Sleeping in Flame
Page 12
Before I could say anything (like "No!" or "Help!"), I realized I was putting my hands out in protest, not against Venasque, but some man I'd never seen before. We were in a cold gray room somewhere, and my back was flush against a window. I saw bright daylight coming in from behind me.
The man coming at me was a midget, no taller than my beltline. He was dressed in a natty blue suit that was a little masterpiece of tailoring and had obviously cost a lot. More than his height, the most dismaying (and interesting) thing about him was his face. It had the seraphic, suffering beauty of Christ in a Renaissance painting: long golden hair, wispy beard, and eyes infused with all the scars and joys of life.
"You are my son!" he said, pushing me backward through the window.
I didn't have a chance to scream because the next thing I knew, something heavy was standing on my chest, licking my face. The pig.
I looked up and saw its craggy, comical face and sweet eyes against the California night sky. I pushed her off and looked for Venasque. He was standing by one of the flower beds, watering his plants.
"What'd you see back there?"
Weakly, I pushed myself off the ground and into a sitting position. "What the hell was that all about?"
He put the watering can down and stabbed a stiff finger at me. "Don't ever ask me questions in that voice, Walker! You either work with me and believe in what I'm doing, or you get out! You gotta lot to learn and not so much time to do it in."
"Well what the hell was that? You send me back to someplace where a midget pushes me out a window? What is that? Where was I? Come on, Venasque, I don't understand this stuff!"
"It was your last life, Walker. How you died back there. You fell out a window? Did you hit the ground? Did you feel yourself die?"
"Should I?"
"Yes; the most important thing you could've done would have been to stay there and feel yourself die! Who was it that pushed you?"
"I told you – a midget who called me his son."
"Don't you want to know if it was your father? Don't you want to know why it happened? That's the whole purpose of studying. All these magical things that have been happening to you lately all come from that last life."
My heart was beating like a hammer on an anvil. BAM BAM BAM. "Do you know why I died there?"
He pursed his lips. "I don't know. I got a feeling, but there's all kinds of funny stuff coming out of you. Like someone's turning the channels on you fast and I can't see any one picture yet."
"How will I get back there to find out about it?"
"After we go to the mountains I'm going to have you go through a couple of rebirthings. You know what they are?"
"You hypnotize me and I go back through past lives?"
"Something like that. First you gotta learn some other things. We gotta fix the TV set to stay on one channel before we can watch the Super Bowl, eh?"
That night Maris and I made love – slowly and deeply. After it was over, she said it'd felt like two clouds touching and then moving together as one great whiteness. Later, we figured out that was probably the night she became pregnant. Neither of us was surprised.
Afterward, we lay on our backs, holding hands. She hadn't asked anything about what had happened with Venasque because she knew I'd tell her as soon as I'd sorted the meeting out in my mind.
"Walker, we're good for each other, aren't we?"
"Of course! Why are you asking?"
She squeezed my hand hard, then let it go. "Because I'm letting myself fall more and more for you, and part of me gets scared doing that.
"Did I ever tell you about the fat man I saw in Vienna? We were supposed to meet one day, but I had some time to kill before, so I went into an AIDA for coffee. The biggest fat man I ever saw walked in right behind me and sat down nearby. He was so huge that it looked like he was sitting on a pin and not a chair. You know what he ordered? I counted. Three pieces of cake, two scoops of ice cream, and when he was finished, two coffees with Schlag. He ate the whole . . . blop in about five minutes. His hand and mouth never stopped moving: like a big steam shovel. At the end, when he went to pay, he reached for his wallet and took out the only bill in there – a hundred-schilling note. His check was for ninety-eight. I heard the waitress tell him. He gave the hundred and told her to keep the change.
"The first thing I thought was, how sad. This big fat man, who obviously didn't have much else in the world but cake to look forward to, used up the very last money he had to buy some. Then I thought some more about it and realized how wrong and condescending to think that way."
"How so?" I took her hand again.
"Because he probably knew sooner or later those cakes he loved so much would kill him with a heart attack or something as bad. But so what? That's what he loved best, so damn it all, he's going to appreciate it to the last cent or breath he had. Isn't that wonderful?" She turned to me while the soft light from the bedroom window fell over her shoulder and the top of her breast. "I can't tell you how envious I was of him. Know why? Because never in my life has there been anything I'd been that crazy about. Nothing. Except you. You're the first. So I have every reason to be scared of that, don't I?
"Obsession is nice, but it can also kill you."
"You think I'm going to kill you?" I smiled at her, but she did not smile back.
"I don't know. No, of course not. I'm hoping I know you well enough to believe you're always telling the truth. That's a lot, Walker! I love you. I love you too much sometimes. You've got more of my secrets now than anyone else ever. That makes you kind of dangerous, you know what I mean?"
I leaned over and kissed her gently. "Can I tell you my coffee story now?"
"Don't make fun of me. That story really happened."
"I believe you. I'm not making fun of you, Maris. I only want to tell you my coffee story so you can see how you fit into it."
She pinched my arm, harder than was necessary. "You're not going to make this up just for me?"
"I swear to God not. This happened about a week before we came over. Remember that day I gave you that big bouquet of roses? Then. I went in for a coffee, just like you did. Anyway, I had just ordered when I saw an old man sitting by himself off in a corner. It was a big place, and I had the feeling that was his seat every day. His Stammtisch. All the waitresses seemed to know him. I don't even know why I kept looking at him after that first glance, except for this great bad boy smile he had on the whole time. Thank God I did!
"The waitress brought him a cup of coffee, and for the first time I saw his hands. Maris, he had the worst case of palsy or Parkinson's disease I think I've ever seen. His hands were shaking so badly that they were out of control. There was no way that man would be able to pick up the cup and get it all the way to his mouth before it spilled all over. But he kept smiling, as if he had a great big trick up his sleeve and was proud of it. What was he going to do? With those crazy shaking hands, he reached into his coat and brought out a straw –"
"A straw?"
"Yup. A big, long, yellow straw that he dropped right into the cup. It looked like a little kid was going to use it, but the thing worked perfectly. Think about it for a minute. After it was in, he didn't once have to use his hands, just his lips. But you know what I loved most? After he took his first sip, he looked up with the proudest expression on his face. No double-crossing hands were going to stop him from having his coffee."
She slid closer to me. "I like that story."
"I liked seeing it, but you know what struck me after I saw him? The first thing? That I had to tell you about it. Partly because I want to tell you everything now, and partly because . . . because you're my straw, Maris. Without you, I know this now, there'd be no way I'd ever be able to –"
"Drink coffee?" She giggled.
"Drink my life. I've been trying to think of a good way of letting you know how much I love you. Seeing that guy showed me. Before you, I had such shaky hands. I know you won't, but I love you so much I wish you'd marry me."
We fell asleep with our foreheads touching. When we both jumped awake later, she said it was because I'd butted her so hard with my head.
I'd been dreaming of a cemetery. A Russian Orthodox cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia, around the turn of the century. Outside the high walls, horse-drawn sleds, droshkies, hushed over the snow-packed streets, with now and then the delicate metal tinkle of sleigh bells. Snow was spinning slowly down, but it was the nineteenth of April, Easter Day.
The place was full of people because this was traditionally the day they came to greet and honor their dead. They had colored Easter eggs with them which they lay on the graves. After that, they opened bags and baskets and took out all kinds of food which they ate while standing around the egg-ornamented graves, chatting gaily with each other, including their dead in the conversations.
My name was Alexander Kroll. As a child, my father had liked to call me Rednaxela when we played together. I had come today to visit his grave and bring him an egg. He'd died the year before of a cancer that slowly ate his face and showed me what he would look like forever once the disease had finished with him.
He had been a poet, a man capable of taking our endlessly long Russian words and sewing them invisibly together into beautiful quilts of language and imagery. While the cancer squeezed that last of him in its stone fist, he began work on a play about a child who accidentally builds a new Tower of Babel with toy blocks. My father died silent and sad because his body wouldn't permit him to finish the first act. The inscription on his grave read Dum vita est, spes est. While there is life, there is hope. He chose it himself.
I didn't know my mother because she'd died when I was born. However, my father, who had the very un-Russian name Melchior, was almost enough to compensate for a life without her. He cooked and cleaned for us, showed me off to the world as his greatest achievement and joy, and spoke to me from the very beginning as an intelligent adult who would naturally understand and appreciate the sound of life's thunder.
An old couple nearby stood in front of a small grave and spoke approvingly of how well Nikolai looked. I looked at the tombstone and saw that Nikolai (their son?) had been dead forty years. Father would have appreciated their ongoing love. Like Heinrich Heine, most of his work had been a hymn to the good in life. One of his friends, Nozdryov, said Melchior Kroll admired thieves for their initiative, earthquakes for changing the scenery, and a cholera plague for inspiring artists to their greatest work. But the same Nozdryov fell on his knees and wept the day they lowered my father into the earth.
"We didn't deserve him, Alexi. If he isn't in heaven right now, then God is a whore."
In my pocket was the knife I'd used two nights before to kill the red woman. It was a beautiful Swedish knife and had always done its job perfectly, almost known by itself where that baby-soft spot just below the ear sang out to be cut. If I was in a good mood, the job was finished in two moves: once hard below the ear into the neck, then out again and straight into the heart. The first touch for greeting, the second to finish.
The red woman said she worked in a leather factory, making gloves. I believed her because beneath all her fingernails was the red dye she used in her job. I noticed all their hands. One woman had bitten every fingernail down to the nub, another had black on two fingers from blotting ink in her office. The red woman, the nub woman, the black woman. All of St. Petersburg was talking about it. I had become the celebrity my father should have been. I had the fingertips of each of their thumbs in my pocket. I was writing a play about it.
Bending down to his grave, I took out pieces of bread and cheese. The bread caught for a moment on the knife, so I had to reach deeper into that pocket to free it.
From behind me I heard someone shout, "Look out! It's a mad one. Look at its face!"
I turned and saw the dog. It ran, then stopped and swayed as if dancing to some secret music. People yelled at each other to watch out – it was mad, it had rabies. And of course it did, but that was him now. I stayed where I was and put my hand out for him to come to me. He tried, but his roaring eyes and rubbery legs kept him standing where he was. His thick brown tongue hung uselessly out of one side of his mouth. He saw me and growled, then whimpered. He fell down and got up, fell down again. Poor thing.
"Careful, it'll bite you!" The old man who'd come to visit his Nikolai tried weakly to pull me away. I brushed his hands away.
"Come here."
When he was a meter away, he began speaking to me in German.
"Vielleicht hist du Rippenbiest, Hammelwade, oder Schnьrbein?"
I put my hand out again to touch him. When I moved, his eyes cleared to a ferocious gold. He lunged, biting deep through my arm into the bone.
"Hello, Papa."
Venasque drove his Jeep like a little old man.
"I am a little old man, Walker. What do you expect?"
We were traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway at thirty-five miles an hour. The car was packed with mysterious-looking boxes, a portable television, and both animals. The two of them either sat at attention next to each other, an inch behind my ear, or lay on their name pillows and snored like propeller planes. Untrue to his word, Venasque had an economy-size bag of M & M candies on his lap that he fed to them over his shoulder.
"They get tired traveling. This gives them some extra energy."
He kept his hands at three and nine o'clock on the steering wheel and never moved them an inch from that position. He checked both inside and outside mirrors constantly. Every hour, no matter where we were on the road, he slammed on the brakes "just to make sure they're working." I found that unnerving, but the dog and pig slept on peacefully or ate their M & Ms in contented silence.
"Why'd you buy such a big car?"
"I travel to the mountains a lot. If you get in an accident in a Jeep, you don't have to worry. Besides, right before I got it, I saw John James driving one down Pico Boulevard. That was good enough for me."
"Who's John James?"
He looked at me incredulously. "Don't you watch 'Dynasty'? Jeff Colby. He's a major TV star."
A 1951 Ford passed us on the left going about twenty miles an hour.
"How much television do you watch a day?"
"As much as I can. When I don't have to teach, I try to go straight through."
"You watch all day?"
"Don't sound condescending, Walker. Can you remember your last three lives? I remember mine. Can you fly? I can. Can you do this?" He took something off the dashboard – a snapshot of his animals. With one hand, he stood the picture vertically on the tip of his thumb. It stayed there and didn't move. Reaching over, I took it and did the same trick on my own finger. Like the day in Maris's apartment with her photograph of Luc.
"Good! You can do that. It saves me some time. Who taught you?"
"No one. It happened by itself."
He checked both rearview mirrors. "Nope. Lesson number one: Nothing happens by itself. It happens either because you got a special talent, or because you teach yourself. Looks like with this, you found part of yourself in that photo and it said hello to you."
"I don't understand." I put the picture down on the seat.
"You want to hear how it happened to me?"
"I'd love to, but do you think you could first speed up a little and go around this guy? He keeps looking back as though he's afraid we're going to hit him."
Venasque gave it some gas and passed a man struggling along on a bicycle. When we were by, the rider gave us the finger and shook his head. Venasque waved.
"Back in France before the war, I was a kindergarten teacher. The best job I ever had. I sat in a room and watched little kids grow up. The only things I had to teach them were fun to do, and most of the time all we did was laugh. I taught well, too, because if you failed them, you failed life.
"It took a long time for
the war to reach us because our town was unimportant, but when it did, it was like a knife in the eye. Nice people I'd known all my life started wearing uniforms and flying Nazi flags and saying Jews were shit. We tried to ignore it, but couldn't.
"Then people started taking their kids out of our school because both my sister and I taught there and we were Jews."
"The Nazis killed her, didn't they?"
Venasque licked his lips and nodded. "You know that too? Yes, they shot Ilonka and her husband Raymond in their own garden. Someone told me she had a strawberry in her mouth when they picked up her body. Death doesn't even let you finish your meal, huh? That was the same day they came for me and the children. Do you remember that?"
I looked at him. "Should I?"
"You were there, Walker. I thought you might remember. Yes."
"Benedikt!"
"Yes, sir!" My palms were flat down in the dirt. I could feel the warmth of the earth through them. We'd been walking all day, and the warmth which had felt so good in the early morning was no longer friendly by three o'clock. All our uniforms were sweated through; we smelled hot, rank, and bitter. Marching, the rucksack I carried felt like a bag of cement against my back. I wanted to throw my rifle away and never pick it up again. Never shoot it, never carry it, never see it. What I had seen that day made me tired of everything, including myself.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to sit in the Cafй Central and read the Viennese newspapers, or perhaps write a letter to someone. The place would be shadowy and cool as stone. When I had downed the last Schluck of real coffee, I'd walk out onto the Herrengasse and take an easy stroll down toward the Opera. Sometimes when you passed the Spanish Riding School you saw trainers leading the horses across the street to the performance ring. I loved the sound their hooves made on the cobblestones.
But I wasn't home. I was a German soldier in southern France in the middle of a war that meant nothing to me. Every day we marched from one small village to the next, scaring these quiet farmers for no reason other than malice. If they gave us trouble, we shot them.