A Dirge for the Temporal (20 page)

Last Days of Solitude

W
ith the snow came a hush. The gates of the city fell closed for the season. Lanterns on posts illuminated melancholy aspects in misted second
-floor windows. Katrina’s was one of these faces, caught between the permanence of winter and the ephemeral flames burning in the fireplace behind her.

  In the dead of night she sat there by the window, sipping the cognac a neighbor had given her, unable to sleep because she knew she was in her last days of solitude. On the adjacent wall a wooden clock ticked off the seconds, collaborating with the diminishing stack of logs by the hearth to prove that time had not really come to a standstill. The big lazy snowflakes falling on the already blanketed roofs and roads made it seem like it had. The absence of wind tonight, the silence, the mystic hour…all these things made it seem so.

  Raising her drink to her lips, seeing the flickers of the fire more clearly
in the curve of the glass than in the sweating window, a sense told her there was movement beyond the reflections. She placed the glass on the flower table and wiped the window with the sleeve of her gown. Yes, there was something—a small girl, wrapped in fur and looking down the tunnel no longer recognizable as a street. No adult was to be seen, only
this child of perhaps five or six standing shin-deep in the unshoveled snow. She appeared to be on the path leading to the door a short distance behind her, but Katrina didn’t remember ever seeing a child at Miss Bettie’s.

  On an impulse she tapped the window. The child looked around, apparently uncertain as to where the noise came from. When she glanced up, expression revealed in the light of the lamp on its post, Katrina recog
nized all the emotions the girl was experiencing. For once upon a time she had experienced them herself. Once upon a time she had
wandered the night looking for answers. As she gazed down into the little
girl’s confused face, she felt herself hanging in emptiness, supported only by the ribbons of the moon. Then knife-sharp, icy water rushed over her, engulfing all the other emotions with shock.

  Wrenching the window free of the night’s cold grip, she hissed down at the child, “Go home, you! There’s nothing out there but snow. Go
home
!”

  The girl turned and started to run, but fell. She got up, wiped her face with her mittens, glanced back once at the window above, then resumed the effort.

~

  In the morning the little girl’s footprints were gone. Katrina tried not to think about her as she watched the milkman deliver his fresh goods to Miss Bettie’s and the other doors along the street. Her own street was
next, so she went downstairs to wait. She opened the curtains to a freshly
white morning. The snow had ceased to fall, but she knew the city would have more about the time the snow covering the ground began to get dirty. It was the season’s way. And next time, undoubtedly, the weather would come with wind.

  She watched the milkman through the kitchen window as he walked up the path. They were so rare, the men. To watch them sometimes was nice. She suspected she was experiencing some maternal feelings as well. She touched her breast, cupped it in her palm, thinking about the milk it would produce. When she glanced up again, he was waving at her through the window. Had he seen her caressing herself? Had it moved him in any way? But no, of course not. Men took their nourishment in their work, their cognac, their rarity.

  As she put the bottle of milk away, she realized the material of her gown over her breast was moist. She sighed, thinking how quickly the days passed, even as each one seemed to last an eternity. How many, three more now? As if she didn’t know…

  She went to the living room’s cold fireplace, positioning some kindling under the grate. The fire crackled to life quickly on the seasoned fuel, reminding her she could do with spending more time down here where the spaces were more open, the mood brighter. Sitting on the hearth’s edge, looking into the flames, her hand found its way beneath the neck of her gown again. She squeezed her breast and felt a drop emerge onto her finger. Carefully she brought it up to look at it. It was pale, not like pure milk but like a baby’s teardrop laced with milk. She wondered if she would let her daughter suckle. Had she fed from her own mother’s breast? She couldn’t remember.

  A commotion outside drew her attention. She went to the window and saw that the girls had surrounded Peter again, giggling and making fun, a common sight since school had let out for the break. Peter lived a few doors down and was the only boy in the neighborhood. At least ten girls surrounded him. He didn’t stand a chance.

~

  About noon of the next day the city bell rang seven times, signaling the opening of the seaward gates and making Katrina wonder if somehow she had her days wrong. The sky was almost clear and a salty scent off the sea hung pleasantly in the air. She had stayed up till ten or so the previous night, in bed with her cognac and book between infrequent trips to the window. There had been the occasional wanderer-by, but no sign of the girl. She had meant to check at a later hour, but fell asleep, and slept pleasantly until the morning.

  The tolls of the bell, as it turned out, represented the return of the hunting party that had set out before the city, save for certain, prescribed
business, had shut itself off from the outside for the cold months. All thirty
-some men had returned intact, and with quite the fetch. Her street being near the city center, Katrina was able to look upon their haul as they rolled past her house in the four wagons of their caravan. As a boy was expected to do, Peter came out and examined the carcasses up close, then rode with the party for a short distance, feet dangling off the back of the last wagon. The hunters looked positive but exhausted, and ready
to return home to whatever it was men returned home to. Katrina recalled
having long ago asked her mother that very question, but whatever her mother’s answer, it hadn’t been worth remembering.

  That evening Katrina didn’t even bother to look outside. The cognac sat untouched by the bed while the book took her to places that even the rattling of the window didn’t disturb. Sleep came easily, but the images weren’t as benign as last night’s, when the worst she’d had to endure was unburying herself from a strange soft substance that proved to be snow. White prevailed again tonight, but it was reinforced with the silver thread of clarity.

  In front of her was the boat, a gray-eyed man in a seaman’s coat urging
the children aboard. As each of the girls stepped on deck, one of the crewmen lifted a sack onto his back. This went on, in the fashion of one sack for each passenger, until all fourteen girls—Katrina counted that many exactly—were on the boat. When the last one had stepped off the ramp, the man in his dingy coat searched the area with his gray eyes. Katrina felt a terrible, consuming dread as they passed over her once, twice, then returned to fix her in their snare.

  She woke gasping for breath. The cognac by the bed was warm. The window was fogged. The night revealed no secrets.

~

  The next morning Katrina answered a call at her door. She was surprised to find Peter standing there.

  “My mom is ill,” he told her. “She said maybe you would come.”

  Katrina did not know his mom, but she quickly got into her boots and coat and went with him. The snow had begun to fall again, lightly yet on an active wind. As she followed Peter around the building to the street where he lived, swirls formed in front of her, a map charting transitory, unknowable places. The sky over the city was ashen, the air trembled with the murmurs of the tomb, and a sense of fragility hung over all. Katrina removed her gloves to check Peter’s cheeks. He glowed in the warmth of her hands for a moment but then made her keep going, the blush dissolving as quickly as it had come. His home was down the block from Miss Bettie’s, smoke curling out of the stump of chimney protruding from the snow-laden roof.

  The door opened inward across a dry mat. The interiors were unpleasantly cool, as if all the heat went out the chimney with the vapors.
There was a nondescriptness about Peter’s home which made Katrina wonder about her own. The boy led her up a stairs, which made for better
temperature, but the smell about the higher floor spoke of lingering. She
had the sense of having been here before as she entered the room, knowing
its weight if not exactly its fixtures. Peter’s mom was on her bed, skin gray as the boatman’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” said the woman. “I’m sorry to have asked for you, but I’ve seen you in your window.”

  Katrina did not ask what she meant. She knew the woman lived in reclusion, being the mother of the only boy for blocks.

  “What afflicts you?” she said. Peter started to speak but his mother waved him silent.

  “‘Afflict’ is a good word. For that is certainly what it feels like. But you must know that. In your own solitude, isolation.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But if you’ll forgive me, mine is of my own choosing.”

  A strangled laugh came from the bed. “Your fate might have been negotiable, but your lot, I fear, is permanent.”

  “What can I do for you?” Katrina said.

  “If my condition worsens, if I become irremediably invalid, or dead, see that my son arrives in the appropriate hands. He’s young. He’s never even been outside the neighborhood. He is alone.”

  “You have no one?”

  “I have a son.” The double meaning did not escape Katrina. She didn’t
know what to say to the woman. The task with which she was being charged was certainly no large one, but…

  “I can agree only to deliver him,” she said at last. “I can’t have any more responsibility than that. My own time has come.”

  “Ah,” said the woman, a faint smile touching at her gray lips.

  “But I’ll see that Peter is taken care of.”

  “Thank you. Pray with me, then.”

~

  The woman slept and Katrina told Peter she would see herself out. As she descended the stairs, she heard a noise, a rhythmic metallic tapping coming from a room off the hall below. She came to a door that stood slightly ajar, pushed it open. The room appeared to be a playroom, with objects of various shapes and sizes lying about its wooden floor. In the
rear stood a little girl dressed in tights and ruffles, whom she knew at once to be the same little girl who had looked up at her window from the street the other night. The girl let the spoons with which she had been tapping come to rest on the circular mouth of a heavy metal dairy con
tainer standing almost as tall as she.

  “Hi,” said the girl.

  “Well, hi,” said Katrina. “Do you remember me?”

  The girl nodded.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you,” Katrina said. “It’s just that, well, you scared me. What’s your name?”

  “Tasha.”

  “That’s a pretty name, Tasha. I’m Katrina. Do you play over here a lot?”

  “Are you going to tell my mommy? She doesn’t know I’m here. I’m supposed to be at practice.”

  “What kind of practice?” Katrina said, rather guessing she knew. She stepped inside the room.

  Tasha watched her with big green eyes. “I can show you. I have a spe
cial gift, Mommy says.”

  Katrina frowned. Her mother used to say the same thing. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to see.”

  The child set the spoons aside and took the handles of the big container on which she’d been making her music, carefully tilting it back against her body. Katrina hurried forward to help, but Tasha refused it adamantly. Crossing one hand over the other, she began to roll the vessel on its round base. Katrina hovered just by, in case her assistance prove necessary. When the vessel was free of the assorted objects among which
it had stood, Tasha let it rest again. For a moment her breathing sounded
like wind in dry snow, but she recovered swiftly, as if this were a daily exercise.

  She fetched a small wooden box from the corner and placed it between herself and the big metal dairy container. “Watch,” she said.

  In one fluid and graceful motion, she stepped onto the box, grasped the handles of the vessel, and lifted her legs up over her head, standing to her fullest extent on her hands. Katrina held her breath as the display did not end there. Tasha’s arms trembled as she slowly arched her body backwards, letting her legs come all the way down so that her slippered feet hooked under the container’s rim. She froze there, forming the most beautiful bow Katrina had ever seen. Katrina was afraid to clap, lest she somehow cause the child to fall from her magical pose.

  Came the slightest noise, an exhalation from Tasha, then she unfurled, as gracefully as she had formed the bow, landing delicately on the box.

  Katrina began to clap. At the door another set of hands joined her. Peter, come down to play with his friend.

~

  That night the dream was so real that she was transformed into a girl again, escorted through the snow by her mother, whose cheeks glistened with ice crystals, perhaps frozen tears. She heard the bell, seven clear notes piercing the howling gale that had laid siege to the city. As they neared the seaward gates, the faces of other daughters appeared out of the blow, frightened, scrawled with uncertainty, like the mask of destiny itself. Mothers and daughters huddled inside the gates, words no comfort, therefore unspoken.

  As the gates opened and the man with the seaman’s coat and the gray eyes stood there, it seemed the weather receded from him, opening up to a night dominated by a huge ghostly moon, its silvery ribbons swinging across the sea. He walked amidst the huddled pairs, selecting from among the daughters with his gray eyes and the gesture of his finger. Those who were ignored shuffled away, murmuring prayers. In the end fifteen girls remained, kissing their mothers a last time before stepping through the raised gates. By the time they reached the dock, there were fourteen. For Katrina had drowned herself in shadow.

  He beckoned them aboard, counting while he did. As each girl
climbed on deck, one of the crewmen lifted a burlap sack, fat with its con
tent, onto his back. This went on, in the fashion of one sack for each passenger, until all fourteen girls were on the boat. When the last one had stepped off the ramp, the man in his dingy coat searched the area with his gray eyes. Katrina felt a terrible, consuming dread as they passed over her once, twice, then returned to fix her in their snare.

  His finger seemed drawn on one of the ribbons of moonlight as it marked her. Trembling, she emerged from her spot and feebly walked towards her beckoner. When she reached him, he invited her on board in silence. She wouldn’t look at his eyes as she stepped across the ramp. No sooner had she planted her feet on the deck than the boat began to rock with the weight of bodies climbing out of the vessel. She turned to watch the men with the burlap sacks file towards the gates, which still had not closed over the shadowy figures who stood there hugging themselves and clutching their mouths as if to stifle cries. The crewmen deposited their bags at the entry and returned forthwith to the vessel.