My House Gathers Desires

by Adam McOmber

  These findings pleased Herr Engstrom, but he was not yet satisfied. Bishop Schiner had already documented similar occurrences, after all. In order to make a name for himself and to be seen as a true man of science, Engstrom needed to discover something new and definitive regarding the saint. “I shall endeavor to take my experimentation a step further than the bishop’s own,” he writes. “I will determine whether the saint can also heal herself. In doing so, I believe I may well begin to discern the very nature of the saint’s incorruption.”

  No record indicates how Lady Margaret became aware of her husband’s experiments. Perhaps it was from the gossip that was prevalent at the House of Engstrom. In her diary, Lady Margaret writes: “I care not a thing for hounds or plums. I know only how the blessed girl makes my own body feel. She raises my spirits, fills me with a joy I have never before experienced. I find I cannot stay away from her. I sit with her when Magnus is gone, and she sings for me. The music nurtures. It enlivens. I wonder what color her eyes would be if she were to open them. I like to think they would be not a single shade, but rather a complicated mix of watery blues and earthy greens.”

  The joyful tone of Lady Margaret’s journal darkens when she discovers the nature of Herr Engstrom’s future experiments. “I have learned that Magnus wishes to cut open my poor lady’s foot,” writes Lady Margaret. “He tells his awful companions (Glaus and Lucillius) that he will make a small incision between her toes. He wants to see if she can heal herself. The thought of him testing my lady in this manner is abhorrent. Let him do what he will to me, but he mustn’t disturb her. She cannot leave this house even to walk the mountain paths. Her songs have grown mournful, for she too seems to know of his intentions. I must come to her aid, even if such action presents personal danger. . . . When Magnus left this evening to meet with his men at a tavern, I went directly to the cabinet. I’ve stolen the key from a servant so that I may come and go as I please. I sat with my lady and listened to her weeping song, attempting to console her. I confessed that I could not physically thwart my husband, but I would do whatever else was in my power to stop him.

  “I do not know when her lament became a lullaby, but soon enough, I could not hold my own eyes open and fell asleep there, lying next to the bier where the glass box rests. In a dream, I saw my lady slip from her glass case like some lovely white shadow, and she came to nestle next to me on the stone floor. Her eyes were still closed. She ran her cold fingers through my hair and touched my cheeks, as I have seen the blind do. And then my lady made a magnificent gesture. She gave me the gift I’d hoped for since the moment I first saw her exquisite form—she opened her eyes. Their color was not the bluish-green I expected. No, they were a stark and shining white—like the eyes of a marble statue—with a hard black pupil cut from the center of each. Still, I was not afraid. As she held me, she began to weep. Her tears were white as milk. I kissed those white tears from her cheeks, and they turned my tongue and throat and stomach cold. From those tears a new resolve rose up in me. I pray that my poor and inelegant soul proves strong enough to do what I must.”

  Lady Margaret’s journal grows silent for a period of three days after her experience in the cabinet. When her narrative resumes, it appears she is forcing the rigid script onto the page. “Despite my best intentions, I could not stop him. I could not stay my husband’s hand. Magnus locked me in our bed chamber for hours because I would not cease my berating of him and his awful experiments. He said the saint was no business of mine. He’d purchased her from the bishop and would do with her as he pleased. There was a look in his eyes that made me wonder if he might harm me. He is a fool, of course, but perhaps a dangerous one, for he believes strongly in his convictions. That evening, he made the incision in the saint’s foot, between her first and second toe, while Alaric Glaus and Lucillius looked on. My lady’s music turned to a scream as he cut her, and I could hear her voice beating against every stone in the house. I hoped she might bring the whole of the château down on our heads to punish us all for Magnus’s desecration. I feel ashamed to be his wife. I know I must take a more extreme course of action, and certainly I must be quick. There is talk that Magnus intends to perform a further surgery. I can barely write this—he wants to examine my poor lady’s vital organs. Her heart and her liver. For whatever mad reason, he wishes to see if they too remain incorrupt.”

  The incision between the toes of the saint did not heal as Magnus Engstrom expected. Nor did it bleed or fester. His writings become frustrated, as he wonders how the saint cannot heal herself if she can heal so much else. It is this frustration that precipitates his need to view the body’s internal organs. He wishes to learn the extent of the incorruption—is the Fribourg Saint merely a shell, and if not, what inhabits her interior? Is her still heart as perfect as her flesh? Engstrom notes Lady Margaret’s unnatural attachment to the body as well: “I fear that the presence of the saint in our household is causing my wife to have nervous attacks, as I myself was once known to have. I refuse to remove the body from the cabinet; it is possible that my wife shall simply be removed from the house instead. While drunk last evening at the tavern, Alaric Glaus suggested poisoning. The comment was meant to be humorous, of course. But I have begun to wonder if there is a substance that will not kill Lady Margaret but render her ill enough that she will be forced into some warmer climate where she can convalesce. In any case, I will not let her ruin my opportunities with the Fribourg Saint.”

  What occurs next is beyond the full comprehension of this record. The final events surrounding the body of the Fribourg Saint caused Magnus Engstrom to impose exile upon himself. He lived out his days far from his home, on an island off the coast of Italy. The house on the island was utterly bare, washed clean by salt from the sea. It was so unlike his decorated cabinet at the château. He was said to sit in a wooden chair and look toward the water. When asked if he felt remorse over what had happened to his young and pretty wife, Engstrom merely shook his head, and said, “I do not know what happened to Margaret. No one can know such a thing.”

  Lady Margaret’s final journal entry is fragmented, written in haste, perhaps in one of the caves above the mountain pass. The journal itself, chewed by the teeth of an animal, was discovered by a shepherd in a field beyond the château. “When Magnus took his leave, I acted. A new song filled the house, a cacophonous symphony. It might have driven me mad had I allowed it. How was it possible that only I could hear her songs? I went to the cabinet, bringing with me the milk cart that the servants use to carry milk between the barn and the main house. My lady was heavy, her joints stiff. I overturned the awful glass coffin and scattered the scarab beetles while trying to free her. Glass panes broke when the coffin’s corner struck the floor. I put my lady in the milk cart, careful as I could be. I kissed her, asking forgiveness.

  “No servant attempted to stop me as I left the château. They understood something had gone wrong when Magnus cut my lady’s foot. They feared the woman in the box. Some of them who attend services at the cathedral have encountered rumors that the Fribourg Saint’s body is inhabited by a demon. Only God and the Devil can ignore the arrow of time, they say. Such thoughts are foolish, of course, and peasantlike. I put on a pair of Magnus’s fur boots and my own mantle for warmth. I pulled the milk cart through the snow toward the cave where I sometimes went to escape the confines of the house. It was my intention to keep my lady there until a carriage passed by on the road below. I would signal to the carriage with my lantern, and my lady and I would go together to the walled city of Bern. Perhaps I’d make a place there where she could be celebrated by all—not a stale museum as Magnus created, but a shrine. Yet no carriages appeared. The sun began to sink lower in the western sky, and I felt the bite of winter’s cold there in the cave. No one would travel the road during the night, and I would have to suffer until morning.

  “My lady sang to me in thankful, warming chords. I pressed my body to hers and fell in and out of restless sleep. In a dream, I put my lips agains
t her own soft lips and discovered the reason she could not sing through her mouth. Her delicate lips had been sealed with some form of strong black string. I pulled at the string, breaking the fibers loose, stitch by stitch. When her mouth was free, my lady’s jaw fell open and she released such a glorious song, finally able to use her own voice once again.

  “I was so pleased to hear the vibrant music fill the cave. She told me her history in song—how she’d been born in Fribourg to a good mother and a good father. She’d been careful with her life, never acting foolishly, never eliciting her parents’ scorn. Then one day, she met a man in her father’s field beyond the village. She and the man walked together in the green wheat, and she did not fear him. His eyes were gentle, and his words were kind. When the two of them sat together by a stream, the man revealed to her that he was not a man at all. He was an incarnation of the Holy Ghost. Being a girl of some intelligence, she did not believe him immediately and asked that he prove himself by giving her a blessing. He dipped his hand in the stream and let her drink cool water from his palm. As she drank, he put his hand over her mouth and then over her nose. He pressed his hand firmly upon her, stopping her breath, and despite her struggling, he would not release her. He said she had been good for all her days, and she would be good for all of time. As I pictured this, I could not help but think of Magnus touching her with his terrible hands. I thought of all the cruelties he perpetrated in his prison of a house. My lady said she died there by the stream, left to wonder if she was full of the Spirit or simply full of water from a murderer’s palm.

  Following this passage, there is an omission in the journal, though it is not clear if the omission is due to damage from weather or because Lady Margaret became physically unable to write. The ink grows splotched and eventually an excess of it runs in dark lines down the page. How long she was in the cave remains unknown. Temperatures in the region certainly become life-threatening on winter nights. Yet, at least for a time, Lady Margaret survived. The final words in the journal are written in what appears to be a new style of handwriting, plainer and more decisive than Margaret’s previous script. “I wonder now—am I sleeping or am I awake? Did I leave the dream of death where my lady died by the stream, or have I discovered some state between consciousness and reverie? The cave is dark. The oil is nearly gone from my lantern. When last I reached for my lady’s hand, I felt only loose bones. Yet I do not despair, for she isn’t gone. I can still hear her song. It echoes magnificently off the cave walls, so loudly that I wonder, at times, if I might be singing it myself. In any case, I know what I must do. I will gather her bones inside the folds of my mantle and leave the cave under night’s cover. Magnus will not see. I’ll make my way past the walls of the castle, through the snow. And eventually I’ll find a good place for burying. I won’t be leaving her in the ground though. She’ll never be in the ground again, for when next I approach a looking-glass, I will not see my own eyes, plain and blue, reflected back. Instead, they are sure to be a revelation.

  Notes on Inversion

  From Psychopathia Sexualis, Doctor Krafft-Ebing. Vienna, Austria 1886.

  Case 135.

  V. was very talented. He learned easily and had a most excellent religious education. At a young age, he began to masturbate without instruction. Later in life, he recognized the danger of this practice and fought with some success against it.

  Soon after, he began to rave about male statuary . . .

  Imagine then a ruin. White pillars against a spectral dusk. We are in Rome, Palatine Hill. Here is Flavius, done in marble. Note his musculature: swollen pectorals, firm abdominis. His cock is, of course, uncircumcised. See the flaccid shaft curled against full testes, a thatch of pubic hair. Flavius has no head, no face. It doesn’t matter. We can invent such things for him. Adonian curls, high forehead, aquiline nose. Perhaps there is a cleft in his chin. His lips are full, nearly pouting.

  Imagine now brushing against Flavius in a darkened hall. We excuse ourselves, politely. We nearly continue on our way. Then we realize just how lovely—how ancient. We take Flavius down from his pedestal. We bring him to our bed. His alabaster flesh is hard and cold. His body is so heavy it nearly breaks the bedframe. Imagine kissing those stony lips. Rubbing our own cock against his timeworn beauty. Flavius speaks to us. His voice is an echo. His throat is some two thousand years old. We can barely hear him. And we don’t know Latin. Still, we understand. Flavius doesn’t love us. He can hardly perceive us at all. Yet he will do this thing we’ve asked of him. When Flavius ejaculates, his semen is a fine white powder.

  Case 137.

  Homosexual feeling, perverse in origin. R. is sexually excited by men’s boots. Patient dreamed of handsome jockeys wearing shining boots. Servants’ boots affect him. Men of his own position, wearing ever so fine boots, were of absolute indifference. In the society of ladies, R. has been reserved; dancing always tires him . . .

  He collapses at yet another gala. Gaslit dance floor in a gilded hall. Stringed instruments play a waltz.

  All around him, boots of every stripe: Dealer and Jodhpur and Paddock. Tight fitting, ankle-high. The smell of leather. The smell of polish. Red Hessian with golden tassels, fronds brushing his upturned face. Woolen Valenki. Top Boots. Black Billy Boots, handsome and vital. He likes a painted wooden heel, a scuffed sole. He pictures men walking for miles.

  He drags himself across the dance floor, wanting to slide his tongue up a boot shaft, investigate the delicate stitchery, dislodge a bit of dirt. He wants to kiss the backstay, the mule ears, the toe box. There is something ecstatic here, something magnificent.

  He knows this is embarrassing. That’s the point, isn’t it?

  Case 141.

  X. believes himself to be the martyr Saint Sebastian. He saw a painting in a gallery—a naked young man pierced through by arrows. X. became, in a word, possessed.

  Each of my wounds is a mouth. It attempts to swallow a sword. I am tied to an alder tree, wrists bound. The lashings are Roman leather, knotted by soldiers I once called friends: Atilius, Gnaeus, Sabinus. Springtime blossoms burst from branches above my head. My blood trickles down the dark trunk. I am the fantasy, trussed. Exemplary sufferer.

  In the prisons of Emperor Diocletian, I fell in love with two men, my cellmates: Marcellian, who was large and rough (like an animal) and Marcus who was lithe and had a beautiful face. Every night, in the space of our small cell, I brought these men to Christ. My body was sweeter, they said, than any communion wine. More fortifying than any host. Together, we reinvented the Trinity. A wheel aflame in the catacombs. When we finished our nightly Mass, we lay together in the dust. We caressed each other until morning light.

  On the day of my execution, the sky was no color I could name. There was a wind from the north. The black branches of the alder tree creaked above. My lovers were both murdered. Dragged behind horses. Marcellian’s head came off. Soldiers tied me to a tree. They surrounded me in a half-circle and took turns shooting arrows. Shafts, buried in my flesh. The soldiers laughed. They talked of other things. “This doesn’t mean I don’t still love you,” I whispered, so softly no one could hear. They did not know they were making a saint of me.

  Case 146.

  Two persons in Vienna are examples. One is a barber who calls himself “French Laura”; the other is a butcher who calls himself “Helen” . . .

  Good day to you! Good day. (Fans flutter. Bosoms rise.) This is a knitting circle in which no knitting is done. Instead of needles we have cocks. Instead of yarn we have our slippery orifices.

  Aunt Patricia has baked yet another of her delicious cakes. We remark on it with enthusiasm. There is time for gossip then. Vicki has been up to her notorious tricks. And you mustn’t start us talking about Anne. We adjust our skirts and ask about the new charitable concerns. We support the Cripples’ Home, The Temporary House for Lost Dogs, and, of course, The Female Society.

  What items will we donate this year to the jumble sale? We can spare nearly everything. And t
hen there is cycling. It’s ever so popular these days. All the women in the park, pedaling about: Fanny and Ruth and Florence. But those uncomfortable leather bicycle seats. They have bruised us! Speaking of uncomfortable: here comes the duchess now. Look at her, will you? Just look at her.

  Case 149.

  He never felt nausea at the penis of others . . .

  The causes of nausea: Perambulators. Light novels. Hoop skirts. Bourgeois work ethic. Portraiture. The Resurrection. The language of flowers. The children’s hour. Quakers. Realism. Naturalism. Strindberg. Strindberg! Allspice pudding. The unfashionable clubs. Muttonchops.

  Case 170.

  The hypnotic suggestions are as follows:

  1.I abhor onanism. It makes me weak, miserable.

  2.I no longer have a lustful inclination toward men. A man’s love of other men is against religion, nature and law . . .

  We place our hand over the doctor’s mouth, silencing him. We tell him we will finish this. Who are we to speak? We are all of them, we say. Every last one.

  Begin the session again:

  1.We will not imagine a quiet hillside in the country where men can be together unhindered. We will not imagine these men taking off their shirts in the tall grass, revealing the sort of physiques that shepherds once had. We will not imagine these men then kissing one another on the chest and on the mouth. We will not imagine them unlacing their tight brown trousers. We will not imagine them building houses there on the hillside where they can live amongst one another. We will not imagine how they don’t pray to any gods. We will not imagine how they talk at night around great campfires, faces bright, telling the old stories. Because now there are old stories to be told.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the editors of the publications in which the following stories first appeared:

  Altered States Anthology: “Night Is Nearly Done”;