The Body of the Beasts

by Audrée Wilhelmy

  But the Queen of Saba continued to ignore

  His supplications, overtures, the way he fawned

  ever more;

  And left in her train, by returning to her globes

  The ogre, his newlywed, and their sinister

  banquet orb.

  Noé stokes the fire. The flames surge in a gold dust high above the beach, sparks take flight and land: on her clothes, where they burn a hole then vanish, on the whale’s carcass, in the Old Woman’s hair, even on the children’s arms whenever the wind turns in their direction. The smoke masks the stench of blood, its white column stands out against the red of the sky.

  Noé pauses for a moment, stops speaking, watches the glowing embers, nothing more. No one moves, all that remains is the sound of lapping waves and the brush polishing ivory; the little ones imagine a palace like the lighthouse only bigger, with sails stretched over the windows instead of dirty, threadbare sheets. Chairs with matching legs, pillows full of stuffing, and dozens of pink duvets.

  Then Noé picks up the blade again, follows the same route from tail to head, cuts into the left flank, eight metres of skin to carve off, the spear slicing through the hide as though it were butter.

  They ate pheasant, mutton, venison,

  On wine and mead they soon were drunk,

  Devoured profiteroles, flans, then candies,

  Turkish delight and August’s strawberries.

  Enclosed in the thicket, Abel’s jaw drops. He once tasted a caramel Sevastian brought back from Seiche and relives the sweet taste of sugar on his tongue, dreams of platters of candy just like that caramel, tempting in their wax wrappers; now he understands the ogre’s good fortune: there is no one richer than a man able to eat all the sweets he desires.

  At last, he undressed her and looked long

  and hard

  On her skin, her white thighs, her belly,

  her breasts,

  Then he sliced her in two and cupped in

  his hand

  Her bloody intestines and her still-beating

  heart.

  Almost imperceptibly, Seth shifts closer to Osip. Mie hears the sound of his bottom sliding across the sand and his quick, scared child’s breath. Night falls and Noé’s expression is frightening with its dancing shadows, blood, and blaze of light: Seth mustn’t cry, says Mie to herself over and over, “Seth mustn’t cry.” Her brother curls into a ball, bites down on his knee, but holds his sobs inside.

  Day after day, for what seemed like forever,

  Desperate for love, unhappy, and violent,

  The ogre married at dawn and killed

  come sunset.

  Soon, all kinds of scavengers draw near to the carcass. Mie worries when crows from the woods begin circling overhead. They caw in the dark and gather in greater and greater numbers, and her first thought is “the wolves will be next.” She imagines being devoured by the pack, their fangs boring into her the same way Noé’s spear dug into the whale. Her blood mingles with the cachalot’s; her mother turns into a she-wolf, eats her child. Mie feels sick, she’s dizzy, she has to clutch at the sand to stop herself from toppling over.

  The day arrived when the Queen did quit

  Consulting her maps and books and globes.

  Then announced her departure forthwith.

  Noé has finished the second cut, lays down her spear, finds a hatchet and grabs hold of it with both hands; she strikes the tail again and again, blood spattering — a fine rain — and she continues until the last vertebra gives way and the flukes fall to the ground. Then she wipes her face with the back of her sleeve, rubs her eyes with her arms; all she manages is to smear blood over her skin and the fabric, now saturated with blood like everything else.

  The ogre, driven mad, threw himself at

  her feet,

  He clutched at her legs and embraced

  her knees,

  Promised her travel, jewels, the earth and

  the sea.

  For the hide to be secured it must be separated from the blubber. Noé lodges a large hook in the severed flank where, barely five minutes before, the tail hung limply. She hoists herself up on the carcass then, using her body as a counterweight, tugs on the skin that separates into a single unbroken pink strip. Once she reaches the end, she uses her blade to detach the epidermis — a tissue eight metres long and two metres wide — from the blubber. In a few days, she’ll scrub it in the sea to remove the residue, attach it to a wood underlay, remove all the flesh, melt the whale’s brain in water, tan its hide, wait another week, then beat it, smoke it, and ultimately nail it to the cabin floor to keep the cold and the winter at bay. With whatever’s left over, the Old Woman will make shoes, bags, belts.

  The beauty refused both a halter and a

  wedding,

  While the ogre blocked each exit, made a cage

  of his dwelling.

  He bolted the Queen in a high, white tower,

  Visited every day, tried his luck by the hour.

  For the time being, it’s the fat that interests Noé: she carves it into chunks piled away from the fire, then sets a large cauldron on the flames and liquefies the blubber inside.

  The air smells of smoke and melted cachalot. Around the blazing flames, it’s the blackest of nights. The children are frightened and hungry, too.

  At last, one fine July morning, the Queen

  Did greet him and bid, “Have a seat.”

  She caressed his shoulders, his belly, his

  maypole;

  Her breasts swung loose, her thighs bare

  and blond;

  She kissed the ogre who could hold it

  no more.

  Blissful, ecstatic, and sated with delight

  He fell asleep beside her and started to snore

  Then woke like a goose to a skewer through

  his side.

  Mie breathes quickly, breathes loudly. Osip takes a step back. Abel quakes in the bushes, their leaves have been rustling and shaking for some time. Seth’s teeth are still embedded in his knee, he rivets his gaze on the blood that dirties the waves, can’t stop watching it trickle. Dé sleeps in his woven basket. The Old Woman, her polishing of ivory finished a while ago, scowls as Noé stirs the blubber in the pot, then empties it into tin pans and leaves their contents to harden far from the tide’s edge.

  Around them, crows, rats, foxes, and flies have started to feast on the exposed flesh; they’ve approached without a sound, the fire keeps them far from the children.

  Noé melts the last chunk of lard. She doesn’t speak for what seems like an eternity. She stares at the waves reflecting the flames and shimmering gold; blood stains her face, her arms, her clothes.

  I know all this for I was there too.

  I saw the treasure, the furs, the girls sliced

  in two,

  The ogre’s huge mouth, his belly full of brew.

  When back to front he felt the thrust of

  a dagger

  The silver blade was mine, a weapon forged

  in Saba.

  Without warning, she bends over, scoops up a pot of wet sand and throws it onto the embers. The entire beach fades to black. Seth sobs so hard, the crows flap their wings and caw.

  — At times Noé looks you in the eye and you’d think she is blind.

  — Noé hears when you speak to her.

  — Noé doesn’t respond.

  3

  One time Mie asks, “Who told you those stories?” and Noé says nothing, but a few seconds later, she rubs her neck and flings back her loose hair.

  Mie knows her mother’s gestures by heart. The way she draws shapes on walls, paper, rock faces, and in the sand, always the same. The bend to her wrist as she snaps off a reed. The spontaneous stretching of her neck, the curve of her lower back when the wind picks up and swells beneath her skirt
s. The way she eludes Dé when he comes up to her, reaching out his chubby hands.

  This gesture — the one where she stretches her arms behind her head and pulls her hair away from her scalp — is nothing unusual in itself, but in the register of her mother’s movements, this one is new and Mie is struck by it.

  From then on, Mie tries a new sentence every day. She says, “I met a blue lobster in the lagoon.” “The oldest wolves lead the pack.” “Have you ever seen a giant octopus?” She scrutinizes her mother, her goal not necessarily to elicit an answer but to measure the impact of her words by the expression on her mother’s face. Noé may not speak, but her forehead, eyebrows, and eyes reveal silent things.

  — I like the sound of the bells on your arms.

  — What is the language of the country where ships come from?

  — Osip calls out to you when he sleeps.

  — Why do you have scars on your back?

  Sometimes, Noé’s belly contracts, or her hands tremble, and Mie knows her mother has heard her, knows Noé isn’t deaf as the Old Woman claims. When she chooses the right sentences, Mie draws her mother in.

  — Cargo ships are like floating cabins.

  — I wish you’d say where you come from.

  — Why is this place called Sitjaq?

  — Do you believe in omens?

  For hours at a time, Mie tends to her words. She tests out their sounds on the lagoon, listens to the echo of their syllables on cave walls. Then, when the sun drops into the sea, when Noé is sitting on the planks of the porch, she plants herself in front of her mother and delivers her sentence.

  — Seth has three moles on his left ear.

  — I’ve realized that you like short names best.

  — Pelicans walk on water before taking off.

  Each occasion is a confrontation. Mie inhales deeply, must let enough air into her lungs for every word to be audible.

  — Salt changes the colour of flowers.

  — Do women always have two men each?

  — Dé eats everything he finds on the ground.

  Her mother’s gaze grazes her but doesn’t linger; it passes right through her daughter’s stomach and torso and dirty hands so Noé is staring at the ocean.

  — Why do you stay here?

  On this day, her stubbornness is rewarded.

  “Yes. Once I saw a giant octopus.”

  4

  There are times when Noé still sings “Let’s eat the whale, gnaw on the flank of the water that swallows us up,” or the other fable about the ailing wolf and fat mastiff, to the point that Mie, leafing through the pages of her notebook, no longer knows if her mother is the white doe or the skinny wolf or even the whale “whose skin and blubber we separated.”

  Noé isn’t the dog.

  Mie shuts her notebook. She lays her face against the cold stone of the lighthouse. The windows of the bedroom are oblong slits, tall enough for the light to filter in, narrow enough to keep the rain out during storms. She leans her forehead on the window frame. Her face is too broad to fit through the opening, but her nose and eyes are exposed to the cool air, her cheeks are mashed against its sides. She wishes Noé would appear on the beach but sees nothing other than her brothers play-fighting with branches.

  A great heron is on the cornice, drying its feathers. It stands tall, its neck proffered to the wind’s gusts, its wings outstretched and tilted toward its legs. It is so close that Mie could reach out and touch it. She says “Hello,” and it turns its head, jabs its beak at her. She stretches too, presses harder against the casing of the window, her throat free, her forehead crushed against the stonework. The bird and the girl observe each other, the wind whips them both. Then the creature returns to its sunbathing and Mie’s face withdraws. She takes a few steps back into the centre of the room. The five windows open onto the beach, the cliffs, and the ocean. Offshore, the freighters look like red bricks bobbing on the waves.

  Mie’s heart skips a beat.

  Osip said, “After the noon ships.”

  The ships have appeared.

  V

  1

  In winter, the white of snow and sand become one. A degradation of grey between earth and water. A dormancy that lasts three months. The cold gnaws at everything: the beach, the forest, the rivers, the sea, the cabin, and the lighthouse. Cargo ships pass the lantern and enter the estuary only to be blocked by ice, some for a few hours, others for a number of days. Osip watches for the men to abandon ship, jump onto ice floes, and try to reach shore. Sometimes one will drown; the others make their way to Seiche and wait for the ice to break up and melt into the sea, after which they return to their vessels, repair scraped hulls, continue on their journey. For several weeks, three or four dozen ships sit immobile at the mouth of the great river, patiently waiting.

  When he feels the storm brewing, Sevastian comes in from the forest. Osip doesn’t know if he does so to shelter himself or to watch over his brood. The eldest brother nails boards over windows, blocks openings in the lighthouse. The wind whistles and strikes the wood. In the bedroom, all is dark. Waves break over the rocks, carrying ice and driftwood.

  Noé stays on her own at the other end of the path. The windows of her cabin quake. She often goes out, wrapped in furs pilfered from Sevastian’s catches, wears men’s shoes found somewhere in the tumbledown cabin, the footprints she digs in the snow twice as broad as her own feet. Gusts lift her hair, cold bites her face. She keeps her forehead high, a woolen sweater wrapped around her head: a splendid queen in the whiteness of winter, crowned with the crimson wool and draped in the pelts of deer, wolves, foxes.

  Osip’s attention shifts back and forth between her and the ships. The horrific cold on the gallery often forces him inside. He retreats to his office, blowing into his hands. Every hour, he steps outside again. He scans the stationary ships, monitors the shore. He makes sure Noé hasn’t frozen, stuck somewhere in Sitjaq’s snow. He watches for her. There she is, bent over blue pack ice deposited by the waves, nailing hides over the cabin’s windows, stoking a fire as tall as a man, eviscerating a seal.

  That first month, the tower reverberates with Abel’s cries and Seth’s energy. The boys climb to the top of the lighthouse, drop pebbles collected over the summer down the inner staircase. Some rebound, some shatter, others tumble all the way to the cellar and come to an abrupt halt once they hit the wall at the very bottom. Wrapped in blankets and woolens, and warm under the jackets her younger brothers shed in the course of their trips up and down, Mie acts as referee. She crouches in the cellar, leaning back against the algae eating away at the seams of the lighthouse, listening for the clattering of stones down the stairs. Sometimes the sounds match, sometimes the clamour of one stone’s fall makes its surpassing of the other obvious. The boys hold their breath — Osip, seated at his desk, is grateful for the silence that accompanies the headlong descent — and sometimes, right at the last second, the pebble in the lead explodes as it hits the edge of a step and rolls to a standstill in a corner by the wall. Then it’s the runner-up that triumphs and Abel’s cries give Osip a start; he knows by the tone of the boy’s voice who has won, who has lost. He takes a long swig of tea, closes his eyes. Soon Abel and Seth have climbed back up the five floors to go at it again — and again, and again. All day long, Mie keeps track. In the evening, the winner of the most races gets the pink quilt and the warm spot in the middle of the mattress.

  The boys’ whole technique is focused on choosing the right racing stones. In summer, Osip sees them proceeding at low tide far into the dunes, where pebbles have been burnished by the sea’s relentless to and fro. They choose them as spherical as possible, preferably heavier, smaller ones, everything a question of the right mix of size and weight, the ore’s resistance, the uniformity of its roundness. In the fall, they polish them, clean off any residue or moss that might affect their champion racer’s speed. The season begins w
ith the first snowflakes. As the winter rain thickens, the boys stamp their feet impatiently, climb up to the lantern and try to choose the best starting position. They spend hours placing pegs Sevastian has carved from the wood of shipwrecks; on the night in question, they take ages to fall asleep and wake before the sun rises, but then must wait till everyone else is up and Osip has barricaded himself in his office for the games to begin. Outside, a naked Noé ventures from her cabin to feel the first snowfall on her bare shoulders and belly. She’s not visible from the bedroom; the tower is dark and already the boys are at the lantern, they’ve set each stone on its peg, and when finally Mie cries “Ho!” from the back of the cellar, they’re entitled to one flick and only one. For ten months, they’ve been practicing the skill, they’ve flicked at rocks, trunks, furniture; the younger one has lost a fingernail and the elder’s index finger is all calloused. The lighthouse resounds to the clattering of their favourites tumbling down the stairs; Abel yells and his voice ricochets off 129the walls, the piercing echoes underscoring his excitement. Seth can’t keep still, he’s capable of racing up and down the five floors twenty times over, nothing tires him out.

  After several weeks, the stones lose their attraction, the children grow bored. Mie draws in her notebook, and from time to time changes little Dé, who sleeps on despite his brothers’ cries. The boys make armies out of scraps of wood and engage in battle; they conquer the tiles of the floor one by one.

  * * *

  Osip blows on the pale grey wisps of steam rising from his bowl. He drinks through lips pressed together. He’s careful not to swallow the leaves that stick to his mouth because he plans to dry them out later and infuse them again: it is tea that gets him through the weeks of north wind. Winters in the lighthouse can drive a person mad. The children, captive in the tower, shout, climb, and invade every space, fiddle with the objects on his desk, pile up coins of foreign currency. Supplies dwindle. The door that looks out onto the world, frozen in ice, creaks but no longer opens.