This Is All a Lie

by Thomas Trofimuk

  “Lie to the Church? I do not know if I can do this.”

  That priest is just a man, Marie Isabelle thinks. He shits and pisses, and has urges like any other man. “Yes. Say the words you wish to be true, take the absolution from this priest, then go home and have a good sleep.”

  Eloise stops crying but Marie Isabelle can see she is thinking things over. The girl is conflicted and unsure. This older woman has counselled her to lie to a priest, which is a lie to the Church, which is a lie to God, which is yet another mortal sin.

  Chapter 5

  …an outfit for falling off a building

  “A wolf’s legs feed him.”

  – Zhanna Petya

  The wings were such a common thing in her life she hardly looked up anymore. She would hear the flapping sound and shrug, and carry on. It was as if she was walking through thick mud. When the darkness came, she could barely lift her feet and she was always exhausted. She would remember her father and skipping stones on the banks of the Seym. She would remember the Kapitán. She would remember how everything in her life was slightly less after the Kapitán walked away. And she would remember waking up one morning a month after her father’s funeral service and finding a note from Slava. He promised in his note that if she was ever in trouble, he would come, he would be there. He told her that even though he called her his delicate flower, he believed she was the strongest of them all.

  A literature teacher at her school convinced Nancy to try her hand and heart at poetry, and she found it was a fine way to cope with her frenzied energy and hyper-emotional periods. She could also dive into the darkness with her poetry. She coped better when her darkness was captured on the page. She could focus and obsess about poetry, about words and phrases, and not think about death, or the sound of the wings. She could contain her emotions. The teacher pointed to Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath, and Yevtushenko, and Nancy read everything she could find from these poets. She pushed beyond these recommendations to discover other poets.

  At sixteen, Nancy became sexually active. She was sexually hyperactive. She was having intercourse with her math teacher, and a freshman college student from the Kursk State University, and with any boy who showed interest. She slept with a second cousin from Saint Petersburg and a classmate named Sonia. Her appetite for sex, while she was in her euphoric periods, was voracious. Inside the darkness, she wanted nothing to do with it.

  When Nancy was nine years old, she made the mistake of telling one of her friends she heard the sound of wings but never saw the birds that made the sound. She assumed everyone heard wings and nobody talked about it. She thought it was normal. It turned out Nancy’s friend was not much of a friend, and she told the story to anyone who would listen. Pretty soon, Nancy had acquired the nickname Spooky and she was teased incessantly. One lunch hour, a bunch of boys caught a pigeon and they were chasing Nancy around the yard. The pigeon, held by its feet, was flapping and frantic. A group of perhaps ten boys and girls were following the boys, chanting “Spooky, Spooky, Spooky…” The boy who was holding the bird was named Alexei. Nancy was not afraid of the pigeon or the boy; she was embarrassed, she felt betrayed by the girl, and she was angry that something so personal was out in the open. It was so horribly out of context. They all thought she was weird and she didn’t want to be weird in the eyes of her schoolmates. And she worried that perhaps she really was weird. Not weird in a quirky, charming way, but in a bad way – in a way that shone a light on the fact you were damaged and possibly dangerous. She tried to ignore them but the yard was enclosed so there was no place to hide. She was on the verge of bolting for home, but then there would be phone calls to her mother and what had started as sharing a private thing would become massively public. Slava was not a big boy. He was two grades ahead of Nancy but about the same height. He was wiry. His hair was black and long, and he wore thick, black-framed glasses. It was as if he appeared out of thin air. He stood in front of the group and with a soft, pleading voice, said, “Stop. Please. Stop.”

  “Fuck you,” Alexei said, looking over top of Slava’s head at Nancy. “Your sister is Spooky. Spooky. Spoo…”

  Slava punched Alexei in the throat, fast and hard, and Alexei was down on the ground, clutching his throat and coughing – trying to get a full breath. Slava looked at the pigeon. Its legs had been tied together and it was flopping around on the grass. One of its wings looked wrong, damaged in some way. He picked up the bird and looked at the crowd of kids who were gathered around. They were no longer chanting. Slava scanned slowly from face to face as he twisted the pigeon’s neck until it stopped moving. He dropped the bird on the ground next to Alexei. “Anybody else?” he said.

  The next week, the girl who had proven to be not much of a friend fell down a flight of stairs between classes and broke her leg. Nancy was not sorry about this accident but she wondered if Slava knew anything about the girl’s fall. She did not know where he was when it happened and she did not ask. Nancy was never teased again.

  The last time she saw Slava he had new tattoos on his arms and wrists. He was still wiry and lean. She had asked him if he remembered the day the soldier came and told them of their father’s death.

  “I was fishing,” he said. “I remember I pulled too many fish from the river that day. I had to stop. They were biting everything. You always have to leave some fish for the river.”

  He smiled at the memory and for a few seconds he was no longer a big man with the Brotherhood. He was just Slava, her brother, who resembled their father when he smiled.

  “You have his name and you have his smile,” she said. “You looked like our father, Slava, just now.”

  “I regret not being there for you and our mother on that day.”

  “You were there afterwards. You supported us when we were lost.”

  * * *

  “Now, you must tell me a story, Ray. As long as I can hear your voice, I am fine. Your voice lets me keep breathing. I want to keep hearing your voice. But I don’t know what will happen when we stop talking. I honestly don’t know.”

  “This is bullshit. I’m not going to sit in my car and wait for you to do something stupid…”

  “…You can’t come up here. I don’t want you up here. And you must not leave. Not until we have an understanding.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of understanding?”

  “We need to understand each other.”

  “I understand you,” he says.

  “No, you don’t. You haven’t even scratched the surface of me.” He doesn’t know about the wings, she thinks. He has no idea what it’s like to live with the wings.

  “We’ve made love dozens of times. I think I know you quite well.”

  “You know a little about my body. And it was seventy-four times, Ray. But it was all silliness. A trick of light across a shoulder blade. A scent of something simultaneously spicy and sweet and squalid. A pocket of lust. A frail thing, suspended in time. I do not exist there. I am beyond there in a place where you refused to go. Now tell me a story.”

  “I don’t know any…”

  “…just tell me a fucking story, Ray.”

  * * *

  He grasps at whatever is there in his brain. Vikings. He starts with the ring. What is the story of the ring? The woman’s remains were found in Sweden. It speaks to a range of activity – the Vikings were in the Middle East. They went that far. But what were they doing there? The Guardian story talked about an emissary of the Abbasid Caliph whose name was Ahmad ibn Fadlan. This writer was disgusted by the apparent lack of Viking hygiene. ‘They are the foulest of all Allah’s creatures,’ Fadlan wrote in the tenth century. ‘They do not clean themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity after coitus and do not even wash their hands after eating.’

  “This was only one man’s observation,” Ray says. “But I can imagine the Vikings were not popular in t
he seaports of Europe. So perhaps this observation was tainted by hatred.”

  “Go on,” Nancy says.

  “It’s a love story,” he says. “It’s the bitter end of a love story…”

  Maybe Nancy closes her eyes as she listens. She leans back and starts to see the story Ray is concocting. She can see a couple making love in tall grass near the ocean. The grass flows in waves. The ocean flows in waves. In the distance is a large house with a grassy roof and low clay walls. The house melds with the hilly landscape. At first glance it appears to be another hill but there are people coming and going through sturdy doorways, and there’s smoke rising from a chimney at one end. It’s as if these people did not want their houses to be seen from the ocean.

  The lovers uncouple. Ingemar pulls away, he rolls over and looks up at the sky. Embla frowns. This does not make her happy. It was nice to have Ingemar back from the south, but she’s not ready for another child, and this felt as if it was the right timing. There’s a softness inside her that screams fertility. She was wetter than usual. And now she was filled with his seed. She stands up. She was making soup and it needs to be watched.

  Ingemar picks up his clothing and looks for Embla. She is already back at the fire with three other women who are all shorter than her. “I am going to the hot water,” he says, and he strides off toward the hot spring.

  “Of course, you are,” Embla says, after he is gone. The women around the fire giggle. Ingemar is famous for his daily visits to the hot springs, where he floats and is quiet in the steaming water. He says it helps to heal his wounds. No one complains. Ingemar is a skilled negotiator and because of those skills, they will often avoid battle. The Vikings are not only courageous, savage fighters – they are pragmatic. They will arrive in a harbour with sixty or more ships and it will be Ingemar who goes ashore alone. He negotiates a payment so the warriors in the harbour do not have to invade. He ransoms the village so things don’t have to get messy.

  When Ingemar lowers himself into the hot water, he thinks about Eira. He loves Embla and their son but he desires Eira, a Chieftain’s daughter from Ribe, which is up the coast. When he looked at Eira and she looked back, her eyes were filled with such a ferocious lust that he would be off balance, unable to speak, or think. He was pulled by her need. Her eyes troubled him. Even now, after spending himself on Embla and soaking in the hot water, he is aroused.

  “Yet another unfaithful man? Really, Ray?”

  “It’s the story, not me,” Ray says.

  “You’re telling the story and I recognize it. You make adultery sound so goddamned romantic. It’s not, you know. Oh, maybe for you it is, but not for me. For the other woman it’s not much fun at all.”

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No. Keep going. But I’m pouring another drink first.” She places the phone on the coffee table.

  Ray can hear her clanking around with the ice, and pulling the cork, and the glug-glug sound.

  On the street where Ray is parked, traffic has backed up. Maybe there’s an accident up the road. The two west-bound lanes are stopped and the truck beside his car hasn’t moved in five minutes. A couple car horns sound behind – impatient toots and longer blasts of What the Hell is Going on? He couldn’t leave right now if he wanted.

  * * *

  “So, this Viking woman, this Eira from Ribe – does she look like me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ray says. “Because nothing happens.”

  “What do you mean, nothing happens? What the hell kind of a story is that?”

  “Ingemar is devoted to his wife. He is attracted to Eira but he made a promise to his wife and he keeps his promises.”

  “Jesus Christ, sweetheart. If you’re going to tell a story at least make the characters do what they would really do. I don’t think that’s true. It doesn’t sound true – this virtuous Viking.”

  “Ingemar is a decent man,” Ray says. “But this does not mean he doesn’t suffer. He is tempted and he chooses to do nothing. Do you know the German word, Sehnsucht? It means a longing for some thing that cannot be expressed. Is there a word like that in Russian?”

  “We have toska. Toska is a sick-to-your-stomach yearning – a kind of intense love-sickness.”

  “So this is what Ingemar chooses to do. He loves his wife and he suffers toska.”

  “He’s an idiot,” Nancy says. “Life is too short for this sort of toska suffering. Life was even shorter back then. He should have fucked Eira from Ribe.”

  “But there’s something beautiful about denying. About choosing faithfulness over indulgence.”

  “You’re so romantic it hurts my fucking head.”

  “I’m not romantic.”

  “But that’s a romantic idea – that sacrifice is honourable, that denying desire is the preferred high road…It’s bullshit, Ray. It’s not realistic. And it’s not beautiful. In reality, people lust and they act on it, or they regret not acting on it.”

  “I have a question for you. It’s not about Vikings but it is a good one.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  “What if you were the wife? What if you were Embla?”

  Nancy is silent and Ray waits. The sounds of traffic – he hears a siren and then it’s picked up by Nancy’s phone. The sound in the phone is delayed, as it has to travel up thirty-nine floors, as it bounces off buildings.

  “If I was the wife, there would be no straying.”

  “But what if there was?” Ray says. “How would you feel if you were Embla? Hypothetically.”

  “I don’t like this question. Ask something else.”

  “You don’t like this question?”

  “No. Ask something else.”

  “Ask something else? Like what?”

  “Why do you keep repeating things like a fucking parrot? Why are we even talking about this? This is not a good story, Ray. I will tell you a good story. This story is about shoes. Once upon a time, there was a Russian woman who would buy shoes and name them after her ex-lovers. I’m going to buy a pair of shoes and name them after you. There’s a pair of Steigers I’ve had my eye on for quite a while. They will be my Rays.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “So that every time I wear them, I know I am walking all over you. That you are beneath me.”

  “That’s clever.”

  “No, not clever. Juvenile, actually, but pleasing. It pleases me to think about it.”

  Nancy giggles, as if everything is fine.

  “But this is pure silliness, isn’t it? If today is my last day, there will be no shoes. No Steigers. No Rays.”

  “I think the Steigers are a good reason to hang around until tomorrow.”

  “Do you, Ray?”

  “Yes. I’ll even buy. I’ll buy the Steigers for you.”

  “Do you think I need your money, Ray? Your generosity? Your pity?”

  “No. I think you have plenty of money. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “You can help me with one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need to decide if I should be dressed or not. I mean, I won’t survive the fall so any concept of vanity is ridiculous. If I am going to be dressed I will need your help to pick out something appropriate.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m serious. I have a fine collection of lingerie, as you know. In fact, I’m going to put some of it on now. Dying is a serious business, Ray. And one should dress appropriately.”

  “I’m not interested in your death. I want nothing to do with it.”

  “Why not? Help me find an outfit for falling off a building. Maybe we can Google – what to wear when jumping off a building – and see what comes up.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “But isn’t that something you love? You know, to sit on the bed propped against th
e headboard with a glass of something and watch me get dressed? And watch me get undressed? You used to love doing that. You did it with me, surely this is something you do with your wife too.”

  “Well, a woman getting dressed is a woman at her most vulnerable, and her most beautiful.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you? And what about when a woman gets undressed?”

  “That’s a different thing entirely.”

  “How so?”

  “One is unintentional, the other, if she knows she’s being watched, is intentional.” Ray remembers going to see strippers when he was younger and being mostly unaffected by what they were doing on stage. On stage was fake, and plastic, and cold. It was when they were done their so-called dancing, and the lights were no longer on them – and as they started to get dressed a kind of erotic magic happened. When the women started to pull on dresses, or tops, or pants, and wrapped themselves in robes, he was aroused. These moments after the dance were vulnerable. For Ray, these moments were erotic.

  A woman in a large, white SUV pulls up beside Ray’s car and the window lowers. She toots her horn. He lowers his window. She leans over the passenger’s seat. “Are you leaving?”

  “No,” Ray says.

  “It’s just, I’ve been around the block five times and you’re still there, and…”

  “…and?”

  “And nothing,” she says.

  “Tell her there’s a parkade at the end of the block,” Nancy says.

  “There’s a parkade at the end of the block,” he says.

  “I know,” the woman says. “It’s just this is a really great spot. And I’ve been circling for almost an hour now.”

  “Tell her to fuck off,” Nancy says.

  “What?”

  “Do it or I’ll drop something on her fucking car.” Nancy stands up and looks around her living room. She spots a heavy crystal vase she’d never liked – an expensive wedding present from her marriage. She crosses the room and picks it up, measures it for flight, imagines it falling toward the street.