, but a few minutes can be a really long time. Then I see it. I think my angle, being lower down, was better, so I could see it and the others couldn’t. There was a little movement on the low wall. I could see it in the light from something burning inside there.

  “A head and a rifle and as the Kraut got ready to aim I got off a shot and goddam what do you know, I got him.”

  A worried look fell over Joseph’s face. “Only, it wasn’t a him. We get up there—there’s no return fire or noise, Donut-boy clapping me on the back and Flannel Suit shaking my hand, and we see who it was looked over the wall.”

  Joseph looked at Luz, shaking his head. “It was an old woman. All alone up there but with a gaggle-load of weapons and stuff to make bombs. The old woman I saw, or thought I saw, when I jumped off the streetcar.”

  Luz reached out a hand, touched his arm, but said nothing. It was hardly anyone’s fault, Hank thought. Joseph was saving their lives. That old Italian lady was going to shoot them.

  “We figured she thought we were Germans, maybe. But why would those assholes leave their mother to guard that place up there, all by herself? Fiends, heartless fiends.” Joseph kept shaking his head. “But that’s not it. That’s not what I didn’t want to remember, even though the memory stopped there, on the road up the mountain.

  “So we feel pretty shitty about that, and we leave, go back, to make up some sort of report or story. The guys don’t blame me. They saw the rifle she had aimed at us. But we all felt pretty bad. I wanted to get the hell out of there. We go back to the truck.

  “I’m driving as fast as I can, with no lights and in pitch black on a road on a sheer cliff. Donut-boy is on my ass, calling me evil and saying we should have gone back to get some of her hair. Boy, when he said that I couldn’t help myself. I elbowed him in the nose.

  “Then everything went sideways. We were falling, off the road. I had driven us fucking off the road when I elbowed Donut-boy. I was screaming, we all were screaming. Then the screaming faded, got farther away. I heard a boom, big and loud.”

  Joseph drew his knees up, held them with his hands. He continued to stare at Luz. “I was thrown out, I guess. When I woke up, there was a little light. The sun was coming up. I sit up, testing myself, no bones broken, except for my head maybe and who cares about that? I wonder where the guys are. Did they leave me here? Was this all some kind of joke?

  “I can’t yell. There might be Krauts anywhere. I remember driving off the road, and I get up onto my knees. I’m dizzy as hell. And then I see it.

  “Down in the ravine, maybe fifty yards down, the truck. It’s charred to a crisp, black and still smoking. I can still smell the smoke, even now.” He fell silent for a moment, remembering. Hank thought about what the smell must have been like.

  “I go down there. I was an idiot, going down there. I should have gotten straight out of there. Of course, they’re all dead. Burned.”

  He was silent a long while. The crickets started up again, a car raced past on the street in front of the house. When Joseph started speaking again, Hank jumped.

  “I just stayed with them. I told myself, I couldn’t get out of that ravine anyway. If the Krauts got me, they got me. To while away the time I made little pouches out of bits of canvas—some of it might be from their clothes, or from the truck itself. We all had this kit, you know, with a needle and thread. Came in handy. Writing the names on each pouch was hard, though. I didn’t have a pen, but I shaped each pouch a little differently, so I could keep track of whose ashes were whose. A wide one for Chef, a skinny one for Flannel Suit, like that. Donut-boy I really scored. I found a shred of his shirt with part of his name on it.”

  Leaning back on the cushion Joseph closed his eyes. End of story, Hank thought. Nothing more to tell other than about hospitals and psychiatrists and broken ankles.

  Susan knelt beside Joseph, put her arms around him, lowering her head so that the tips of her hair touched his lap. Hank wanted to reach out, touch her, touch Luz, who stayed seated, quiet. He needed to ask her to do the same for him but he didn’t know how.

  Carl got up, brought out another bottle and some glasses. Even Luz had a sip. She got to her feet, stretched, began to wipe out the bowl with a cloth from her bag.

  Setting his empty glass down beside Carl, Hank went into the studio.

  The Cyclist was done. Even the sinews of his thighs and calves were visible; head down, goggled, he spun the course, wheels turning, going round and round. Jars of glazes were mixed and ready for application.

  After a while, Joseph hobbled wearily on his canes and left them, telling Susan he didn’t need any help. As he said this, he glanced at Hank as if letting him know he was giving Susan the permission to finish the Cyclist.

  Susan, unlike Hank, seemed energized and went back into the studio to finish. Now she would apply Grandfather Joel’s ashes. Outside, Carl picked up the car keys while Luz packed up her bag.

  “Don’t go,” Hank managed, reaching for her hand.

  Her eyes glinted in the Christmas light glow. She looked away from him, as if she hoped to see an answer in the darkened geography of Susan’s back yard.

  “I see you’re not addressing me, Hanklet. I’m going home.” Carl took Luz’s hand, kissed it. “A pleasure to meet you, Beauty. Take good care of our Hank here.”

  Picking up the half-drunk whiskey bottle, Carl looked at it, up-turned it to let it drain onto the lawn.

  “Lucky grass,” he said, and left them alone. Hank heard Carl taking the Peugeot out of the trunk. He hoped the racer wouldn’t be too banged up.

  The light from the studio made a silver square on the lawn. A chill edged the night, and Luz pulled her jacket around her, and to Hank’s immense relief, settled down onto one of the patio chairs.

  He lowered himself to the chaise, rubbed his knees. “How did you do that? Can you really do magic?”

  Luz shrugged. “An old family secret. My mother can do magic. She taught me a few things.”

  “That was quite a story.”

  “Yes it was.” She fell silent, and they both remembered.

  What a crazy thing war is. No wonder Joseph came home a mess. Hank thought, lookin
g at the tiny figurines of Joseph’s fellow soldiers. He didn’t want to touch them.

  “I found his stash of ashes when I was going through his things,” Luz said, seeing him looking. “I asked him one day about them, but he couldn’t tell me anything. Then I asked him if I could have his permission to take a bit of ash from each to make a glaze.

  “At least he could tell me about the men, and I decided to try to make each one.” She picked up Donut-boy, the insane lieutenant baker. “My figures are cruder than Susan’s, but by the time I got to Donut-boy, I was getting pretty good.”

  Hank thought the figures were fantastic. “These are really good, Luz.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Hank watched Luz pick up each man, turn him over in her fingers like Hera deciding the fate of mortals. He could do no more than watch her, when he wanted to fold her into himself, feel and taste her skin and lips again.

  Should I bring it up again, apologize about asking Luz to be Mom’s nurse? Around them the soft night penetrated Hank’s bones; the Christmas-light string colored Luz’s cheek with a sheen almost like gold.

  Then he remembered Mom’s letter. Pulling if from his trouser pocket, Hank looked at the folded yellow legal foolscap marked with Mom’s heavy square script.

  “What is that?” Luz asked.

  “A letter from my mother. She wrote it while she was in the hospital.”

  Hank watched Luz sit a little straighter, stiffen. Don’t leave. Please stay.

  Sighing, Luz looked at Donut Boy lying in her open palms.

  “Read it to me.”

  The Christmas lights provided a red-moon glow. His heart thundering under his ribs, Hank began.

  “My mother once told me that memory is like soap. Heavy and solid, but as it is used, it grows smaller. It transforms into lather and bubbles, and drains away with the water.

  “You children never met my mother and I thank God every day that you never did. Virginia Ronert was a hard woman, bitter, angry. Later in this missive, confession, whatever it is, you will learn why. But there was one thing about her, that I, her only daughter, inherited, and that was her voice.