Suddenly, I heard the laughter of young women. I rolled over and peered out over the window frame, half expecting to see some odd lake mermaids playing in the shallow water. Instead, I saw half a dozen blue-uniformed girls from the monastery school, all my age or younger. I recognized several of them. They jostled each other for a perch on a driftwood log, like me having momentarily escaped the tyranny of duty. None of them was dressed for the cold, and they hunched against each other, giggling. Occasionally one would stand, brush the sand from her bottom, and sit again.
I watched in fascination. Women in general don’t understand how charming they are when they aren’t trying to impress men. They fussed with their breeze-blown hair and the shoulder badges awarded for schoolwork and Bible memorization, gossiping about teachers and absent classmates.
One stood and gave her red-brown hair to the lake breeze, letting it blow behind her like a comet. She looked out across the water as if awaiting a ship, then walked down to its edge. She had a long neck and full lips, which she pursed at whatever she imagined she saw across the lake.
“Come on, Laurena,” one of her friends, a small blonde, cried. “We’d better get back.”
Indeed, I could hear the bell that marked the change of hour. I was expected back as well. Brother Michael needed my help. One of the three magnetohydrodynamic generators that powered St. Theda’s and much of the surrounding countryside was down for cleaning and maintenance. I was to spend the afternoon crawling through tubes getting covered with coal dust. Punishment was certain if I was late. I couldn’t move but watched as Laurena tossed her head disdainfully, kicked off her shoes, and waded into the water. A wave wet the bottom of her skirt. Her uniform hugged her waist, showing off the curve of her hip and her breasts. I learned later that she had taken it in herself, in private, with a razor and needle and thread.
“Laurena!”
“Go back if you want. I’m not going.” Balancing delicately on her bare feet, arms floated out for stability, Laurena walked onto the driftwood decades of storms had jammed against the pier pilings. “I have other places to be.” The curve of her bottom as she stepped up on a piling made me dizzy. She was as luscious as a basket of fruit. I was in love at that instant, totally and irrevocably. I had something to which I could dedicate my life. I pushed my erection into the sand, feeling the roughness of the cassock against it.
“There’s a bit of a gap between the end of the pier and the coast of Wisconsin, if that’s where you’re going.” This voice was dry and amused, not the voice of a schoolgirl. It had a dark, rough quality, like weathered wood.
Laurena turned challengingly, almost losing her balance. She steadied herself, trying to look dignified. “And what’s that to you, Aya Ngomo?”
“Not a thing, Laurena Tarchik. Except that if you don’t come back with us, you’ll be missed. Then they’ll figure out where we go, and we won’t be able to do it anymore.”
“Let them try to stop us. I’m tired of it anyway. It just feels like freedom. It’s only a longer leash. I want to get out of here.”
There was a whispered conference among the five girls still on the log. Four of them stood and ran lightly back up the trail that wandered through the dune grasses to the monastery. Left on the log was a small, bent girl with dark hair and skin. This was my first sight of Aya Ngomo.
Despite the luminous presence of Laurena Tarchik, she caught the eye at once. I may sound as if I am writing standard hagiography, Thomas, but the unfortunate thing about hagiographies is that they are sometimes true. Aya Ngomo focused my vision, even without the benefit of having had her icon at the front of my classroom as I was growing up.
I realized that I had caught glimpses of her around the monastery. She suffered from a progressive nerve disease, some mutated by-product of the artificial plagues released during the twenty-first-century wars. Her spine was twisted and she was in constant pain. She walked crabwise and crept slowly along walls. Her long hair was a lustrous black. She had an odd beauty, like an exotic caged bird. Her skin was dark velvet, her eyes wide and all-seeing.
She was, I had heard, a ward of the Patriarch of Milwaukee himself. He had taken an interest in this quick, intelligent girl. She held your eye by more than just her deformity. She was like a jewel with a complex flaw, much more interesting to gaze into than a transparent stone.
“Go away, Aya, for God’s sake!” Laurena was almost shouting.
Aya looked composed. “Why are you being such an idiot?”
Laurena turned her back to Aya and walked farther out on the piled driftwood. It creaked and shifted under her weight. “Haven’t you ever wanted to escape? To go”—she stared at the horizon, squinting to see something—“somewhere?”
The crippled Aya Ngomo put her thin arms around herself. “Escape? Laurena, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Then let me go! Let me—” Her foot sank through a rotted piece of wood. The rest of the pile shifted. She gasped and tried to pull back. She almost fell from the effort, something that would have snapped her ankle. She was well and truly stuck, her foot trapped by a heavy log.
“Aya!”
Aya shook her head slowly, as if things had happened exactly as she had predicted. Perhaps they had. She stood, wincing, and walked to the end of the pier.
Laurena stood motionless, her hands clenched at her sides. She sucked breath heavily, in obvious pain. At that instant I thought less of the pain in her ankle than the way her breasts moved as she breathed. I couldn’t even make myself feel ashamed of that later. She was a wild animal caught in a trap. And I, as the hunter, would come and free her.
Aya Ngomo crawled slowly across the shifting driftwood toward her friend. “Don’t worry, Laurena. Does it hurt?”
Laurena drew a breath. “Yes,” she said tightly. “Dammit.”
At that point I finally stood. I brushed the sand from the front of my cassock, correcting my appearance as much as the damn shapeless thing allowed, put my pectoral cross back on, and stepped out through the house’s tilting door. I felt exposed on the beach below the monastery, black as a crow, immediately visible to anyone as a truant monk. I stepped onto the pier behind Aya.
“Are you ladies in need of some assistance?” The casual seemed to be the proper tone to take under the circumstances.
They turned and I was faced by two pairs of appraising eyes, Aya’s dark, Laurena’s a vivid green. I was then tall and slender, with a high forehead and a sharp nose. My skin was just as dark as it is now, though far smoother. I was already known for intelligence and ambition. Still, I quailed before those female eyes.
Laurena rolled hers. “Just what I need.” She returned to her contemplation of the horizon.
Aya just laughed, a low throaty sound. “Where did you come from? Are you appeared like a miracle? Such excellent timing.”
I’m afraid that I blushed. Laurena was too obsessed by her own predicament to consider, but Aya guessed that I had been eavesdropping.
“I may not be a miracle, but you can use me as one.” I stepped past her and onto the driftwood. I weighed more than either of the women, and it swayed under me like a ship’s deck in a storm. I made my way over to Laurena, kneeling down next to her. She ignored me.
As I bent by her slender ankle, I could feel the exhalation of her flesh. Her own sharp scent made itself known over the bland floral aroma of soap. I let my shoulder rest against her calf. The wet bottom of her long skirt had plastered itself against it. The log had jammed tight. Bruises were already appearing around her ankle. I pushed against the wood. Pain caused her to suck in her breath sharply. She didn’t speak.
“Well, miracle, what are we to do?” Aya had made her way out to us, moving as lightly over the wood as a stalking spider. She held a thin cylinder of wood out to me, a piece of an old porch railing or chair. With its help I was able to pry the shifted log far enough for Lnurenn to pull her foot out. She put her hand on my back to steady herself as she did so. I felt her fingers warm on my sh
oulder blade.
“Thank the gentleman,” Aya said chidingly.
I stood. Laurcna looked me in the eye. “He works with my brother, Michael. His name is Vikram Osten. Michael says he’s lazy and only here because his family has ordered him. The Ostens are a powerful family.”
I smiled at her. Michael’s sister. Interesting. “You are quite welcome, Miss Tarchik.”
I earned a laugh from Aya, which pleased me. “You’d better hurry back, Brother Vikram. Someone will miss you.” I met her dark, somberly amused eyes and realized that further help would not be appreciated. With a slight, I hoped sardonic, bow, I made my way off the pier and up the sand trail to the monastery. Halfway up I turned, to look at two figures, the taller straight one leaning on the smaller bent one, as they made their painful way across the sand. Neither looked up at me.
Out of breath, I ran into the waste-plastic and wood building that housed the generators. Michael rested his arm on a stanchion and watched the flickering LEDs. He fussed with the flow diagram, changing the ionization balance in Number Three. Number Two was shut down, ready for me. He didn’t look happy to see me.
“You’re late, but no matter. I expected it, you see. You can work twice as fast. Into your coverall. Make sure your work is good, or you’ll be here tomorrow as well.”
He slung the coverall at me. I changed out of my cassock in front of his expressionless ruddy face. Without a further word, he shoved me into the dust-filled MHD feed tube.
❖
I saw Aya Ngomo again two weeks later.
A shrub-covered dune with a bare top rose just near the chapel. Outdoor services were often held there. One morning, as I was coming aromatically from cleaning a communal latrine, I heard shouting from behind the dune, an angry, ugly sound. I hesitated for a moment, then ran around it.
Several of the boys from the nearby town had gathered around Aya Ngomo. She lay sprawled on the ground, her back twisted, while they circled her, jays around a captive lizard. “Batty, batty!” they cried. “Fly to your cave, hang from your feet. Leave us be!”
Wild-eyed, they waved their arms like madmen. One pulled back a black-booted foot and kicked her. She rolled over silently, without so much as a gasp. Her eyes, expressionlessly black, looked up at me.
I make no claims about my physical courage, but having been seen by those eyes I could not turn away. Shouting some nonsense of my own, I waded into them. I had no plan, no idea of what I was doing. With sudden fury they turned, smashed my face, and punched me in the stomach so that I bent over, retching. A huge hand came and hit the side of my head. I found myself lying on the ground. They continued to kick me, but I took no notice. I watched the clouds roll by overhead. They were the most beautiful clouds I had ever seen.
Suddenly a large figure came into my view, picked up a boy, and flung him into outer darkness. It was Michael. Behind him came other monks, a taut, active mass. The disorganized mob of locals was swept aside like so many dried leaves. It was late afternoon. The light slanted dramatically across the monastery. I lay with the side of my face in the rough grass. The air was crisp and winy. It was a pleasure to be alive.
Brother Michael picked me up. “Are you all right, Vikram?”
To be rescued by Michael. How humiliating!
“I’m fine, thanks.” I tried to stand. He had to catch me. Two other monks came and supported me under the shoulders.
Blue-uniformed girls had gathered around Aya Ngomo. They swirled and twittered, brushing the twigs from her sweater. For a moment I could see nothing but masses of feminine hair. Then they parted and I saw Aya’s eyes on me. Standing next to her, full mouth quirked in amusement, was Michael’s sister Laurena. She looked past me as if thinking about something far away. Then my brothers carried me off.
The monastery Infirmary was on the second floor of what had once been a rustic tourist lodge, its false wood beams long since cracked and fallen away, revealing the metal that supported it. My bed was crammed into a corner behind a deeply gouged plastic partition. On the wall above my head, just under the roof, hung a glass case filled with Indian arrowheads, labeled with names like Kickapoo and Potawatomi. It had probably hung there for over a century. I imagined a boy collecting these remnants of a forgotten age, the action of someone who did not have to worry about the future. A window looked out on the monastery past the thick bough of a maple tree. I could lie in bed and watch others about their duties. Under a thick blanket yet.
A firm knock came on the partition. I looked up, half-expecting it to be Brother Michael, come heartily to rip the blanket from me and drive me out into the frost to do some labor for God. Instead, Aya Ngomo’s dark head poked around the partition. She rustled in and sat in the room’s one chair.
“I came to thank you,” she said. “That was a brave tiling you did.”
“And completely ineffective.” I waved my hand in dismissal. I had already learned how effective being casual could be.
“It was still brave. Such a helpful man you are. Is there anything I can do for you?” She was made to be painted as an icon. Her scrutinizing black eyes dominated her face. Her words, as they so often did, seemed to contain a sardonic barb.
I was suddenly hot in my bedclothes, prickling sweat all over my skin. I reached under my pillow and pulled out an envelope. It contained a love note to Laurena Tarchik. I had labored long over this work, sitting up in bed under the arrowheads. In it I proclaimed my love for her, my undying passion, my longing for one single word from her lips... well, it was new to me then. I also cited my family’s connections and my future prospects. A sturdy bank balance is often as much of an aphrodisiac as flowers and honeyed words. I begged for a meeting with her, at the corner of the Chapel of SS. Cosmas and Damien, in two nights.
I handed the letter to Aya. “This is a letter to Laurena from her brother Michael. Could you take it to her?”
She balanced it on her palm as if weighing the truth of my words. Her eyes looked past me.
“There’s one sort of intelligence,” she said. “It helps you get what you want. Laurena has it. So do you, I think. There’s another: the kind that tells you what the right thing to want is.” She slipped the envelope into her sleeve. “It’s lovely of Michael to write his sister. She doesn’t like him much. That’s too bad. I’ve always thought about how lovely it would be to have an older brother.” She stood up, as far as she could, her back bent. “Get better, Vikram. Even if you don’t want to.” She left with a sound like blowing dried leaves.
Two nights later I edged out of my window into the cold air. The maple had been pruned away from the building, and I had to lean over to grab the bough. The drop below pulled at me as I tilted out of the window. I seriously considered climbing back into bed. Perhaps the career of a lover was not for me. I let myself fall outward. I felt the rough bark of the tree in my hands and swung my legs around the bough. After that it was easy. I slid down the trunk to the ground. My dimly lit window hung high above me.
I felt exhilarated. I breathed not air but light. The ground rocked under my feet as if I walked on the surface of Lake Michigan. I ran off through the darkness.
The chapel corner was deserted, the moon peeking over the ramshackle plastic building that housed the MHD generators. Two huge concrete cherubim with snarling faces and winged wheels supported the chapel. I pulled myself into the shadows by their heads.
The cold wall behind me sucked my heat. I shifted weight from foot to foot but didn’t dare move much more to stay warm. Footsteps crunched on the gravel walk. I almost turned and ran then. Heart pounding, I stepped forward into the moonlight.
Laurena turned. “Ah, Brother Vikram.” She stood before me in a long dress, not a school uniform at all, but a real gown flaring out over her hips and tumbling down to the ground. Her hands were clasped like a suppliant’s, her hair loose around her shoulders. For a moment I thought she was there to make mock of me, but she was clearly as nervous as I was.
“I’m glad you came,”
I said.
“I almost didn’t,” she said. “Aya didn’t want me to. She didn’t say that, but it wasn’t so hard to figure out what she thought.”
I didn’t ask her if that was why she came. Instead, I took her arm. She pulled her arm back against my hand in acknowledgment of its presence. I felt joy.
“So what do you think rescuing me on that stupid pier entitles you to?”
I ignored her tone and paid attention to the pressure of her upper arm. “Just a few words. The ones you wouldn’t give me before.”
She snorted but said nothing else. We walked along the low wall that tried vainly to stop the encroachments of dune sand and finally stood on the slope overlooking the villages that clung to the edge of Crystal Lake, the dune-trapped body of water behind St. Theda’s. Her family lived down there somewhere, save for her tedious brother Michael, who had moved up to the monastery, where he worked providing his town with electric power. Though surely her ankle had already healed, she still limped.
“I was in Chicago once,” I said, naming the most romantic place I could think of. It helped that I actually had seen it.
She took my arm in her turn but did not look at me. Was she seeking, somewhere among the twinkling lights around the lake, the single light of her family’s house? Escape. Laurena Tarchik wanted escape. I was going to give it to her. “The Drowned City. I wish I came from a drowned city. I wish Lake Michigan would pour across the dunes and fill Crystal Lake to overflowing.” She was imagining water pouring in through the windows of her house, drowning her mother as she fixed dinner. I didn’t need to read her mind to know that.
“The water the towers rise from is usually still. It’s shallow and you can still see the fire hydrants and street signs under it. There’s enough glass left in the buildings that the reflected light of sunset makes the place look inhabited.” We hadn’t actually landed there. Uncle Cosmas had just swung the boat in close on our way to Milwaukee. But I didn’t feel the need to burden Laurena with that kind of detail.
The Breath of Suspension Page 2