‘Am I dreaming?’ she asks and hears her lost voice brush his cheek.
‘No, my love.’
And her voice bursts free from her and sings with the wolf into the frozen night.
It’s as if nothing has disturbed the peace of the cabin. The windows glow with warmth, the door stands open, inviting them to enter. She has the sensation of coming home. Demetrius closes the door, and the outside world fades away. By what clock they live concerns them not at all.
Edith knows she and Demetrius spend that winter in a clearing in the forest. They never leave and they travel far by staying. He teaches her to play the violin, they make love, dance and laugh.
When he tells her about his time as a shepherd she’s unsure if they aren’t both there on the mountain, for she feels the warmth of the sun and sees the meadow, the flight of the swallow, the rise of the lark.
She asks if he knows who his murderer was.
‘No,’ he says. ‘But I knew I would be killed.’
And the pang of guilt that she feels about his death rises, a serpent to bite her.
She says, quietly, ‘I was to blame. If I’d never promised to marry the butcher perhaps you’d still be alive.’
‘Nothing, my love, is that simple,’ he says. ‘I had a brother, younger than me, my parents’ favourite. He wanted to take over my father’s business. But in our family, the tradition is that the eldest son inherits it when his father retires.’
The light begins to fade, rooms fall and rise until all becomes still and Edith is with him in a house with a long, imposing passage. The walls are sliced in two; the lower part panelled, the upper part papered with a pattern of brooding lilies. The smell of dead flowers is noticeable. A thin young man with round glasses catches a maid and pushes her against the wall, bunching up her skirt with his other hand.
‘He always was subtle in his dealings with the ladies,’ says Demetrius.
‘Your brother?’
‘My brother.’
The light in the passage hisses and Edith doesn’t know if it all happens at the same time or if she is seeing an accumulation of isolated incidents. His mother, a large, matronly woman with a well-endowed bosom, is sitting in a blood-red drawing room, surrounded by a sea of pompous furniture, heavy with the weight of inheritance. She is talking to a stiff-backed lady whose low chair puts her at a disadvantage.
‘Mother is telling her friend that her daughter, Palonia, is lucky to be marrying an angel,’ says Demetrius.
‘Where is Palonia? And where is the angel?’
Demetrius laughs and only now does Edith notice the girl, crushed by her mother’s hopes for the impending marriage. Demetrius’ mother studies the girl as if to assure herself she’s worthy of being sacrificed on the altar of the family name.
‘The angel is my brother,’ says Demetrius, ‘and here’s my father.’
Before them is a gentleman, imprisoned in a stiffly starched collar, walking back and forth in his study, a pendulum marking time. Behind him the walls are hung with cuckoo clocks. ‘He’s saying I will never amount to anything, that he sent me to university and now I intend to waste my life by becoming a shepherd.’
‘Perhaps he was right,’ she says.
‘No – every step I took led me to you.’
‘Led you to your death,’ says Edith.
The cuckoo clocks all chime together.
Demetrius’ perfect brother, thin as a snake, is doing up his trousers while the maid weeps.
‘When my grandfather heard I was to marry you,’ Demetrius says, ‘he wrote to tell me to be careful – that my brother had taken up hunting.’
She is dizzy with what she’s seen. ‘This was your life – in that coffin of a house?’ He nods. ‘Why didn’t your father just give the business to your brother?’
‘For the same reason that you were to be married in a traditional wedding dress. It has always been that way because no one had the imagination to think of another way.’
‘In all my imaginings about where you’d come from, I never saw you in a house like that. I knew you were clever – lots of people are who have taught themselves about the world. But I never guessed you came from such wealth. Doesn’t it make you sad to have had a family that didn’t know you?’
‘If I hadn’t found you, I would’ve been wretched. The rest doesn’t matter. The butcher, my brother, your father, my father. It’s all the same. I was the stranger who fell in love with a magical woman and that changed everything.’
‘I know nothing of the world you left.’
‘That makes me love you more.’
In the morning – which morning? In a morning with light coming through the windows and Demetrius’ arms round her, she says, ‘The word “love” is too small.’
‘It’s a word that many claim and few find,’ says Demetrius. ‘May this never end,’ she whispers.
He runs his finger down her neck. ‘All things living and dead have a season,’ he says and kisses her.
‘What would we do if you were alive?’ she asks.
‘Much as we do now. We would worry more about money and my sheep and the roundness of your belly.’
‘There will be no children.’
And then he says something that she holds tight to. ‘Not this time, but there will be. This time we have winter, we have the snow.’ He climbs out of bed, pulls on his trousers. ‘Tonight I will play for you.’
She turns away for she can’t bear to look at the wound in his back, a weeping eye that can be plainly seen.
Neither he nor his dog go hunting with her. She goes out to see what she can find for the pot. She takes the hunter’s gun. There is only the one bullet, a precious gift not to be wasted on a rabbit. The knowledge of it gives her a sense of power; if anyone comes for her she at least is armed and has one chance to protect herself.
‘If you catch many more birds, you might fly away on borrowed feathers,’ he says.
Edith has finished the skirt and jacket she’s made from her wedding dress and other pieces of fabric she found in the chest. She’s embroidered them with red flowers.
Edith eats a pheasant she has trapped, cooked in plum wine and snowmelt with mushrooms and barley. He watches as he always does.
‘Why weren’t you wearing your boots when Misha found you?’ she asks.
He thinks for a moment. ‘It seems so unimportant. I was washing my feet in a stream. I saw a butterfly, and I wondered who made this world with its mountains, its valleys, and also thought to make something as delicate as the butterfly.’
‘Didn’t you hear the footsteps behind you?’
‘Don’t be sad,’ he said. ‘That’s the difference between us. I neither care nor have any interest in who pulled the trigger. I’m dead.’ He touches her face and asks, ‘Do you know what makes snow?’
‘Rain,’ she says.
‘Rain and particles of dust. Without the dust there would be nothing for the snowflake to form itself round. Each one different, gentle, soft. The dust of me will always be there in the snow.’ He looks out of the cabin window. ‘The moon is full. If I play will you dance for me?’
She stands and puts on her fur hat with its antlers and feather. In the silvery pool of moonlight, she begins to move, her hands held across her chest. The music starts slowly. She is conscious of him watching her. Eyes closed, she opens her arms and whirls round and round. She takes off her jacket but the music asks for more. Layer by layer her clothes come off until she is naked apart from her hat and her boots. Only then does the dance become hers. She dances for her lover’s wound, she dances for the life he didn’t own, she dances for the passion that’s in her. She is reborn into her skin and begins to understand this cloth of flesh pulled tight over muscle and bone and the pleasure it gives her to dance naked for herself, for her lover.
‘You dance me wild,’ he says as his music reaches a crescendo. Only then does the song come from deep inside her. Raw in her throat it rises until she feels the power of it against her teeth, a power
older than her soul. The song is returned to her in the growl of a bear, in the howl of a wolf. Breathless she falls into his arms. And still it snows.
‘You are the most beautiful of women,’ he says.
‘Have you seen many?’ Edith asks.
To her surprise, he says simply, ‘Yes, but none compare to you. Now,’ he says, changing the subject. ‘Tell me your story. You listened to mine, it’s your turn.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘I don’t believe that. Try.’
She thinks she could gaze on him for all time. Then she looks down at her hands. ‘I was born and brought up, and I met you.’
‘His shoes were new,’ he said.
‘Whose shoes?’
‘Whoever shot me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s the last thing I remember thinking as I lay on the ground, and he walked towards me. It’s the smallness of things that matter, the brevity of a little rock can’t be dismissed. It’s still part of the mountain.’
This night is the last. The last time she hears his music, the last time they make love. She can’t tell in all their passion where he begins and she ends. They are floating over her village, they are a part of the moon and the stars.
He whispers, ‘Do not fear the coming of the light.’
It isn’t as if they’re waking into a new day, more that they’ve travelled there and arrived in a different place and found the cabin to be filled with sunshine. On the table is a bunch of snowdrops.
Edith turns to him. ‘It broke me once to lose you.’
‘You aren’t losing me. Neither will you lose your voice. I’m here. I’ll always be here; my soul is with you, and you will come back to me. Dress for me. I want you to look a queen when you return to the village.’
He hands her the fur hat with its reindeer horns.
She smiles. ‘I can’t wear it.’
‘You should,’ he says. ‘The more strange and wondrous you look, the more they’ll respect you and leave you alone. Don’t go back with your head bowed. Stand tall, be brave. The one thing men fear most is the freedom of a woman to be herself. Wild women frighten men.’
‘They’ll see me as a ghost or one of the bloodless.’
‘They will see you and hear you, and no one will lay a hand on you.’
Demetrius hands her the violin.
‘I’ll look very strange dressed like this,’ she says. ‘Perhaps I’ll be with you sooner than I think for they’ll…’ She stops.
He opens the cabin door. She smells the urgency of spring in the air, the snow nearly thawed, the earth bursting with life. She hears the roar of the snowmelt as it cascades into the mountain streams.
‘I’ve left it as late as I could,’ he says.
She turns from him and in that instant knows him to be gone.
The cabin was as derelict as it was when she first found it. She walked towards the skirted fir trees and pushed her way into the sunlight. She half expected to find she was wearing her wedding dress and was pleased that she was still in the clothes she’d made.
‘This will forever be my secret,’ she said aloud.
The air smelled sweet and was filled with the song of birds. Down she went to where the oak and beech grew. Far below her she saw her village, heard the church bells ringing. For a whole winter not once had she given any thought to the days of the week or the hours of the clock.
The village was pretty in the sunlight with its quaint, painted houses, the cherry trees in bloom. She walked up the cobbled street to the square and found no one about apart from the odd stray dog, a cat sleeping on a windowsill. Singing was coming from inside the church. It’s Easter, she thought, and waited for the congregation to emerge.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Wild Woman
The butcher came out of the church into the blazing spring sunshine. The moment he saw her, he stopped. He felt his heart lurch and put his hand to his chest. To everyone’s surprise, he stumbled. A small thing but one that was noticed by the congregation. Una rushed to his side and he swatted her away and pointed to where Edith stood. With the sun in their eyes, it took the villagers time to make sense of what they were seeing. A wild figure in a headdress of fur, antlers and feathers stood before them, a mountain goddess descended from the summit.
‘A gypsy,’ pronounced the priest. He sighed. ‘I thought I’d made it quite clear that the circus isn’t welcome here.’
Shielding his eyes, he looked again, and it slowly dawned on him that he was staring at a dead woman. He went pale.
The doctor too squinted, then gasped in horror. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘Nobody could survive the winter on the mountain.’
The mayor said, ‘My God.’ And added, though no one knew what he meant by it, ‘Will it ever end?’
Six elders pushed forward.
‘Surely she can’t be alive?’ said one of them. It was a question that didn’t have an answer.
Edith watched them and smiled and for the first time didn’t mind being stared at. Let them look, she thought, as she turned to walk down the street and with every step she had the sensation that she was becoming taller. She put the violin under her chin and played, a Pied Piper bringing her voice back to the village. The frail and the young who hadn’t attended church peered from their windows.
The cabinet maker peeped out from behind his shutters and saw a crowd following this wild creature. Fearing the worst, he hid under the stairs. It had proved a place of safety in the avalanche; perhaps it would serve again with a demon.
Only when Edith reached her house and opened the gate did she feel herself return to her normal size. With an uncharacteristic gesture, she bowed to the crowd before closing the gate behind her. And a lost memory came rushing back to greet her: the day her grandmother died, she’d blocked her ears to all that her grandmother had tried to tell her. She’d refused to listen and had run off to see Lena. When she returned, washing was still hanging in the yard and a sizeable earthenware dish was broken on the kitchen floor. Her grandmother was lying dead at the foot of the stairs.
Edith looked round the yard now. It was a wreck, and a goat was nonchalantly munching the tops of some straggly turnips. Only the walnut tree stood proud in its fresh, spring-washed leaves. Five bedraggled hens emerged from the henhouse. Too thin for eggs, too thin for the pan. How could her father have let everything fall into ruin?
The house was in an even worse state, smelling of stale wine and piss, though her bedroom was untouched. From the middle of the kitchen, she called to the cabinet maker.
‘Where are you?’
It was strange, even to her, to hear her own voice in the house again.
A pathetic whimpering came from under the stairs and she opened the cupboard. He was thin like the hens, his eyes sunk into their sockets.
‘I’m not a well man,’ he said. ‘Are you a demon? Have you come to take me to hell? It was an accident – I didn’t touch her – she lost her footing.’
For a moment Edith couldn’t think what the old fool was blabbering about. He crawled out of the cupboard. Still on his knees, he said, ‘Just give me another chance.’
She hadn’t imagined that her appearance would have such a dramatic effect. Demetrius had been right.
The cabinet maker seemed to be in a mood to talk and Edith decided to say nothing.
‘You see, I had to do something. The old woman was going to take Edith away. I couldn’t let her – she was my daughter, my property, not hers. You’re not Edith. You look like her but you’re a demon. Please, demon, it was an accident.’
The cabinet maker jumped when Edith spoke.
‘No, it was no accident. Even then, you’d already made your deal with the butcher that I should be bride meat.’
‘I gave that woman a roof over her head, food, a place to stay. I indulged her by letting Edith call her Grandmother.’
‘Without her and her stories, we would have been penniless. I go away for t
he winter and look at you, you lazy drunk. I’m not going to stay long but while I’m here this place will be clean and tidy. And you will clean and tidy it.’
He scratched his head, trying to make something work in his wine-soaked brain. Finally, he said, ‘What kind of demon are you?’
‘An angry one. And I am Edith.’
‘No,’ he said backing away. ‘She’s dead. But I grant you, demon, she isn’t buried because her remains haven’t been found. You are one of the bloodless. Edith doesn’t talk.’
She stared at him. ‘You will clean the house,’ she said, and her father scurried away to fetch the broom and a pail.
By sunset, he had swept the floors, washed the windows and scrubbed the table. Never once had Edith taken her eyes off him or lifted a hand to help.
‘I need a drink,’ said the cabinet maker.
Edith stood and blocked the door. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not going out tonight to beg for alcohol.’
‘I can’t do without a drink, I can’t,’ he said.
‘I know that,’ said Edith. She went into her room and lifted the two floorboards under which she had kept a small supply of lentils, barley and oats, and five bottles of plum brandy. She had always been fearful that one day there might be nothing in the store cupboard.
She put one bottle on the table with two glasses. For the first time that afternoon, the cabinet maker’s eyes lit up.
‘You’ve never been grateful for anything, have you?’ she said.
Her father’s hands shook as the glass found his lips. He looked up at her and said, ‘I’m grateful for the plum brandy.’
The butcher called a meeting of the elders and told them that they must agree to ban anyone from going near the cabinet maker’s daughter. For all his bombast there was a sense of unease among the elders, as if something more than snow had melted.
‘Remember what happened to the bear hunters?’ the butcher said.
How could they forget? The mayor’s son had sworn he’d witnessed Edith tear the flesh from his friend’s face and suck the blood from him. Nor had they forgotten that the mayor’s son had told them how he and his friend had got away: the sun had shone through the trees into Edith’s eyes and she, being terrified of sunlight, had disappeared into the snow.
The Snow Song Page 14
