The Gentling Box Read online

  I hoisted myself onto my feet, began to make my way up the ladder of stairs to the loft. The rags, the kerosene, scrap wood—everything I needed would be there.

  ***

  I tossed the shovel aside with a heavy grunt, looking down at the shallow oval pit I’d dug twenty yards from the caravan. My eye measured the corpse shrouded in the blood soaked bedding. The grave was five or six feet long, it sloped unevenly down four, maybe five feet deep at the bottom; big enough.

  I began tossing scraps of lumber, and they landed with the sharp clattering sounds of wood striking wood. I arranged the boards in the rough shape of a pyre. Still stooping, I paused, smudged the back of my hand against my forehead, then I reached behind and grabbed the round red can that held kerosene. There was a rag stuffed in the spout, and the instant I pulled it out my eyes began to water from the acrid fumes, and I coughed. Breathing through my mouth, I began dousing the wooden boards, watching them darken where the liquid soaked in.

  I got to my feet, turned toward the body, considering. It had been something of a struggle to maneuver her dead weight, and I’d gotten her to the edge of the grave by shifting her into a small wheeled cart that Lenore sometimes called her pony trap. Now that the spurt of emotion that carried me through the job was gone, I thought it would be harder to lift her out of the boxy cart to place her inside the grave. Easier to burn her, cart and all, I decided, looking briefly up at the dark sky, hearing the wind rustling the leaves of the trees.

  I bent over, locking my knees, grunting and lifting the handles of the wagon. Her head and neck were jammed against the backboard, her knees and feet flopped over the low edge on either side of the handles. I could feel the cold flesh of her calves bumping against the backs of my hands and it made me uneasy. I swallowed, and began pushing. The cart swayed under her weight, and I steered it toward the pit. It stuck in the soft dirt on the lip. I strained, getting my legs and back into it, heaved it up and over the edge. It jolted down the slight incline. The wheels struck one of the boards, and under the heavy awkward weight, the cart tipped on its side, spilling Zahara’s body out of the loose shroud and across one edge of the pit.

  In the moonlight, I saw her face resting against the naked boards. Her body was jack-knifed under one edge of the cart. Don’t look at her, I told myself. I hunkered down and began wadding the rest of the bedding and the clothes I’d worn in and around the wooden boards. I splashed more kerosene, feeling slightly queasy when it spattered her arms, legs, her face. I could imagine the flames, the roaring sound they would make consuming her. There would be the smell of roasting flesh. If I stayed to watch, I knew my gaze would be drawn helplessly to the sight of her blackened flesh shriveling back to show the teeth, the grizzled scalp and filmed-over eyes. I shook my head, knowing deep inside myself I’d never strike the match while I could still see her face.

  I sighed. There was nothing to do but to crawl down inside the grave and cover her. First the shroud, then pile more wood and don’t think about the red-hot center, about her body feeding the lunatic flames.

  At the bottom was the cold dank smell of earth, the sharp reek of kerosene. I told myself to step slowly, carefully among the boards as I moved toward her.

  I jerked one corner of the spread, wincing at the stiff feel of the cloth where the pooled blood had dried. Her body shifted and there was a tinkling sound—the soft ping of metal on wood, and I stopped, puzzled. Then it came to me: it was the silver pendant around her neck, the one I’d bought my wife that long ago day in Sighisoara, that she told me Mimi had given her on our wedding day, and I suddenly wanted it. Take it, a voice inside me urged, and grimacing, I felt among her clothes until my fingers closed on it. I jerked the chain, snapping it, and shoved it deep in my pocket.

  I looked down; she was lying on her side. The moon picked out the gleaming edge of the knife handle, her arms and hands flung in a grotesque sprawl. For the last time I saw her face, one eye gazing darkly, her mouth open, the jaw slightly askew. I covered her with the sheet, yanked the boards over her corpse and scrambled out of the grave.

  I stood on the edge, felt the wind lifting my hair. I lit a cigarette, took a long drag, savoring the harsh smoke and peered down. Nothing of her to be seen, and nothing would be left.

  “Goodbye,” I said. “Akana mukav tut le Devlesa o Beng—I leave you to God—or the devil.” I tossed the flaming match into the pit.

  There was a pale blue light, very nearly like a droplet of oil striking water, a sudden brief yellowish flare that expanded then seemed to contract just before it exploded into rushing lines of fire that raced along the boards.

  ***

  I sat on the ground twenty feet away, feeling the warm draft, watching the lurid flames flicker and spurt against the sky. It would take a long time—maybe the rest of the night—for the body to burn completely, and I’d stacked wood and brush nearby to feed the fire at the first sign it was dimming. I would wait, there was no hurry now. I wrapped a blanket shawl-fashion over my shoulders, snugged the end underneath my hips and legs.

  Then I took Mimi’s pendant out and looked at it, a silver moon gone red in the firelight.

  ***

  I dreamed of myself as a boy in England where my parents traveled one summer in our yellow caravan. It was England where they’d met years before I was born. My mother came from a district in the north, near York I think it was. She was a cottage girl—all I really knew of her youth was that she’d slipped from that life into my father’s. The intrigue and mystique of gypsy ways held her in its thrall, I suppose, but that summer she showed me England, and one of my most vivid memories was of a field glowing at sunset while hundreds of brown rabbits hopped madly around us, scampering into the hedgerows, and it was this old dear memory that found its way into my dream, then shifted.

  Time collapsed on itself, so that I was suddenly aware I was no longer a boy but a young man, standing amid the summerwashed green clover and sweet grass. I watched the gamboling rabbits in sheer delight, saw the buttery flash of paler fur from underbellies and tails, a wide smile on my face, my hands held high and wide as I pirouetted with joy.

  In the way of dreams I heard the low slinking jingle of a tambourine, and then, far off at the edge of the red horizon I saw Mimi. Arms outstretched she ran toward me. I saw the long colored ribbons streaming like banners, trailing from the tambourine she carried. Her face was lit with a wide smile, she’d threaded wild flowers in her dark braided hair, and I saw the gleam of lavender, blues, whites, pinks, sometimes falling away, as she raced toward me, barefoot, laughing.

  I ran too, and we met in the center of the field and rocked into one another’s arms.

  “Dance with me, Imre. Dance with me,” she said, laughing up at me, and I felt her hands on my hips, while she stepped sideways, twirled, her long full skirt floating gauzily, a summer kaleidoscope of pale rose, yellow, cool green. A thin gold bracelet shimmered at one slim ankle.

  And then my arms were around her, tighter than before, she was so warm against me, flushed with running and joy, and she pressed her lips to mine, and I heard her moan, softly, and the red sky was alive around us and then there was the light sweet tinkle of the tambourine slipping from her hands, like the chime of bells on a gentle breeze—

  ***

  —and I felt sad and cheated when I saw the gentle English meadow change for the barren Romanian steeps, the brilliant sky was only the glow of the old sorceress’ funeral pyre; but I was surprised that my dreaming mind still held on stubbornly to the jingling sound of bells. Now I heard the soft scattering of hooves, of wooden wheels moving over hard ground and seconds later a dark caravan came into view, stopped in the shadows.

  A figure jumped down lightly, skirts swirling around slim booted legs and turned toward me. Her eyes were shining. I held my breath and yet the name came to my lips, “Catherine,” I began to say, hearing a kind of hushed wonder in my voice and feeling my eyes widening, my pulse begin to hum at the same time I got to my feet and b
egan running, because I suddenly realized in the very depths of my heart what I’d known all along: It was Mimi, standing there, in the full flood of her youthful beauty—arms outstretched to catch me—

  —Mimi lowered her arms slowly to her sides and I felt a pang of disappointment, then slipped out of that half-dreaming state, found myself still sitting on the ground, now fully awake. I looked up. The night sky had gone cloudy, the moon was no more than a misty light. In the ruddy glare of the fire I saw Mimi’s face was grim, her lips pressed in a tight line, her shoulders drooped with weariness.

  I moved toward her, aware that the smile on my face felt unreal, the way it always does when you grin from nervousness. I never glanced back at the fire, told myself what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. I nodded hello, and the sad dark eyes that looked into mine were tentative, but I took my wife in my arms.

  ***

  “The place stinks of her,” Mimi said when I opened the door to our caravan, and I felt a wave of guilt and sorrow contracting my stomach. “Christ,” she brought her hands over her nose and mouth, “it smells like home—not our home—but the hellhole I lived in with her when I was a child.”

  She sat heavily at the table, and I watched her draw a finger through the dusty surface, gaze blankly around the disheveled room. For the first time in all these months I was aware how unkempt, how dirty it was. Cast off clothes and graying smeared towels were bundled here and there—even in the kitchen. Pots and pans and greasy dishes lay in crooked slanting stacks on the counter, caked silverware poking out between the rims. The stove was splattered with bits of dried food. There was a long ragged tear in the green curtain that separated Lenore’s sleeping compartment—I winced thinking of how it had gotten torn when I pawed one night at Zahara.

  “Funny, isn’t it? She brought her smell with her and it stayed,” Mimi said, lowering her eyes. “I didn’t notice it when I was here before. Or maybe I made myself not notice it.”

  She’d already told me what part of me had known all along; Joseph had sent her as Catherine, not so much to lure Anyeta—although the old woman’s greedy desperation led her to believe she’d found a willing victim—as to use her own power to help me. I hadn’t thought about it, but now I realized she’d kept Anyeta from blasting me to shreds, using a sort of steady but inexorable counterforce, and keeping the old sorceress off balance so there was no time for her to think, react.

  “You can train yourself not to see certain things, I guess,” she said a little sadly, and I saw her glancing at me. “Oh well, might as well get to it.” I knew she meant to clean and scrub before she would let Lenore back in, before she thought of it as our home again. She took off her gloves, then pushed back from the table and started to get up, and I put my hand out, inadvertently catching hold of her scarred wrist. We both stared at it briefly, and our eyes met.

  “Mimi,” I said, letting go of her hand. “I—”

  “What’s done is done, Imre.” Her voice had a wooden, hollow sound that frightened me.

  “Mimi,” I stood up, then buried my face against her, “Oh Christ, oh Christ, can you ever forgive me?” I cried, felt tears that wanted to come burning hot and hard in my eyes and throat. “Maybe not yet, but someday? Just tell me if it’s in you to forgive me someday?” I hung my head, afraid to meet her eye.

  “Imre, look at me.”

  I lifted my head, her hands hung limply at her side. “Do you see this?” She suddenly pushed her sleeve back and gripped her forearm tightly with her fingers. The thick ugly scar circling her wrist went a deeper purplish red. “This is your answer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My death will be one endless torment, an eternity of suffering, trapped inside a rotting body, a dark, stinking grave. That is my future—the only future I have. Do you think I’d let the days of my life—what days I have—be a second river of agony?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you know you’re forgiven,” she said, moving away, and tying the strings of a dirty white apron over her dress.

  “But your voice . . . it’s so hard—”

  “I have said I forgive you, and I will clean up this mess and pick up what I can of the life we had—”

  “She bewitched me, it was an illusion,” I said. “Mimi please, it wasn’t real—”

  “And I will go on—mostly for Lenore’s sake, and—”

  “The first time—even the first time—I pretended it was you, please oh Christ, I’m sorry, so sorry, she tricked me; and even with you—when I thought you were Catherine, oh dear God it all came back to me and it was you I wanted, you I was making love to, even the scent. I saw it in your eyes; you know I was reliving that first summer we went to Hungary! We’re sworn to love as long as we live—you know that part of me sensed it was you, please—”

  “And what about the part that shook with heat and writhed in passion and dabbled inside that cunt of a whore that was my mother?” Her breath came out hard, her eyes glinted with pain.

  “You wanted her!” she screamed, suddenly weeping into her hands, and I tried to take her in my arms, but she shook me off and sobbed. “Dear Jesus, you wanted her more than you wanted any woman your whole life.”

  “No, Mimi, it wasn’t real, not even the desire was real. It was—” I spread my hands in a helpless gesture, “it was only an old memory she twisted and brought to life inside me.” I put my hand on hers. “I thought you loved her. Zahara told me she loved you—”

  “Loved me? Loved me!”

  “She showed me the silver pendant, said you gave it to her the day of our wedding—” My hand burrowed deep inside my pocket.

  “She stole it from me! The way she took you . . . . It was armaya, a curse, don’t you understand? ‘Love what you hate, love she who makes you angry, she who makes you cry.’” Mimi shook her head. “But it isn’t love, it’s the power to deceive; she pretended to care to trick me, to trap you—”

  “I have the necklace,” I said, pulling the moonshape from my pocket. “I have you, we’re together now—”

  She struck it from my hand. It clattered noisily onto the floor, the glittering silver rattling and tapping; emphasizing the silence, the space between us.

  Mimi stepped back. “I keep seeing you with her.” She closed her eyes, brought her hands shakily up to her brow. “Seeing you like some half-crazed creature slavering over that grotesque flesh—her mouth—yours, I—keep seeing it, remembering it.”

  I pulled her hands from her face, held them tightly between both of mine. “Don’t! Mimi don’t—we both have to learn to forget—” I stopped, shivered, suddenly aware of the oppressive atmosphere, of the smell in the caravan, a miasma of rank sex, grime, spilled blood, thinking for her it must be a thousand times worse.

  “It’s like she’s still here, and I’ll never be rid of her, never.” Mimi groaned, swayed a little, sagged weakly against me, and I caught her in my arms, and then I lifted her and carried her to the one clean place in the caravan, the one place I never sullied with Zahara—the small ship’s berth of a bed that was Lenore’s.

  I laid her down gently and we cried in each other’s arms, and then, oh thank God, and then, the healing began between us.

  -35-

  I couldn’t undo or change what had happened between Zahara and me, but I could make Mimi know that she mattered, that I loved her. Regrets and apologies can only carry a man so far, after that it’s the loving that lets his wife know what he feels. And so, we began to make love tenderly, sweetly—like the very first time—although our bodies had known one another long and well.

  ***

  Mimi leaned against my shoulder. I stroked her hair for a long time, until gradually I felt she was freeing herself from the spell of tension, and we kissed, gingerly at first. My hand moved over the soft skin of her cheek, her throat, then slid to the row of buttons. I began undoing them slowly, wondering when the last time was that I undressed her, that she might savor that small but electric thrill.

>   She sat facing me, her blouse unbuttoned to her waist, and I let my hands linger at her breasts while we kissed, until I heard her breathing begin to quicken. I opened my shirt, felt her hands moving softly beneath the mat of hair.

  I caressed her thighs, her small buttocks, felt her skin growing warmer through the rustling fabric of her skirt.

  “You’re taking such a time,” she whispered.

  “Impatient?”

  She shook her head. “No. It makes me feel more desirable—as if I were a tschai, a girl, and you wanted me to be ready but weren’t sure how far I would go.” She laughed lightly.

  “We have all night,” I said, and then I moved my hand slowly and deliberately between her legs, listening to the silky whisper of the fabric under my fingers, savoring each separate and discrete sensation.

  “I love you, Mimi.”

  I knew it would be a long time before I allowed myself the pleasure of touching the moist flesh there, longer still before I tasted it with my tongue. I closed my eyes, kissed her, thinking toward dawn we would both be naked. I would feel all of her against me, smooth and warm and deliciously damp. Our bodies would meet, drift on that delightful tide before they finally parted.

  I don’t think either of us was aware of the sound of sleet gently pattering off the roof. It was harmony for our unhurried romance, the anticipation we savored; we were both looking ahead to dawn.

  My hands found the bow shape of the ribbon drawstring and delicately plucked it, then drew her underpants down to her knees, but not off, not yet. Under the skirt, I caressed the skin of her belly, felt the small bones of her hips. I rounded the tender flesh of her inner thighs, let one finger move leisurely against the slick center. Inserted the tip.