The camp was quiet. Only Benno was about, practicing short tumbling passes near the fire. Deep in concentration he gave no indication that he saw her. She moved quietly toward the dray that carried Evangeline’s tub. Amos would be there; he would be unable to help it, not when he was so enchanted.
She found him, asleep, covered by a worn blanket, with his arms twined around the girl. His scarf had come loose and his hair escaped, reminding her of the untamed child she’d first known. She would kiss his forehead, run a hand down his cheek, but it would wake him. Or the girl. She had no longing to stare such a creature in the eye once more.
She whispered goodbye and called him by his name.
Ryzhkova returned to her wagon a final time to collect her belongings. She lit a tallow candle, one already burned low, and ran her hand over the box and the cards that had spoken so much. Taking them would leave nothing of her behind for him, and she wanted him to remember, to love her if he could, even just a little. She opened the lid to the box, looked at the cards that she’d inked so carefully, proud of their color. Perhaps, once the Rusalka pulled hard at his soul, perhaps he’d remember that she’d loved him and it would be enough.
She touched her hand to the paper, feeling Amos in it, and whispered a prayer for him. She said the words she would have said for her father. “Keep him safe. Give him family. Give him a home. Drive the Rusalka from him; that she will drown in sorrow deep enough to tremble through her blood. May the water take that blood and wash her and her line away. Let her not drown another man. Keep him safe.”
Ryzhkova was accustomed to tarot with its layers of meaning, interpretations, and reversals, and how a picture might look one way but contain a contrary truth. Used to her silent apprentice, she had forgotten that language itself was as subtle and slippery as her cards, and that words contained hidden seeds that blossomed with a speaker’s intent. A wish for safety meant nothing if the force behind it was a desire to kill. Though she spoke of love and protection, dread, grief, and anger bled through. Each word that fell from her tongue bound itself to paper with a small part of her soul, infusing the cards not with love as she thought, but with a hex burned strong and deep by fear. Buried in the heart of the deck, the Fool’s eyes shut.
She closed the box.
A knot in her scarf fashioned it into a sack, easily carried on her shoulder. She blew out the candle and stepped from her wagon. She crossed the camp slowly, careful to not let the coins she carried jingle.
Benno watched as she passed his wagon. She did not understand him, laughing one minute, somber the next. But he watched over Amos as would a sibling. He was strong, like her brothers, but protective as they had not been. She nodded to him. The tumbler executed a small bow.
“You have sharp eyes, yes?” she asked.
“Always, Madame,” he answered.
“Good. You will use them. Watch her. Keep him safe.”
Confusion clouded Benno’s face, but Ryzhkova said nothing more and continued past him. Soon she heard the soft thumping of Benno’s palms against the ground as he practiced. Ryzhkova walked from the circle of the menagerie’s wagons and disappeared into the darkened streets of Burlington.
JULY 21ST
Frank is on the front step, waiting for me to let him in. He’s come to talk about the details of the money. Boat shoes, khaki shorts, a slightly frayed polo shirt, casual attire for what amounts to hours and blood. When I asked if we could postpone, he said, “We should deal with it quickly. It doesn’t look like there’s time to play around.”
I let him in, leaning against the door; the ankle is more grotesque than yesterday, just a sprain, but painful nonetheless.
Frank’s eyes go immediately to the hole. “Jesus, Simon. What happened?”
“The house attacked.” There’s a bump on my head where it hit the floor. If I touch it, pain spiders across my skull, and when I close my eyes there’s a pulsing checkerboard. Frank says something and it sounds like he’s two miles away.
“Looks like it,” he says, pacing around, eyeing the hole. He crouches down, rubs a callused hand around it. “Shit.” I can’t remember if I’ve heard Frank swear before, but it sounds strange. We should talk about the money, I know, but there’s something else.
“The curtains and the paintings you have in the barn, did my mother know about them? Did she ever touch them?” A trigger point for a curse may be hard to find, but if it’s there, then there’s a chance to break it. There is no stopping sadness. Sadness slips through the fingers.
Frank doesn’t answer. He raps his knuckles against the floor, tapping and knocking in different areas. He mutters something. “What happened to this place? The outside’s bad, we knew that, but the inside?” He stands with care, testing the boards. “Dry rot’s all the way through.”
“It’s just a floor. Was my mom in the barn when she gave you her cards?”
“Just a floor? This is bad. Bad.” His mouth snaps closed, bulldoggish. He walks the rest of the room, tracing the walls, tapping and listening. He stops at my desk, carefully avoiding the hole, and looks at the book, leafs through a few papers and casually slides them across the desk.
“I’d appreciate it if you don’t touch that, it’s very old,” I say. “Delicate.”
“Delicate.” The word is a slap. “The floor is gone. Gone, Simon. Haven’t you done anything? Why didn’t you ask for help?”
“I did.”
His hand starts pumping. “I need to get a few things. I’ll be back,” he grunts. “Don’t touch anything, and for chrissakes, don’t—just
don’t.”
He slams the door. Plaster crumbles, leaving a dust shower in his wake. Inching back to the desk is a wobbling balancing trick, and when I get to the chair there’s the distinct feeling that I’ll be here for some time. My face itches. I rub it hard. Lack of sleep is taking its toll.
I spend the next hour and a half bouncing through genealogy websites. At last, a name pops up among a record of marriage ceremonies performed in a Philadelphia church. Among a column of names one sticks out, highlighted in yellow. At the sight of it I gasp. Ryzhkova. Katerina Ryzhkova was wed to a Benno Koenig. Madame Ryzhkova’s daughter and the Koenig from the book. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my research it’s that my parents were the exception, not the rule; circus performers tend to marry each other. I can hear Frank loading and unloading things from his truck, a beaten-up flatbed made of rust. He soon pulls out of the driveway, leaving me to work in silence. Their marriage leads me on a search for children, which does not disappoint. Within two years of marrying, the Koenigs had a daughter, Greta. Greta Koenig proves something of a dead end, turning up no records after 1824. In fact, the Koenigs seem to disappear. I dash off an email to Shoreham’s reference librarian, asking Raina if she wouldn’t mind searching for marriage or death records for Greta Koenig. She has a sweet spot for genealogy, her family being one of the oldest on the east end. On a whim I ask her to search for Greta Ryzhkova as well. Performers can be funny about names; if Ryzhkova was a bigger draw than Koenig, it’s possible Greta went by her mother’s name. I go back to the book. While the portraits almost certainly belonged to the fortune-teller Ryzhkova, the curtains have no purchase record; they appear only in drawings and notes on a cage for a Wild Boy. Nothing indicates how or why any of them would wind up in Frank’s possession and there’s no mention of what caused such substantial damage to the book. I’m missing things, in part due to Enola. All the cards.
The Tenets of the Oracle
should refresh my memory as to what she destroyed. But
The Tenets’
pictures are different, flatter somehow, and less sinister; they read like stained glass, whereas the pictures Enola ruined were a shattered mirror.
Frank returns, his truck rattling as it pulls into the gravel driveway. Before I can hobble to him, he’s already set up a sawhorse on the beach grass that passes for my lawn. I get closer and hear a string of swears. He stops when he sees me. It’s clearly an effort.
“I’ll patch the hole so it’s not gaping.”
“Thanks,” I say. “This may sound strange, but is any of your family Russian? The paintings in your—”
“Stop with that. Just stop,” he says as he grabs a piece of plywood. “You’re like a dog with a damned bone. I don’t know about that stuff, we’ve just always had it.”
I offer to help. He looks at my ankle. I limp back to the house and he stays outside. I’m glad he does. He kicks the sawhorse and swears again, then paces around his truck, picking out tools, putting them back, pausing to look at the house and judge the lean of it. I can’t help but see Alice in him, the way she tips her head when looking at something high up in the stacks. If I don’t take his money I might keep her, but then I’m letting the house go, all of it—Mom’s laughter in the wallboards, the only place in the world I can picture my father. Where would I go? To Alice’s? On to Savannah with its grand houses and grass rivers?
Frank drops to his knees, face low to the ground, eyeing the foundation. There’s no need for a level—the interior of the house makes everything clear: no door hangs straight, none of the windows open and, surely as all the tables lean, the house will go over if nothing is done. It’s rotting at its core.
I should have gone to the carnival with Enola. I should be watching her. Last night, she and Doyle staggered in closer to dawn than dusk. I heard him whisper in the rasp-voiced way that makes things louder.
He’s fine, Little Bird. It was just a weird day. Get some sleep, okay?
They were gone before I woke. She left a note telling me to come by the carnival. Thom Rose wants to talk to me.
Frank walks into the house like it’s his. He puts his hands on either side of the door, resting on Dad’s palm prints, and it feels perverse. “How’d you let it get like this,” he barks.
“It’s been in bad shape for a while. Dad didn’t do much maintenance.”
He squeezes the back of his neck and tugs on the hair peeking out from under his hat. “I thought you were trying to keep the place up, but this? This is structural, the whole damned thing. You did
nothing
.” He goes on about support beams and foundations, undermining. His color rises until he looks like a ripe plum. “I called the town. They’re sending an inspector.”
The knot on my head announces itself. “You did
what
? You know what will happen.”
He nods. “Maybe.”
The house will be declared uninhabitable and I’ll be forced out. “Why would you do that?”
“You’ve got no money. You’re borrowing off me and I’ve got to move fast or we’ll lose her. I didn’t know how much you’d let her go. Every day work’s not done is a day closer to her collapsing. The town will condemn her and force a rehab. You’ll have to leave, and then Pelewski can start on the structural work right away.”
Her,
like the house is a woman. He surveys the room, the subtle bulge of buckling walls, the loose floorboards. “It’s dangerous, too. You shouldn’t be here,” he says, but he’s staring past me. There is no mention of when I could come back or if I ever could. His eyes are wet. Good god, is he crying?
“I won’t take your money. I’ll figure it out.”
“I want you out of here,” he says, his voice flat and even.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. If they need to, Enola and that Doyle kid can stay with us a few days.” He rubs his forehead. He
is
crying, actually crying. “But I want you all out. Nobody stays here. It isn’t safe.”
“What gives you the fucking right?”
There should be silence or a moment of apology. There isn’t.
“I’ve got the right.” He scratches his splotchy neck. “I’ve got the right,” he repeats. His eyes dart to the ceiling, the kitchen, the floor. “It’s my house as much as it is yours. I bought this house for Paulina.”
Through a thousand feet of water I ask, “What?”
“I bought this house for your mother.”
It isn’t true. Why would he lie? Dad promised my mother a house, this house, that’s why we never left, never sold. It was his love letter. “Why?”
He moves to the couch, by the arm Enola picked bare. “I loved her.” It’s sincere, awful, like hearing she’s dead all over again. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“You what?”
“I loved her. You don’t remember, you were too young, but Paulina was so, so beautiful.”
“Shut up.” I remember.
“It’s nothing you could understand. I just—” He coughs. “I met her first.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I don’t recognize my voice.
“I brought him back to meet her. Had I known,” he laughs bitterly. “Had I known. The night I met Paulina she read my cards. She read my palm, too. She held my hand.”
Mom’s thin fingers held in those square hands, those carpenter paws—her fingers that messed my hair—her fingernail tracing across his lifeline. “Stop it.”
“Maybe you don’t know because you’re a quiet kid, but when a woman takes your hand like that and looks you in the eye, something changes inside you. I brought Dan with me because I had to show my best friend the woman I was going to be with.”
My foot bounces, sending rhythmic stabbing pain up my leg. I can’t stop it.
“I told her to come see me, that I was up early and she could find me at the dockmaster’s in the harbor. She came by in the morning. The day after, too. She kept coming by, even after he saw her. Even after he told me he loved her, she kept coming by. I never should have brought him. You can’t know what it is to stand in the middle of a crowd, watching the woman you love, watching your best friend fall in love with her.” He talks to the floor, to his feet, unable to meet my eye.
“Did she know?”
“That I loved her?” He rubs his bulldog jowls and sad man splotches. “Yes.”
“Dad bought her the house. He promised it to her.”
“My grandfather left me money. Paulina wanted to settle down. She was sick of traveling; she’d been on the road her whole life, hadn’t ever lived in a house. Maybe she didn’t want me then, but I could give her that. So I gave him the money.”