The Gift: Novel

by Hilda Doolittle

  “We were talking—because I heard them talking—I was cold.” What will I say now? “It’s too dark to read to me, Mamalie,” I say, “but I was thinking I’d ask you to read. I was thinking, I’d get my new fairy tales. I don’t know, I may have said out aloud—you know how it is—‘I’ll get my new fairy tales, I’ll get Hans Christian Andersen.’”

  I said again, “I’ll get Hans Christian Andersen.”

  “They were talking outside the window,” I said, “I was listening to them and they said “ah.” They were saying “ah” because it was a shooting star. Aunt Jennie says you can have a wish on your first summer shooting star. I did not think of any wish, anyhow I did not see it, I only heard them talking. I wished, if I wished anything, that I would not think it might fall on the house. I knew it could not, because of gravity or something like that, that keeps the stars from falling on us and keeps the world going round. Gravity keeps the earth on its track, and Mr. Evans explained about Papa in the transit house. Eric is in the observatory, looking at his double stars.”

  “Double stars,” said Mamalie.

  “I heard you coming up the stairs, and I said, could I get your knitting and you said no, I think, or maybe you didn’t answer at all, and then we lit the candle.”

  “Yes,” said Mamalie, “we lit the candle.”

  “Then you took off your cap.” She puts up her hand, she is feeling for her cap. I wonder why she thinks she must always wear a lace cap?

  “I wanted one of the little tight caps,” she said, “like the early Sisters wore, and I wanted to be one of the single Sisters but Christian said it was best not, because already the German reformed people were accusing us of popish practices.”

  I said, “What are popish practices, Mamalie, and who is Christian?”

  She said, “I thought you knew, Agnes, that I called your father Christian.”

  She said Gnadenhuetten, and it does not matter what it is or where it is or what it means or anything about it. It is the same when Papa calls me Töcterlein, it simply makes everything quite different, so that sometimes I am sure that I am really in the woods, like when Mama plays Träumerei which isn’t very good music, she says, but I ask her to play it because it’s called Träumerei.

  It would be no good my trying to learn German because, when I look at one of the German grammar books in the bookshelves, it stops working. A row of words called der-die-das doesn’t belong to it. I would rather talk German, real German, than anything. I do not want to learn German, I do not even want them to know how much I feel when they say Gnadenhuetten like that. I am in the word, I am Gnadenhuetten the way Mamalie says it, though I do not know what it means.

  “And Wunden Eiland,” she says.

  It seems as if something had come over me like the branches of a tree or the folds of a tent when she says Wunden Eiland. She says Eiland which must be an island, and the Wunden, I suppose, is wonder or wonderful. I do not even want her to tell me, but I want her to go on talking because if she stops, the word will stop. The word is like a beehive, but there are no bees in it now. I am the last bee in the beehive, this is the game I play. The other bees have gone, that is why it is so quiet. Can one bee keep a beehive alive; I mean, can one person who knows that Wunden Eiland is a beehive, keep Wunden Eiland for the other bees when they come back?

  But it won’t be any use just thinking like this, because if I don’t say something, she might really go to sleep, or she will talk the whole thing out in German and I don’t want to listen to her talking nothing but German, because then I start to think about it, and if I start to think about it, it gets der-die-das-ish and I am angry that I cannot understand or that I cannot learn it quickly. But Wunden Eiland is not a thing you learn, it’s not a thing that anyone can teach you, it just happens.

  “Tell me more about the island,” I say, though maybe Eiland isn’t an island, though I think it must be.

  “It was washed away,” said Mamalie.

  Mamalie is talking like something in a book and I do not very much understand what she is saying. I have heard of Count Zinzendorf, of course, who founded the Unitas Fratrum, the United Brethren which is our Church or which was our Church before we moved from Bethlehem.

  Unitas Fratrum is united brethren, like United States is united states, and they have a sign which is a lamb, like the United States has an eagle, and they have a flag with a cross. Mamalie says it is a flag the crusaders used or a banner, but that was long ago, only it is all long ago.

  I think four hundred years back; it is because we all had a holiday when it was 1892, which was four hundred years since Columbus discovered America. But the Unitas Fratrum seemed to have discovered something which was very important, that was in Europe. They came to America to bring the secret from Europe or to keep the secret to themselves. But something happened like it always does, it seems, so that the United Brethren weren’t really united.

  Mamalie said, “My Christian explained the secret to me; it seemed very simple to me. It was simply belief in what was said—and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. You see, those words were taken literally.”

  There were all these questions in a row, each with its particular question mark. I did not think them out nor see them in writing, but some of them were:

  Did you play the spinet, Mamalie? Did you play Four Marys?

  Who were the four Marys, and why were there four?

  Who has our Grimm, and did they lose the picture of the Princess and the Frog, that was loose and partly torn across?

  Why are they all called Christian or does it just mean that they are Christian?

  Why do they make it a secret, because anybody can read what it says in the Bible, lo, I am with you alway?

  Did great-grandfather Weiss like Christian Henry more than he liked Francis, who is Mama’s own father?

  Why do you always think there might be a fire or didn’t you, was it me or Mama thought it?

  Why are you frightened and put your hand to your hair? (I want long hair, but if an Indian came to scalp you, perhaps it would be worse.)

  What were the papers?

  “What were the papers, Mamalie?” I said.

  Now Mamalie told this story which I did not altogether understand but pieced together afterwards—I mean long afterwards, of course, because the “thing” that was to happen, that was in a sense to join me in emotional understanding, in intuition anyway, to the band of chosen initiates at Wunden Eiland, had not yet happened.

  The “thing” that was to happen, happened soon afterwards, maybe that very autumn or winter. It was before Christmas, say in November, or it was after Christmas was well over, say in February, but I cannot date the time of the thing that happened, that happened to me personally, because I forgot it. I mean it was walled over and I was buried with it. I, the child was incarcerated as a nun might be, who for some sin—which I did not then understand—is walled up alive in her own cell or in some anteroom to a cathedral.

  It was as if I were there all the time, in understanding anyway, of the “thing” that had happened before I was ten, the “thing” that had happened to me and the “thing” I had inherited from them. I, the child, was still living, but I was not free, not free to express my understanding of the gift, until long afterwards. I was not in fact, completely free, until again there was the whistling of evil wings, the falling of poisonous arrows, the deadly signature of a sign of evil magic in the sky.

  The same fear (personal fear) could crack the wall that had originally covered me over, because to live I had to be frozen in myself—so great was the shock to my mind when I found my father wounded. I did not know, as Mamalie began talking, that Wunden Eiland was Island of the Wounds; it came clear afterwards. Bits of it came clear, as I say, in patches; the story was like the quilt that I drew up to my chin, as I propped myself up in her bed, to listen.

  Roughly, a hundred years had passed, since the founding of the town and the rituals practiced at Wunden Eiland, which, M
amalie had explained, was actually an island in the Monocacy River which, in Mama’s day, was called a creek, though it could occasionally break its boundaries in the season of floods, as that time Mama told us about, when the deer that Papalie had in the seminary grounds were lost.

  A hundred years had passed, since the founding of the town I mean, when Mamalie’s Christian found the papers or the scroll of flexible deerskin which told the story of the meeting of the chief medicine men of the friendly tribes and the devotees of the Ritual of the Wounds. Christian, who was no mean scholar, glimpsed here a hint in Hebrew or followed a Greek text to its original, and so pieced out the story of the meeting, deciphered actually the words of strange pledges passed, strange words spoken, strange rhythms sung which were prompted, all alike said, by the power of the Holy Spirit; the Holy Ghost of the Christian ritualists and the Great Spirit of the Indians poured their grace alike; their gifts came in turn to Anna von Pahlen, to John Christopher Frederick Cammerhof, to John Christopher Pyrlaeus, who was not only a scholar and authority on the Indian languages, but a musician as well.

  Well, where had Mamalie’s gift gone then? I did not ask her, but I sense now that she burnt it all up in an hour or so of rapture, that she and her young husband together recaptured the secret of Wunden Eiland; and not only the secret, but the actual Power that had fallen on Anna and Zeisberger and Paxnous and Morning Star, fell, a hundred years afterwards, on the younger Christian Seidel and his wife, Elizabeth Caroline, who was our grandmother. As Mamalie outlined it, it seemed that, in trying over and putting together the indicated rhythms, she herself became one with the Wunden Eiland initiates and herself spoke with tongues—hymns of the spirits in the air—of spirits at sunrise and sunsetting, of the deer and the wild squirrel, the beaver, the otter, the kingfisher, and the hawk and eagle.

  She laughed when she told me about it, so I know that she and Christian (or Henry) who was Aunt Agnes’ father, must have been very happy.

  We are back at the beginning. This is just a bedroom. Why, I am sitting up in Mamalie’s bed, and there were voices outside my window. My garden is under the window is the first line of a poem that I recited, the first time I recited anything on a stage. It was a large audience, they clapped, and Miss Helen said I must go out and be out of the window and make a bow. I made a bow. Now, this is something like that. They were acting something.

  Mamalie has forgotten that she was not at Wunden Eiland; she said, “The laughter ran over us,” but she was a hundred years later, and she just picked out notes (that she had carefully looked up in the hymnbooks and in the old folios) that John Christopher Pyrlaeus had indicated to her, down the side of a page. Mamalie must be very clever. She never told me about this. She never, I know, told anyone about this. And now she is telling me about it. It is as if she had been there at that meeting, only she couldn’t have been there. How does she know that they laughed?

  There was a seal that had a cup and an S on it. The S was for Sanctus Spiritus that means the Holy Ghost that nobody seems to understand, but that Mamalie said that Annavon Pahlen and John Christopher Frederick Cammerhof found at a meeting at Wunden Eiland; that was a scandal. What is a scandal?

  It was a blot on the church, they said, and they didn’t have any meetings like that anymore, and Mamalie says that Christian—her Christian—found that they had made a pact or a pledge, but it was in the spirit, in the Sanctus Spiritus, and it seems they didn’t keep it. They couldn’t keep it because the stricter Brethren of the church said it was witchcraft. What exactly is witchcraft? You can be burnt for a witch. Is Mamalie a witch? She is crouching over the candle, she is holding the saucer with the candle in it in her hand. What is Mamalie saying to the candle?

  “… until the Promise is redeemed and the Gift restored.”

  But she said that before. She said that when she was telling me about the copy of the promise that they made to one another, that was written on deerskin, or maybe it was parchment. They made a promise, but it was not Mamalie’s fault if they did not keep the promise; how could it be? I suppose the gift was their all talking and laughing that way and singing with no words or with words of leaves rustling and rivers flowing and snow swirling in the wind, which is the breath of the Spirit, it seems.

  Mamalie helped her husband who was named Henry, but she called him Christian, or maybe his name was Henry Christian—anyhow, he was dead. I mean, he was dead almost from the beginning, because Aunt Aggie was not a year old, I think, when he died. Morning Star was the Indian Princess who was the wife of Paxnous, who was baptized by the Moravians. She was really baptized, it seems; Paxnous was not baptized, but the Indians took Anna von Pahlen into their mysteries in exchange for Morning Star. I mean, Anna was Morning Star in their mysteries, and Morning Star (who had another ordinary Indian name like White-cloud or Fragrant-grass or one of those names) was Angelica which was another name of Anna von Pahlen, who was really Mrs. John Christopher Frederick Cammerhof, but I like to think of her as Anna von Pahlen.

  Mamalie is talking to the candle. Really, it is not her fault.

  “It is not your fault,” I say.

  I am sure it is not her fault, whatever it is. Maybe she was afraid they would burn her for a witch (like they did at Salem, Massachusetts) if she told them that she could sing Indian songs, though she didn’t know any Indian languages, and that she and her Christian had found out the secret of Wunden Eiland which, the church had said, was a scandal and a blot.

  Maybe it was all shadows and pictures in Mamalie’s mind, maybe there never was a parchment, maybe there never was such a meeting at Wunden Eiland, maybe there never was a Wunden Eiland.

  “Maybe there never was a Wunden Eiland,” I say.

  “What—what,” she says, “Lucy.”

  Now, who is Lucy? Is that old Aunt Lucia that we used to take sugar cake to, at the Widows’ House?

  “I told you it was all written, I told you the parchment was—was—Lucy, water,” says Mamalie and she seems to be choking. Now I am frightened. “Lucy,” she says, “someone must find the papers, someone must work out the music, now Christian is dead. Lucy,” she says, “who can do the work— who can follow the music? Music, Lucy,” she says. Now I am frightened. I put one foot out of bed. I get out of bed; I walk round the bed. I stand looking at Mamalie. I take the candle from her hand.

  “Be still,” I say, “be still, it’s all right.” I do not call her Mamalie, I do not even call her Mimmie. “It’s all right,” I say, “it’s all right, Elizabeth.”

  I think this is a good idea to call her Elizabeth, though it rather frightens me. If she thinks I am Lucy, then I am not Agnes any more, and if I am not Agnes, she is not Mimmie any more. I think it must be old Aunt Lucia she is talking to, at the Widows’ House, who died.

  Ida used to put an apple pie or a sugar cake in a basket with a clean napkin over the top, and Gilbert would carry the basket and we would take the sugar cake or the apple pie to Aunt Lucia. Mamalie says “Lucy,” but I think this is old Aunt Lucia who wasn’t an aunt at all, but we have many aunts, and Mama has many aunts who were sisters in the church to Mamalie, so I suppose they were aunts to us, in the church.

  It is all about the church. It is something the church thought was bad and Mamalie was part of it, though she wasn’t really, because it was a hundred years earlier, but she said, when she played the songs, it all came back. Songs bring things back like that, it seems. Did she sing the songs? I never heard her sing. I don’t think Mama ever heard her sing. She asks me to sing Abide with me and Mama plays the tune for it; Mamalie always asks me to sing; I think she is the only person who always asks me to sing.

  She asks me to sing Fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens. She is always afraid, it seems, in the dark, and she asks me to sing The darkness deepens. It’s not really dark in this room, but then I am not afraid of the dark. I am afraid more of a bright light that might be fire and a shooting star falling on the house and burning us all up.

  It all sta
rted with the shooting star and my asking questions.

  But I must do something, she might come back in a hurry and wonder where she is. But it might be better if she did come back because where she is, she is thirsty, and she talks about the parchment being burnt and herself being burnt and the promise and the penalty if they didn’t keep the promise, and about great wars and the curse on the land, if we did not keep the promise, and how Morning Star was the soul God gave the church and the church did not recognize Morning Star, even though the morning stars sang together. But they didn’t. The morning stars didn’t sing together, she said; she said, “Shooting Star, Shooting Star, forgive us,” and something about a curse and things like that. I really did not know what to do. I was glad she was talking quietly, almost whispering, for I would not have liked it if Mama had burst in or Aunt Jennie, laughing and joking and saying, “What—what—you two not in bed yet?”

  I remember that Aunt Aggie did say that Mamalie was very sick, and while Mamalie had that bad fever, she was sent to stay with old Auntie Bloom for over a year, and Aunt Aggie called Auntie Bloom “Mimmie” too; Aunt Aggie thought Auntie Bloom was her own mother, for a long time, she said. I suppose this is it. Aunt Aggie is now living with Auntie Bloom, and she is a very tiny little girl and I am not Aggie any more, but I am Aunt Lucy or Aunt Lucia, and I suppose I am nursing Mamalie because the Moravian Sisters made medicines and had patches of old gardens with mint and sage and things they made into medicines.

  I am the nurse of Mamalie who is very ill and had some sort of fever, maybe brain fever, they said; anyhow I think it is very sad that she was afraid (when she had her fever) that Shooting Star was angry with her.

  She said she was thirsty; I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to get her a glass of water from the washstand and pretend to be Lucy and try to get her to go to bed? I go to the washstand. The washstand jug is nearly full of water, and it is very heavy. It would be terrible if I dropped the pitcher: this is a jug or a pitcher, like the seidel that was the cup with the S, that was Sanctus Spiritus, that was the sign of the communion so that the old uncle turned it into an urn and put the S on a shield, Mamalie said, but Mamalie said he had the same words in French, l’amitié passe même le tombeau.