Authors: Toby Barlow
“An obelisk?” the girl said, feeling like she was being quizzed by one of the nuns from her old school.
“Bah. Call it what you will, but this is what it is: a great big penis. A big man’s giant cock. His fertility. Men have been building these all over the world, everywhere, for as long as they have walked the earth. They are so enamored with themselves, they cannot help it. They put those cocks up everywhere, like little naughty boys shouting, ‘Look at my penis! Look at my penis!’ And see what they put here all around it outside? See those statues of women encircling that big, massive cock? The men will say they put the women there to symbolize victory or harmony or some such horseshit, but really they put those women around that cock to show how power works. To say men are bigger, to overshadow us.” She looked down at the bewildered girl. “That is how it is wherever you go. So, you know what you are going to want, what you are going to need?”
“What?” Noelle asked.
“A way to fight back.” She left the window and headed to the door. “And I gave that to you. You have that now; forever you have it. So, okay, let’s go.”
Noelle knelt and took the bird in her arms, and then she dutifully followed Elga as the old woman dragged their luggage out the door.
As they walked down the hallway, Noelle looked at the prints of landscapes and ancient architectural drawings that lined the walls. These, along with the carpeting and chandeliers, had all appeared wondrous to the simple little girl who had checked in only a few days ago. Now they seemed more complex, and as she followed Elga down the hall her brooding mind dug into these images, chasing new interpretations of the world. Coming into the lobby, with its high ceiling, its decorative nymphs and gilded garlands in the upper molding, its gold-framed mirror, its tall glass doors and long curtains, Noelle thought it was really no different from any cathedral or palace or great museum: they were all splendid exaggerations, a way to fool ourselves into believing that we are greater than the ordinary beasts. All the grand rooms were nothing more than visual tricks, like the rigged and mirrored boxes that stage magicians used, attempts to turn all of these small pale creatures into a gathering of the great and mighty gods they so wished to be.
“Countess? Countess?” A sharp voice interrupted Noelle’s thoughts, and she turned to see the hotel manager stepping quickly out from behind the hotel’s front desk, wearing a pressed and polite smile. “Countess, excuse me for a moment, pardon me, but are you checking out?”
Without pausing, Elga pointed at the luggage. “I was looking for you,” she said. “Take these and come with me.” Noelle followed as the old woman led them both out through the revolving doors to where a sedan waited at the curb. Elga walked up to the car and knocked at the window. The window rolled down and a dark-haired man stuck his head out.
“
Que se passe-t-il?
” he asked with a bad American accent.
Elga waved her thumb toward the manager. “We need to pay him.”
The American looked at her as if he did not comprehend what she was saying, but she merely stared back at him, clearly happy to wait until she got her way. Finally the man got a checkbook and started to write. Leaning back out, he asked the manager, “How much?”
The manager mentioned the figure and the American shook his head dismissively but then went back to writing. Noelle looked over at the other man, sitting in the passenger seat; he was small and bald and he wore a cream suit and a white panama hat. He did not seem to be paying attention to the curbside exchange. Finally, the American tore the check loose and handed it to the manager.
“Thank you, Countess, we hope to see you again.” The manager bowed, stepping back from the car. Elga ignored him and pointed for a hovering bellboy to put the bags in the trunk. Then she climbed into the backseat. Noelle followed.
“So, where to?” said the American.
The old woman did not answer at first, she simply stared straight ahead. Noelle looked up into her eyes and it seemed as though Elga’s irises were vibrating ever so slightly. Noelle nudged her gently and the old woman broke out of her silence.
“I have snake dust stored in the priest’s barn. It will help us find her,” Elga said. “His place is not far out of town. I will show you the way.”
XIV
Witches’ Song Eleven
Oh, right now we’re far away from Elga on another ride,
the big engine hums like my busy cyclone mind.
Lyda’s growing weary of our ramble,
hoping to remain behind at the farm,
she always had a soft spot
for that dead rat’s solemn brother.
But Basha insisted we all stick with this reedy fellow,
pushing us into his cage of a car just as he was pulling out,
leaving his friends behind to their fate, and now
here we go, my one keen eye watching.
The great city’s body grows,
we trace its arteries in, watching the beast swell,
its avenued claws grasping the peripheral villages
in a tightening grip,
slowly crushing their hearts dead, feeding its centuries’ hunger.
Then its tentacle legs and arms thicken with the long lines
of low stores spanning and radiating out,
busy with entrepreneurial ambition,
followed finally by the porcine, urban bloat,
stuck with spires and antennae;
these guts of the metropolis, ever tumescent,
they glow phosphorescent,
bursting at its buttoned seams as the beast stuffs itself thick daily
with the farmer’s fats and grains, and the fishmonger gains
all taken by claw from land and sea,
the iron and stone raped and ripped from distant horizons.
Every day, Paris eats its own nation
as every capital and crown is wont to do.
Every day we call it civilization,
Doll it up it with art and pomp, a trumpet’s ta-da.
So this one driving, Oliver,
he’s not much of a riddle, is he?
Dancing with shallow musical steps
from one iced oyster tray to the next,
only as constant as a crooning radio signal.
But he makes for a good, soft bullet
as we now aim him true, picking up velocity
as he’s shot toward Basha’s plotted point.
She is in the front seat and
she thinks I can’t see her, but I can,
she is not as invisible as she would like to be.
Her pale silhouette leans over,
whispering what into the driver’s ear.
What? I cannot hear her
but he does, doesn’t he.
She will keep wrapping him up,
enshrouding him in her ghostly whispers,
until her bidding is done.
XV
High in the barn loft, the afternoon light came through siding cracks in long, diagonal shafts that Zoya thought looked like golden swords leaning at rest. She was curled up naked, her arms wrapped around Will, as they both lay beneath the thick red wool blanket, protected from the autumn chill. She liked the way her naked breasts pressed against his chest, she liked the way her bare hip wrapped around his warm thigh, she liked stroking his leg and feeling its strength. She sniffed at his armpit, he had not bathed for two days and now the rank toxins from all his various adventures filled her nostrils and made her smile. This was literally a part of him, these tiny, stinky tumescent atoms that emanated from his pores and, inhaled and ingested through her sinuses, became a part of her. There was magic in that, a slight and playful communion bonding them together; she sniffed again, deeply this time. She loved how rotten he smelled. Then she fell asleep again.
She awoke to the sound of evening birds, the sun was beginning to fade. She gazed up at the crowded shelves above them, all stuffed with jars and books, sheaves of papers and piles of dried fungus and root. These were all Elga’s, though Zoya knew them by heart. For years the old woman had hauled her odd collection around, fashioning potions, cures, and curses as needed, hawking them, for money or for luck whenever they were running short on good fortune. When events were rushed and times uncertain, they traveled light and Elga would hide the lot of it away in dank sewers, attics, damp catacombs, or old root cellars, hexing and stashing them for years, even decades at a stretch, but always finding them again, digging up and hauling away the cache whenever the coast was clear. Zoya felt uneasy lying there now, she could almost sense the old woman’s presence and imagined the crone muttering to herself as she searched for ointments, balms, powders, or merely those green tins of crispy grasshoppers she liked to snack on. The priest had said Elga was locked up in a jail back in the city, and while Zoya knew they wouldn’t hold her long, she believed they would detain her at least long enough for Zoya and Will to rest some before they ran again.
Looking at Will, she whispered the tiniest of spells and touched his ear to keep him asleep a little longer. They had crawled into bed exhausted soon after Oliver had left that morning. He had departed with a promise to “sort things out proper” with the authorities. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to the embassy first. I have a bit of pull there.” Putting on his hat, he said he would send word when the coast was clear. “Head south,” he suggested, “to Antibes. There’s a little hotel down there that Scott and Zelda used to stay at. The Hotel Belle Rive. Lovely spot, right by the water’s edge. Shut yourselves in your suite, find some dance music on the radio, and order up room service till you hear from me. Shouldn’t be long.” Then he smiled a perfectly confident smile that reminded her of a lawyer leaving his client at the gallows, promising a pardon that never comes.
She was quite sure she would never see him again, not because he was a bad man, but because men like Oliver, though sincere in their dedications, also suffered from a squirrel’s tendency to be distracted by any random acorn that fell on their path. These were the men who committed their betrayals casually and effortlessly, letting people down with little malice and less concern. Promises were simply nice solid-sounding words to them, and so, as Oliver’s car drove off, she was relieved to see him go. After all, he had been useful, but he was used up. She did not mean to judge him, she merely observed. But what she saw was what she had seen all too often, a silly, vain creature who had been raised to believe the universe spun around him, when in fact he was the one spinning in the darkness, circling truths he could never hope to perceive.
Besides, she recalled, he was so lazy in bed.
Will stirred in his sleep; she let him rest. When they first climbed up to the loft she had arranged their pallet, laying the priest’s spare sheets and blankets over straw and filling buttoned shirts with clean stable rags for makeshift pillows. He sat on a stool, watching her work, telling her of Bendix, the drugs, and the vivid dream he had been chased through. While she was intrigued to hear about the hallucination’s landscape and the mystery man who had saved him, she was more interested to hear about this scientist who, she learned, had once hunted her and killed her friend and stolen their secrets. A rage swelled inside her but she bit her tongue: this was not something she could share with Will. “Oliver is right,” she said, lying down on the sheets, “we need to go south.”
“Where to?”
“Not to Antibes, not to anyplace where anyone knows we could be.” She paused to think. “If we cut across the Pyrenees, we could disappear into Spain. Maybe go down near Gibraltar, then we can always cross to Algeria or Morocco if we need to. We should be fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile and stretched her body out across their makeshift bed. “I know how to travel.” She reached across to her lover. Elga had once told her that no man could run like they could run, pride and weakness always slowed a man down. “We move like the water, they move like fat fish. It looks like it will work, but it doesn’t. Their big stupid balls always slow them down.” But Zoya was sure Elga was wrong. Will had tumbled into her life the same way he fell into her arms now, full of vitality and lustful energy. He had no strong ties to any history calling him back and no ambition of where to go. He could be hers, entirely, and she did not plan on letting go. Tightly embracing, they licked, bucked, and bit, rolling over and into each other through the morning until they both lay exhausted again, his chest bellowing hard, her skin chafed raw by his stubble. Soon he had slipped off to sleep. Now, hours later, she ached to wake him again. She wanted the feeling of his hands on her hips and his body hard inside her. She had felt a difference, an awakening, a new kind of appetite, deeper than the simpler one that so often gnawed at her; this was a fresh hunger that she liked, promising a union that filled her heart with warm blood and satisfaction. She wanted more.
Outside, the birds stopped chirping. She noticed the silence immediately. She was feeling cautious, though she knew birds quieted for many reasons. A dog or a fox could be passing nearby, or a hawk could be gliding overhead. Perhaps the priest had returned, though she guessed that he might have come and gone already, returning to his chapel again for his evening service. No, there was no reason to be worried, birds stopped singing for a myriad of reasons. She slipped out from under the blanket and picked up her clothes. Besides, she thought, if a car had pulled into the driveway she would have heard it, unless it was someone who knew how not to be heard. They could have parked up the road and crossed the flat wheat field on foot. She fastened her bra and slipped into her underwear. She looked down at sleeping Will. She had never pulled anyone in so close to the truth before, but then, she had never felt as vulnerable. She buttoned up her blouse. The silence was so complete, even the evening crickets were silent. Still, probably nothing to worry about. She pulled up her skirt and fastened it.
A bird chirped. She exhaled, surprised at how nervous her instinct had been. I am too jumpy, she thought, I must relax. When the bird chirped again she noticed it wasn’t the chirp of an evening songbird, a finch or a bunting, it was the cluck of a nearby chicken. Then a thought struck her with the dead weight of certainty, with the sureness of a nail hammered into soft wood: the old priest did not keep chickens, but Elga’s little friend did.