“Yes. Well, that’s the catch,” she said and smiled. There’s no shame in saying I looked away then. Even in a mirror, the smile of Yeksabet Harpootlian isn’t something you want to see straight on.
“Isn’t there always a catch?” I asked, and she chuckled.
“True, it’s a fleeting boon,” she purled. “The gift comes, and then it goes, and no one may ever remember it. But always, always they will long for it again, even hobbled by that ignorance.”
“You’ve lost me, Auntie,” I said, and she grunted again. That’s when I told her I wouldn’t take it as an insult to my intelligence or expertise if she laid her cards on the table and spelled it out plain and simple, like she was talking to a woman who didn’t regularly have tea and crumpets with the damned. She mumbled something to the effect that maybe she gave me too much credit, and I didn’t disagree.
“Consider,” she said, “what it is, a unicorn. It is the incarnation of purity, an avatar of innocence. And here is the power of the talisman, for that state of grace which soon passes from us each and every one is forever locked inside the horn, the horn become the phallus. And in the instant that it brought you, Natalie, to orgasm, you knew again that innocence, the bliss of a child before it suffers corruption.”
I didn’t interrupt her, but all at once I got the gist.
“Still, you are only a mortal woman, so what negligible, insignificant sins could you have possibly committed during your short life? Likewise, whatever calamities and wrongs have been visited upon your flesh or your soul, they are trifles. But if you survived the war in Paradise, if you refused the yoke and so are counted among the exiles, then you’ve persisted down all the long eons. You were already broken and despoiled billions of years before the coming of man. And your transgressions outnumber the stars.
“Now,” she asked, “what would you pay, were you so cursed, to know even one fleeting moment of that stainless, former existence?”
Starting to feel sick to my stomach all over again, I said, “More to the point, if I always forgot it, immediately, but it left this emptiness I feel – ”
“You would come back,” Auntie H smirked. “You would come back again and again and again, because there would be no satiating that void, and always would you hope that maybe this time it would take and you might keep the memories of that former immaculate condition.”
“Which makes it priceless, no matter what you paid.”
“Precisely. And now Miss Andrews has forged a copy – an identical copy, actually – meaning to sell one to me, and one to Magdalena Szabó. That’s where Miss Andrews is now.”
“Did you tell her she could hex me?”
“I would never do such a thing, Natalie. You’re much too valuable to me.”
“But you think I had something to do with Ellen’s mystical little counterfeit scheme.”
“Technically, you did. The ritual of division required a supplicant, someone to receive the gift granted by the Unicorn, before the summoning of a succubus mighty enough to affect such a difficult twinning.”
“So maybe, instead of sitting here bumping gums with me, you should send one of your torpedoes after her. And, while we’re on the subject of how you pick your little henchmen, maybe – ”
“Natalie,” snarled Auntie H from someplace not far behind me. “Have I failed to make myself understood? Might it be I need to raise my voice?” The floor rumbled, and tiny hairline cracks began to crisscross the surface of the looking glass. I shut my eyes.
“No,” I told her. “I get it. It’s a grift, and you’re out for blood. But you know she used me. Your lackey, it had a good, long look around my upper story, right, and there’s no way you can think I was trying to con you.”
For a dozen or so heartbeats, she didn’t answer me, and the mirrored room was still and silent, save all the moans and screaming leaking in through the walls. I could smell my own sour sweat, and it was making me sick to my stomach.
“There are some grey areas,” she said finally. “Matters of sentiment and lust, a certain reluctant infatuation, even.”
I opened my eyes and forced myself to gaze directly into that mirror, at the abomination crouched on its writhing throne. And all at once, I’d had enough, enough of Ellen Andrews and her dingus, enough of the cloak-and-dagger bullshit, and definitely enough kowtowing to the monsters.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said, “I only just met the woman this afternoon. She drugs and rapes me, and you think that means she’s my sheba?”
“Like I told you, I think there are grey areas,” Auntie H replied. She grinned, and I looked away again.
“Fine. You tell me what it’s gonna take to make this right with you, and I’ll do it.”
“Always so eager to please,” Auntie H laughed, and the mirror in front of me rippled. “But, since you’ve asked, and as I do not doubt your present sincerity, I will tell you. I want her dead, Natalie. Kill her, and all will be…forgiven.”
“Sure,” I said, because what the hell else was I going to say. “But if she’s with Szabó – ”
“I have spoken already with Magdalena Szabó, and we have agreed to set aside our differences long enough to deal with Miss Andrews. After all, she has attempted to cheat us both, in equal measure.”
“How do I find her?”
“You’re a resourceful young lady, Natalie,” she said. “I have faith in you. Now…if you will excuse me,” and, before I could get in another word, the mirrored room dissolved around me. There was a flash, not of light, but a flash of the deepest abyssal darkness, and I found myself back at the Yellow Dragon, watching through the bookshop’s grimy windows as the sun rose over the Bowery.
There you go, the dope on just how it is I found myself holding a gun on Ellen Andrews, and just how it is she found herself wondering if I was angry enough or scared enough or desperate enough to pull the trigger. And like I said, I chambered a round, but she just stood there. She didn’t even flinch.
“I wanted to give you a gift, Nat,” she said.
“Even if I believed that – and I don’t – all I got to show for this gift of yours is a nagging yen for something I’m never going to get back. We lose our innocence, it stays lost. That’s the way it works. So, all I got from you, Ellen, is a thirst can’t ever be slaked. That and Harpootlian figuring me for a clip artist.”
She looked hard at the gun, then looked harder at me.
“So what? You thought I was gonna plead for my life? You thought maybe I was gonna get down on my knees for you and beg? Is that how you like it? Maybe you’re just steamed cause I was on top – ”
“Shut up, Ellen. You don’t get to talk yourself out of this mess. It’s a done deal. You tried to give Auntie H the high hat.”
“And you honestly think she’s on the level? You think you pop me and she lets you off the hook, like nothing happened?”
“I do,” I said. And maybe it wasn’t as simple as that, but I wasn’t exactly lying, either. I needed to believe Harpootlian, the same way old women need to believe in the infinite compassion of the little baby Jesus and Mother Mary. Same way poor kids need to believe in the inexplicable generosity of Popeye the Sailor and Santa Claus.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” she said.
“I didn’t dig your grave, Ellen. I’m just the sap left holding the shovel.”
And she smiled that smug smile of hers, and said, “I get it now, what Auntie H sees in you. And it’s not your knack for finding shit that doesn’t want to be found. It’s not that at all.”
“Is this a guessing game,” I asked, “or do you have something to say?”
“No, I think I’m finished,” she replied. “In fact, I think I’m done for. So let’s get this over with. By the way, how many women have you killed?”
“You played me,” I said again.
“Takes two to make a sucker, Nat,” she smiled.
Me, I don’t even remember pulling the trigger. Just the sound of the gunshot, louder than thunder.
One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)
1.
I am dreaming. Or I am awake.
I’ve long since ceased to care, as I’ve long since ceased to believe it matters which. Dreaming or awake, my perceptions of the hill and the tree and what little remains of the house on the hill are the same. More importantly, more perspicuously, my perceptions of the hill and the house and the tree are the same. Or, as this admittedly is belief, so open to debate, I cannot imagine it would matter whether I am dreaming or awake. And this observation is as good a place to begin as any.
I am told in the village that the tree was struck by lightning at, or just after, sunset on St. Crispin’s Day, eleven years ago. I am told in the village that no thunderstorm accompanied the lightning strike, that the October sky was clear and dappled with stars. The Village. It has a name, though I prefer to think, and refer, to it simply as The Village. Nestled snugly – some would say claustrophobically – between the steep foothills of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, within what geographers name the Sandwich Range, and a deep lake the villagers call Witalema. On my maps, the lake has no name at all. A librarian in The Village told me that Witalema was derived from the language of the Abenakis, from the word gwitaalema, which, she said, may be roughly translated as “to fear someone.” I’ve found nothing in any book or anywhere online that refutes her claim, though I have also found nothing to confirm it. So, I will always think of that lake and its black, still waters as Lake Witalema, and choose not to speculate on why its name means “to fear someone.” I found more than enough to fear on the aforementioned lightning-struck hill.
There is a single, nameless cemetery in The Village, located within a stone’s throw of the lake. The oldest headstone I have found there dates back to 1674. That is, the man buried in the plot died in 1674. He was a born in 1645. The headstone reads Ye blooming Youth who ƒee this Stone/Learn early Death may be your own. It seems oddly random to me that only the word see makes use of the Latin s. In stray moments I have wondered what the dead man might have ƒeen to warrant this peculiarity of the inscription, or if it is merely an engravers mistake that was not corrected and so has survived these past three hundred and thirty-eight years. I dislike the cemetery, perhaps because of its nearness to the lake, and so I have only visited it once. Usually, I find comfort in graveyards, and I have a large collection of rubbings taken from gravestones in New England.
But why, I ask myself, do I shy from this one cemetery, and possibly only because of its closeness to Lake Witalema, when I returned repeatedly to the hill and the tree and what little remains of the house on the hill? It isn’t a question I can answer; I doubt I will ever be able to answer it. I only know that what I have seen on that hilltop is far more dreadful than anything the lake could ever have to show me.
I am climbing the hill, and I am awake, or I am asleep.
I’m thinking about the lightning strike on St. Crispin’s Day, lightning from a clear night sky, and I’m thinking of the fire that consumed the house and left the tree a gnarled charcoal crook. Also, my mind wanders – probably defensively – to the Vatican’s decision that too little evidence can be found to prove the existence of either of the twin brothers, St. Crispin and St. Crispinian, and how they survived their first close call with martyrdom, after being tossed into a river with millstones tied about their necks, only to be beheaded, finally, by decree of Rictus Barus. Climbing up that hill, pondering obscure Catholic saints who may not ever have lived, it occurs to me I may read too much. Or only read too much into what I read. I pause to catch my breath, and I glance up at the sky. Today there are clouds, unlike the night the lightning came. If the villagers are to be believed, of course. And given the nature of what sits atop the hill, the freak strike that night seems not so miraculous. The clouds seem to promise rain, and I’ll probably be soaking wet by the time I get back to my room in the rundown motel on the outskirts of The Village. Far away, towards what my tattered topographic map calls Mount Passaconaway, there is the low rumble of thunder (Passaconaway is another Indian name, from the Pennacook, a tribe closely related to the Abenakis, but I have no idea whatsoever what the word might mean). The trail is steep here, winding between spruce and pine, oaks, poplars, and red maples. I imagine the maple leaves must appear to catch fire in the autumn. Catch fire or bleed. The hill always turns my thoughts morbid, a mood that is not typical of my nature. Reading this, one might think otherwise, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. Having caught my breath, I continue up the narrow, winding path, hoping to reach the summit before the storm catches up with me. Weathered granite crunches beneath my boots.
“Were I you,” said the old man who runs The Village’s only pharmacy, “I’d stay clear of that hill. No fit place to go wandering about. Not after…” And then he trailed off and went back to ringing up my purchase on the antique cash register.
“…the lightning came,” I said, finishing his statement. “After the fire.”
He glared at me and made an exasperated, disapproving sound.
“You ain’t from around here, I know, and whatever you’ve heard, I’m guessing you’ve written it off as Swamp Yankee superstition.”
“I have a more open mind than you think,” I told him.
“Maybe that’s so. Maybe it ain’t,” he groused and looked for the price on a can of pears in heavy syrup. “Either way, I guess I’ve said my peace. No fit place, that hill, and you’d do well to listen.”
But I might have only dreamt that conversation, as I might have dreamt the graveyard on the banks of Lake Witalema, and the headstone of a man who died in 1674, and the twisted, charred tree, and…
It doesn’t matter.
2.
I live in The City, a safe century of miles south and east of The Village. When I have work, I am a science journalist. When I do not, I am an unemployed science journalist who tries to stay busy by blogging what I would normally sell for whatever pittance is being offered. Would that I had become a political pundit or a war correspondent. But I didn’t. I have no interest or acumen for politics or bullets. I wait on phone calls, on jobs from a vanishing stable of newspapers and magazines, on work from this or that website. I wait. My apartment is very small, even by the standards of The City, and only just affordable on my budget. Or lack thereof. Four cramped rooms in the attic of a brownstone that was built when the neighborhood was much younger, overlooking narrow streets crowded with upscale boutiques and restaurants that charge an arm and a leg for a sparkling green bottle of S. Pellagrino. I can watch wealthy men and women walk their shitty little dogs.
I have a few bookshelves, crammed with reference material on subjects ranging from cosmology to quantum physics, virology to paleontology. My coffee table, floor, desk, and almost every other conceivable surface are piled high with back issues of Science and Physical Review Letters and Nature and…you get the picture. That hypothetical you, who may or may not be reading this. I’m making no assumptions. I have my framed diplomas from MIT and Yale on the wall above my desk, though they only serve to remind me that whatever promise I might once have possessed has gone unrealized. And that I’ll never pay off the student loans that supplemented my meager scholarships. I try, on occasion, to be proud of those pieces of paper and their gold seals, but I rarely turn that trick.
I sit, and I read. I blog, and I wait, watching as the balance in my bank account dwindles.
One week ago tomorrow my needlessly fancy iPhone rang, and on the other end was an editor from Discover who’d heard from a field geologist about the lightning struck hill near The Village, and who thought it was worth checking out. That it might make an interesting sidebar, at the very least. A bit of a meteorological mystery, unless it proved to be nothing but local tall tales. I had to pay for my own gas, but I’d have a stingy expense account for a night at a motel and a couple of meals. I had a week to get the story in. I should say, obviously, I have long since exceeded my expense account and missed the deadline. I keep my
phone switched off.
It doesn’t matter anymore. In my ever decreasing moments of clarity, I find myself wishing that it did. I need the money. I need the byline. I absolutely do not need an editor pissed at me and word getting around that I’m unreliable.
But it doesn’t matter anymore.
Wednesday, one week ago, I got my ever-ailing, tangerine-and-rust Nissan out of the garage where I can’t afford to keep it. I left The City, and I left Massachusetts via I-493, which I soon traded for I-93, and then I-293 at Manchester. Then, it will suffice to say that I left the interstates and headed east until I reached The Village nestled here between the kneeling mountains. I didn’t make any wrong turns. It was easy to find. The directions the editor at Discover had emailed were correct in every way, right down to the shabby motel on the edge of The Village.
Right down to the lat-long GPS coordinates of the hill and the tree and what little remains of the house on the hill. N 43.81591/W -71.37035.
I think I have offered all these details only as an argument, to myself, that I am – or at least was once – a rational human being. Whatever I have become, or am becoming, I did start out believing the truths of the universe were knowable.
But now I am sliding down a slippery slope towards the irrational.
Now, I doubt everything I took for granted when I came here.
Before I first climbed the hill.
If the preceding is an argument, or a ward, or whatever I might have intended it as, it is a poor attempt, indeed.
But it doesn’t matter, and I know that.
3.
I imagine that the view from the crest of the hill was once quite picturesque. As I’ve mentioned, there’s an unobstructed view of the heavily wooded slopes and peaks of Mount Passaconaway, and of the valleys and hills in between. This vista must be glorious under a heavy snowfall. I have supposed that is why the house was built here. Likely, it was someone’s summer home, possibly someone not so unlike myself, someone foreign to The Village.
The Ape's Wife and Other Stories Page 6