Ben Soul

by Richard George

sobs quieted, and her tears dried.

  “You must think me an old fool,” La Señora said, “to be so overwrought about something that happened almost seventy years ago.” She pushed back, gently, from Elke’s shoulder and reached for a handkerchief in her pocket. She could not find one. Elke handed her a packet of tissues.

  “Señora,” Elke said, “old hurts can be sharper than new ones.”

  “Perhaps so,” La Señora answered. “I must ask you not to talk of this. May I, as usual, rely on your discretion? It wouldn’t do for the world to know the iron maiden can break.”

  “Certainly, Señora.” Elke stood. “Do you need more tea?”

  La Señora laid her finger against the outside of her teacup. It was cold. “Yes, nice fresh tea would be very pleasant. You may pour this cold stuff on a geranium, if you will.”

  “Certainly, Señora. Shall we take tea in here, or somewhere more comfortable?”

  “In the lunchroom, I think, my dear. It’s cozy there, and I need cozy for a little while.” Elke helped her stand, and supported her as they walked out of the room.

  “Thank you, Elke,” La Señora said. Elke nodded.

  The Virtual Cockroach

  Vanna lay on her prison pallet and let her mind ramble through the netherworld. In her ramble, she came upon a chink in the wards surrounding La Señora and the unicorn. She tried to wriggle a finger of her mind into the weakness without success. It was too narrow. Then she bethought her of a cockroach, and its ability to scrabble into crevices. She shaped the dark shadows of the netherworld with the currents of her mind to create a virtual cockroach. She placed a cursed disease of the spirit on it for it to carry into La Señora’s psyche.

  La Señora lay sleeping in her bed. Her rest was uneasy, and she began to dream. Her Papá was in her dream, pale of face, his moustaches ragged, and in need of wax. Black hollows took the place of his eyes. His wounded mouth pled with her for some gift she could not discern. Fury twitched at the end of the whip she held, raised to slash at him.

  The unicorn, too, was uneasy, shifting and stomping its feet in its niche in the circle of rocks where the llamas had come for the night. The llamas nearest the unicorn muttered in their drowse; its disturbances stirred them to restlessness as well.

  La Señora, in her dream, slashed the whip at Papá, not to strike him, but to drive him back. Papá wailed, and slid into the darkness. La Señora fell out of her dream, only to dream again a little later. Reggie occupied this dream, resplendent in his dress uniform and the vigor of his youth.

  The virtual cockroach crept into the crevice in La Señora’s psychic wards. In her dream, La Señora watched in horror as war wounds sprouted on Reggie. A flesh wound to his face marred his youthful beauty. Then a mortar shell tore away his left leg and left him incongruously standing on the right, staring down at the bleeding stump. Then a whistling bullet tore a great gaping hole in his chest. Reggie crumpled and fell. Out of the gore poured on the floor of the netherworld a fiendishly laughing Papá arose. La Señora woke from this dream, sobbing. Her sobbing turned to muttered curses. Elke heard her, and came to her, to hold her and murmur soothingly over her until La Señora went to sleep again.

  For a time her sleep was placid and free of dreams. The virtual cockroach had slithered on to the unicorn’s rest, seeking to unsettle the beast’s mind with darkness. The unicorn dreamed a host of creeping and crawling things attacked it, seeking to bite at its hooves or to crawl up its fetlocks to suck at its blood. The unicorn stamped its feet to crush the creeping and crawling things. In its stamping, it missed the virtual cockroach, which scurried into a crack in the netherworld.

  When La Señora woke in the morning, Elke sat drowsing by her bedside. Elke heard her stir under the covers, and woke. She smiled at La Señora. “Ready for breakfast or do you want to sleep a little longer?”

  La Señora found it difficult to force words through the thickness in her throat. She did manage to croak, “Water, please.” Elke poured from a pitcher on the nightstand beside La Señora’s bed. La Señora slowly sipped and swallowed nearly a full glass before she gestured to Elke to take the vessel away.

  Still hoarse, but better able to speak, La Señora said, “Have you been here all night, Elke?”

  “Much of it. You had troubled dreams last night. It seemed best I stay near, to be sure you were all right.” Elke leaned over and patted La Señora’s hand. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked. “Or is it just the upset that business of the letters gave you yesterday?”

  “It is much ado about something long past,” La Señora said. “My will and understanding know that, but my heart and unconscious mind haven’t accepted it yet.” She cleared her throat again. “Is it late?”

  “Just coming on to seven, Señora,” Elke said. “Do you want me to help you dress?”

  “No, I can manage. It would be nice, though, if you were to lay out my print frock, the one with the cabbage roses. It buttons up the front.”

  “That I will.”

  “Just tea and toast, this morning, perhaps with a little rose hip jam.”

  “Of course, Señora.” Elke rose, extracted the gown from the armoire at one side of the room, added the small clothes to it, and left to give Willy his instructions. La Señora pushed back her bedding, slowly swung her feet over the side of the mattress, and pushed herself upright. Then she stood and went into the bathroom to perform her morning ablutions. She rang a small bell she kept at her bedside when she had dressed. Elke returned to brush La Señora’s hair, and coil it into a bun. Then she wheeled her out to breakfast.

  After breakfast, La Señora said, “I must get back to cleaning out Papá’s desk.”

  “Señora, do you really want to continue that work today?” Elke asked.

  “Yes. I gain nothing by putting it off.” Elke read the determination on La Señora’s face. She nodded.

  “I will be close by, should you need any assistance,” Elke said. She pushed La Señora’s wheeled chair into the office and raised the shades on the windows. The morning light sent the night shadows scurrying into the corners or under the furniture. La Señora re-read Reggie’s letters. Her suitor’s devotion struck her in this reading. “I missed this kindness,” she said, “by drowning myself in my fury with Papá.” Tenderly she folded the letters, put each in its respective envelope, and put the envelopes in their secret slot in the desk. As she closed the panel, she thought to try the matching pigeonhole on the right side of the desk. It, too, had a catch that opened a small door. Behind the door, La Señora found a faded blue velvet pouch. As she withdrew it, she felt papers in it. A stained satin ribbon was knotted about the opening.

  She picked carefully at the knotted ribbon. When she had undone it, she opened the pouch. A puff of dust settled on the polished desktop. La Señora withdrew several sheets of old paper. The top one had a brief scrawled note on what appeared to be butcher paper. “Miss Sally, may you find this when you most need to. He bade me burn it, but these sheets you should see. Elly.” La Señora had to search her memory for some time before she remembered Elly Ganz, the nurse who had attended Papá in his final illness. She laid the note aside.

  She recognized her Papá’s hand had written the remaining sheets. The first several sheets were dated in the 1920s. They recorded Papá’s affair with a woman named Tara Bull. The left hand edge of the pages was ragged, probably because they had been ripped from a bound notebook. Two other sheets were dated 1935 and 1939.

  My Journal, October 14, 1935:

  We laid my Fancy Danza to rest today. Brave heart that she was, in the end the consumption took her far too soon from this world. I have laid her to rest in San Danson Mountain, in a plot that overlooks the sea. It comforts me to think her spirit may rise up to look over her beloved ocean.

  Now all my concern must be my darling daughters, especially to guard them from the dangers of worldly men. I must trust Ta
ra to oversee Neva, which I believe with all my heart she will. My Salvación I shall take away to the stricter society of Lima, her mother’s home. Perhaps one day there will be a man pure enough for her.

  Poor motherless waif that she is, I must get a good woman to care for her. I asked Tara, but she declined, fearing the wagging tongues of the world. No doubt she is right. Women usually are about such things. God help me be the parent my little girl needs!

  “So,” La Señora said to the page in front of her, “that’s why we rushed off to Lima. Oh, Papá! Could you not see I needed to be among familiar things to mourn Mamá?” She laid aside the journal page and took up the other.

  My Journal, September 2, 1939

  War has come, begun on a Polish bridge. I am a gloomy old man, perhaps, but I foresee no good coming of this, only death and destruction. Please, whatever gods may rule the weary world, let this conflict burn in Europe, and not spread across the globe as the Great War did! We were wise, I think, to return from Lima when we did. Shipping lanes will not be safe, not with ships that glide like great sharks under the sea to prey on innocent vessels. Dark times, these!

  After almost a year and a half, my Salvación has taken up her life again. I know it struck her most cruelly that her British beau didn’t contact her. I haven’t told her my part in interrupting