"True Bee", story

TRUE BEE
(in Blue Lake Review, July 2011)

As a loyal member of Communist cell Kreuzberg, Melissa felt personally under attack whenever anyone – such as her boyfriend, Dieter -- complained about the Wall. The Wall was beautiful to her eyes, a noir fortress. The buildings on her street huddled by it, like pudding in a mold. It spread a shadow into her bedroom, reliably, as if answering to a touch. She could – and did -- go on and on praising it to her skeptical boyfriend. The Wall lent a thrill to everything she was doing in Berlin. The concrete and barbed wire -- armature for the “iron curtain” (a term she particularly loved, since it conjured up images of medievalism and armor) – put no distance between her faith and her mission.

            She got to West Berlin via a hefty but obscurely funded fellowship for gifted pedagogues. She opened her own pre-school, which she called Little Seeds. Her school was illegal, but no one bothered her about it. She supposed this was because no German was among her Little Seeds. There were mostly Turks and Kurds, children of foreign “guest” workers, and occasional gypsies. She taught them to chant Long Live the Revolution! as a nod to her dad, who had painted those very words Long Live the Revolution! on the mailbox at the end of the driveway. It was a family joke that there were three Communists in the United States, and they all lived in Wisconsin: her mother, her father, and Melissa Bee.  Four generations had tilled the same soil, and two generations put the hammer to the sickle.

            Oh, then. The Wall fell.  Melissa leaned out the window in her bedroom and watched the crowds locking elbows and singing, “We Want No Wall Between Us!” Dieter sat beside her, tipping his beer to a corner of the tumult outside – as if he were toasting someone in those crowds, someone who would be looking directly past the TV cameras and into Dieter’s eyes, and saying: I’m coming, I’m coming soon.

            She didn’t know whom to blame. Hungry, needy, curious swarms, the ones she used to call her “comrades,” jostled her off the sidewalk and mobbed the stores in search of bananas and CD players and feather beds and blue jeans. Their frank materialism shocked her.She wrote home to Wisconsin: “I guess I should be celebrating like everyone else? Maybe I should feel sympathy? Maybe global capitalism will put an end to all wars?” But the simple fact was, “they” – those people storming the streets – were a nuisance: they took her parking space in front of Little Seeds and stunk the air with their leaded gas cars.

            What she didn’t tell her parents, and what she had a hard time admitting to herself, was that the Wall had separated her from Claudia.

            Claudia.

            Melissa had never needed to think about Claudia. Claudia was always on the other side of the Wall.

            Dieter had met Claudia in Dresden and had seen her exactly five times when he was over there on his business visa. Dieter kept no secrets from Melissa. He had told her more than she wanted to know about Claudia. Claudia was a sad person, resigned to being a cog in the wheel. He had shown her a photo he’d taken of Claudia in Dresden with a war ruin behind her. Matted blood-red hair, squished nose, and tiny, nearly rubbed-out mouth.

            “Now that the Wall is down, no one has to take sides,” she told the children. That was the lesson for the day.  “And now we can all unravel,” Melissa shouted, and held up the paper dolls, their faces painted red, yellow, white, black. The children crashed against her like baffled birds flying against a windowpane. She laughed, “Okay, so I’m becoming invisible, along with the Wall.”

          

            That beautiful, shrinking wall. Returning home one night, she met Dieter at the door. “She’s at Kempinski’s.  I’m going to meet her at Kempinski’s. She hitchhiked all the way from Dresden. I have to say hi to her, at least.” Melissa hid under the dark bulk of a blanket, curled like an ear.  “And are you planning to go to Dresden, Dieter?” She wondered if she was over-reaching, putting thoughts in his head that didn’t belong there.

            “I’m saying it’s possible I might have to drive her back. Unless it’s not okay with you.”

            “Scheisse. Dieter, I’m not a booboisie. I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

            “All right then.”

            She did not rush to the window to look. She did not watch Dieter whistle down the street, a healthy, strapping lad of nearly twenty-five, the kind Wisconsin was noted for, only he was from Hamburg.

            Day after day, she endured the steady chop-chopping down of the Wall. Finally word came from Dieter: Dresden has possibilities. He was sick of Berlin hectic. He got a job designing a new shopping center. “I’m a stinking will o‘ the capitalists now. Feel free to separate yours and mine and send me what you think I deserve. They were good times, but don’t get stuck on what used to be. ‘What ambiguity there is in exalted things. We end up despising them a little.’ Lebe wohl, True Bee.”

            She saw herself going back, forward, in fragments in a rotating traffic mirror on the way to Little Seeds. The street used to be one of the quietest in the city, but it was almost unrecognizable now, clogged with tourist busses. The parents and children were gathered outside the door, suspiciously downcast. She greeted them, kissing this and that little check. Why so sad, lovely darlings?  Then a woman pushed forward, thanking Fraulein Petersen for her award-winning pedagogy and handed her a bouquet. She introduced herself as Frau Firwitz, and thrust a notice into Melissa’s hand. Little Seeds was an unauthorized school, as Melissa knew, left well enough alone by the freewheeling West Berlin, but that Berlin was no more. As of this morning, the children were being directed to a clean new facility licensed by the city and furthermore, it will cost the parents not a pfennig.

            Regrets and danke schoens, loved you very much from the group.

            Melissa paced the sidewalk, clutching the bouquet in her hands. It felt inexpressively heavy, as if all earthly cares were loaded onto her, onto her alone. Firwitz. Firwitz. My little seeds are in your hands, she cried. Don’t think of the harvest, but only of proper sowing!

            “Ach ja, Fraulein Petersen, something will be arranged… a farewell party.”

            “Nein, nein,” Melissa shook her head. She didn’t want a party. No more goddamned celebrations.

            It sorely is a bit of a shock, her father wrote. The disaster of the Wall. It had gotten him down, too. He was feeling like he was trapped in a drain trap, with all the crud. Melissa read her dad’s letter while standing at the window of her bedroom. A creaking mechanical rake was sweeping the sand behind a construction fence hung with plastic. Mom sends love. Chips of the Wall were being hawked on the street corner, laid out on a flap-top table in a velvet cloth, turquoise and amber graffiti flaking off. Every day the price went up, and one day, she knew, the hawker would be gone, there’d be nothing left to sell.  P.S. Sweetheart, her father wrote, if you get a chance, send us a piece of the Wall.

Poems

The Music Chamber

POEMS

The Music Chamber

(Why I am not Matisse)

published in Sidereality

I started a painting

of two girls and a mother.

The girls sit at a piano

with their faces turned away.

Why, I don't know.

Are they looking for some forgotten light,

those wounded lovelies?

The curtains are half-drawn. A lovely

noon. I haven't decided

how many colors to let in.

So far the girls are huddled ink --

in a stupor maybe

from my endless wavering.  (Should they wear pink? Are they any less innocent

if I smear them in gray wash?)

A dwarf figure, more like a stump

howls by the garden door. Yes, they are looking

toward it -- toward Mother. Crazy, I will admit,

but I hear her too. A howl

from a stump.

Wait. The piano's slippery keys.

Are those what they feel? The one girl, rapt,

picks a rhythm on the keys, a drowsy ping,

ping, like wax dripping on doilies.

Queenly steel blue eyes that

bleed

???

No! Wrong: gleam.

A gleam of black and steely something

slips down from Mother's sleeve:

How on earth

                     
                                                                                                     

did she get in?

Quick, erase the arm, the bleeding whatsit --

Too late,

I've brought in a note of savagery: I'm watching, I can't intervene.

Everything's on a grim course

of inevitability. 

There and there and there,  beating with their tiny fists

the girls pounce on the knife in a rush

and Mother falls --

A charcoal saint

in bloodied crinoline.

How did it happen? 

I wanted two girls, a mother,

a music chamber, a sweetly tender scene.... All the smiles

that a mother could wish.

And then came the stray thought,

bleed.

Who Hasn’t Dreamed of a Worse Life?

published in Fireweed

            The police call you in the dream. They speak the language of

      forbidden

      revelation,

      a bi-polar romantic.

      Some lies and fears crave to be exhaled.

The blind goddess drifts away, her hands

fat as cherubs loosening the sky in your mouth –

pearls or rain or something or other

thrums on their chests,

the cops coughing up clouds.

Sweetheart, they’re flying over.

      Must see you. And the wedding party

      showered with rice and bullets?

            Suspicious? Oh, yes.

You can escape. Just in the nick of time.

      But then if it’s not the police

      it’s the job the husband the kid.

      You might not want to wake up.

      You might prefer

      the police.

----

  

----------------------------------------------

 Ghost Road

published in Sidereality

The road is straight

there is nothing between us

the clouds could be hills

only they travel to us

puffs of wind like a prickly coat

your face like the moon I can't see

--  dark, full of sly phantoms

my eyes, swollen twice their size

the eyes of a bedeviled magician

I tell you,

Don't fret, little girl

Day is breaking

-- goes the old song

Sing it with me,

hop-skipping over nerveless stones 

Day is broken, she sings 

Happy girl,

followed by a broken road

Nothing to keep you

Nothing to make you run away

No memory

older than you are

------------

 

Mirror to Mirror

published in The Argotist

            Leave your sleepy rivulets to trickle down my wrist,

teacher. Put up a mirror for an answer

so I can ask the same

thing twice

            Seal shut last year’s envelopes, your lesson’s feral cabinet,

            Say, The mirror is facing the wall, so my secrets are safe

            Don’t ask me,

            “Dear little cobweb: why so brooding, mysterious, and  quaking?”

            Don’t say, I’ll seize this and this and this

            Leave everything

            like the sun, when nobody’s watching

            melted down for sheer moonlight

 

For Bob Arner

published in The Argotist

During last fall’s rehearsal

the wind spoke to earth in quarter inches, pacing each dropping leaf

to the plash of the water

losing itself in a zillion facets of ice

The pond gives way to broken glass,

ghosts of objects, gray-bodies, crying out in a witchy voice

Hello bone of my foot

Hello kiss me starry sky

when ghost birds with baby cries

flap like stray scrap across the

brassy garden

We will someday assemble an art together

that is all of that

----------

 Valentine

published in Salt River Review

I write long letters to the dead  (you only know how heartfully),

in the woods, scratching the bark with my lonely fantasies, you

were always near, the one to decipher my messages. True, I would guide

you, you couldn't have found your way alone. I wouldn't have

wanted you to. I loved holding the secret.

It's been thirteen years to the day since your last letter came,

a forest fell out of the envelope, fire blew off the bush, you see

I do remember and handwriting like someone opening his veins.

The charms you enclosed ("spitted flames") looked like the rubies

my mother piled on for shopping tennis anywhere anytime

she didn't give a hoot for propriety.

They kiss-kiss when I put them on.

But that's not what I wanted to say. I'm writing you because

she died yesterday I think you should know that

she kept on asking me When for godsake you

going to marry that boy

so handsome and  lucky.

I didn't have it in me

to remind her you were dead.

So darling, should you meet her, I'm afraid

you have a little explaining to do.

I meant no harm by my deception, tell her that please,

and let me know

what she says because I hate to think this

is something you can’t read.

----

Lore's Necklace

            (for Leonore Uhlmann-Heyland and Joachim Uhlmann)

Published in Rattlefish Literary Review

Before all the clocks stopped, I fingered each of her beads like a prayer to the past

            I remember this
            I remember that

I remembered richly even while tomorrow grew thinner and thinner.

Before the game was pulped for turbines, I held the talisman

on my tongue, chanting

the poet's golden riddles
for luck.   

One strand of intoxicating verse
looped into another into another to glow for all
            time.

This was in old West Berlin

in the shaggy metropolis with the mid-morning schnapps breath.

I heard the poet chanting

silence, silence, silence

before the collapsed glitz of winter in surreal Paris

             and

the bead became the blue rose

in the enchanted necklace

            rare like that.

----

Sunset in Frascati  

published in Salt River Review

St. Peter's flared in the distance, the crimson dome.

A steep drop of crystal cliffs

led me down to the child's grotto.

Beyond that, a thin strip of molten sea.

A dead baby

was tossed before the altar.

(Coming closer, I saw with relief

it was only a lump of clothes.)

Kneeling there, listening.

Far off, a motor roared in anguish

over its broken muffler, a radio

thumped heavily beyond the vines,

and the violators were chipping away

at the hills in search of pre-Christian tombs.

I heard them, the mad motors, the greedy mystics

and their pickaxes attacking the  hills.

You took on trust

I would respect your secret wilderness

beyond the tidy, sequestered paths,

or I'd get bored by

so many rows upon rows of cindered

ferns that I wouldn't venture far

or stay long.

But I stumbled upon it

in the blades flattened around a pedestal,

each weathered blade of grass

seeming to join in a script 

the name of someone, you know who I mean,

the woman who was covered with tubes,

who even then was writing in her head:

Burn this.

---

 Before the Celebration

published in Salt River Review

once there was a little world

waiting to be mended.

dimming light and the hour’s hoax

of perfect timing.

a life-sized dummy

rotating on a flat earth, struck by pins and the busy scissors

of the seamstress, quick,

what was her name?

a chart of the earth’s surface

was the body’s,

tailored to changing measurements,

each year look ma, I’ve

grown.

then there was a rip

so final.

a rip. maybe only a pinpoint split --

and darkness falling swiftly.

such dead stillness,

and the dummy tilting elsewhere, waiting to be lit.

 

New Year’s Transformers

published in Jivin’  Ladybug

  

Out of body, the strange apparatus

divides

air from air. It resembles a mouth,

an opening. Inhale.

Not really a mouth, but there are hands

stitching together a summer cloud

in a sky of frayed ends.

Not really hands, not a sky, either.

Scents carried in the air weigh nothing.

All you can touch

contains a cosmos of memories.

There is not here. Now is not

the time.

 It can hear you talking,

although you only mouth the words:

it can pick up anything

and bear it along

up, up, and away: all those messages from elsewhere

arriving

and arriving and only passing through.

Interpretation of Dreams, for My Daughter

published in Jivin’ Ladybug

In my dreams sometimes I relive the thrilling first

sleep of a small,  sated innocent.  No howling,

primal  twilight.  No monstrous, beating

heart rattling  the crib.

Someone’s mom

(or is it me?) devours every

creeping horror.

Awakening, I am clueless,

bruised deaf, screaming like a fish.

Maybe mothering is only a question

of which chunk is eating whom?

Ritualistically, I might squirt

menstrual hexes across

the sheets. I might chant crone’s wisdom.  Or mumble a prayer

against the scary future.  But I don’t

do anything,

I just dream. Some dreams

are also prayers.  The best ones recall

the naked grin, the bare brine tongue

of a slumbering angel.

     

           

Born

published in Sein und Werden

one shapeless sprawl     gray silent

without end       no omens of mis-

adventure

no warnings

to beware   

as life

as humanly here    begins:

a lit door opens without a sound

and you       a pint-sized probing scout go forth impatient

to consume the air    you have the dignity of rareness    oh you have never felt so naked

it won’t hurt     whatever they take from you

(you don’t even think to ask for mercy)

and will you miss the smell of the garden

and will you want the colors of home

poor alien?        name!birthplace!family!

what roots that clutch

do not signify multiple

frailty?

now now now your cries clack between jaws

mechanically after-the-fact                unseeingly

you act     with all the wrong verbs        poor sucker stuck to props that are no longer

here

cues hissing      warning of

mis-

step      over and over       (the throngs shouting less, less! instead of more, more)

and the glitter

comes spattering down …

rhyme it:

tell

well

bell and fell     and so on     so much

to be known

hell   sell   yell

and so forth

so much     so much

oh memory me

more

yee!

purely purge thy dross

------

Novel (1st pages)

Opening chapter of The Inner Game -- What to read more? Contact jsdlgut@gmail.com


 

                 Chapter 1

The Pawn on Nuns Island

     He listened, and decided she was no longer crying. In the semi-darkness of the car, he could just about make out the motionless shape in the back seat. The girl – asleep or more likely only pretending to be -- was completely hidden in the blanket he had stolen from the motel room an hour before.

     Nervous, because he did not know what awaited him, he forced himself to open the car door. His voice, as usual when he addressed the girl, affected an air of easy confidence: "This is the last stop, I promise. Just wait here, I won’t be long."

     A rivulet of moonlight swathed a path from a deeply rutted lawn to a sprawling wood structure. It did not have a front door. It had all shapes and sizes of windows and a wraparound porch and God knows how many added-on wings. There was a fire escape that started on the second floor and didn't seem to end anywhere.  

     But he could not find an entrance. This was not a good sign.  Bedraggled and heavy-eyed, he was in no mood after eight hours of madcap driving to discover he had ended up in the wrong place.

     "The sisters wanna keep hidden away..." Mama had told him.

     And Mama, he hoped, had not led him astray.

     The only entrance he could find was a screened door off to the south side.  This door was locked. There was a buzzer under a thick patch of ivy close by the door. A bell, like for a bicycle, was nailed to a post. He made a nuisance of himself, pressing down hard on the buzzer, shouting up at the gray windows, rattling the screen, ringing the bicycle bell. 

     A quarter of an hour passed, maybe more.  A very small, fiery scrawl was beginning to appear over the mountains to the east. Whoever was inside the building was not to be roused. It seemed to him that more and more leaves were falling around him, piling around his loafers. Shadows shivered between the huge, spanning trees.

     He had to keep resisting the impulse to go back to the car and check on the girl.

     From a long way off he could see a string of lights from the bridge he had driven over and a cluster of lights on the opposite shore.  Beyond the mountains were towns he'd never heard of, a peppering of tiny dots with names he had read for the first time on the map tonight. At last a few isolated lights from inside the building went on, the screened door blew open and a woman in pants and a sweater stood blinking at him.  "Well?" she asked with a sleepy drawl.

     Well, he was at a loss what to say.  He cursed himself for not being better prepared. He cursed Mama for not warning him.  For shit sake, Mama, why didn't you tell me, "You'll find a house deep in the woods and a dwarf at the door"? 

     She was little more than a child to look at, with an unlined face and a blankness in her features that had not yet settled into any definite expression.

     She was still waiting for him to explain himself. He felt the disadvantage of his height, but being a well-brought-up young man he was careful not to stoop in order to meet her round eyes that glowed overlarge under the porch light and looked glazed with sleepiness.

     "I'm --"  he stuttered to introduce himself --  his name was Malcolm Marshall --  but the woman interrupted him.

     "Oh, welcome." The tone in her voice sounded more neutral than welcoming, but holding open the door with her foot, she reached up to Malcolm, folding both her thick hands into his in a warm grip. "I'm the Mother Superior. I've been expecting you ever since your mother called. Please come in."

     She was smiling, and her smile had the intended effect on poor Malcolm. The Reverend Mother seemed prepared to overlook his soiled raincoat, his late arrival, his face with the prison pallor.

     Without saying more, she was leading him down a long hall where a row of dimmed chandeliers made spidery shadows across the linoleum tiles. There was an unmistakable atmosphere of deep slumber behind the closed doors they passed. "I'm sorry if I woke you up," he said.

     She answered him with a little joke. "No, no, God never sleeps." 

     "We share a mutual friend, don't we?" she continued pleasantly, motioning him into an office at the end of the long hall. He took a seat next to her own midget chair, which she slid into with a quick wriggle. "Your mother told me you're engaged to Isabelle," she said. "I've known Isabelle since she was a child, so you come highly recommended."   

     Malcolm cleared his throat slightly at the mention of Isabelle.

     "Yes, ma'am," he said. His stomach churned nervously as he felt the woman examining him. Just as he was examining her for any telltale signs of doubt or suspicion.

     But she seemed to like what she saw, because her voice -- surprisingly resonant, considering her size - was creamily enthused. "How fine. I'm delighted. And you've brought us a visitor. A friend of Isabelle's, I understand. What is her name?"

      "Her name's --" he began to say, but broke off. The nun had turned on a lamp next to a casement window above her desk, where an astonishingly grotesque portrait of a weeping Christ was propped up in a silver frame.

     Glancing away from it guiltily, Malcolm leaned forward at the edge of his chair, gripping his knees. "Her name's Becky Hall." It was a lie, God help him. The rest wasn't a lie. "Age eighteen. I'm afraid she's not, um, Catholic. I'm not sure..."

     "And she's with you?" the nun asked him.

     "Yes. She's asleep in the car. Should I go get her?"

     "No, no, let her sleep."

     "We've had a long drive," he put in, hoping the nun didn't see his relief that he wouldn't have to bring the girl in for inspection. "We've come from the city."

     "And you're exhausted."

     "Becky, very. She's had some trouble, and she needs seclusion and a lot of rest."

     The nun crinkled her face up for one of her electric smiles. "Well then this is the place for her." With a sweeping gesture to the window, she explained there were twelve nuns, in addition to herself, who lived in what she called "our blessed island on the bluff." There were two separate cottages a quarter of a mile through the woods. These were hermitages set aside for guests who spent up to six months in silent meditation. One of the hermitages was free for Becky, but unfortunately there was no guarantee for how long.

     "If a sister comes in need of tranquility..." the Mother Superior smiled knowingly. "But of course, we never turn anyone away. Not if there's a genuine need."

     “Thank you," Malcolm said, and then he did something he regretted instantly.  "My I.D.," he said.

     The nun leaned forward, squinting at the laminated card. Malcolm Marshall, junior adjunct of a division mystifyingly named Educational Coordinates of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

     "Well," she said.

     It was too late for him to withdraw it.  He had sprung it on her as a prelude to explaining himself and his relation to the girl, but if his mind had been working less sluggishly, he'd have known that it was an unnecessary complication. That stupid urge he had, to show off. The nun's plump face was stitched taut with bewilderment and a struggle to comprehend. Now he saw what a devastating commotion he had caused. She was thinking of police, disturbance, who knows what kind of unwanted interference. What had his supervisor said? "You use the I.D. very sparely, Malcolm."

     "I'm afraid my mother didn't tell you...?" Malcolm pocketed his I.D. hastily. "I hope it's not a problem," he said. "Isabelle would like to be here, but she has the store to run, so that's why I've come, you see."

     The nun shot him an incredulous glance. "You do know this is a silent retreat?"

     "Yes, ma'am. That's why we thought of bringing Becky here." Stiffening his back in authority, he readied himself to tell the story he had rehearsed with infinite care in the car. But there was an undercurrent of anxiety in his voice that he couldn't suppress.

     He fumbled for the words that wouldn't reveal more than was necessary. "Becky needs someone to... to be with her. She's in deep shock, her husband died a few days ago, in tragic circumstances. And I've... I've had some experience with situations like hers, and I think I can be of some help to her. I wouldn't feel comfortable dropping her off here, I mean. In light of her circumstances, total solitude wouldn't be wise."

     He gave a pause. The nun's face was grimly set, in disagreement or confusion -- he couldn't be sure which it was. Her head was still, and slightly bowed. He searched frantically in his mind for something to say that would persuade her that the girl needed him, she could not be left alone. We have reason to believe Becky is in danger.  -- No. He'd already revealed too much. Any more, and he would be running the risk of the girl being traced to the convent if a search was put out for her. Finding no other alternative, and wondering if he'd regret it in an instant, he reached for his wallet.

     "If I may, I'd like to make a contribution..." 

     "No, no that's not necessary." The nun dismissed his offer with a rush of breath.  And confused, he dropped the twenty-dollar bill on her desk. The woman glanced at it. "Mr. Marshall, may I ask how old you are?"

     "I'm thirty-one," he said. He was twenty-six. Looking into her eyes, his heart contracted a little, realizing what a muddled impression he must be making on her. A clumsy intruder, talking a pack of lies, arriving at an ungodly hour and flashing a FBI I.D., acting the savior of a girl who had every reason to loathe him through and through. But he would make amends, he would.

     Coming here was the first of many amends.

     The nun was casting her eyes over the portrait of the weeping Christ, as if to receive some help there. Her mannish, practical hands played nervously on her broad lap. It was a slow second before she asked what she was obviously very uncomfortable asking: "To make this clear... As our guests here... you and Miss Hall understand, don't you, you have taken the vow of chastity?"

     "Yes, ma'am. Yes, of course. There's no question of that." He was furious to feel himself blushing.

     "Yes, of course, it goes without saying," the nun nodded kindly. She was visibly relieved to get the awkward question over with. "And it's only proper we try and accommodate the person who could most help her. After all, Isabelle's mother has been very generous to us, she comes here so often, I wouldn't want to disappoint her, the one time she asks a favor from us." 

     And now it's over for me, he thought. In his racing imagination, he saw the scene unfold: He'll leave the office. Morning will come; and by and by the Reverend Mother will pick up the phone and cheerfully inform Isabelle's mother of Becky Hall's safe arrival.

     With rising anxiety, he watched the nun scrunch her face into a thoughtful frown, and for a moment he thought she was going to go back on her decision, but then she reached for a jar on the windowsill and shook out a bunch of keys.

     She squared her shoulders and extended the key to him. "The hermitage is marked number two." Cocking her head to the side, she gave Malcolm an appraising look. "There's only one bed."

     "That's no problem, not at all, I'll arrange something," he said -- too quickly. "If I could ask you, to keep this confidential?"

     Another blunder. The nun was again put out. Her gray eyes flashed warningly.

     He put in, "Would you like to meet Becky?"

     Yes, she would, and the Mother Superior was already at the door. "If you don't mind,” she said, “I'd like to have a look at her. I’ll be careful not to wake her."

     Malcolm sprang to his feet. "Of course, yes."

     As they neared the car, he saw with a shock that the girl was awake, she sat with her face pressed against the window, watching their approach. He felt the nun's impatience as he fumbled to unlock the car doors, and then suddenly she swung open the girl's door and held out her hand.

     "My dear, we are very happy to have you with us. Don't hesitate to ask if you need anything."

     In the bald glare of the car light, the girl's face looked bled-white. Her spiked orange hair gave her the appearance of being electrified with fright. She made a flapping action with her hand, and stared at Malcolm. "Where am I?"

     Malcolm exchanged a nervous look with the nun.

"How do we get to the hermitage?" he asked.

     "You can't miss it," the nun said, "take the road past the Madonna.” She turned her gaze to the girl. If there had been any suspicions in her mind about Malcolm's rather dubious story about a dead husband, they seemed to have vanished at the sight of the girl's obvious distress. "The Madonna was donated by Isabelle’s mother."  She lisped this to the girl, her gray eyes clouded with concern: "You'll see in the morning that the views are breathtaking."

     Two small pillars adjoined the dirt road, both lit with floodlights. One pillar had the statue of the Madonna in front of it, another had a sign. Malcolm braked the car and read the sign out loud, as much for his own sake as for the girl's, as if that would help put his apprehensions to rest. "Nuclear-Free Zone," he read aloud. "Pray for Peace."

     A short drive down the road and he found the hermitage. It was a squat, shingled cottage enveloped with blue mist under the moonlight, with a blush of sunrise over its steeped roof and clinging ivy.  Beyond that, so far as he could see, were meadows holding the distance like sand-colored clouds, and a dense patch of forest where he could hear a waterfall.

     He stepped out into the chilly air and looked around. 

     "Well... here we are," was all he could think of saying. The events of the night had proceeded at an insane clip, and now this. The girl was slumped to one side with her cheek resting lethargically against the window.

     Wedging her out of the car, he gave himself a high mark for stupidity for gushing, "It's pretty, isn't it? Didn't I say it'd be?"

     She held back on the steps, gripping his elbow.  "Another motel?"

     "No, this is a hermitage. For nuns, Veronica. You'll love it here."

     "Where are the nuns?"

     "Somewhere on the property." Keeping up a happy patter, he nudged her up the steps, one excruciatingly slow step at a time.   

     Inside, it was as spartan as he'd expected. With a bare wood floor, a metal cot by the wall, a closet, and a large picture window which, when he tried opening it, he discovered was nailed shut. He pretended to be mildly annoyed.  "Stuffy," he griped, "not much fresh air." The girl stood staring blankly at a bare wall while he made a quick inspection of the bathroom. No windows there, no easy escape for the girl. That is, if she was even capable of looking for an escape, which he doubted. 

     Returning, he found her still standing in the same spot in the middle of the room. She was showing all the symptoms of shock: the trippy glaze over her eyes, the monotone voice. "We’ll be here long?"  she asked.

     "Well... as long as we can." He pulled down the covers on the cot and patted them. "Nice and soft." He made a move to remove her coat and she drew away.  She crawled into the bed, wearing her coat.

     "I’ll be back for Boris's funeral?" she asked.

     "I'll try to arrange it," he replied, without looking at her. He had found some extra blankets on the shelf in the closet and proceeded to spread out a bed for himself on the floor.  "But it wouldn't be very responsible of me if I succeeded, would it?" he said. "I'd be going against orders. I'm supposed to keep you away from the inquiries of the police, you understand. The police are looking for you. One of the first places they'll look is at the funeral."

     They had gone through this before, for hours and hours during the long drive north, and then in the motel and again in the car, but he went patiently through it for her again.

     "So long as the investigation goes on, it’s best that you stay here. And I'll make it as pleasant as I can for you, I promise, okay?"

     "Who will bury him?"

     He shot her a glance. She was lying on her side on the bed, watching him with unblinking blandness.

He repeated stupidly, "Who will...? Well..." He hadn't thought about it, truthfully, who will bury Boris Weber.   

     Who. Who. He could not think. He was so goddamn tired of the lies. But he’d gone too far to stop lying now. And the fact was, she had asked a simple question. And yet it had stunned him. Who will bury Boris Weber. A “funeral” was easy enough to arrange, or pretend to arrange, because Veronica would not be present anyway. But a burial…

     A burial required an assigned place, a spot in the earth, a headstone. Once he had “arranged” it, she would want to know all the particulars, which would expose him to spirals and spirals of more questions from her, and more fabrications from him…      

     He was still waiting for his mind to come down, trying to unwind from the nightmarish thrust of all the hours and hours on the road.  Finally, he ventured,  "Well... who would you like?" 

     "There's no one but me."

     Yes, he nodded, it was true, there was no one but her. Weber had no family, and few friends. He trusted no one, and the once-gregarious Veronica had certainly not influenced him for the better. Just the opposite: Weber had cleverly managed to draw her into his own isolation. A free-spirited girl who had been turned into Weber’s puppet.

     "We'll think of someone tomorrow, I'm sure." Malcolm kept his voice pitched to sound casual.  "Let's just get some sleep.  May I turn off the light?"

     He gave her a last glance. After all the hours of bedlam and screaming, she was now strangely becalmed. He willed himself to relax into it, to believe peace had come at last. "Sweet dreams then," he said evenly. He turned off the light, and then he carefully slipped the pistol out of his pocket when her voice broke into the darkness.

     "Janice?"   

     "Janice?" he asked with a start.

     "You know. She takes care of my house."

     Janice, he remembered. It was another monstrous detail he had failed to account for.

     "She can do Boris's funeral."

     His funeral. Back to that. 

     "Yes, all right, that's a good idea," he said quietly.

     "Alone. I don't want anyone from the FBI there."

     "Yes, I know, " he answered evenly.

     "Promise. No FBI."

     "Of course. Yes, I promise."

     No FBI.  No police. Just a simple, private funeral, with a designated mourner: Janice.

     He lay on his back, staring into darkness. A wide, haunted lull filled the room.

     Janice was a catastrophe. 

     Veronica's voice broke into his thoughts: "I don't know where he should be buried. Anywhere... I don't think he'd care. Tell her to decide."

     "Right," he said, and he dared an outrageous lie: "I'll call Janice tomorrow."

     "Please do," Veronica responded. "She has to take in Mooshi. I don't know how. She doesn't have a key to Boris's apartment."

     And he went on: "I'll see that she gets one."

     "I forgot to feed Mooshi before I left."

     He went on: "She'll be all right till tomorrow. Cats can take care of themselves."

     "Tell Janice to call the stables to look after Sapphire."

     The damn horse, he thought. What's to be done with the damn horse.

     "I'll call the stables myself," he lied. He kept on lying, but almost believing himself.                              

     He heard Veronica's faint moan.

     And at last she was silent. He listened to the wind outside. Something knocked. Something hooted. Something whistled.  He lay tense on the floor, clutching his pistol by his ear, ready to spring at a moment's notice. His ears tuned to the lightest sound. Every sound unnerved him. He wasn't used to noises from the country. He watched as a crimson veil of daybreak began to spread over the window. He listened to Veronica shift in her bed.  He felt for his gun again.  And at last he drifted off to sleep to the sound of her weeping.

     #

Story: Being Orpha

Being Orpha

Somehow or other she lost her voice. Her name, Orpha, was the last word she ever spoke

-- in a whisper.  It sounded like Alpha, a promising beginning. But perhaps creation, once

it has been opened with Alpha, can only be followed by silence.

            Sitting in her chair on the porch she watched the empty parked cars. Frost

scribbled on the windows and a small after-image froze: her fingers dangled in the air

after she crossed herself three times. She often said to herself: I am the only one here.

            Much earlier in her life (she had come over mountains and the ocean), she had

seen rivers that looked like small streams, cities at night that flashed and were gone. Then

she fell from above, and crashed, and ever since then she was in a flat country she never

understood. 

            She would think to herself: It’s only when I’m sleeping that I never say “I’m

dreaming.”

            There were places out of time that all flowed into different corners of the halls.

For instance, her husband Charles reading the Iliad in the yellow chair by the plastic

potted ferns. Or a rubbed-out message in chalk that was blowing over the tire prints in the

oval gravel drive.

            But when she dreamed, she was always the same age she is now.

            When a hand appeared, a face, or a voice was heard from staff or visitors,

everything changed: the black dog’s paws clicked across the porch, then came the tail

eagerly slapping the floor: ear-dreams.

            Orpha on the porch, waving her arms, as if she were imitating the movements of

the leaves,  or  saying goodbye to someone, or hailing one of the parked cars. She had

angry, comprehending eyes. Palms up, she felt strong, and with her eyes closed she could

believe the sunlight that settled upon her was warm fur. Those moments reminded her of

nothing but: I AM.

            Once, it streamed everywhere, and she was present, joined to one place. Those

friendly and curious hands cupped the immense realm beyond the mountains: the edge of

a continent. Death for once was all on the surface – the waves took it away. And she

existed as skin, hunger, love: I AM, I AM. She smiled, but the eyes in her dream still

looked angry. “Why am I here?” she asked herself. “Why am I here?” When she awoke,

she was making motions with her fingers as if she were threading a needle.

            “Those jerks and jabs with her fingers mimic the speech of someone who

stutters,” said the doctor examining her. “Was she a stutterer?”

            “The black dog knows,” she heard.

            Nurse Jane was panting over her, her face contracted in one firm, set expression.

She wanted to shout: “I know words. But do you? No, but you say you do. And that, dear

Nurse Jane, that is the broken promise of speech: you think you are using words, but the

words are using you.”

            They carried her to a freshly made bed. It was a new room. Doctor’s orders. She

heard him say the word change and out of his mouth chattered something like tumbling

coins. (To whom had thoughts ever been so palpable?).

            “Put me out in the forest,” she wanted to say. “Lay me down among the sticks and

the rotting leaves. “

            The doctor: “Did she say something?”

            Nurse Jane: “Orpha, did you say something?”

            I’m the log in the forest that will become the Savior. I’m the sculptor carving the

log in the forest that will become the Savior. I’m the carpenter nailing the Savior to the

post.

            The wind made a sound like an animal squishing through wet leaves. Then the

animal was gone, too.

            But by and by the sliver of light under the door became a thin white bone. A

drawer being opened was a short bark. Then came the click of nails on the floor and the

eager panting, panting, which in the ear-dream again became the ticking of the clock.

Ticking, ticking.

            Anguish.

            Anguish, passing from dark to dark and eyes lying in wait for the light.

            Her neighbor in the next bed was again busy counting, one thousand three, one

thousand four, but this time Orpha’s pulse didn’t race to catch up.

            A single sound was repeated over and over – not a word, not yet a word, but

something like “hmm?” blown through cupped hands.

            Nurse Jane turning to her surprised, said: “If you don’t acknowledge this small

miracle now, Orpha, you’ll be mute forever.”

            “Yes, yes, “ Orpha nodded, chomping on her teeth, as though the words, her first

spoken words in ten years, didn’t really fit her right.

            “I want to say something that can be heard long after I’ve finished speaking,” said

Orpha.

            Nurse June clapped her hands. “Say it! What will it be?”

            “Listen,” said Orpha, nearly shouting. “If the Lord really has words for it, this is

it.”

            “Yes? Yes? Tell me. “ Nurse Jane bent over her. What is it?”

            “Listen:”

(For Orpha Buchart, 1889-1992)