Dagmar's Daughter

by Kim Echlin

  She had a knack for the stage. She made nothing so appealing as her own fearless energy. She called at the crowd with a cheeky swing in her tight black jeans and when they called back to stop her showing off, she sidled up slow and unpredictable to the edge of the stage, paused, leaned in and whispered, suddenly girlish and sweet, Oh no, not yet. Everyone laughed and someone called out to do her medley again and she feigned breathlessness and said, I can’t do that one twice, then winked before hitting its first note once more, anointing them with all they desired. She played the Millstone Nether people as well as she played her fiddle and they loved her. She sensed their moods through her skin and mirrored everything back. She filled their ears with lovers’ ballads. She played each person’s secret cravings. She stamped and spun across the stage, seducing, daring them to join her. Her face was the shape of a flax seed, nose straight as a clean punch, body nipped in at her waist, eyebrows set in a quizzical arch. She lived in the upper and lower registers.

  Dagmar stood at the back of the crowd, listening.

  Her daughter was alive with something a mother couldn’t prune. There wasn’t a boy on the island who knew which key she’d play in next. She played at all the weddings and parties and had plenty of tunes left over. There wasn’t enough space for her to fill. Those last nights before she disappeared, she played out in the woods, down the road from her father’s house. Under stars and moon, lips red, hair red, skin wrapped in black, disappearing into shadows as she step-danced, broken horsehair flying loose and catching the light like fireflies, her sheepgut sang a young woman’s reckless wonder at the world. Her toughened fingers pressed and slid, tapped and plucked, her green eyes fixed on things beyond, and still faster she stepped until she disappeared into notes in the night. Nyssa of Millstone Nether.

  Donal appeared in front of Colin’s old house, a set of bass notes playing in his head.

  He smoked a cigarette in front of the half door and didn’t ring the bell. He loitered, tempted to turn and leave. Then the door opened and there was Colin, unshaven and just waking up.

  Haven’t had tea yet, come in! he said without looking as he rubbed his hands through his hair.

  Donal silently pulled out another cigarette, stuck it between his lips and lit it with one hand the way the two boys used to practise together. Colin looked through the smoke to finally see who was there. The eyes do not change when everything else is altered.

  Donal?

  He stepped back, took the cigarette out of his mouth and cupped it by his side.

  Colin pulled the door open to embrace his old friend and Donal stepped backwards to avoid the threatening arms. Few had touched him all those years. Colin dropped his arms and stepped back too. Unabashed, he said, Got a smoke?

  Donal tossed him a cigarette and damp Pacific matches.

  Colin tried to light it with one hand but he was out of practice. Soothing, sharpening nicotine seeped through. Where did you go? he said.

  Nowhere. Away.

  Donal examined the feeling of being recognized. He watched Colin step back inside and wave him in.

  Where’s Dagmar?

  She doesn’t live here. We split up. A long time ago, a few years after you left.

  You left?

  She left.

  Still on the island?

  We raised our children together, more or less.

  Children?

  Two. A son and a daughter much younger.

  Colin stared curiously at the scars on Donal’s hands. Donal followed him into the kitchen and nodded when he held up the whisky bottle.

  What did you do?

  Collect dead birds.

  Colin handed him a glass.

  Still play?

  Donal didn’t answer.

  Seen Madeleine?

  Yes.

  Why dead birds? asked Colin.

  Snakes.

  Snake-eating birds?

  Bird-eating snakes. Anything-eating snakes. It’s all dying out there. They talk about half-lives. It is a place full of snakes. Back-fanged. He held out his hands.

  Colin nodded. Here for a while?

  Maybe. I built a place across the strait. Donal hummed out loud the tune that was in his head. What’s that called?

  “Ships Are Sailing,” said Colin absently.

  The name came back soft and sure as a fog-bird on the wing. Donal thought, Now I can leave again.

  Bung your eye! said Colin lifting his glass. Feels like I’m waking from a dwall seeing you here. I’m going to Dagmar’s tonight for a bonfire. My little girl, Nyssa, fiddles like the wind. You should hear her. She can fiddle anyone into the ground. Still play?

  Donal nodded.

  Colin stood, his fingers loose on his glass, and studied the familiar stranger. Then he reached across the space between them into Donal’s shirt pocket and helped himself to a cigarette.

  Nyssa dreamed smells. She dreamed she was wandering in a place lit by fireflies. The dusk gardens were scented with purpurea and sweet peas, overrun by unruly pink performance her mother had planted. Sweet alyssum warmed the air. The day had been suddenly hot and then just as suddenly it had rained and the perfume from damp cedar and sweet grass filled the night air. Partyish bursts of laughter came from bowers in the trees and a voice said, She’s coming into ear. From behind the gardens in the dark shadows Nyssa saw Moll in a cage. She said to the cage dream-rudely, What are you doing here?

  Moll spat sea moss from the side of her mouth and said, Who do you think made all this?

  Then Nyssa woke up.

  Nothing could wait. Appetites and desires had to be satisfied.

  All day and into the evening, Colin and Donal smoked and drank, saying little, their mouths growing cottony, their minds liquor clear. Colin went to the half room out back and brought in an old double bass. He leaned it against his piano, eyebrows raised in invitation. He sat and tinkled a few notes on the chipped keys. Donal allowed himself to smile, butted his cigarette, tightened the old bow and tenderly tuned the worthless instrument. The moment the bow hit the strings, Colin knew that Donal had never stopped playing and he listened with surprised affection to his old friend. They had little to say to each other, but they played, picked up old melodies and rhythms. Each listened and judged the other. Colin admired Donal’s perfect ease, and Donal still judged Colin lacking. When they finished, Colin passed the bottle to Donal, who tipped it up over his lips and stroked the old bull fiddle affectionately.

  Did you record? Donal asked.

  Did, answered Colin. Lots of the others on the island too. I played over on the mainland for a while. Toughest audience is still here. Then he stood and said, Sun’s down.

  It was a slight spring that year, undependable. Dagmar had planted a clump of love-in-a-mist beside Colin’s door. Starry rose and white flowers hung luminous in the darkness on a gentle tangle of pale ferny leaves. Colin snapped off a twig and twirled it in front of his face. Something thick in the air.

  He stared at a great flock of shearwaters flying in from the sea, circling and diving and settling in the waters of the harbour.

  He nodded toward them. Look at those bawks so thick on the water you could walk on them, he said drunkenly.

  No snakes, said Donal. This was what it was to be the prodigal home, feasting and smoking.

  Time to go, said Colin. Smart few’ll be there tonight.

  Donal stretched and said, Not going.

  Of course we’re going. I always go.

  We’re?

  She’ll want to see you.

  Not going.

  Colin stared hard. Then he thought of something. He went back to his room and came out with a pair of old oil pants, scissors and two tattered quilts. He cut off each leg and cut out in each a pair of eyes and a mouth. He pulled one over his own head and a hat over that and handed the other leg to Donal. He wrapped a quilt around his shoulders and gave the other to his friend. They’ll never know you in this old cadder, he said.

  Donal slipped the hood over
his head. Only his scarred hands showed. They stood face to face in their disguises, eyes shining through the rough holes, delivered from the bond of identity. Years Donal had lived lean and monkish, the only other voice his bass. Pulling down his hood, he said, She’ll know my voice.

  Don’t speak, then, said Colin. Hide your face as long as you like.

  Nyssa was starved for her own ferocity. Born to it. Her ear was set. The music was written; nothing to do but play.

  The flames of the fire leapt high when the two shrouded figures wove across the field toward Norea, Dagmar and Danny, neighbours and children waving flaming sticks and leaning too close to the flames.

  Nyssa saw them first and shouted, Daddy! and ran across the field to welcome the gowned men. Why are you dressed up?

  Found me out already! said Colin. Don’t tell a soul. We have a friend who wishes to be hidden. I’m keeping him company!

  Dagmar was irritated with Colin’s games and strangers. And Danny had that day informed her that he was the father of Marta Morris’s about-to-be-born baby. She sat beside the girl, who was uncomfortable and huge. Colin and his stranger were thirsty, and Danny poured them jars of whisky to sip through their hoods.

  Nyssa disappeared into the apple tree and with a whoop jumped down, danced and fiddled toward the fire. Everyone laughed at her familiar trick. One of the boys took Colin’s drum and joined her, making the skins moan and throb as he’d learned from the older man. Nyssa danced over to drunken Colin, who was already beating his spoons, and she tipped her fiddle down to play into his mask. The men laughed to see the two of them, and applauded the children following Nyssa’s wild dance.

  Dagmar, I’m not feeling so well, said Marta.

  Here, lean back on me a little. Look at Nyssa. She’ll be exhausted again tomorrow. Danny! Come over here. Are you going to make him take care of this child?

  Norea called to Nyssa, Play my duck song.

  The girl lifted her fiddle and the old woman rose and found some square footing. Her clear, thin voice chiselled at the night air through Nyssa’s strings and her song made the children shiver.

  My momma cut me and put me in the pot;

  My dada said I was purty and fat;

  My three little sisters they picked my small

  bones,

  And buried them under the marble stones.

  Norea had been blind so long that she’d forgotten the shapes of things. At first she had dreamed in images and colours. But they faded and disappeared and now her darkness was filled with the sensations in which she lived. She could hear the sea on the shore and smell the pine and the sweat of her family. She could smell the thick spruce beer Colin was drinking, that charming mocking manlife that Dagmar took for herself. Now there was a great-grandchild about to be born. What happened to all my brothers? she thought as she sang. Some most likely dead now. I never saw them again.

  When she finished and sat down and the scattered clapping stopped, the stranger planted his double bass into the earth a little removed from the fire, flames flickering off chipped varnish. Nyssa listened to his first notes, then lifted her fiddle again. She stepped up his melancholy rhythm and waited for him to follow, the others laughing and listening to this new player and Nyssa’s challenge. Donal led her into a lament he and Colin had played years ago called “Mother’s Grief.” Eyebrows cocked, Nyssa followed. How did this stranger know the old music? She’d never heard a bass tuned so cleanly to her fiddle, the throb a perfect octave or two or three below her. Colin didn’t like what he heard. He got up and noisily threw more logs on the fire until it blazed up and everyone moved back, crying for mercy from the heat. He handed Danny his spoons and the bottle. Danny called for “My Dungannon Sweetheart,” sang and beat out the rhythm. Nyssa played and Donal joined with a simple bass line. Danny tipped backwards off his chair, one leg snapping, and everyone laughed. Marta twisted unsteadily and said to Dagmar, I better go.

  She rolled to her knees and got up awkwardly, bending over her stomach, the ground beneath her soaking wet. Dagmar pulled a boy away from men who were teasing him into tasting whisky from the bottle and Danny rolled over into the baby’s waters and passed out.

  The stranger was playing a cadenza no one had ever heard before. He rang out harmonics at the top and deep rumbles at the bottom. The ground gaped from beneath. The shine of the stranger’s scars caught the flames and saucy Nyssa listened. Eager for what she felt when she heard this man play, she put her fiddle high on her shoulder and began to answer his sliding tones. He cut his bow deeper into the strings. She found his key and put in a few bars of a traditional strathspey. Colin laughed and called, Now there’s a girl, fiddle him down!

  Wrapped in the music and the sound of the sea beyond, Nyssa didn’t hear her father. But Donal did. He picked up the tempo and played a counterpoint to Nyssa’s tune. She smiled and broke into a reel to see if he would follow. He did and she gave him the solo. He leaned into the strangeness of playing among these people again, his tones travelling over the bare rock toward the shore. He listened to Nyssa, their two minds entwined, the perfectly matching vibrations of their strings deafening their ears. Donal had never heard a fiddler like this girl. She understood his intonation and played into it. He broke out of the reel with a phrase from Bottesini’s “Reverie,” forcing her finally to drop her bow and listen to him. This music was formal, restrained and unfamiliar. She stood silenced, listening to the hooded hidden figure, his mask pressed against the neck of his instrument, his arms embracing its body but leaning toward her, playing for her.

  From across the field, halfway to the house, Marta called out, Someone!

  At the strained tone in her voice, the group tore itself from the heat of the fire and the music and hurried over the dark field. Dagmar found her near the greenhouse.

  Sweet mother, said Dagmar, She’s in labour! Why didn’t you say anything?

  Marta wrapped her arms around herself and groaned.

  Take the children up to the house, said Norea.

  Colin said, Let’s get her inside. Help me carry her.

  The girl shook her head and leaned back. In the darkness Dagmar spread her legs to look. Norea bent down on her old knees and slipped in behind to cradle her head. A hen carried far is heavy, Norea said, wiping the young woman’s forehead with her veined hands. We’re here.

  She’s not going to wait for any walk to the house, said Dagmar.

  She can’t have her baby in a bawn, said Colin.

  The girl moaned, rolled to one side and Dagmar and Norea settled into the dirt to work.

  Colin put his quilt under her legs and whispered into Dagmar’s ear, reeking of whisky, Can you do this?

  All she could see was the blood-swollen hole in front of her, the head already pushing through. She hissed back at Colin, You’re drunk. If you drop this baby, I’ll rip your head off your shoulders. I could use some light.

  Colin said, Why would I drop my own grandchild? He squatted beside her, lit a match and held it low.

  Dagmar eased her fingers into the hole to massage it open. The girl screamed, Stop!

  Norea said low and urgent into her ear, The baby’s almost here. Push.

  She pushed then and screamed and buoyant Colin raised his match and said, That’s it, not a thing to worry about. I saw Danny born. You’ll be fine.

  Keep that light down, said Dagmar, pulling and stretching evenly. The girl screamed and pushed again. She rested and Dagmar said to Colin, Saw him born! Is that the story you tell? He never laid eyes on him till he was three months old or more.

  Norea whispered, Push hard this time, right down, like you’re going to shit. You have to get this baby out.

  Dagmar reached in to guide out the head, pulling and easing it earthward. She said, You’re almost there. Wait. Now . . . breathe and push. I’ve got the head. I want the rest.

  Norea cradled her and whispered in her ear, Push, you’ve got to push. You wanted this baby. You don’t want it dead.

  The cr
uel thought whispered into her ear made the girl lift her head out of Norea’s lap, prop herself up on her elbows and with a groan push so hard that she felt as if all her insides were spilling into the field. For the first time in her life she took up space.

  Here he is! said Dagmar. She pulled out the slippery baby and she saw in the light of a single match the squashed head of her grandson, his amazed eyes wide open, his mouth pursed with awe. But it wasn’t right, and in the thin light she saw that the baby was turning blue. Hard and urgent she said, Mother, take the baby. The cord.

  The powerful flesh was wrapped right round the poor child’s neck, turbid mother crying, What’s wrong! Dagmar thrust the baby into Norea’s firm hands and tried to unhook the cord.

  Norea said, Have you got it? Don’t strangle it.

  Then Dagmar did the only thing she could think of, stretched and broke the cord with her fingers. Blood spurted across her face and over the baby and the mother. Colin said, She’s bleeding! And no one had so much as a towel or a piece of string. Dagmar thrust her hand into the vines on the rocks and ripped off a bit, raking her hands on the thorns. She tied off the gushing cord with it and said, Stop screaming. You have a baby boy! Look and see.

  Dagmar took the baby back from Norea who held it tight inside her own sweater and she wiped and swaddled it with Colin’s shirt against the dawning chill. Then she laid the baby on his mother’s breast and placed her arms firmly around them and said, Here he is. Perfect as a boy gets. A couple more pushes now, and we’ll get out the afterbirth.

  Praise the end of it, said Norea and she pulled her sweater back around her and stroked the exhausted mother’s hair and struggled to straighten out her own stiff old legs. The fiddle and double bass from across the field had fallen silent.