1.
If I stood before the glass coffin with the body of the dead saint inside and waited for my miracle would it come to me?
The chapel veil around her head is yellowing. Becomes a snake. Her face is sunken and plastic. Where the mouth was, a pushed-in pile of blackened lips and catlike teeth. They have put a coating of wax on her body to preserve the miracle of unrotting death. But I think when they poured it, it must have been too hot. It left her gray eyes staring out of dimly burnt sockets. Frozen in a brown edge singe. Still, we believe. A symbol of the deathless death to be admired.
The faithful rosary around her fingers, hands crossed upon her black-cloaked chest. The rust of vivianite like a fashionable blue choker around her neck. Her clothes are dull and soiled. The regalia of an ancient doll found in a moldy basement. The pillows and padding around her are tattered and graying as much as her unconvincing skin.
If I stood before the glass coffin with the body of the dead saint inside and believed and waited long enough for my miracle, would it come to me? Would she grant my wish like a bone you pull at the table? A tasteless fortune cookie signifying nothing. A prayer to the empty sky. The feeble promise of the insincere.
They run from me now, everyone I knew as a boy. They think I am vile and keep their distance. Build walls. Make signals to warn one another I am coming. Or, worse, think of me not at all. They think of me not at all. And if they see me looking they go to each other and whisper. He is back. He has returned. He’s looking at you from over there. Run away. Laugh and hide.
I may not look. They must not see me looking. I try to do nothing to alarm them. It has been a long effort. I have rid myself of possessions to be clean. I say nothing, and tell all my grief to the dead saint and her daughter.
If I stood before the glass coffin with the body of the dead saint inside and asked for oblivion, and believed and waited long enough for my miracle, would it come to me?
I am followed by men in hats, women in blanched white makeup and familial pearls, old pouting red lips, faces secure in their righteousness. Bad perfume heavy clouding unwashed skin. There was a policeman. Two clowns, one juggling. A man wearing a solemn gold mask and a woman kicking high feet from below her skirt. Babies wrapped in their mothers’ arms. Nursemaids. Tappers. Pirates. Painted faces as if it were Carnival again. Foreigners. Released prisoners. Pensioners. Hangers-on. Fat people. Brown people. Men in square brown hats and cripples twirling their crutches as if just magnificent and recently healed.
They wait their turn to stand before the glass coffin with the body of the dead saint inside and ask for their own random oblivion and try to believe and wait long enough for their own miracles to come to them. But they can’t get on so long as I stand here.
Beside me is a burlap sack I bought on the mountain. Alice is inside. The dead saint doesn’t move. No miracle.
2.
He set his candles in the red sand. they must be in a line and set just so or the prayer won’t work. the curse they come again. but the greens they knock it down, he attempt to remake.
I put money in the can and take five candles from the orange wooden box. They are ivory white and smell of myrrh or the scarcity of ages. Or the trinkets of memory in the damp historic halls. Or perfumed turtles. Or the smooth ink scent of old prayer book paper, crinkling and thin. They have a beautiful scent and it will get better when I light them, if ever that day comes. I must place them standing up inside a box of red sand. And I must space them perfect one to another, the line perfect and straight. It is a careful process. If I do it wrong they will not allow it. Everything depends on the red sand in a barrel.
Having hauled Alice from my apartment I made my larger muscles tired. And now I use the smaller muscles and they quiver as I set the first candle into the sand. I do this knowing it will not work. I will put the second candle in the wrong place or at the improper distance. Not that I am trying to. But they will come out and say it is wrong like they always do even if I think I’m doing it right. I cannot go from large to small muscles so fast. The next candle will be wrong as well. And they will come out and tell me it is wrong and I may not light them. Because you can’t light them until they are perfect in the red sand. I will look closer at my alignment and my placing and I will only then see what they are talking about. There is only one chance, and I have lost it.
As I’m doing it, of course, I believe I am putting them in the red sand in perfect order. Or I think I am and maybe one or two are off and I hope they won’t see it. But all the time I know it won’t be good enough. I do not know why I persist in this effort. I know I cannot do it right, but keep trying. I know they will find fault no matter how well I think I’ve placed the candles. Yet I return and try again.
I finish my row of candles and pull the cord attached to the small brass bell above my head. A monk emerges from behind an ornate carved door and stands beside me. He studies the arrangement. He shakes his head. I can’t see his face for the hood. But I’ve failed again. He pulls the candles out of the red sand and returns them to the box I bought them from. I may try once more or as many times as I’d like, but I will have to buy the candles all over again each time.
I push my hands in my pockets to see if I have money to buy more candles, but my pockets are empty and all my money is gone. I always seem to forget to bring enough. I’m not sure what is happening to my mind these days.
It is time to return home. There is some money there I think. So I pull the sack out of the cathedral and walk along the broken sidewalk to my apartment with it.
When I was younger I could carry Alice wherever I went. But these days I drag her here and there. I have become too old and weak over time. The weather always chills me. The church takes all my money. I have sweaters.
3.
I have sweaters and my apartment is simple. I am not like the young men by the river. They live in complex hives while my simple apartment is the essence of quiet. The apex of silence. And the key to simplicity is to have a lack of things. I do not have many things in my apartment. I have a shrine to St. Athwulf beside my bed. But that is no clue. It would reveal nothing to the authorities, as he is forgotten.
I have rid myself of possessions to be clean. I say nothing, and tell all my grief to the dead saint and her daughter. I am the pure warrior, untainted by desire.
In contrast to other apartments the authorities will see when they inspect the scenes of crimes, my apartment will offer them few clues. Perhaps none at all. When they break down the door they will find me gone. There will be no telltale trace or mitigating circumstance. No lead will create a trail they can follow. There will be nothing to discern. Nothing to judge. Nothing to use.
There is no television in my apartment. Instead, on the 5th of every November, I bring out my icon of St. Charitina and celebrate her virtue. I am always sure to ask for intercession. How would the police ever know this? It is not a crime yet.
There is no radio as there is never anything on the radio I want to listen to. I have no books because I do not read. And because I do not read there are no newspapers or magazines here either. Too much knowledge is a trap. You think you know things, and they will catch you. Know too much and you trip yourself up. Under questioning I would not break because I know so little.
I have two cups in case one is dirty.
I have a curtain and a radiator. There is a comfortable chair beside a table. It was while I was sitting in that chair deep in thought when St. Edmund the Martyr appeared. At first I thought he was only a stain in the wallpaper. But when he spoke I knew he was real.
I have one plate because all you have to do is wipe your plate clean when you finish and it is ready for the next time. I eat out of cans and boxes, so there is only ice in my freezer. But I never use it because water does not need help. I wash with water. When I wash my wrists I try to remember what St Edmund said to me that day. But it is never of any use. It was too long ago. There were soft shoes in those days. It is not the day of soft shoes anymore.
My kitchen counters are spotless and empty except for the breadbox, which is blue and has a flower on it. It is usually empty. But right now I do have a loaf of rye bread in there. I better eat it soon or it will go moldy.
I have a couch and a chair and a table by the front window of the apartment. This window faces the street but I have only looked out once.
I have three sweaters. One is green. One is black. And the third is also green. I get cold now that I am older. I do not smoke. I pray. And I can light candles to the memory of St. Gens du Beaucet because he would rather be a hermit than in the world. A penchant for the ideal always rattling around in my pocket, you see.
I do not have to place my candles in an exact row at precise distances in red sand here. Not here in my rooms. I can just light them and sing. And St. Gens taps on my window like a snowflake in the winter because he approves of my frugality and my singing. Still, I know, my poor candles here do not have the same power of those you could buy at the cathedral. But one must make do sometimes. I try to make up in quantity what I have always lacked in quality.
I do not smoke and I do not drink. I get headaches and have five bottles of aspirin in my medicine cabinet. They are next to my shaving cream and bandages, which are just above my statue of St. Iwig.
Many people may wonder, you for example, what I do to pass the time. I could try and explain it but it wouldn’t be of much interest to people. Then again, of course, there is always Alice.
I make my food and am sure to have three meals a day but I am not a heavy eater and am not much interested in food anyway. So soup and bread and water and canned stew is fine. I don’t care for fruit except blueberries. But they are to difficult find and not usually worth the price as they go off and spoil fast in this kind of air.
I sleep in my bed and I shave. I keep washed and take care of my clothes. I have four shirts and five pairs of pants. They are brown and blue. And the sweaters I’ve already mentioned.
I keep the apartment clean but I worry sometimes about why I have stomach pains. I’m sure it is a virus so I keep the floors clean too and never eat food off it. But I will lay in bed and hold my stomach because it hurts so bad. I do that for hours sometimes until the pain goes away.
I like to have pain. I’ve noticed that when pain subsides something gets released inside my body that makes me feel good. A kind of bliss that sets in when you feel relief I suppose. So whenever I am in pain I think – oh, I will feel good when it is over – and it isn’t so bad anymore. I especially enjoy waking up with a splitting headache. Because when I take two aspirin I feel good when they start to work. I like the feeling of relief when a long bout of pain is over. It is worth being hurt.
I don’t have any pets because they are dirty, but I seem to be always fighting ants in my kitchen. I don’t know where they come from but they are not my pets. I once considered waging a full-scale international war against all ants. But after several years I recognized the futility of it. I satisfied myself with the local battle as being as much as one man may be expected to handle.
I don’t have a telephone because there is no one to talk to on it. But I do keep a basket of plastic flowers on my kitchen table because they are a light blue plastic. I think they are a wise choice. I do not have to water them. Just dust them. Alice likes them too, I think. But she never speaks because she is dead.
I keep her in a simple sack I bought on The Mountain. At night when I go to sleep I put her in the closet on a shelf so she doesn’t attract ants.
No. The authorities could never suspect me. They will never come after me. I am protected by the saints and fight the ants. My life is different from the lives of those down there. Down there by the dead river.
4.
At night the young men and boys begin to appear. From the high street and down the rough stairs. They move in a trance down to the formless river that sizzles through our city like an old broken snake. Polluted and dark. Crusted with a hard algae scum. They go down to this river, because that is where they can find the last vestiges of the ancient maze. They come in the dim cold squeak of the late night and early morning. Three AM they come. Out of their own streets and shops and secret, feverish bedrooms. One by one. They are like drug fiends, nervous and worn. Pale and shaking. Tromping down the old stone steps. Passing the abandoned fishing huts and black old shacks. Drawn to the worn down remnants of the Wall that still exists from a thousand years before.
They rub their hands against the old stones of the Wall. They rub their faces into it. Or their whole bodies. It stops their shaking and their moaning. Some lean against it, this monument to a bygone age, and seem to soak in an odd kind of strength from it. They emerge from this covered in the chalk dust of the ages. It calms them. They consider it magical. A talisman. And they are able to relax again after making this contact with the past. The urge satisfied. For the time being.
The entire spectacle frightens the authorities. It has been going on for months and there is some alarm. The government wants to destroy what remains of the old Walls but there are historic principles to consider. So all talk of these remnant's once and for all destruction labors on.
These walls that made the Maze are sacred to many. It all comes from the most important time of our history. In the age of the Vikings we were a small country with few people. The Vikings invaded again and again but we were always too few to fight them. So they plundered at will until King Ulf II, known as Ulf the Hermit, built a magnificent maze.
It spanned across the entire width and breadth of our country. Overnight ten foot high brick, stone, and old composition concrete. It sprung up like a miasmic weed. The maze broke up the country. It created long, winding corridors across open country. Broke up roads and whole villages. Dead ends. False openings. Concentric circles that wound the traveler right back where they started. When the Vikings invaded and attempted to follow their old paths of plunder, they got lost. The maze befuddled them. And while they were wandering aimless we burned their ships. Little by little we killed them by trapping them in blind alleys and throwing rocks from the high walls. After years of constant defeats they never came again. They held meetings in the great long houses of their terrible lands and said no more of this from these people. It isn’t worth the cost. The treasures are poor and the women are ugly anyway. But it was the Maze that did them in.
Over the centuries, of course, need, weather and wind wore down the saving structure of our protection. Farmers cut openings to resume the cultivation of their fields. Towns broke down the maze to reconnect their streets and markets. The rain wore down the rest. All that remained crouched hidden in forgotten places in untouched reaches of the country. Soon enough there were no more Vikings anyway. The killing seed had been routed out of their genetics once and for all.
The maze no longer exists as it was either. It ceased to exist as a function or the thing we thought of it as. It was a thing we saw from a passing car on a country drive. A thing we had picnics beside without remembering what it was for long ago. An ignored thing. The largest of many things taken for granted. Generations came and went without realizing or remembering the reason for the stones. It was something in schoolbooks. Therefore unimportant.
Only in the recent years has this changed. But only after the onset of a terrible plague that raged through the ranks of our young men. This disease seemed to have no cure. Somehow our young men, desperate, found that coming in physical contact with the old stones helps a great deal. It calms their nerves. Helps them focus. Summons their long neglected and waning strength. And stops the horrendous shaking they suffer from.
No one ever understood the nature or cause of these symptoms and maladies. But touching the old maze cured all who seek the remedy. This medicine never fails, and seems to have repaired the lives of so many.
It is a great mystery.
But the old walls of the great maze are not for me. I do not have this malady.
I have another.
I have rid myself of possessions to be clean. I say nothing, and tell all my grief to the dead saint and her daughter.
5.
I forced myself back to the cathedral of St. Thorfinn. I had to go. It was unfinished business. Like rain when it doesn’t fall. Like threats against the state. Like a weak fist.
I return because I know the glass coffin will be returned to the diamond city in two days and I had only prostrated myself before it once. Once is never enough for the saints. They are as jealous as their God. I have to go. But I am weary. I am tired of fighting this thing that I have. This thing that possesses me. The sickness that has ruled my life since there was only a shell of a man in my clothes. The twisted disease of not being able to forget. The curse or remembering everything.
I’ve tried to talk it out with Alice but it is too late and I know it. I neglected her and sent her away when she did nothing wrong. She did nothing to me. She did not expect to be so dismissed. And, when I look back over the years, I sometimes find it difficult to understand why I did what I did. How could someone as thin and pale and sick refuse the company of one so beautiful?
She was so beautiful. This Nordic maize colored hair and her green eyes. Slender and tall. Graceful and pleasant to look at. A gentle nature too. And a sense of humor. This was the essence of her soul, if souls we have.
There was no reason to send her away. No reason to stop our love. Our friendship. That which seemed like the perfect life before us. But I did it. I did it and I did it with a fearsome energy. A fierce heart. And heartless, then, after all.
Now she is in a sack by the window where I keep her during the day. Near the radiator. And I grieve over it. It would have been better, I think, if I was the one who killed her.
You should understand - I didn’t kill her. I am responsible for some terrible things, but not that. When I sent her away she still had her life. She forgot me. Or, I should say, if ever she remembered me it was with scorn and hatred. But no, I didn’t kill her. In fact no one killed her. She died by nature and nothing else. It was years later when I found her, and brought her back with me. Because I was sorry, and remain sorry, for the terrible thing I’d done to her for no good reason. This, and much more, is what I seek absolution for. A story for another time. First things first.
It was the last day of the visitation by the saint in the glass coffin. The Holy Woman of wherever she was holy. I forced myself to go. I did not take Alice with me. There was a plan in my head. This time I would line the candles to a perfect line. By leaving her near the radiator I would not have to use my large muscles carrying her through the streets. I would arrive at the cathedral in full strength. Therefore I would be able to set the candles straight. The monks watch the red sand and guard it with jealousy. Like the saints and their God. Religion is a jealous thing.
It was a liberating thing to do this because it was not my usual way of going. I always took her with me and was proud and happy to show her the sights. But I felt, and said to myself, maybe this time I will go alone. She’s done nothing wrong and the holiest of all beings sees and hears all. He knows what I’ve done. She didn’t need to accompany me. So I left her by the window where it was cool, and cracked the window open just a bit so she could see.
I was determined to make my final apology. Throw myself on the saints and priests and monks and all else available for mercy. So from the moment I crossed the threshold from the street into the vestibule I went to my knees. And I stayed on my knees the whole time. I got into line on my knees. I walked on my knees. Hands folded in perfect prayer position. All I wanted to project was the outward, physical showing of my sorrow and penitence. No pride. No ego. And plain clothes. Plain clothes and brown shoes. And no whiskey either. Sober. Sober as an abandoned wrench in the moonlight. Solemn and humbled.
Most people did not bother to notice my dour attire. My studied plainness. I am a simple man, and each of us came there out of our own private hells. Those that did notice, and some who pointed at me and smiled, were fakers anyway. Not fit for true blessings, I imagined. Religious for show. Those who do not take the principles of their faith into their lives. Those who scorn others for the color of their coat. Those who put worms on hooks and mix the forbidden fabrics in their shirts. Let them laugh, I said to my imaginary Alice – because she was under the window by the radiator – let them go. They’ll get their reward. Faith is all about others getting what they deserve. And I was well practiced in this.
The progress was slow this time. Anyway slower than before. My knees buckled twice with sharp pains and I almost couldn’t support myself. But I managed. I walked on my knees to the foot of the coffin, praying most of the way. Wishing I could go back to the past and try again. To not send Alice away.
Maybe it would be better for me if I had the same malady of those young men by the river and the walls. That would be nothing compared to this, and at least they could experience a momentary cure. Find some relief. Get succor and quiet their minds. Once you are in line on your knees, there is no quitting.
I put my hands on the cool glass and stared at the moldering saint inside. I think they’d put on a new coating of wax since the day before. I couldn’t be sure. Something was different and new. It stopped me from my earnest prayer and I didn't know where to look.
Then I realized what was different. The daughter of the saint in the glass coffin was watching me from a door that led to her chambers. The well-known Marta Vansimmerant. She who was the only child of the sainted woman laying there. She who accompanied the glass coffin wherever it went with the sanction of the holy fathers. A daughter of both the saint and the church. Living proof that the Holy Woman of Wherever had been real. Accompanying her mother was her sanctified mission. Dressed in black. Hollow eyes. Old but still young, somehow. She stared at me as I made my effort to pray on my burning knees. The blains. The shooting, arching stab in each one. My offering. My penance.
When I finished my devotions I struggled to my feet, unhappy. Even resigned. I knew I’d done all I could do. I did not feel relieved of my burden. Like the lightness of confession when transgression is clean and you are free again. No earnest need to repent and make good, in gratitude for the weight being lifted. No. I felt nothing. Achieved nothing. There was no point in trying the candles. I knew my penitence was incomplete. Immature. Tainted. For when I saw her I tried to peel back the fabric from the front of her lean body. I tried to visualize her nakedness. My penance was impure. There would be no peace. No help for it at all. I finished the ritual and departed.
Marta Vansimmerant watched me at every step until I was out the door. Her eyes like claws.
6.
If I stood before the window.
No. I did stand before the window. The radiator pipes knocked as the heat went on. It’s an ancient sound the others find quaint.
If I stood before the window on my return. I returned from the cathedral of St. Thorfinn of Hamar. It wasn’t up for question. I was there. I am there still, in some sense. I don’t know why I question myself. I don’t know why I say ‘if’.
I stood before the window and did not see Alice. The brown sack. Burlap. Sometimes gray. Whatever it was. The sack was gone. Funny how only then did I notice the mud on the carpet and the blood on the doorknob. I saw none of that coming in. Perhaps it wasn’t there then. I don’t know.
The radiator knocked as the heat went on. Alice always liked the sound of the air going through the pipes. Like a low hum from a motor. Like a fan of endless white noise. Somehow a comfort. Man has conquered the world and so there we are with comforting sounds not part of nature that we made. They help us to sleep. She liked that. She liked to curl up inside her sack and listen to the air go. I would put jelly on white crackers and watch her do it. So I know.
But she was gone. I left her alone and she was gone.
They took her and I stood before the empty window where a sack used to be full of Alice. I have a headache. Then it is gone. I lose my sense of timing. Is it now or then? Alice is gone and there are clues leading to the conclusion that while I was away someone took her. They were bleeding and had mud on their shoes. I was so proud that I would leave no clues for the police if ever they searched my rooms. Now the clues belonged to someone else.
My bedroom is dark. There is one pillow. A green blanket on a single bed. The window. The brick wall of the building next door, across the gangway. No clock. There are no clocks because my apartment is simple. I already explained this once to you. There is a small table and a chest of drawers. I have socks there. I don’t recall if I mentioned sweaters.
I know what I own. I know what belongs to me. So look around, I instructed myself. Look around and see if there is anything here that doesn’t belong to you. I said this to myself as if scolding a child. Impatient with the little one’s obtuse demeanor.
I fall on top of my blanket and stare at the ceiling. The ceiling is white with little rosettes spinning in the distance. I must think. I hear music. Then I don’t. But I know I must make a plan to save Alice. Clues. There are clues. And I should concentrate, but there are pictures two inches behind my forehead. Terrible pictures of Alice and what they might be doing to her. Whoever they are.
There are evil men in the world who see a dead woman and think this is their chance to violate her. She would never give in to them alive. Not my Alice. But now that she is dead, they think they can do what they want with her body. This is the sickness of the world. I sit up and put my feet on the simple floor. I must get going. There is no telling what they’ll do to her. I must save her from it. It’s why I put her in there in the first place. I must get control of my mind. It floods fast. This is what happens without a bag of Alice by the radiator.
I shouldn’t have sent her away. There is nothing worse I could have done to her sweet nature and gentle voice. Her green eyes. The rhyming runes she spoke in. The smile. Her dirty feet. A face of gold.
It rumbles around in my head, these cats of light. My skin crawls. The window opens. There are ants. But also mud on the floor. Leading from the door to the silver painted radiator that clanks when the heat goes on. Footsteps occurred. Footprints they are. They are not mine. What isn’t mine is a clue. How did I not see that before?
Brazen and brash like a dried river running right from the world. One, two, three. The thief appeared at night when he knew I was away. Sidebar. High train. Low road. He waited, of course. They watched me to see when I left her unprotected. Someone was watching. Are they still?
The thought of someone watching made me want to dance. I cannot scratch my chest hard enough to stop this itch. I’ll sleep on it, says I. Let the mind grow. That’s what happens. You figure out things when you sleep, they say. I swallow a yellow tablet and return to the covers I tossed and scrambled on just now. Clothes off to the cool feel. The blank pillow. Salty eyes and tight covers. The sleep of the dead. Let the brain work itself out. The best thinking is the unworking kind. Before you were born you knew nothing. There was nothing for you. This is what death is like. Nothing any more. And sleep is preparation. The ruminating columns of color hopping up and down the scale while the music goes. This is dreaming. And dreaming drives the train. I need to sleep so that the dreams may instruct me.
If I sleep.
If I sleep before the open window there will be risks.
The night passes. There are violins. I know nothing.
I awake to nothing. My open window tells no secrets. There is no breeze of a summer morning. No birdsong on the rooftops or from the worm offering ground. I am used to the sound of traffic on the high road. But there is nothing to hear. No sound of city buses. No cars pushing or trucks hogging. There are no airplanes overhead.
My apartment with no books or radio sits in a pool of no motion. Even the sounds of a neighborhood doors or floorboards overhead are missing. There is no crank and groan of small-minded men playing narrow games in faded gray factories.
There was a drum going. I floated out of the room like an antique cartoon, all black and white ink in the film click jerks. A classic wave along the nothing air, sniffing the warm scent of cartoon food. To the seductive snake of a foreign piccolo. Down the door and out the walk. Through the nothing going on to something near the river. Hypnotized, baptized, realized, stigmatized. The Nordic drum amazed.
But, I say to the gathering angels, I have rid myself of possessions to be clean. I say nothing, and tell all my grief to the dead saint and her daughter. Does this count for nothing?
7.
The boys were there beneath the crooked stair. The long stair rambling in concrete bits with mouse holes and rain worn streaks. The stinking river dead and still just beyond. Some of them were writhing atop the bits of maze as if making love to the stone, the ancient stone. As if some old woman who held a strange charm for their energy. Available and unmoving. But only stone, after all.
There were dangerous red banners and everyone tried at uniform. Belt buckles. Shoulder straps. Severe heads. The signatures of rank and the markings of cult. A wicked cult that meant harm to someone if only they could find a target. And the speaker, like a marionette. Jerky arms and pleading palms. Strings running up to an invisible hand. Odd that I could not hear him from my open window for he seemed loud enough. The speaker, the marionette, hoarse and wild with fists and sweat and those not making love to the stones listening, rapt.
The whole world was down here by the river. Or at least the whole country. Even the birds and the worms they dug. The life of the city had moved down by the greasy river and there were cries to return to glory. Glory as if bored with all the calm. Bored of all the sameness. One last hit of adrenalin before the dotage. This seemed the only reason the old men joined the boys who were rubbing themselves on the remnants of the maze.
There were threats to rebuild the maze, despite what it meant. This was our national honor and the symbol of our history. Their red flags showed a kind of black maze in a white circle too.
There was the marionette. The scarecrow. Waving arms and swearing vengeance on the world that abandoned his country. My country. The country. They’ll take this and like it. We will return to our highborn spirit by the grace of these stones. All the cheering was in unison and at no time did the drumming stop.
I rubbed my eyes to rid myself of the scene, but only the colors changed. Blood red, animal shit green, black and hate and spleen. This was not safe. Skinny men eyed me from the side. Who is this – what does he want – why is he not rubbing his body naked against the stones. I realized at once that I had done a foolish thing. Coming down here without a way to defend myself.
There were two men circling each other at the opening of a tattered red tent. There was a silhouette of a swan painted in chipped green paint on the canvas above them. They were within feet of each other, staring. Leering at each other. With hands on or near the pommels of swords in the scabbards at the sides. When one moved, the other grunted and countered. Neither of them blinked. One would growl the other would grunt. They would raise their voices doing this fro time to time. Especially if they felt the other was about to make a move and attack. Sometimes they let out a sharp Hey-hey-hey. To which the other would growl and curse. Always threatening. Always circling. Sometimes in silence, but then growling again if one moved too close to their sword. Sometimes, as they jockeyed around, their noses came within inches of each other. Once in a while one would make a threatening growl and move his hand toward his sword handle. This led the other one to jog step to the side and grunt louder and lean in and threaten to pull out his sword as well. They went quiet and kept circling each other. Threatening each other. Both afraid to break contact lest the other one attack. Caught in an insane dance that was a metaphor for nothing.
I stopped a few yards from them. But had to find a way to get inside and got caught in their dance. They had swords, but I had none. So I was being twice as careful. We must have made quite a picture. Three men grunting and growling and circling each other. Any new move by either made the others growl and grunt Hey even louder.
I began to understand that I could influence their reactions by my moves. I came to this conclusion the longer I danced and threatened and grunted. My grunts and feints and stomps and shoulder jerks, all of my own design, got their attention. All he wanted to do was get inside the tent. But I had to be careful.
I inched toward the tent opening. I stomped as I moved. Landing hard which made the one immediately to his left move back. This, in turn, made the third one grunt and pull back an inch as well. The concert of nations. The Congress of Vienna. Diplomacy. War games. Little by little I maneuvered them out of the way. When I knew I could make a clean break from this rumba I jumped inside. They rattled their swords and grunted Hey and growled louder, but it was too late. I was inside. They resumed their duet. Still audible inside.
The inside of the tent was cool and quiet. A toothless man scratched his matted hair said I wish they’d kill each other already. They’re bad for business.
I looked out the opening. They were face to face once more, clutching their sword handles. Grunting away. How long have they been doing that? I asked.
He explained they’d been at it for days. They are there when I close up and go to bed and still there in the morning when I wake up. Sooner or later one of them will collapse from exhaustion if nothing else, I keep telling myself. But the next day comes and there they are again. Like the stars and the moon and the sun. As constant as two doting mothers. They never seem to sleep. I think they’ll stay like that forever.
I had to get to business. A sack, I explained. Has anyone been through here carrying a sack? To which he closed his eyes.
What color, he wanted to know. How big? What's inside? I could not answer all his questions. Gray or brown. Big enough. But I never told him the contents.
It's missing, I explained. And important to me. Taken from my rooms just in the night while I was away.
You shouldn't be away, he shook his head. People shouldn't go away. They should stay home. He pointed out the tent. See where it leads? Look at these crazy people? One of the young men rubbed himself against the old stones so hard he started to bleed. What do you call that? I had no answer.
The only thing I saw was the Daughter of the Saint here last night. Her men put something in her car. It might have been a sack.
Marta Vansimmerant. I said her name in my head and it conjured an image in a mirror at the back of the tent. A dark thing with sharp teeth. He saw the image startle me. Oh don't worry about that, he calmed me. That's just Louisa.
His daughter walked in through a back slit in the tent carrying a bucket. I made to go, but he bade me use the back way to avoid the two outside. They're insane. It's never going to end. Why bother? Look, he pointed at the ground just outside where they were. He showed me how they'd worn the ground down in an almost perfect circle. That's how long they've been at it for God's sake. I have half a mind to blow their brains out. But they're the future, so the others won't allow it.
I slipped through the back as he instructed. On the other side a solid line of men in steel helmets snapped to attention, then broke their discipline. Oh, someone spat, we thought you were someone else. They lit cigarettes and cursed me. Some were shaky, and broke rank to touch the wall and settled their nerves.
Subscriptions are always free.