The Woman Behind The Waterfall

by Meriel,Leonora

  She moves slowly across the room. Her back is hunched over.

  She looks down at her dress.

  She wants to cry but she has no tears.

  Angela is lying in the basket suspended above the stove.

  Lyuda takes her out of the basket. She holds her, wrapped in a grey blanket.

  “Little one, little one,” she says.

  “Shhhhh,” she says. “Little one,” she says.

  She rocks the baby in her arms. The baby’s eyes are open, looking into the face of pulled despair.

  Mama, Mamochka, Mamusya, Matenka moiya!

  The baby is quiet. Lyuda sits down, holding her.

  She looks over to the window and the white, white, white outside, and the perfect silence in the house, the baby in her arms held against her warm breast.

  “It is so beautiful,” she whispers. “Angela, it is so beautiful. Angela, it will be spring,” she says. “It will be. Angela.”

  She shakes her head from side to side. The baby closes its eyes. Mother is so very warm. She is saying something. Something nice.

  The baby sleeps.

  Lyuda lays her back into the basket and tucks the blanket around her, then turns away from her and her face crushes into an appalling grimace of despair. She clenches her fists, digging her nails into the skin of her hands, her breath held, everything frozen into a twisting misery.

  And then, slowly, she releases her face, her hands.

  She breathes.

  T

  Lyuda lies on the bed. She is curled into a ball, her body crushed in on itself. She is crying. Her housedress is hitched up and her legs, bruised and covered in stubbed, pale hairs, are pulled up to her chin. Her hair is draped over half her face and down her back, unbrushed, tangled, dirty.

  The baby lies on the bed opposite her, propped up in a nest of pillows. She has a wooden spoon and a pocket mirror with a red velvet back which she grips in each tiny fist, and strikes at the pillows. Her eyes are bright and laughing, and they move from her mother, to the spoon, to the pillows, and to her mother again.

  Lyuda opens and closes her eyes as she cries. She knows the baby is watching, but she cannot move. Curled up, she lets the grief flood over her. It is a course, she thinks. There are tears that must come, and I must let them come. She lets the thoughts of her life move through her mind. Volodiya, Mother, Father, Angela, scenes, moments, memories, tears to be cried for each of them. They must flow, she thinks. However many tears to be shed for each of them, they must flow.

  The baby sees her falling tears and she laughs. She holds the pocket mirror in her fist and moves her arm, catching first a reflection of her own face, and then a reflection of her mother’s, and then a reflection of tears. A river, her spirit calls out. It is the reflection of a river.

  The river of tears flows out of the reflection and into its mother, that great long snake winding between the willow trees. Grandmother watches it rising – the river growing higher on the banks, tears and tears and tears.

  Not a single drop, she says, that is lost.

  T

  Lyuda stands, the baby in her arms, and stares out at the endless descent of snow, which is all that is visible through the grey window.

  The kitchen is stiflingly warm and her dirty housedress is thin, her legs bare, her feet in fraying slippers. The baby stirs and she glances down, but her face does not move. The baby is asleep.

  Outside, the snow falls calmly like a slow and separate waterfall. She is behind the waterfall now, in that silent, nowhere place where the noise and the silence are the same. Where the existence and the non-existence are the same. Where the being and the not-being are the same.

  This child is holding me here, behind the waterfall, she thinks. She is holding me between the darkness, where I desire to go, and the sunlight beyond these tears, which I can barely remember. I could disappear, she thinks, like one of the snowflakes coming in through the window. Just go out into the cold, and disappear. And there would be nothing more natural, there would be nothing that could be less noticed than this tiny act of completeness, than this fact of having lived, and having died. Of having tried, and having failed. The snowflake does not struggle, she thinks. When the circumstances change, it changes. It disappears in a single moment and for all time.

  I have this baby, she thinks.

  And if I didn’t?

  She carries the baby across the room to the cradle, warm from the heat of the stove. She places her into it gently and covers her with a blanket. The baby’s cheeks are a delicate red and she has fine black hair on her head.

  Lyuda returns to the window and takes off her slippers. She climbs up onto the cupboards and onto the sill beside the window. She pulls her knees up under her chin and wraps her arms around them. The windowsill is icy cold under her bare feet, and a faint draft blows against her legs and hips. The skin on her arms tenses, rising in tiny mountains against the cold. Her hair is fastened to the top of her head in a bun, and she reaches up and takes the metal pins out one by one, and lets her long hair tumble around her shoulders and down her back. She presses her forehead against the cold glass, and her breath clouds it over. She wipes the glass with her hair and peers out through the pattern of watery slashes she has made. Through them, the garden is entirely white with heavy, piled snow. The snow would reach up to my waist, she thinks. I could walk through the garden and it would be like swimming in a frozen river. I could take off my dress and the snow would carry my body through the garden. A last, solitary walk. And I would just disappear into it. I would leave this life just as I came, holding onto nothing.

  The baby. I have a baby.

  She turns her head and pushes her naked cheek to the glass, wiping the slashes and the last of the water from the window. Then she reaches with one hand for the latch of the window and pushes it open an inch. A rush of icy wind blows through the open gap and over her. She shivers. The cold is so comforting, she thinks. It is so clear, so final. It does not come in waves. It comes, it creates its own world, and it transforms everything to its will.

  Her body starts to shiver with the touch of the snow, and she pulls her legs tighter towards her, knees pressing against her breasts, and she leans her head back against the window frame and closes her eyes. She sees the garden before her, and she is filled with a sudden happiness.

  A moment shifts. She opens her eyes wide, in unexpected joy.

  “It is not snow!” she cries out through the glass. “It is moonlight on white flowers!”

  She pushes open the window with a strong thrust and falls out into the garden in a rush of warmth. Beneath her is a sea of white forest flowers in bloom, lush and thick, like moss. She drops sideways into them, landing softly and then she turns onto her back with her body laid out. She looks up into the face of a full, white moon and its light covers her body entirely. She looks down and sees that she is clothed all in white. She touches her hair, which is woven with strands of fern and summer leaves, golden curls draped over her shoulders. She is so warm she could even take off her dress, and just lie in this bath of silver light.

  She pushes the dress back from her smooth shoulders and turns her head into the blossoms, drifting into their delicious summer scent.

  “Summer moonlight,” she says aloud. “For you, I might live!” She breathes in deeply. “And the scent of moonlit flowers. It is almost a reason. It is almost a silver thread I could hold onto.”

  Her pale, beautiful shoulders are cushioned in the flowers, and she reaches out a hand in front of her, watching it turn silver as it crosses the great face of the moon. Her body is growing lighter as the moonlight pours down into it, as if she is beginning to transform into the moonlight itself. She starts to laugh at the delicious feeling, a laugh of complete joy.

  “Take me,” she murmurs to the moon, between her laughter. “Take me! It is the loveliest feeling. I am dissolving into flowers.” She reaches a hand out into the blooms and she can feel the tiny cups of the individual blossoms with her fing
ers. She breathes deeply. Lily of the valley. Faint snowdrops. A touch of lilac.

  She hears a strange, rasping sound from somewhere close, and she looks around, surprised. The noise is entirely out of place. It comes again, louder, and the flowers and the moonlight start to fade away. Her golden hair starts shrivelling into dust.

  “No!” she cries out. “No! It is something! At last, it is something.”

  Her hand, reaching for a silver thread of moonlight, clasps on nothing, and her eyes open and her head falls forward against the icy window glass and she gasps in a freezing breath, and for a moment she cannot see where she is, her body is so cold, and the white through the window and the noise! The noise!

  “Oh my god,” she says, and her hands are trembling. “Oh my god, I didn’t die. I didn’t die. I didn’t die.”

  She pushes her legs back out over the cupboards and half-slips onto the kitchen floor. She slams the window shut.

  Her body is shaking. She starts to cry. She pushes the slippers onto her feet and she stumbles across the room. She takes the screaming baby in her arms and holds its warm body to her own. The baby wails and Lyuda’s tears drop into her hair and onto the baby’s face and onto the blanket and onto the floor, like melted snowflakes.

  She carries the baby into the bedroom and she climbs into the bed where her mother used to sleep. She holds the baby to her breast and starts to feed her.

  Lyuda’s crying slowly calms, and she wipes her tears away with the sheet, and quietens herself as the baby sucks. Slowly, she warms up. Slowly, she is calmed. Slowly, a single winter day passes.

  17

  From a place of the deepest peace, Grandmother hears a voice calling to her.

  She does not want to respond to the voice, as it seems to be calling to someone who she no longer is; someone she has left behind. But the voice is insistent, and with the voice comes a path of silver, which she is able to follow.

  She travels along the path, and images start to appear around her, connected to the summoning, and she finds a remembrance returning as the images take shape.

  A face, a door, a curve of road...

  At last, she understands that she is looking at the village where she once lived, but now she is seeing it in waves of colour, with all the elements merged together in the waves – trees and wind, blown leaves and water, the bricks of houses and the laughter of playing children, the entire village flowing in one living tapestry of constant movement.

  She feels the earlier peace leaving her, as the familiar scenes ignite an excitement, a curiosity for the dramas weaving through every breath of village life, the variations exploding from one moment to the next, the irresistible expressions of love held poised in each flowing wave.

  “Who has called me here?”

  Grandmother looks around for the summoning voice, and she sees a spirit of pale grey hovering nearby.

  I have come to call you back.

  “Who are you?”

  I am a protector. I am asking for your help.

  The village around her comes closer, and now Grandmother can see a girl with knotted black hair lying star-shaped beneath a lilac tree. She can see her daughter, a circle of darkness expanding around her; and her granddaughter, drawing in her mother’s grief. Grandmother feels the threads of forgotten emotion drawing tight within her, and she sighs. Beyond the joy, there was always the sadness.

  “Do I have a choice?” she asks.

  The Nightspirit draws a final image before Grandmother: a girl dancing in a sunlit garden.

  There is always a choice.

  Grandmother pauses, looking down on the village, at the thread waves of the tapestry weaving in and out of one another, in endless patterns. The emotion is moving steadily through her, the images of her daughter and granddaughter growing stronger, and she feels something pulling her; a sensation of being drawn towards them by something she cannot see, but something that is a part of her. She knows that she must go.

  “How do I return?” she asks, at last.

  Find a memory, the Nightspirit says. Follow the feelings within that memory. They will carry you where you need to go.

  The Nightspirit departs, and Grandmother begins to draw back the memories of her life. She sees herself with Grisha, and a powerful relief comes over her.

  “I was not so alone,” she says softly, and Grisha laughs and reaches out his hand to her.

  “You were never alone, my love,” he says. “My beautiful Zoryana! My girl in a blue dress. Do you remember swimming in the river? When the music from Ivan Kupala was playing and we could hear it on the willowbank and we danced? Do you remember?”

  “Oh yes, I remember. I remember! The blue dress. And you held me...”

  “Follow it, Zoryana. Follow the music, follow the memory. The child needs you.”

  “I am going Grisha. I will return. Be close to me.”

  “I am always close to you. Go now.”

  Grandmother focuses on the memory. From far away she sees the village, nestled in a landscape of endless green forests and black fields. She draws closer and sees the river, like a coil of silver silk stretched out over the countryside, and it calls to her. She can hear the music now; accordions and violins, a chorus of singers and clapping hands. She sees the festival fires further down the river, young girls jumping over the flames, wishing for husbands. She sees their childish desires floating up into the starry night like tiny white feathers. Like tender, luminous dreams.

  The music carries her closer to the riverbank, where she sees a girl dancing around the willow trees with a young man. She sees the fair-haired girl stepping naked out of a blue dress and diving into the silver water, and the young man diving in after her, and as she sees this, her spirit, carried on the music, touches the highest branches of the willow tree and her light merges into the light of the tree and the grass and the black soil and the droplets of moving, living water.

  She releases herself into it all.

  T

  I am perched on the thin bough when I see it. I am calling out my mating cry and the river is echoing it back to me and the willows are full of swallows and dipping birds. The air is trembling with song and the river is answering all of them, one by one, and all at once.

  And then something in the air changes. One of the willow trees across the water seems to be growing larger. There is no wind here so I know that the air isn’t moving it, but I can see the tree growing wider and somehow brighter, as if it is casting a green shadow upwards and all around it, and it is moving; shimmering like clear water when it is flowing over shallow rocks. And I want to perch here and watch what is happening, but at the same time I feel an irresistible urge to fly up into the air and sing the most beautiful song I have ever sung in my life.

  I flap up to a higher branch and I change my cry to one I have never sung before, and I am watching the two trees, the two fountains of green, and there is light all around both of them and I feel something bursting from inside of me and the river is singing louder than ever and I am singing with every drop of strength that I have and I can sense and hear that all of the birds in the other trees are doing the same.

  I know that we are all watching what is happening across the water and feeling this unbearable joy, and at some point our song has become one song; all of us birds, the river, the trees, the air, the waves of heat, everything. And it seems that at this moment, the two trees are merging into one, and now there is only this green fountain of light, and light is pouring out from all of the branches into the river, and I feel that I have to start flapping my wings and take off into the air to sing out, and I do this! I lift up from the branch and fly up and out into the air and I fly and fly down to the river and up again and the air is entirely filled with singing birds.

  T

  Grandmother, hearing her song of welcome, lights up the branches of the willow and pours her spirit down through the green strands into the river and into the air and into the earth.

  “Thank you,” she tells th
em. “I have been here before. I have come back to help my child. I have come to help the white star.”

  T

  We return to the branches through the heavy air, one by one. The river grows quiet and flows on, flows on. Our songs are finished and my strength is faded. I will rest. I glance up and down the river and hop along the bough. I find a crook of branch, hidden with tender leaves, and close my eyes.

  The river flows.

  T

  When the day has faded, Grandmother sits on the willowbank. She is resting.

  “There is much work ahead,” she says to the river. “My daughter has gone too far, too deep.”

  The river flows, acquiescent. It knows the tears of Zoryana, and of Lyuda, and of Angela. It carries them all onwards and merges them into its clear waters.

  “I must break the rope,” says Grandmother. “I will show her there is nothing to regret. I will break the rope and all paths will be open. She will go to another place.”

  She closes her eyes. The river flows, and she listens to the rustling of the leaves around her, and the singing of the river birds, and she waits for Angela.

  18

  When I open my eyes, I feel that something is different. I am not in my nest. My head is not tucked beneath my feathers. I am lying on black earth and the scent is overpowering. It is the smell of growth, a sense of urging greenness, pushing buds. I smell worms in the soil. I hop up onto my feet. I am undamaged. I am well. I am strong. My strength has returned. I lift my wings and they carry me up. I return to the ground. Everything is in order. I glance around me looking for worms. Something is different.

  I fly up from the soil and into the lilac tree. The girl is not lying beneath it as she often is, fallen white flower buried in sunshine. My nest is not in the tree. I perch on the branch where it should be, but it is not there. This is the place; the curve of branch where I have laid twigs and moss and leaves and pushed them close and tight with my beak. I rise from the tree and circle it, looking for what is different. I fly down to the bottom of the garden and up again. It is all the same. Back to the lilac tree and the nook is still there. My nest is not.