“Great,” I said.
We left the office and began walking back through the impossibly long corridor. About midway down the hall, one of the office doors opened and a handsome young lawyer emerged wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a blue-and-gold-striped tie loosened at the neck, as though he had just finished his workday. His round wire-rim glasses seemed to require constant attention to keep from sliding down the steep slope of his nose. He didn’t notice us and nearly backed into Luas while closing the door behind him.
“Careful there,” Luas said, stepping wide to avoid a collision and coming to a stop. “Ah, Tim Shelly, meet Brek Cuttler.”
Tim extended his right hand but, seeing I had no right hand to return the gesture, sheepishly retracted it, stepping with me the same awkward dance I had stepped with countless others during my life. He seemed perfectly nice, but I had a distinct uneasy feeling, as though I’d met him long ago and he wasn’t who he now seemed to be.
“Brek here is our newest recruit,” Luas said. “She just met her first postulant.” Luas turned to me. “Tim hasn’t been with us much longer than you, Brek. He’s had a more difficult start of it, though. Came away from his first meeting with a postulant convinced he was a waitress at a diner. Wouldn’t stop taking my breakfast order—poached eggs and toast, no butter, mind you, Tim. It wasn’t until he made a pass at me that we achieved a full separation of personalities.”
Tim seemed embarrassed but I found the story hilarious. It felt good to laugh again. It had been so long.
“You’d make a good catch, Luas,” I said, joining in.
“Now, now,” Luas said, “you mustn’t tease me. Tim—or rather the postulant—was interested in me only because her boyfriend made conversation with a pretty woman at the other end of the counter and she was trying to make him jealous.”
Tim nodded in agreement. “I really was lost. It took me a while to separate her memories from my own.”
“Well,” Luas said, “I must attend to some administrative matters. Tim knows the way out. Would you be so kind as to escort Ms. Cuttler?”
“Sure,” Tim said.
“Splendid. She’ll still need the blindfold before entering the hall.”
“Understood.”
“As I said, Brek,” Luas cautioned, “I’ll check in with you to see how you’re doing. Sophia knows how to reach me if there are difficulties. Please make no effort to evaluate Ms. Rabun’s case. There’ll be opportunity for that later. Just get accustomed to her memories and emotions, both of which are quite powerful, as you well know. You should spend most of your time relaxing. Sophia will be with you. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Yes . . . yes, I’m fine,” I said.
“If she starts taking breakfast orders, we’ll know who to blame,” Tim said, gamely, getting in the last jab.
“Guilty as charged,” Luas said, bowing in mock apology. “I must be off.”
We watched him walk down the corridor and disappear into one of the offices.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, eager to learn about Tim’s experience and everything he knew about Shemaya.
“I’m not sure exactly,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” I replied. “Where are all the clocks and calendars? That’s been one of the most difficult parts of the transition for me.”
We started walking toward the great hall.
“Have you done any presentations on your own yet?” I asked.
“No, I’ve only watched,” Tim answered. “Luas says the next one’s on my own, though.”
“Me too . . . after Amina Rabun. Are these all presenters’ offices? There must be thousands of them.”
“Yeah, I just got mine. There are a bunch of empties down at this end. Where are you staying?”
“With my great-grandmother, at her house—or what I remember of her house.”
“Nice. I stayed in a tent with my dad when I first arrived. He and I used to go hunting in Canada, just the two of us. He died a couple of months before I got here.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be . . . I guess you’ve got him back now.”
Tim hesitated. “I guess,” he said. “It was great seeing him at first, and he really helped me adjust, but he’s gone again.”
“Gone? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. One day he just told me I was ready to live here on my own, but that we’d see each other again someday. That’s when I realized that we can live anywhere we want while we’re here. You don’t have to stay at your great-grandmother’s.”
“What do you mean, anywhere?”
“Well, anywhere you can imagine . . . Let’s see, so far I’ve lived at Eagle’s Nest in Austria and Hitler’s bunker in Berlin—I’m really into Nazi history.” These seemed like odd choices. It made me think of Harlan Hurley and Die Elf and their endless fascination with all things Hitler. But maybe it was no stranger than Civil War reenactors living in canvas tents on weekends. Tim went on, “I’ve also stayed at the White House for a while, Graceland, West Point. I’ve flown bombers and fighter jets and driven tanks. I even took a trip on the Space Shuttle. If you can imagine it, you can do it.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s amazing. I thought you could only go to the places you’ve visited during your life. That’s all I’ve been doing.”
“No, anywhere you want. I’ll show you when we get outside. You can’t do it in here.”
When we reached the train shed, Tim opened a bin near the doors, removed a blindfold, and tied the thick felt cloth over my eyes. Passing through the great hall, I peeked again at the souls. It was like walking through a library and randomly sampling paragraphs from the thousands of autobiographies cramming the shelves, each authored by a different hand but, like all autobiographies, revealing the same truths, suffering, and joys. I closed their covers when we reached the vestibule on the other side, neither confused nor weakened as I had been before.
Despite my uneasiness about Tim, for the first time since arriving in Shemaya I felt a flicker of hope rather than apprehension, the way a visit from a friend brightens the darkness of an extended illness. I flipped off the blindfold, and Tim and I virtually raced outside like two kids let out of school.
I could see the roof of Nana’s house through the trees. The train shed somehow bordered the western boundary of Nana’s property. The entrance into it was little more than a disturbance in the air between two maple trees that had been there since I was a child.
Could the entrance to heaven have been so near all along? I wondered.
But, of course, we were nowhere near Delaware or my Nana’s home. It was all being made up spontaneously in my mind. I could even hear the sound of light traffic along the road.
“Nice place,” Tim said, looking around. “Okay, so where do you want to go?”
“Um . . .”
“Just pick any place, you can see them all.”
“Well, okay . . .” I couldn’t think of anything on the spot, then Gone With the Wind popped into my mind for some reason. “Tara,” I blurted, of all possible things.
“I’ve never been there,” Tim said. “What would it look like?”
All at once we were there, standing on the wine-colored carpet sweeping through the foyer and up the grand staircase of the fictional plantation mansion. Crystal chandeliers tinkled softly in a gentle spring breeze that stroked the plush green velvet curtains of the parlor, carrying the sweet afternoon scents of magnolia, apple blossom, and fresh-cut lawn. With our heads turning, we walked out to the portico with its whitewashed columns, then along the sun-drenched veranda and back into the dining room with its sparkling tea service and glassware.
It didn’t matter that Tara had been only a description in a novel or a set in a movie any more than it mattered to readers of the book or audiences in the theaters. Nor did it matter that I could not remember the exact details as they appeared in the book or on the screen. My mind instantly provided what I expect
ed to see, feel, and smell. I was slightly out of breath when we reached the top of the stairs, and I felt a very real stab of pain when I banged my shin into the corner of a dry sink, proving that we were not wandering through a mere illusion. Everything was in its place, except Rhett and Scarlett, of course. I bounced on her bed, giggling like a little girl, intoxicated by the dream turned reality. Tim had never read the book nor seen the movie and did not share my enthusiasm, but I dragged him through each room anyway like a starstruck movie-studio guide: “This is where she shot that Union scoundrel,” I squealed. “And this is where Rhett left her.”
Back in the parlor, we stopped to examine a miniature ship in a bottle on the fireplace mantel. As quickly as my mind recognized the ship, my thoughts replaced the plantation with ocean and the mansion with the masts and hull of a sixteenth-century caravel on the high seas. There we were on the wooden deck, dressed in our business attire like a pair of farcical bareboat charterers. A huge wave caused the caravel to roll sharply to port in gusting winds, forcing us to claw our way on hands and knees toward the starboard rail through a drenching saltwater spray.
“Maybe you could warn me next time you’re about to think about a ship!” Tim shouted. We fell off the crest of another wave, and the ship lurched to starboard, knocking him onto the deck. I had seen it coming and braced myself against the bulkhead.
He collected himself and rose wearily to his feet. “Think calm seas!”
I did and the seas quieted instantly, as if two gigantic hands had reached down from the heavens to tuck and smooth the immense sheet of ocean, snapping the surface flat as a pane of glass. The skies instantly cleared and the sun came out. Tim sat down on the deck and I joined him. We could see what looked like a small Caribbean island in the distance.
“My grandfather took me sailing on the Chesapeake Bay when I was a girl,” I said. “Sometimes I’d fall asleep with him at the helm and dream I was one of the early explorers lost at sea.”
A tropical breeze rocked the boat, cooling the warm touch of the sun. We floated adrift with only the far-off sound of gulls and the easy slap of water against the tired wooden hull breaking the silence. I was exhausted and stretched out on the sun-splashed deck, propping my head against a hatch cover.
I soon fell asleep in this paradise. In my dreams I returned to the Chesapeake Bay. I was on my Pop Pop Bellini’s sailboat and he was teaching me to steer. The day was perfect, breezy, and warm. The sunburned skin of my grandfather’s bare chest and shoulders added color to the spotless white fiberglass coaming around the cockpit of the boat. A weathered, old blue captain’s hat shaded his eyes as they darted from the jib to a landmark on shore toward which he told me to aim to make the most efficient use of our tack. As soon as we sailed out of sight of the dock in Havre de Grace he allowed me to take off the life jacket my parents insisted that I wear because swimming with one arm is virtually impossible.
But my beautiful little dream about sailing with my grandfather suddenly turned into a nightmare—a nightmare that often awoke Amina Rabun, whose memories now lived inside me. Because I experienced Amina’s memories as my own, I experienced the nightmare directly as though I were Amina.
In this nightmare, my little brother, Helmut, and I (Amina) are playing near the sandbox constructed by our father out of colored bricks behind our large house on our property at the edge of the forest outside Kamenz in eastern Germany. Papa’s company employed many skilled masons, and he had them arrange the bricks on three sides of the box into patterns of ducks and flowers and extend the backside into a wide brick patio area, the opposite side of which had a large brick barbecue. Beds of roses, carnations, and begonias surrounded the two opposite ends of the sandbox, and our lush green lawn spread across the front.
Despite the obsessive state of tidiness in which our father maintains our patio and lawn, the sand in the box is excreting a putrid odor and I do not want to play in it. I tell Helmut he should stay away too, but he plunges in without concern. Soon his legs, hips, and torso are swallowed up, as if he is sinking in quicksand.
“Help, Amina! Help me!” he cries.
I reach in to grab him, but as I peer over the edge into the box I realize there is no sand. Instead, the arms of thousands of cadavers, tangled, blackened, and rotting, are swarming around like snakes inside the box, clutching at Helmut, pulling him down into an immense grave that extends deep into the earth, as if the box is situated over a portal into hell itself. I call out to Papa for help and pull as hard as I can to free Helmut, but I cannot overcome the strength of all these thousands of arms.
And then the nightmare ended. I awakened to find myself no longer on my grandfather’s sailboat or the ship in the Caribbean. I was lying on the grass outside my Nana’s house in Delaware, looking up at her and Tim Shelly, who were kneeling beside me.
“Brek, are you okay?” Nana asked.
I tried to comprehend what had happened. “I think so,” I said.
Nana smiled and stroked my shoulder. “You remember your name. That’s a good sign.”
I sat up and looked around. “I just had the most terrifying dream,” I said.
Nana comforted me. “You’re safe now, child,” she said. She turned to Tim. “Thank you for bringing her to me. I’ll take care of her.”
Tim stood up to leave. “No problem,” he said. He stared down at me with a chilling expression on his face, on the verge of being heartless and cruel. I had the same uneasy feeling as when I first met him. I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. “Thanks, Tim,” I said.
He walked off through the trees toward the train station.
Nana sensed my apprehension. “Does he make you uncomfortable?” she asked.
I sat up and brushed the grass from my skirt. “Yes,” I said. “I feel like I know him but he’s pretending to be somebody else. I just can’t remember who he is.”
“It will come back to you when you’re ready,” Nana said. She helped me to my feet. “There is a reason you meet every postulant and every presenter in Shemaya. You must discover why you have been introduced to Toby Bowles, Amina Rabun, and Tim Shelly. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will adjust. And the sooner you will have an opportunity to leave.”
16
Amina Rabun’s brother, Helmut, died at the age of seven years and three months, but not in a sandbox. A five-hundred-pound bomb punched through the roof of the gymnasium at his school, killing everyone inside. The old men who had no children in school and could, therefore, examine the scene objectively, the way men do in their fascination with destruction, remarked how the debris was driven outward in a ring around the blast zone. This was not questioned by the hysterical mothers and fathers or the city elders and townspeople. We had all heard the bombers circling overhead and the crack of the antiaircraft guns. Helmut liked the pommel horse and the trampoline.
The bomb that hit the Dresdner Schule für Jungen at 0932 hours on 22 April 1943 instantly dissected and immolated the thirty-two little boys playing beneath it, scattering many times that number of arms, legs, and other body parts hundreds of yards from where they had last been assembled. The Nazi officials who took control of the scene collected these remains and divided them into roughly equal sheet-draped mounds, one for each family believed to have had a son in gym class that day. With solemn voices during the invocation, they proclaimed that the children had made the supreme sacrifice for das Vaterland, and we should all be very proud. Despite the dark hairs that curled around the edges of our little sheet, we cried and prayed over it as if it were our own little blond-headed Helmut. Mama swooned and had to be carried from the street and sedated for a week.
—
MY NOSE ITCHES. I reach to scratch it with my right hand, miss, reach again, and miss again, as if I am swatting a fly rather than part of my own anatomy. There is a throbbing, penetrating numbness in my arm. This is the phantom pain. The ghost of my forearm haunts me each night, deceiving me during sleep by reattaching itself to my body
and performing the functions a forearm performs, like scratching itchy noses and swatting flies. Having set me up this way, it exacts its revenge for my carelessness around the manure spreader by vanishing just as my eyes open in the morning, so that I am forced to reexperience the terror of seeing a bandaged stump quivering above me like a broken tollgate on a windy day. The stump points indiscriminately at the eighty-seven squares of ceiling tile in my hospital room. I have counted them often and am certain of the number. The morning nurse, Nurse Debbie, comes in and eases the stump back down to my side, sending bolts of pain shrieking to my brain and from there to my vocal cords. She apologizes.
“Time for breakfast and more morphine,” she says, calling me sweetie and fussing over me.
Luas and Nana are sitting at the foot of my bed. I do not know what they are doing here. Their mouths move, but I cannot hear them, so I ignore them. Globs of gray oatmeal dribble down my chin from a spoon held by fingers not yet accustomed to holding spoons. Nurse Debbie serves the narcotic after breakfast, injecting it directly into the intravenous tube that still replenishes the fluids I drained onto my grandfather’s pickup-truck seats and the emergency room floor. The poppies submerge me into a warm, perfect, opiated sleep from which I always regret returning.
—
AT THE SUGGESTION of Pater Muschlitz, the parents of all the little boys killed at the school in Dresden agreed to bury their gruesome parcels in a mass grave as a sign of communal loss. All except my Papa.
“My son will have his own grave!” he raged, in denial of the fact that only God Himself could determine which sheet or sheets concealed Helmut. “He will not be buried like an animal! Like a common Jew! He will be buried in the family plot outside Kamenz!”
Papa ordered his staff to design a monument appropriate for the son of a wealthy industrialist, constructed, he insisted, of the gymnasium’s broken concrete and twisted rods of steel so no one would forget the cowardice of his murderers.
“It must be bigger by threefold than all other monuments in the cemetery! It must be completed immediately!”
The Trial of Fallen Angels Page 14