Let the Dark Flower Blossom

by Norah Labiner

  400.

  “That story about your father—is it true?” said Salt.

  “Did he really make coffins?” said Salt.

  “Coffins, caskets—” said Schell.

  “And he taught you how to do that?” said Salt.

  “How to use a hammer,” said Schell.

  “He killed your mother?” said Salt.

  “You must have hated him,” said Salt.

  “My father?” said Schell.

  “No,” said Salt. “Roman”

  They sat in silence.

  As the candles burned.

  “Do you know who killed Roman?” said Schell.

  Salt removed his eyeglasses.

  He set them, bows down, on the table.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  The candles were burning down.

  Salt said, “I think Inj exists only for me. Is that wrong?”

  “It isn’t right,” said Schell.

  “No?” said Salt.

  He gave a dry laugh.

  “But then, what is?” he said.

  Schell said nothing.

  Schell was thinking about his wife in her hospital bed.

  Schell was thinking about the girl’s naked body in the snow.

  He was thinking about kerosene and turpentine.

  About the locust.

  And the flood.

  And Babylon the great sweet mysterious harlot.

  And the difference between sugar and salt.

  And the mold upon roses.

  Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.

  A book upon a shelf.

  And a name upon a page.

  Everything meant nothing.

  And nothing was the blank page.

  There was nothing.

  Between one minute and the next.

  One letter and the next.

  Between breasts.

  Between thighs.

  The slip of the tongue between s and z.

  “My mother—” Salt said.

  In the light of waxing candles.

  “Her name is Wren,” he said. “Do you remember her? A girl with that name? Did you know her?” Salt asked.

  401.

  Beatrice ran through the woods.

  402.

  Eloise said, “You will always be able to do what you want with me.”

  403.

  Schell looked at Salt.

  404.

  “I didn’t kill Roman Stone,” said Salt.

  “But I wish that I had,” he said.

  405.

  Eris believed in the novel as the only truly feminine art form.

  406.

  Zigouiller kissed Eloise and her hair smelled of smoke.

  407.

  Years later when he was old and prolific and so important that one could barely speak of literature, let alone letters, without uttering his name, Benjamin Salt told an audience of rapt listeners in a packed lecture hall in Oslo the story of how he received—as a gift; a token, an apple of sin; like a box, that he had only to pull the string and untie, unbind—the inspiration for his second novel. He told of his moonlight journey through the woods, through drifts of snow, to take hold of a manuscript that had been stolen from his grasp by a girl—yet he omitted the part about the typewriter. He did not tell that part of the story.

  Instead he told his story this way:

  “Many years ago when I was young and thought about nothing but art, night and day, I contracted a strange suffocating illness. I went on a journey—a pilgrimage, really—in search of a cure. The cure, in my case, was no unguent or herb, no pill or injection; no, the remedy was a story. I traveled a distance to find the man who could tell me this story. You see, I was suffering from writer’s block. How was I to live without words on the page? I lived in a terror of emptiness. I did not know yet the lesson to be learned from lack. As I say, I was young and took symbols where I could find them. So what could I do? I did what dreamers do. I did what is done in the movies: I headed out on the road with a beautiful girl. Well, that didn’t work out,” he paused, as the audience laughed. “We were young,” he went on, “and love was an inevitability. The man for whom I searched had promised to give me the manuscript of his memoir—he was peculiar, a recluse. I won’t speak his name, as he so valued his privacy. He would only allow me to read this memoir on the condition that I came to visit him on his island. He was lonely there, lonely with his terrible knowledge. We arrived on New Year’s Eve just before a storm, and found ourselves—the four of us—snowbound. This recluse had a girl—no more than a child—living with him. It was rumored that the island was haunted, that the inhabitants were possessed. These were rumors, of course—” he seemed to lose his way in the telling of his story. There was silence; it lasted almost too long. No one moved. No one coughed. Or whispered. And then in the dark and hush of the auditorium, Salt spoke, “On the night before I was to leave—he gave me his manuscript and promised that with the reading of its pages would come a cure to my affliction. How could this be? I held out my hands to receive my medicine, my antidote—the perfect story—when just then that girl, that strange possessed child, stole the manuscript, gathered it in her arms, and made off with it into the woods—into the snow. What could I do but go after her? I followed her by the moonlight. She led me through the darkness. I called out to her. She ran on ahead of me. She lost me. She eluded me in the trees. She fluttered up as a bird. I chased her shadow. She disappeared.—I fell; I lost my footing on an icy incline—I slipped and fell down, down—and when I landed, as I lay on my back in the snow, in the cold, staring up at those starry twins, Castor and Pollux, and the vast blue of the black sky; I knew then, not fear, nor anger—but a story—word by word—complete, whole—a world of words. I knew every word and the space between every letter. I knew; I knew what had happened. And what was yet to happen. I opened my eyes to the heavens—and there before me was a house. Do you believe that there is such a thing as the house of fiction, ladies and gentlemen? I do. I saw it that night. I saw the house of fiction rise up out of the wilderness and all her lights were blazing.”

  He said the woods were haunted.

  He lost his way.

  He fell in the snow.

  He lay in the snow staring up at the black sky.

  And then he saw the doctor’s house rise up before him.

  And he saw light in Beatrice’s windows.

  He went to it.

  408.

  Beatrice was kind to Salt. He would have to spend the night. He couldn’t go back through the woods. She showed him her father’s house. Salt looked in astonishment at the ruins of a botched civilization: the books and paintings; the marble statuettes and figurines. They drank plum brandy. And when it came around to it, Salt asked her for the manuscript.

  409.

  Eloise was thinking about what Roman had done to her.

  410.

  “I should have gone with Benny,” said Inj.

  In the kitchen, she stood at the window.

  The room was warm. The fire was bright in the stove.

  “There’s a path through the woods,” Schell said.

  “He’ll get lost,” she said.

  “He’ll lose his way,” she said.

  She placed a hand against the glass.

  The clock ticked.

  Snow fell.

  Inj turned from the window.

  On the table was the Santa Fe cake.

  Schell took up the knife and he cut two big slices.

  He set them each upon a plate.

  She sat.

  “Have you ever had Santa Fe cake?” he asked.

  She said no, she hadn’t.

  She picked up a fork.

  “Do you miss him?” she said.

  “I hadn’t seen him in years,” Schell said.

  “He wasn’t the kind of person that you can forget,” she said. “Was he?”

  Schell said no, he supposed that Ro was pretty hard to forget.

  And God knows that he
had tried.

  “Oh,” said the girl. “You’re joking again.”

  She set down her fork.

  She broke a bit of cake with her fingers.

  “I hate jokes,” she said.

  “I saw Ro hit a girl once,” said Schell.

  “Did you?” said Inj.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She said, “What happened to her?”

  “What happened to the girl?” she said.

  He said that it was a long time ago.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s stopped snowing.”

  It really had stopped snowing.

  And everything in the world was perfectly still.

  “Does it bother you to talk about Roman? I like talking about him,” she said. “I like saying his name. You told me that like is a word for children. And I felt so stupid,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Are you? For what?” she said.

  “You don’t have to apologize to me,” she said. “It only makes it worse. I’m not the sort of girl who needs apologies.”

  She ate.

  “Do you want to hear my story?” she said.

  She laughed.

  “The truth is that I don’t have a story to tell you,” she said. “There is nothing mysterious about me. I didn’t have a lousy childhood. Nothing tragic has ever happened to me.”

  She ate with her fingers.

  “This is so good,” she said.

  “Do you want to know about me and Ro?” she said.

  She rose and brought the coffeepot to the table.

  She liked coffee with her cake.

  She didn’t like cake without coffee.

  She liked the bitter and the sweet together.

  She filled his cup.

  And then her own cup.

  She added cream.

  She turned her spoon round in her cup.

  “He threw me over for another girl,” she said.

  “I didn’t hold it against him,” she said. “How could I?”

  She went on, “Ro died. And I met Benny.”

  “What about the typewriter?” he said.

  “Benny wanted it,” she said.

  “I don’t have it,” he said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Why did you write to me?” he said.

  She turned her spoon in her coffee cup.

  “I’m sobering up,” she said.

  There was a bottle of brandy in the cabinet.

  He got the bottle.

  He poured some into her cup.

  She drank.

  “Ro used to talk about you,” she said.

  “And your sister,” she said.

  “Why do you read books?” she asked.

  “Some people,” she said. “Read books to learn things, or to escape.”

  “I’m so envious of other girl’s tragedies,” she said. “I guess that’s why I read books: to imagine that I’m that tragic girl around whom the whole wide world revolves.”

  “I was a little envious,” she said.

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  He said, “I hadn’t seen him in years.”

  “Not of you,” she said.

  She pushed her hair from her face.

  With a palm against her forehead.

  “Of your sister,” she said.

  She drank.

  “I sent you the letters,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She smiled.

  Sad, wan—

  “I’m not really sorry,” she said.

  She looked down into the cup.

  She looked up.

  “He was waiting,” she said.

  “Waiting?” said Schell.

  “For you,” she said.

  “He said he couldn’t write his book until you wrote yours.”

  “He was waiting for you, and—you; you were waiting to tell the perfect story,” she said.

  “Do you know what I think?” she said.

  “I think every story is the perfect story,” she said.

  “Isn’t that stupid of me?” she said.

  “You loved him,” he said.

  “You make it sound ugly,” she said.

  “You make it sound like an accusation,” she said.

  “I suppose it was ugly,” she said.

  She drank the last of her cup.

  “Did you write your story?” she said.

  “I did,” he said.

  “Why?” she said.

  “It’s my story,” he said.

  “Who else would tell it?” he said.

  “Now who’s being stupid?” she said.

  “So you did it for Ro,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I think, I thought—it’s what he would have wanted,” she said.

  “And you always did what he wanted,” Schell said.

  “I did,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

  411.

  “Beatrice,” said Salt.

  He set his glass on the table.

  Her face was strange in the lamplight.

  She leaned back against the sofa.

  The tapestry flowers, the brown, the forest green.

  He touched her cheek.

  He touched her dark hair back from her face.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” he said.

  He took her hands in his own hands.

  He put his hands over hers and held them together.

  Beatrice did not pull away.

  He raised her hands to his lips.

  And kissed her fingers one by one.

  “I know just who you are,” said Beatrice.

  Salt looked at her with his dark damp serious eyes.

  “Who’s that?” he said.

  “You’re the monster in the maze,” she said.

  “I hate you so much,” she said.

  “Then why don’t you stop me?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Salt pulled the chain on the lamp.

  He knocked a glass swan from the table.

  It fell to the floor.

  And shattered.

  412.

  The black-and-white dog sleeping by the warmth of the fire awoke.

  413.

  Olga carried Chester on her hip, and she led Julian by the hand, from the television to the bedroom.

  414.

  Dibby, in the study where no one did, heard Olga putting the boys to bed.

  415.

  Susu, waiting in line to have her passport stamped, looked at her wristwatch.

  416.

  Eloise was thinking about what she had done to Roman.

  417.

  Elizabeth Weiss was watching a crime drama on television.

  418.

  A hand—though deft, though quick—could not have stopped the fall of the china swan to the floor, where it shattered; its long neck snapped.

  Oh well, it was an ugly thing anyway.

  Salt let go.

  Beatrice cried out.

  419.

  One can neither win nor lose on the topic of aesthetics. Whether the swan was ugly or not had little to do with the fact that it was broken, in glass pieces on the floor. One could have collected the pieces and perhaps with patience and glue reassembled the cygnet to its former majesty. One could have done and still might do so many things.

  One likes a thing or does not like a thing. Even if like itself is the province and provenance of children, one still likes a thing or does not like a thing.

  The swan was white, with an orange beak, with claws, and it stood on its legs rising upward, its wide white wings unfolded. It was a regal stance, this posture; a threatening position, but it betrayed the flaw of the maker’s design. For when an errant hand in pursuit of the chain on the lamp brushed against the statue that had stood upon the edge of the table for years and years as though waiting for that hand; when that elbow knocked the swan from the table to the wooden floor, first the legs broke,
then the neck snapped; the beak chipped, the wings fractured; the dark eyes stared up into the darkness.

  One shouldn’t confuse one’s own ugliness with the ugliness of the world.

  420.

  In Sheldon Schell’s study, the dim light of a desk lamp cast a shadow against the flowered wallpaper, upon a painting done in green and brown and white of a girl being raped in the woods.

  421.

  Bruno Salt awoke in his bed.

  422.

  Dibby typed from one year into the next.

  And then suddenly it happened.

  423.

  What?

  424.

  The customs agent looked at the pages of the girl’s passport. He looked at the girl. He asked her to remove her sunglasses. She did. He asked what she had done on her travels. She said she had seen the world. She asked with a small amount of irritation, if there was a problem? He said, no. He said there was no problem. Susu said, good, because she was going home.

  425.

  A hand fumbled, an errant elbow knocked; the fingers of a fist uncurled.

  426.

  Dibby came to the end of the manuscript.

  427.

  There is a theory. It says: The closest definition of art that one can come to is beauty plus pity. One is sad when beauty dies. And beauty always dies. The manner dies with the matter. And the world of subjectivity dies with the individual.

  428.

  The book was unfinished.

  429.

  The typewriter was green. It was not heavy. It was light. It was portable. The Baby Hermes was a modern miracle of Swiss ingenuity. It had still after all these years its original clamshell metal case. It was bought new in 1960 by a very pregnant Mrs. Eloise Schell. As she had always wanted to write a novel.