Invitation to a Bonfire

by Adrienne Celt

  Rothschild showed up at Sugar Books in late winter, after an initial thaw had given way to the year’s final deep freeze. I’d been spending nights in the greenhouse, tucking towels around the seams in the windows and readjusting the vents as needed. Suffice it to say, I got little sleep. Once the Donne girls figured out what I was doing, they threw snowballs at the windowpanes on their way home from midnight study sessions, sometimes knocking at the door and running away, leaving poppets on the step with pins stuck in their eyes. God knows where they found the time to make poppets.

  The days were bleary with exhaustion, and as one such afternoon smeared over into evening I walked to the bookstore, hoping to cheer myself up. I’d been in recently, and didn’t really think there’d be much new stock, but it was all I could think of. Indeed, the New Arrivals shelf was sparse: just a small shipment of obscure philosophical texts and an unsealed box addressed to a publisher sitting at the foot of the checkout counter. The register girl saw me trying to peer inside.

  “Oh, we’re sending those back,” she said. “They packed too many by mistake.”

  “Can I look?” Everything else was picked through, and I was too tired to walk through the aisles and try to get excited about some romance or mystery I’d passed over several times before. The counter girl shrugged.

  “Knock yourself out. Just try not to muss them up too much or the publisher won’t take ’em.”

  I pulled the cardboard edges out from where they’d been tucked underneath one another, and they gave a squeak—then I gave a yelp. “Is this a new Orlov?”

  “Who?”

  “Leo Orlov. He’s a writer?”

  “I figured.” The register girl leaned over the counter for a better look. “Hmm. Search me. I guess it’s new. We didn’t think we could sell that many books by a guy no one has heard of.”

  “I have.”

  “Well that makes one.”

  Lev already lived in New York then, but he was still obscure in America. I pulled a copy out of the box and looked regretfully at the rest. No way I could buy all of them, and anyway what would I do with them if I did? The book seemed to shiver in my hand, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. I was reluctant to hand it over to the register girl even long enough to let her wrap it.

  “What’s it about?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I have to read it.”

  “You’re not even going to check before you buy it?” She wrote out a receipt for me and placed everything in a brown paper bag. “That’s devotion. Not a lot of readers like you out there anymore.”

  “I know,” I said. Though I knew nothing of the kind, the idea made me proud.

  “Let me know how you like it,” the girl called out as I left the store. “Maybe if it’s good I can convince the owner to re-order them.”

  I had planned to walk to the store for a loaf of bread and a bit of cheese, but I decided that Orlov trumped my aversion to the cafeteria. I’d slip in late and hope that Hilda or Nadine would be there and let me eat with them in the kitchen. A few students would be sure to see me, and no one would applaud me for eating with the cooks, but what did I care? Orlov, I chanted to myself. Orlov, Orlov, Orlov. When I reached the edge of campus I broke into a run, clutching the paper bag in my hand. Buildings blurred by, along with trees and faces. I was almost at the dorm. I was almost free. Most likely it was this excitement that kept me from noticing Kay’s foot stuck out in front of me—a rookie move, really; she tried it every time we crossed paths—and I tripped over her toe, skidding to the ground.

  “Whoops!” A yellow braid loomed above me, the rest of her hair covered up with a knit cap. “Must’ve hit a patch of ice. Want a hand?”

  My knees were skinned, a hole scraped into the left leg of my pants. Most likely they would’ve worn through soon anyway, with me on my hands and knees at all hours checking heaters and watering hard-to-reach plants. But it wasn’t as though I could easily replace them; a book was one thing, but proper clothes were another. Knowing I’d probably have to make a visit to the charity shop, I batted Kay aside with stinging palms.

  “Get away from me.”

  “Temper, temper. And here I was just trying to help.”

  I pushed myself up, grabbing the book from where it had skittered across the paved path and shoving it back into the bag. “You help like a hole in the head, Kay.” Spending time with John O’Brien had improved my idiomatic language immensely.

  “Such a bitter leftover,” she told me. “Someone should really put you out with the trash.”

  “Well, someone should really teach you some manners.”

  “What did you say?” Kay smiled, her eyes cool. I almost never parried her attacks. “Say it again.”

  She was in my way. I was so close—my bed, unslept-in for days, was half a minute’s walk from where we stood. In my hands I crumpled the Orlov bag, its paper already colored with a streak of blood. I stepped towards Kay and took a breath.

  “I said you were a little bitch.”

  The silence that followed was a beautiful thing. I suppose I can savor, here in this lonesome cottage, the similarity between that moment and this one. For once, Kay was at a loss for words—indeed, in her surprise, she seemed unable to move at all. It wouldn’t last long, I knew, and taking advantage of the momentary calm, I walked around her into the dorm, locking the door to my room behind me.

  23.

  I can still recite by memory the description on the back of the book:

  Rothschild: a new novel from the critically acclaimed foreign writer Leo Orlov. PICTURE yourself on a world far away, but not so different from our own. IMAGINE a terrible illness overtaking every woman and girl, be she Missy or Mrs., Ooh-la-la or Oh-no-thanks. First, a green line winds up her leg—yikes! Is it a varicose vein, or something more sinister? Ladies don’t take any chances, slicing the new arrivals off with razors and nail scissors, burning them off with cigarette lighters. But no matter what they do, the illness continues, the growths return, and women become slaves to it—until one brave girl decides to take an unlikely stand.

  It was rare for me to read the jacket copy of an Orlov book—I preferred to let the story wash over me, in all its twists and thrills. Plus, whoever wrote the jacket descriptions was a dunce. Not once, until after the success of Felice, did the description come close to reflecting what the novel contained. The basic details of the plot were there, but none of the depth, almost as if the publishing house didn’t want people to realize what they had until it was too late.

  But in the case of Rothschild, for some reason, I skimmed the summary and then set the book down with shaking hands. There was a sink in my room—a luxury the rest of the dorms did not contain, because my room was really intended for floor monitors and other adult visitors. I turned the water on, hot, and cleaned the gravel out of my palms, snipping away bits of dead skin and wrapping my wounds in clean white bandages. After inspecting my pants, I decided they might still be mended, and set them aside in a laundry basket before dabbing my knee with iodine. Then, with a shuddering sigh, I sat down on my bed wearing nothing but my camisole and underwear.

  I began to read. The night was predicted to be another cold one, and eventually I’d have to go out to the greenhouse to take up my watch. I could bring a flashlight and continue on with the book from there, but the beam would draw more girls to the glass, and I was worried an icy snowball might eventually smash through a window. Just an hour or so, I told myself. If I didn’t eat dinner, the time wouldn’t matter much. Just a few more pages. Just a chapter. Or two.

  A world full of invaded women opened up before me, with gentle passengers that clung to their legs. Not just green veins, but green vines, giving way to rich green pods and eventually small creatures with warm, sticky fingers. When the first afflicted woman saw her passenger emerge she was horrified, until the creature opened its eyes. They were—how to describe it? Very dear. A woman alone was just a woman, but now she was chemistry, a valence of heart and hope, Orlov wr
ote. The beings triggered bonds so elemental that they seemed like natural law. Most of the time they kept their eyes pinched shut to conserve energy, but occasionally they blinked at their women so tenderly that none could bear to do them harm. Some even took on the illness intentionally, fostering their passengers with pride. Legislation was written to protect the creatures, making it illegal to try and snip them free, as many had done in the early days. Because how did they survive? They sucked the energy from their women like milk through a straw.

  One girl tried to fight this, arguing that children, at least, should be allowed to get the creatures removed and try to live their lives unencumbered. But she was shouted down over and over again, until at last she died of a gunshot wound on the floor of the senate, her purple blood leaking out across the white tile. When I closed the book after reading the last page, the whole world was winking out—once the women all succumbed, life became impossible. Babies couldn’t be born. Men died out, lonely. And at last the only sentient beings left were the passengers. They’d never intended to do harm, but now they were starving to death on an empty planet, tugging at one another’s arms and wailing as they realized there was no one left to love.

  Lights winked out across campus, too. In my room, I hugged the book to my chest and tucked up my knees, turning my whole body into a knot and closing my eyes, just for a moment. I remembered my old life, its sweetness and annihilation. A pan of piroshky baking in the next room, the mist of yeast and meat and broth filling up our whole apartment. My father waving to me across a field in the summer, the light burning out my view until all I could see was his silhouette. My mother, brushing aside a strand of hair before leaning down to kiss my forehead. And then, too, my face, crushed against the pavement, a cacophony of ordnance exploding above me.

  My blood was warm and thick, my eyes heavy. I fell asleep still clutching the novel, and eventually it migrated between my thighs. When I woke with a start in the middle of the night it was still there, hot where my skin pressed into it. Outside the wind made a sound like an animal. I threw on some clothes and rushed to the greenhouse, bringing the book with me. Not to read, just for company. So I could remember for a little while longer the feeling of opening it for the first time.

  Lev

  26 June 1931

  Airmail via [Redacted]

  There isn’t much time today, Vera. The days seem to be shorter, here, where the west meets the east. And I’m not talking about loss of light, I’m talking about actual hours. The practical tock of the clock, tick-less. Sudden jumps. I pick up a cup of wretched coffee in the morning, and before I set it down the day’s gone, and I’ve accomplished nothing. Time is always different without you, but this feels new. Were you previously winding something in my heart that I wasn’t aware of? Is there a wifely duty you never bothered to outline? Please reply and help your liminal Lev.

  The good news is I’ve got a lead on a courier at last. As you know, I can’t very well stroll across the Soviet border and hand them my passport. People have been killed for less. The courier and I are supposed to meet and discuss terms at a quarter to four, dead of night—which I thought was twelve hours hence, but I just glanced out the window and saw a sky of inky blue, so maybe it’s sooner. I’ve probably lost time just scratching out this paragraph. And me with so many things left to do: I need to count half the man’s fee upfront, in small bills. I need to clean my little Galesi pistol, which is essential on the streets, and such a pretty thing. Mother-of-pearl handle, dark snub nose. It’s almost alarming how fond I’ve become of it.

  But we were talking about my manuscript, weren’t we? (Or anyway I was, but considering your correspondence habits lately, that’s more or less the same thing. Me, with a pen in hand, imagining the look on your face, which comes so clear I know in an instant everything you would have said after making it.) I still remember the reeling of my senses, a feeling not unlike vertigo which overtook me when you said you’d burned it in the kitchen fire to keep me from debuting with a story below my worth. Too concerned with politics, you told me, too insular, just not good. Your face was calm, perhaps a bit of fret about the lips. I put my hand on the table, to steady myself. You said I looked green, and I broke out in so much sweat it seemed I’d been washed over by an ocean wave. I walked out of the apartment onto the streets of Paris and didn’t return for a night and a day.

  I have no recollection of that interim. My first time jump? Or a simpler answer: a mind frosted over for its own protection. Erase what should, by all measures, be lost. When at last I showed up in your building’s vestibule, I was stubble-grown and raw of throat. Still wet all over, though you said there’d been no rain.

  Even then, back in your arms, I dreamed for a time of your murder. Many scenarios presented themselves: a sympathetic fleshly fire, a bullet, a pair of hands around your throat. But you know this, don’t you? You were there, after all. You peeled my fingers off your neck, face calm as evening. You pressed me backwards, away from you—not a shove, just a suggestion—and picked up a cigarette, licking the tip to check for stale tobacco before lighting a match. Your father had gone out for a bottle of champagne, the better to celebrate our upcoming nuptials. I looked at you and quivered, Vera, because you seemed to know everything I didn’t know.

  But. We don’t need to dwell. Do we need to dwell? I just saw a star fall across the velvet sky. Red sparks in black night—so, not a star, but a shell, exploding in what looks like celebration. I feel I’m back in that close apartment, watching you smoke. Drawing deep breaths, sucking in your cheeks. Exhalations more magnificent, coils undulating through the air. After which, you drew me forward, understanding that I would forgive everything. An explosion is a pleasure, Vera. An explosion means release. Do you know that the word grenade comes from pomegranate? So many seeds, spilled. So many chances, lost—or perhaps you could say honed, winnowing life to its essential pieces.

  I wanted you dead. You put flame to paper. We both had our reasons, didn’t we?

  Zoya

  24.

  For a while I was sure that Kay would do something awful. She’d run to the administration and claim I’d perverted her vocabulary. She’d accuse me of aural assault, or battery of the brain. I thought she’d try to get me fired, just from spite. It would’ve been, in some ways, a relief.

  Instead, days passed and—nothing. At first I waited for the early class bells to ring before venturing outside my greenhouse. I finished all my morning chores, weeding or watering, spritzing a mixture of hydrogen peroxide to decrease the chances of mildew and mold. No biology students were due that week, on account of the weather, and so I was able to creep away unmolested and go into town for breakfast. When I returned, I reluctantly opened the greenhouse for viewings (a simple matter of turning over the WELCOME sign, since I couldn’t leave the door ajar), and day after day no one came to visit except a first-year named Daphne who liked the hydrangeas.

  I confided to John O’Brien about what had happened, and he laughed before turning serious. We were replanting some of our first seedlings into their mature pots, and he stuck his spade upright in the dirt, brushing off his hands and giving me his full attention.

  “Zoe, have you ever considered going on a date or something?”

  “What?” I must’ve looked shocked, because he quickly shook his head.

  “No. Oh, no. Not with me.” John went a bit pale with embarrassment. A few months before, after a couple of beers and a dinner with Siobhan, he had pulled me into an embrace while walking me home. I hadn’t even needed to protest—he drew away of his own accord and apologized profusely, saying he just felt like we were family, and had gotten confused. I never brought it up again. “With a young man. Someone your age?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “It’s not that I think you did anything wrong, honey,” he added. “I just wonder sometimes if you don’t need another place to turn your attention. So those girls won’t get under your skin so much.”

  I promised him I
’d think about it. There wasn’t, in truth, a lot of extra time in my days, though of course I’d structured them that way on purpose. The greenhouse was my life, and I kept a mental calendar of which sections needed pruning or fertilizer, how often a major cleaning was required to keep the window glass pristine. Before I left in the evenings—provided there was no freeze in effect, and thus that I was able to leave at all—I whispered good night to many of my favorite plants individually, thanking them for their hard work and telling them how beautiful they’d become. In my time off, I often had to wash or mend my clothes, or else clean out my room, and was always surprised by how much of my time cooking and shopping took up every week. I was in the process of looking for an apartment, as well. It seemed likely that unless Kay ratted me out for vulgarity, I’d be offered an extended contract at the greenhouse, and I didn’t want to stay on campus over the summer, or ever again. There were several small houses being let in the area, and I’d been making my way through them with help from Nadine, who enjoyed circling rental notices in the newspaper. When all that was through, I liked to read, or take quiet walks by myself. It seemed a full life.

  But there was something about John’s suggestion that struck a chord with me, nevertheless. My body had always been serviceable: long enough limbs, strong enough hands, good teeth, decent digestion. I’d been so young when I began working with my parents in the Lipetsk field that it felt natural to consider my legs primarily in terms of locomotion, and my fingers as diligent pincers for plucking weeds or removing pests. In school I changed focus, but still, there were things I needed. Eyes for reading, the ability to sit without growing stiff. I hadn’t given much thought to the fact of my body, its very existence. There’d been no call to.

  Lately, though, things were different. It would start like this: a morning walk around campus with the clouds grading down into fog and then mist and then rain, moisture stuck to the fibers of my sweater, heat inside my clothes. I’d breathe in, and the air would have a scent like chopped ice, though it wasn’t quite cold enough anymore to snow. Bits of too-big gravel would trouble my feet beneath my shoes, and I’d kick them off the path, turning just in time to see a swallow sweep down over the lawn. And then came the girls.