The Gentling Box Read online

  For my parents, Anne and Armand Mannetti and in memory of my mother

  Part 1

  _____________________________________

  Mimi

  All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

  — Tennyson

  -1-

  Nyiregyhaza, Northeastern Hungary: June, 1864

  My wife sits mute now in the corner of our caravan, because this morning it is her personality which has come to the fore. Her hands are folded quietly in the lap of her skirt. Just above her left hand is a thick purplish scar that circles her wrist like a hideous bracelet. I don’t want to think about the scar, about how it is the source of the evil afflicting our lives.

  If I raise my head from the sweat-soaked pillow I can see her bare feet splayed against the worn floorboards, but it is her face I find myself staring at: small, kitten-shaped, dominated by her huge dark eyes. She has gypsy eyes. They were very bright when we were both younger; now they are ringed by deep gray shadows like bruises and filled with pain. Meeting mine, they beg: Save Lenore.

  My wife is right of course, and she is living evidence of what will happen to Lenore, our daughter, if I don’t intervene. But Christ, I think, how can I save her when the foul disease I’ve taken is ravaging through me like a brushfire? I close my eyes and instantly hear the swish of skirts, so I know she has gotten to her feet, she is moving toward the bed. And now I feel her hand tapping my shoulder urgently.

  I open my eyes; her face is full of defiance. Her black brows contract angrily and she points at her wrist. Again.

  “Yes,” I say, my voice a ragged whisper, “I know.” I know we will die shut up in this stinking grave of a caravan and Lenore will be possessed by the same hungry spirit that has taken my wife’s life, that killed Joseph and punished me.

  No. She shakes her head, and suddenly her thin hands go to her face; her shoulders hitch and great wracking sobs shake her small frame. She is crying, and the wailing voice I hear is the first sound she has made as Mimi, as my wife, in more months than I can count. She speaks when she is Anyeta, I think bitterly, but never as Mimi. Anyeta has taken that from her, too.

  She sinks onto the edge of the bed, her long hair falling forward, and I want to comfort her. I sit up but my chest burns. I cough, my throat a column of fire, but it’s so hard to breathe. I make myself cough harder and up comes a wad of greasy yellow phlegm streaked with blood. I manage to hide the clotty mess in a handkerchief before Mimi turns her head and sees it.

  I put my arm around her shoulder. Her eyes flick toward my fingers. She whirls around and points at the livid scar on her wrist. I nod. Mimi is reminding me again. She has tried to save Lenore herself, but her powers have fled. I admire her courage. It wasn’t failure.

  “Not your fault,” I rasp before the rumbling cough cleaves me again. We both wait until the fit passes. I let my hand rest on her knee.

  All at once, Mimi seizes my wrist hard. Her grip is like iron, like steel pincers, and I’m suddenly terrified the change is on her and in a second her eyes will blink and I’ll see Anyeta’s demonic eyes, hear her mocking screams and taunts.

  But Mimi throws my hand back at me and runs to the oval mirror. She jerks it from the plastered wall so fiercely the nail pops out with a shriek and she nearly loses her balance. The silvery mirror sways between her hands, she holds it to her chest like a shield, she moves toward the bed. She is making a grunting noise, trying to tell me something. I concentrate on her lips. She is moving them carefully, slowly. Then I have it:

  “Look, Imre.”

  In the mirror I see my features are blurred with thick scabs and crusts. My face is overrun with the red weeping sores and I would weep for the sight except I think she has seen it spreading and nursed me and never shown revulsion or fear.

  Mimi thrusts the mirror toward me again and makes a furious sound, shapes the word, “Look!”

  She wants me to know that time is short, that I’m dying, that the pustulent blisters will eat through my lungs, completely consume my flesh—

  Mimi hurls the mirror to the floor. The sound is deafening inside the caravan. I see her feet moving among the splinters from the shattered mahogany frame, the chunks of broken glass. She squats. Heedless, she clutches a long sharp shard and I see drops of blood welling from her palm and fingers then running down and staining the white filmy sleeve of her blouse. She points at her wrist with the glass knife, then at mine, and pantomimes sawing.

  And then, Christ, then I know what she wants. A sick feeling eddies through me, and I feel the vomit rising in my throat. I push it down because Mimi is asking me to be strong, to save Lenore. I look into her dark eyes and I know what she wants. She wants me to claim the hand of the dead.

  -2-

  I take a deep breath. We both know that claiming the hand of the dead is no small matter, and I glance up at Mimi, expecting her to be looking back at me with sympathy, with understanding, perhaps a little sadness. But she is already climbing the short flight of wooden steps to the cramped loft space above the bedroom. I hear the creak of her tread on the floorboards over my head. The roof is low, so I know she is bent over rummaging through the boxes and kegs, the rolls of dun-colored canvas we use as tents in summertime, Lenore’s outgrown toys. We don’t let Lenore go up in the loft. We tell her it’s dusty, dangerous. We don’t want her to find what my wife has kept hidden up there. Even I don’t know where it is, and when I go up to look for a tool or a bit of leather to mend a broken harness, I keep my mind on my business. I don’t think about the savage charm.

  Mimi is on the third step, standing upright now. And I can see she has the glass-topped box in her hands. My breath catches in my throat.

  The box is a rectangle. The bottom is the brilliant orange of hammered copper. It’s very old, the finest craftsmanship. I think at one time the top was probably a kind of thin metal tracery or fretwork so the owner could look inside and see the relic. But the soldered hinges show signs of repair, and someone—maybe Anyeta—has had it replaced with glass. It reminds me of a miniature coffin made for a prince or a statesman.

  My wife opens the lid, and the caravan is suddenly filled with a sweet fragrance. Briefly, the smell of lilies, tuberoses, gardenia overpowers the sickroom stench—the wet swampy odor of my disintegrating flesh.

  She nods at me and sets the box on the low deal table between the bed and the sidewall.

  The hand is nestled in a bed of worn velvet the maroon color of drying blood; displayed as if it were a wondrous antique jewel in a shop window, instead of an ugly lump of flesh.

  It is black with age and has shrunken in on itself, so that the fingers are curled into a fist. It looks more like the hairless paw of some mummified dog than a human hand. If my wife were to turn it over I would see the fingernails. They make round, slightly glossy spots like stove windows made of smoked mica. At the wrist two small bits of cracked yellowish bone can be seen.

  The thought of claiming it makes my head whirl.

  Mimi goes to the wooden door at the rear of the wagon. At the threshold, she turns and looks at me. In the half gloom her face is nearly as pale as her white blouse, and her eyes are the violet brown of pansies. She swallows nervously, then hangs her head a little. She doesn’t want this for me, but we are both afraid Anyeta will dupe Lenore as Mimi herself was tricked into claiming it.

  There is no air of command in her eyes or her posture, only pleading. She pauses, her hand touching the iron latch, and gives me a small smile. For a second I’m reminded of the young girl I fell in love with.

  I don’t know if I can summon the strength or courage to claim the hand of the dead. I settle deeper into the feather pillows, my arm resting crosswise over my brow. Mimi seem
s to know that I want, need, to think about the dark twisted tale of our lives.

  I sigh, and suddenly she is at my side, her hand in my graying hair. She leans over the bed and kisses my eyelids one at a time.

  “I love you, Imre,” she shapes, and then she is hurrying toward the door. It shuts behind her. Neither of us knows whether she’ll come back as herself or Anyeta.

  Outside I hear Lenore’s voice trembling with fear and grief. “Papa,” she blurts. “He—?” Her question hangs for several seconds.

  “Dying,” comes the soft reply. And I know that my child is out there, alone, speaking with a demon that pretends to be her mother.

  My eye is drawn to the copper box. The blackened hand seems to vibrate. I feel its power calling me, whispering promises like sighs in the hot wind that blows over the flat Hungarian plain. I grit my teeth. Drops of sweat break out at my hairline. Oh Jesus, no! I don’t want this. I shake my head and a sharp steel cough racks my chest.

  “Please. I can’t.”

  A constellation of pallid faces—Joseph, Constantin, Mimi, Lenore—crowd the air around my head like cherubs in a religious painting. Their eyes are full of sorrow, begging me to intervene.

  “Think of the power.” A musical voice hums in my mind—fills it.

  “Christ, Christ,” I moan. For then I am hearing the haunting sound of gypsy violins. I see the bosa venos around the campfire, their faces lit in the ruddy glare. Their heads are canted over the shining instruments. The bows are flying faster, faster. Feet moving over scattered rose petals, the swirl of a gauzy scarf. Mimi dancing. I cover my face with my hands.

  “Remember, Imre?”

  Yes. After the feast, Mimi danced again—for me alone—in our caravan the night of our wedding. The women had drawn dotted patterns on her hands with red henna for the ceremony; but when I undressed my bride I found she’d privately, daringly rouged her nipples. Her boldness fled, my delight made her suddenly shy. She was afraid the Romany women would show the white nuptial sheets in the morning, and there would be no virgin’s blood because we’d been making love, secretly, for months. They didn’t. But we stained and reddened the sheets with the henna on her body that transferred to mine. And in the times between our long sweet couplings, I got on my knees and vowed I’d never betray her. I didn’t know I was telling a lie. And it wasn’t a lie until Anyeta came into our lives; I wince hearing a low throaty chuckle bubbling with mockery.

  “Look, Imre,” the voice croons slyly. I watch transfixed. The copper box opens, closes, opens, closes. Each time the lid thuds down the caravan walls seem to reverberate. There is another crash, and then I’m lost in the tunnel of memories, hearing the sound of the stranger pounding the door on the night it all began ten months ago.

  -3-

  Late August, 1863. Buda-Pest.

  I clearly remember the evening Anyeta’s messenger arrived. It was toward twilight and I was standing at the long wooden counter in the kitchen, hacking at a fat brown hare and putting the chunks of meat into an enamel stewpot. Mimi and Lenore sat at the table slicing wild mushrooms. Through the window I glanced toward the clearing and saw wisps of drifting smoke from a ring of abandoned campfires mingling with the gathering shadows and the gray mist. The only sound was the wind moving through the trees, or the occasional soft blat of insects drawn to our light and bumping against the glass. Hearing these small noises against the deeper quiet made me feel isolated, a little lonely. There had been a big, noisy wedding feast for Tomas and Helene a few days before, but with the celebrating finished, the rest of our small troupe—some twenty gypsies—had left that afternoon to roam south toward the Lake region with its spas and resorts and tourists. Sometimes I like to think if Mimi and Lenore and I had gone with the troupe, Anyeta’s messenger would never have found us, or at least we might have left Lenore in safety with the others, but it isn’t true. I’m sure Anyeta’s messenger had orders to track us half way across the continent, if it came to that. Anyway, I—we all—wanted to stay in the wooded camp in the hills above the city. There was a rumor circulating that Empress Sisi was coming to the capital. Buda was celebrating the feast of Stephen. Mimi—and especially Lenore—wanted to see her. There were heavy holiday crowds in the marketplace, and I wanted to earn enough money to get us through the coming winter.

  “Tourists,” I said, thinking of the departed troupe on its way to the resorts, “don’t buy horses.” I cut an onion into rough quarters and added it to the pot. “It’s all right for the others—Rudolph can sell wood carving anywhere, or Kitta can get in a bit of fortune-telling—”

  “Dukkeripen!” Lenore jumped up from the table, her long braids plaited with brilliant red cotton swinging wildly, her round brown eyes wide. “I’ll go right up to Sisi in her glass carriage—”

  “They only use that one for weddings, honey,” Mimi said, smiling. Lenore had heard that the Habsburgs, Franz Joseph and Elizabeth, had a special glass carriage designed by Rubens and nothing could convince her that the Empress didn’t ride in this airy confection all the time. “Why not? If it was mine, I would,” Lenore used to say.

  Ignoring her mother, Lenore went on. “I’ll say, ‘Your Ladyship, your Worshipfulness,’”—she mimed bowing her head, dipping her knees in a low curtsy—“I am but a poor, poor gypsy girl, unskilled in the art of dukkeripen, but let me tell your future. You will have many more children and much happiness. You will live to a great age, and when you are finally called, your Highness will make what we gypsies call a good death—peaceful, surrounded by all your beloved children and grandchildren. Amen.”

  At the end of this crazyquilt prayer-speech, Lenore made the sign of the cross, then clamped her hands together at the same time she squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could. She was so small for her age, and her face was so earnest, Mimi and I were laughing. Curious, Lenore opened one eye to see what we were laughing at, just as I caught the distant sound of hoofbeats ascending the rise toward the campsite.

  “One of yours?” Mimi joked.

  I’d sold a slicked-up nag the day before to a young farmer whose enthusiasm made him fasten on the gleaming new saddle I’d thrown into the bargain, when he should have been looking at the mare’s considerable defects. But dissatisfied or not, my customers didn’t seek me out. All bargaining was final I’d tell them before I took the cash or the trade. Now, hearing the horse and rider approach, I wiped my hands on a towel, thinking Mimi had been doing a brisk business with her herbs and tonics; her best seller was a bottled brew she called Santekash. It was willowbark and ordinary water, and while it did cure headaches, she stressed its ability to stop a hangover dead in its tracks. Buda on holiday was a big drinking town. Maybe, I thought, it was some drunken Hussar who’d made his way to the gypsy camp looking for a quick cure. Outside our caravan, I heard a man’s low voice reining his horse, the creak of leather as he dismounted quickly.

  “One of Mother’s customers,” Lenore said alertly.

  But before either of us could make an answer, there was the sharp staccato of bootheels hurrying up the wooden steps, and a fist striking heavily over and over again just below the carvings on the green caravan door.

  ***

  A Rom I’d never seen before stood shrouded in the gloom of the doorstep. In the dim light I picked out the gleam in his dark eyes, a long sharp nose, a thin sickle of a smile. His face and clothes were streaked with road dirt. A spattered cape swirled lightly around his legs, near the rolled tops of a pair of travel-scarred boots.

  “Anyeta sent me,” he said, at the same time he thrust one hand against the center of the door, pushing it wide. He stepped high to cross the threshold and brushed past me.

  “You’ve seen her?” Mimi said.

  I felt a low dread settling over me like the chill damp in an earth cellar. There’d been no news of Anyeta in Hungary for twenty years—not since before the uprising in ’48, when the Emperor brought in Russian troops to squash the revolt. And I realized suddenly that some part of my mind
hoped or believed she’d died in the uprising or its aftermath. Shot. . . starved, perhaps.

  He came to a stop in the center of the room. There was an eerie stillness in his face and form—all except his ebony eyes, which glittered too brightly. He peered down at Mimi. “The sorceress is camped three, maybe four days east of here, just beyond the Romanian border.”

  An image of the Carpathian Mountains—dark, steep, wild—that lay between us and the old woman rose in my mind. “And what does she want now?” I asked, but I saw the answer was already glimmering behind the brilliant eyes and sardonic grin.

  “What any Romany mother wants.” He paused, and his shrewd eye fell first on Mimi and then on Lenore. “A good death,” he whispered. I heard Lenore’s quick inhale, saw her narrow shoulders stiffen, but before I could intervene, the stranger spoke again.

  “Anyeta’s dying, she wants her child. She said, ‘I want Mimi to have my place in the troupe. Tell her I have secrets.’” His voice went high and reedy. “‘Things inside me that belong to her, to her daughter if she has one.’”

  There was a sudden silence in the room. Anyeta’s voice, I thought, not just her words, but her voice—the quivery way it would sound if she were near death. I thought of Lenore pretending to tell the Empress hers would be a good death, of the stranger’s oily insinuating gaze as he’d hissed the same words. I felt my heart speed up. It was as if the old woman had somehow reached across the distance and hidden herself in the room to listen, like a spy skulking in the shadowy corners of things.

  “No,” I said, “No.” I wanted no more talk of the old woman in front of my daughter. I caught Mimi’s eye, signaling a reminder that Lenore was in the room.

  “Lenore,” Mimi said, “go to the bin and get more potatoes for the stew.”