Quiver

by Holly Luhning

  The stairs led to a large, open room with hardwood floors and a rectangular burgundy rug in the middle. A crystal chandelier hung above, and the only other illumination in the room came from groups of taper candles arranged on the window ledges. There were several vases of pale pink roses, and the air was saturated with their sweet scent. Waiters circulated with trays of glasses filled with an amber liquid. My heels sank into the deep plush of the rug. A tray drifted near to us; Maria took two glasses and handed one to me. “It is Tokaji,” she said. “Only from Hungary. The wine of kings and the king of wines. You will like it.”

  I stayed close to Maria all night. She seemed to know most of the fifty or so people there, and most of their conversations were in Hungarian. I attempted to introduce myself in Hungarian, stumbling through “Dani, vagyok. Ès te?” but then I’d fall silent and watch Maria as she talked. She laughed loudly, stroked people’s forearms, looked seductively at the more handsome men. A few times we drifted off by ourselves, sipped our Tokaji by one of the candlelit windowsills.

  After about an hour, a man stepped into the centre of the room. The crowd hushed and he spoke three or four sentences. Then everyone started moving towards the back corner of the room, where there was another staircase.

  Maria leaned close and whispered. “It is time for the show, Dani.” She stepped ahead of me and I followed. We funnelled into the line of people and headed up the stairs. To the side of each stair, a tealight burned. The tiny flames were the only source of light. I kept hold of Maria’s hand.

  The crowd filed around two sides of a rectangular space lit by floodlights and filled with shaved ice. Four naked women were sprawled on the ice; two were completely supine, while the others were posed with arms outstretched in a way that suggested they were trying to crawl away. Three people dressed in black robes with hoods were holding a fifth naked woman. They were trying to drag her forward, and she was hunched over in resistance. On the far side of the ice pit, a number of men in dark fur coats and hats regarded the scene. An old woman, with a full peasant skirt and a kerchief, lunged towards the naked women and held a bucket of icy water that threatened to spill onto them. Her face was contorted into a. joyful sneer.

  A long, red, embroidered carpet unfurled from the head of the ice pit and led beyond the glow of the floodlights into darkness. On the carpet, a few feet from the edge of the pit, a woman sat in a throne. She was dressed in a long white dress and a purple velvet, fur-lined cape jacket. White gossamer sleeves emerged from the coat and were gathered at the wrist by ruby-studded cuffs. A square, lace-trimmed collar topped her dress and overlapped the collar of her jacket. She wore a headdress of garnets and pearls that held in place a tall, stiff-looking cap. Her posture was relaxed, her head tilted back and her arm draped over the side of the throne.

  “You remember Csók’s painting from Čachtice?” Maria had manoeuvred us into a spot right at the front of the crowd, parallel with the supine naked woman nearest the throne.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. The women lying on the ice stayed completely still. I was surprised at the realism of the recreation. “Do you know all of the performers?”

  Maria put her arm around my bare shoulders. I held my breath for an instant, wondered if she would keep it there.

  “Always a question. For now, watch. Later, we can talk.”

  Then I heard a deep, nasal hum, like a low note on a bassoon. The sound grew louder, and more notes layered on top of it. Soon, the low tones merged with other pitches, higher-toned instruments, and a slow, sombre music began. A loop of synthesized bass notes kicked in, along with a slow drumbeat. The figures in front of us began, very slowly, to move.

  The women lying on the ice began to writhe; their motions were fluid, yet they performed at one-tenth the pace of regular movement. Then the women became still, and the black-robed men on the side of the ice began to mime clapping and laughter. Only one or two figures or groups moved at a time, so I could take in every movement of each of the figures in the scene. The three men holding the naked woman started to push against her stance of resistance. Her bare feet dug into the crushed ice, and her calves and thighs tensed against the men’s pressure to drag her forward. All the figures were silent, and the music continued to play, getting faster and louder.

  After a minute or two of this, I asked Maria, “How long does this last?”

  “It depends on how they have designed the performance.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Traditional tableau vivant, the actors do not move. But this is not strictly traditional.”

  “Does anything else happen? Or do they just do these little motions for the whole time?” Now the Báthory figure had begun to raise her arm from the side of the throne. Her mouth pulled back slowly into a wide grin.

  “Danica.” Maria dropped her arm from around me and looked annoyed. “Just watch.” She turned away from me and focused her attention on the scene. Suddenly, I might as well have been a lump of rock next to her. I looked at the rest of the crowd. They were all transfixed by the performance.

  The old woman with the bucket started to move. She rocked back and forth, swinging her bucket to and fro painfully slowly. It was difficult to mime the inertia of swinging a washbucket full of water; on her creeping upswing, I saw her upper arms wobble under the weight. She made one more sweep back, then made a rapid upswing. Water flew from the wooden bucket and doused the women lying on the ice. The old woman became still, and the women again began to writhe. The ice they rested in had begun to melt in the warm summer night, but still their skin, illuminated by the floodlights, was bright pink gooseflesh.

  The women ceased to move and the group of men who held the lone standing woman inched her closer to the edge of the pit. Her feet scraped and slipped in the icy slush as they dragged her towards the throne. The Báthory figure began to lower her hand back over the armrest, but her face stayed frozen in a wide, smug grin. One man broke from the group, grabbed the woman’s hair with one hand, pushed at the small of her back with the other and caused her to fall forward, still slowly, onto the slush. His hood fell back, and I could see it was Sándor, from Zöld. The woman arched her head back from the cold surface, and her hair fell away from her face and settled over her back. It was Tünde.

  A moment later, the floodlights went dark and the music stopped. The crowd was silent for a couple of seconds, then someone to my right started clapping and the rest of the people joined in. The applause was thunderous, and as my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I saw some audience members clapping with a serious, pensive look on their faces, as if they had been greatly moved by what they had viewed. Others were smiling, one or two were pumping their fists in the air, and still others were making yelling, whooping noises. I could make out the figures moving away from the scene, disappearing into the corners of the set.

  “There, Dani,” said Maria. Her long crystal earrings glimmered. “Your questions are now answered?”

  “How often do these things happen?” We had begun to drift with the crowd towards the door to the staircase.

  “You must learn to absorb these events,” she said. She walked ahead of me slightly. “The effect will be ruined if all you think of are questions.”

  “But I can’t absorb anything if I don’t know what I’m seeing.”

  She sighed. “Did you like it?”

  “They did a good job of creating, you know, an atmosphere.” I tried to think of an insightful comment. “The audience was really into it.” Maria ignored me. We jostled down the stairs with the crowd. The thick scent of the roses hit us as we re-entered the main room.

  Now Maria turned to me. “That is all you have to say?”

  Her annoyance was palpable. “It was...” I stammered. “What did you think?”

  “They should have staged it in the winter. The girls’ flesh barely turned red. It was not very impressive. The weather, it needs to be freezing, there should be real snow, the water should turn to ice on
them.”

  Maria continued on for a few steps, then turned around.

  “Dani, do not pretend that I shock you.”

  “Maria, that would be cruel.”

  “Cruel? Why did you come here and help search for the diaries? You are not as dedicated to these things as I am?”

  “That’s completely different.”

  “I have, I think, misjudged you.” She walked towards me.

  “You want a story. You want to watch, but you want, at the end, things to be pretend. You fear risk. And that, what is the point? That is useless.”

  “Useless? What are you talking about?”

  She stood inches away from my face. “I do not know if you really understand.” Her blue eyes, rimmed with black liner, scrutinized my face. “If, really, you are what I look for.”

  I was silent. She put one hand on my waist, the other on my cheek. My heart felt like I’d taken a shot of epinephrine. Her eyes hardly blinked.

  “What?” She leaned close to my ear. “Still, you have nothing to say?” Her nails dug through my dress, into my waist. She gripped my chin with her other hand, then roughly pushed me away. “You don’t know how lucky you were. What I could have shown you. Pathetic!” She started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I ran after her.

  “I am leaving. I am going with my friends.” She walked out of the room. I kept following her.

  “Maria! You’re leaving me here? I don’t even know where we are. How do I call for a taxi?”

  “I cannot have your ridiculous things, your pathetic self, near me any longer. I will call my doorman. He will put your suitcase downstairs,” she called over her shoulder. She caught up with a group of people filing out of the building, and started laughing and talking with them, piled into one of their cars and drove away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  On Saturday, I meet Maria for shopping. “You will love this place, Dani.” The storefront’s two large display windows are filled with mannequins dressed in short, sparkly, black cocktail dresses, thick, metallic-gold, patent-leather belts and magenta bobbed wigs. There is a large security man dressed in black, arms folded, standing at the door. He nods at us as we walk in. The walls of the boutique are covered in black, silver and gold sequin-like discs, the lights are dimmed, and heavy electronica broadcasts from speakers suspended from the ceiling. It’s like I’ve stepped into a club, except that instead of cocktail bars, racks of clothing line the perimeter of the irregularly shaped space. Maria heads for an alcove on the right of the store, and I follow.

  She flicks through the clothes with precision; in ten minutes, she’s got a fitting room started and three outfits to try on. I’m still trying to figure out whether the garment I’m holding, which has one fringed shoulder, is a dress or a shirt. I finally just hand it to one of the impeccably coiffed salesgirls and head into the fitting room, where the light is dimmer still.

  As I change, I catch the looped fringe of the dress/shirt on one of the shiny discs that line the cubicle wall.

  “Dani, your outfit, do you have it on?” I hear Maria call from outside my curtain.

  “Uh, yeah, I’m almost ready,” I reply, trying to unhook the loop from the disc. The back of my left shoulder is caught on the wall, and it’s difficult to reach my right hand around to free it.

  “You all right in there?” the salesgirl asks.

  “Oh, yeah, fine, thanks.” I wait until I hear her walk away. “Uh, Maria?”

  “I am ready for my next one, and you have not seen the first,” she answers.

  “Yeah, I know. Can you come here?”

  “What is it?” She’s standing right outside my curtain. I pull the material aside a bit and try to step away from the wall. The fringe holds me back, and I clatter into the discs.

  “What are you doing?” laughs Maria.

  “I need some help,” I say, motioning her into the cubicle. “I’m stuck.”

  “Yes, I see that you are. There,” she says, as she leans in and unhooks me. “Much better. Now, come out—tell me what you think of this,” she says, as she walks out of the dressing room, twirling a little. She’s wearing a zebra-print spaghetti-strap cocktail dress, with a wide silver belt held together by three tightly fastened straps. The belt cinches her waist tight; she is a tiny hourglass.

  “Too much?” she asks, piling her hair on top of her head and twisting to look at herself in the mirror over her shoulder. She lets her platinum waves fall and turns to face front, hands on hips.

  I’m momentarily mute. It’s not that she looks stunning. She does, but it’s not only her physicality that impresses me. It’s an indefinable element, the sum of her thoughts and her movements, the way she sweeps around me, the jingle of the silver hoop bracelets she’s worn today. I’m tethered to her.

  “Yes,” she says, answering her own question before I recover from my reverie. “But only a little. I will try the next one.” She takes a look at me in the fringed monstrosity. “I do not think that suits you, Dani,” she says, before she disappears behind the curtain.

  I look in the mirror. The “dress” I have on barely comes below my bum, and the material is so sheer across my tummy that you can plainly see my belly button. A tight, wide band runs around the bottom, and the material balloons from there, taut and translucent from front to back and very roomy from side to side. When I hold my arms out straight, it looks like I have bat wings. With fringe hanging down one side. I take it off and pull on my jeans and sweater.

  “Now this, this is good,” I hear Maria say. “It is not right for the ball, but perhaps I will buy it anyway?” I collect my jacket and purse and pop out. She’s kept the silver belt, but put it over a tight, strapless black dress that hits just above the knee. It’s an outfit you’d notice come into a room, I tell her.

  “It is not always the outfit, Dani, it is whether the woman wears it properly. And this,” she says, turning her shoulder to the mirror, tossing her hair, “I can.”

  “Is it for anything special?” I ask, once she’s back in the change room.

  “Oh, there is always someplace, something, and you will need a new outfit.”

  “Or do you mean someone?” I say teasingly. “Edward, perhaps?”

  Maria sweeps aside the curtain and steps out with the outfit draped over her arm. A salesgirl hurries over, confirms with Maria that she should take it to the cash. “Dani, you do not choose your fashion for a man.” She looks at me seriously, puts a hand on my shoulder. “You are not a doll. If you do, you will likely be both ill-dressed and pathetic.”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, unsure exactly what has triggered this lecture. “I was just trying to be funny. You know. It’s just that you and Edward are usually together, so I assumed you’d wear the outfit around him.”

  “Usually together? That is not so.”

  “Oh, I guess it just seems like it. And at the Tate, he mentioned to me that you two were getting serious.”

  “Oh, Dani,” she sighs, “so adorable. But this is really what you think? I believe it is true, yes, that you know me better than that? I have other interests.” She walks me out of the change area to the cashier. There is no cash register on the large, smooth desk where the girl is folding the dress and belt into a little parcel. Maria slides her credit card across the shiny surface.

  “Yes, I know, your work and everything.”

  “See, it is as I said.”

  “But he seems very nice. And he’s completely in love with you.”

  She signs the bill, collects the red-ribboned black bag and heads towards the door. “They always are, to begin.” The security guard nods at us as we step out to the street. “But it changes, yes? If they think you love them back.” She links her arm through mine and picks up our pace.

  “Well, that’s not true. You’re too cynical,” I say.

  “Am I?” She pulls her arm back and begins to walk faster.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend—”

 
“What you say, I do not take offence. I think only you are wrong. Listen,” she turns towards me, “you start to try to please, to need them to be pleased. Soon, you are won, and the game is over.”

  “What about being in love? You said you were married when you were younger, right? So you must have been in love then, to go through with it.” I know I’m pushing her.

  She prickles. “To you, marriage equals love? You are more naive than I thought,” she says, sighing loudly. I’m taken aback by the dramatics, but now I feel bad that I’ve said something to make her react so strongly. I start to apologize again, but she beats me to it.

  “Forgive me, Dani. It is nice, in a way, that you are still able to believe things like that. Perhaps I am only jealous of it.”

  I want to say something kind, to make up for upsetting her. “But Maria, maybe Edward doesn’t think of you as a thing to be won.”

  “Yes, now he may not know he thinks like that. But if you are wealthy or powerful or very smart or very beautiful—especially if you are all of these things—you always are something someone will desire to possess. To win.”

  I am not sure what to say. Her comment about my naivété aside, for the first time ever I feel I want to comfort Maria. Maybe she’s more vulnerable than I think.

  “But let us talk of something else,” she says. “Maybe you are right, I am only too cynical. Your Henry, things are good there?”

  “Sure. Henry is doing very well in his residency. He’s always at his studio, and his work is going well.” This, at least, is true.

  “Yes, he has a very nice studio—you have been?”

  “Yeah. It’s a great space for him. And great for him to have Andreas close by, too—they seem to get on well.” I’m babbling a bit now, and don’t factor in the tension that seemed to erupt between Henry and Andreas after the review business. But it feels good to talk about something positive that’s come out of our move here.

  “Andreas? That man that had the show on the same night as Henry?” says Maria. “But he has moved—Henry has not told you? When I went by a couple of weeks ago, a girl, I think her name was Nicola, she had moved her things there.”