Prodigies

by Angélica Gorodischer

  Young Gangulf might have wanted to shout but he could not and anyway it was now too late, everything had already happened as always, and as always nothing more remained for him but the final kingdom of the accursed hunger for gold, having finished only a portion of what he had proposed and not all of it, not always the easiest or the most pleasant, hanging like a little frog from the reeds in a marsh waiting for a downpour, for the distant intemperance, for the abysm he stared into every time he dreamed about what he would do and of the insipid pleasure in achieving it. His parents had given him complicated pivoting leather toys, self-propelled trains, ships that rode the waves in ponds, and armies of lead soldiers in fancy dress; they had provided playmates for his games, ordering the servants’ children to always let him win, and had gone off traveling again. He wanted to master something and above all someone but not lowering himself on cords or turning on pivots but entering through the lips of open wounds, someone who would fear him and beg, although it was a forgettable stranger like that dead body that had started rotting from the instant it had begun to fall beneath the beast’s hoofs. He happened to see Miss Esther but not on that night or ever could he force her to look him in the eyes because she knew a secret he did not, and he ran toward the useless, weak, warm body, a tiny thought like a lightless dart flying from the tips of open fingers toward the sky, just a lighter stain in the night on Scheller Street.

  Part Three: Prodigies

  23. Sunrise

  Not even during the well-built and well-protected tea-time, no, thought Madame Helena, there is no silence like that in a house in the hours preceding dawn, and it does not matter at all to be sleeping with the windows open to the noise of the stifling nights at the end of summer, it does not matter if the street and sky enter bedrooms and drag themselves all the way to the foot of the bed, it does not matter how exposed the indoors are to the weather and wind outdoors nor how exposed overwarm bodies are to sudden cold, to the whistles and sirens that blow, to the murmur of the barges and tugboats in the river. In sleep, the world becomes the background of a shop window or simply disappears, crumbling like the painted friezes in old houses where humidity works surreptitiously from inside the walls; sleeping and caring about no one else after the last second of wakefulness and nothing is yet like it is going to be; the heavy bellies of houses puff up, sustain dreams and above all tears, like a dike and refuge, as if the houses do not know the people they protect, as if they had just welcomed them and were still not clear on their names, which one goes with which face, which bodies wear which clothes; they cope with fears, moments and days not yet amassed, tuille curtains piled up on a chair ready to be hung to block sun and light, thick syrups poured down the throats of women in labor, whispered calls, and serene mirrors perhaps comparable to frozen lakes in which the caves beneath the water’s surface remain uninhabited and mute. In dreams, erratic sprits of lost Christmases dance in the windows, impossible colors shimmer in eyes, and whatever happens, it remains within the refuge of pillows: some people hear voices and some overcome their shyness, become their own rivals, form part of the landscape in a book of hours, or work in unforseen professions. Shining dragons; stone mortars where tired bones are milled, long tired leg bones, small flat bones of tired fat hands; deceptive silhouettes from a painful summer in which too many changes have had to be managed in the house; shadowy dragons obliging careful movements down corridors and stairs bearing in mind the time of day and everything that had been said on previous nights around a poorly served table. This during sleep, and by day meddling between the beginning and end of sleep when interruptions have been so bothersome they leave a scuff mark on doors, when mornings have been broken up by commotion and injustice, when there is too much to understand and concerted effort does not suffice for what has not yet taken form but has begun, but for the moment there are only suspicions, marks on the sand, and above all hopes that nothing will happen.

  Then, it could be believed since the night and the house are still dark and it is time to sleep, at some moment for no reason, because a reproach has worn away the weft of a world that is trying to repair itself and behave as usual against the tide of what is happening outside, a silence arises and obliges knowing, organizing, not being fooled, running from store to store to learn the prices for everything sold and everything bought, with people present who have always known how to confront the changing series of waves about what is said, people who have not retreated or hidden behind faces devised for specific attractive lies. It is no excuse that the tranquility may not be of this world: the house has been there for a century, more than a century on Scheller Street, following the curve of the river, with its trees and gray facades and flesh inside, thoughts like the buzzing wing of an insect and desires turned into candies and colorful stitches resonating on the still-tense fabric stretched between framework, and the feeling of stagnant water, everything that happens and still has not and stops existing when it has: these thoughts need the grandeur of decisions. At that moment in which the still-missing light seemed to be about to peek over the curve of the river and rise up, erasing the shadow in the garden, Madame Helena Lundgren decided not to wait, not to accommodate, not to pretend anymore. Katja might or might not get well, no one could know, and although Wulda would remain, that was not the problem, she could not continue to serve dinner clumsily with giggles and excuses. She would look, discuss, compare, and at least attempt that very afternoon to have a new maid in the house, someone who knew how to serve food, present platters, fill glasses, and wait next to the sideboard, eyes always vigilant to see what every diner might need. She would need to prepare the suite on the ground floor that opened onto the garden that morning, not wait until the afternoon, and perhaps let Mr. Ruprecht come to occupy it. Somewhere a door softly closed and if she had been sleeping the noise would not have awoken her, but since she was yet in bed at the soft, best threshold of the day, a closing door could still change her mind about those very proper, almost perfect plans birthed by the house if she changed at that moment; a door that closed at that changeable moment could even make her think about the house in Linz which she never thought about or about Madame Nashiru’s stone garden that she would never see, where women’s shadows slide toward other shadows, threatening and triumphant, happy to destroy them. She sat up in bed and, as she did, she broke apart the fragile shell that sometimes holds memory at bay: memory, Madame Helena thought, should not be impeded; without wrappings, smoke, or jewels, it can easily be incorporated into everyday life, the black and green border, the white porcelain that chimed in the dining room, open windows and balconies, steps in the corridor, Lola’s creeper now almost reaching the grille on the first floor balcony, the doctor’s visit—had Wulda spent another night watching over sick Katja?—the locksmith who would have to come to change the window catches in the kitchen, the tea she would drink in the dining room once all the guests had drunk theirs because Wulda could not go upstairs with two trays at almost the same time since Miss Simeoni no longer came downstairs for any meal, and she would ask for a coach to take Miss Esther and her luggage, which was not much, to the station at seven on the dot in the afternoon, and after that she could rest until the evening meal. She hoped that Madame Wunze would arrive when she said she would and not sooner to give her time to make the required renovations. She got out of bed and went to one of the windows: the summer did not seem to have ended, a scarlet line was sharply drawn, a sign from the gods about the day that had not come into being but would, over the river far from Scheller Street.

  24. Luduv

  And in a poor imitation of girls’ sleep in winter when morning lies in wait and sleep holds on so the moment will not pass and doors open that were never there, Katja in her room, smaller than Lola’s due to hierarchy, where there are two beds because for a time Madame Helena thought to have two maids that slept in the house until the woman with the hats came to offer her niece and Madame fired Louise and took Wulda who worked harder and was stronger and quieter; this room
that held the sweat of nightmares but not the rhythm of hours spent sewing or the labored silences of secrets, rocked a psalmody like a baby in a cradle for itself and no one else, apparently mute and secret; tasting all the letters of misery together while sighing, eyes closed, such a placid face, the chest of winged beings shaking inside her only for the mouth’s remembrance of the flavor of nuts on sultry afternoons, her body so unexpectedly flat beneath the blankets and everyone believed that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow she would wake as always and then, what a comfort, they could say it had been nothing, a scare, hitting her head like that when she fell, poor thing, a little sleep and convalescence but look at how well our Katja is again, how easily she comes down the stairs and how she smiles; meanwhile in the smoky whirlpool in her head, enclaves, profiles on lost coins, angular time standing still, alleyways, and the laughter when she began to be stuffed with images, dragged her inside herself, fishing for pearls in Saboga, and was finally running after Luduv to find him under the eaves and in the embrace of the household to look out for him, to move in space and time through everything: people, for example, clocks, little stories, wooden furniture, foam, pages, glass and ink, groaning illness, sad freedom, hands that work in the quarry, and the rain that improves your hair; how lovely your blond hair is hanging over your forehead, Luduv, how lovely your eyes, Luduv, these gray wheels with a thousand stripes and the little black points that devour me, where I reappear at the blink of an eye and I am someone else because who is not changed by your gaze, seed pearls in the line of your teeth that I see when I hear you although you have never said it so precisely when May arrived on the breath of the ram and two threads of honey, for I was filled to overflowing with iridescence and do not want the world that turns, and I see you, I see us leave everyone behind; when you left, when I was not there, when I could not clutch the tails of your shirt, shake you by the shoulders to wake you and make you stay, trip you, make you stumble and fall with our legs intertwined and ours is mine again, to see you turn when I called you, Luduv! I called you because I could not be there or anywhere else if you were not there, and to speak of you to others to tell them that it had been a privilege but also to frighten you away, and since I could not find you among others I called you, Luduv! and there you were so serious, waiting to see what I would say, what I would do, how I would look at you and how I would welcome you and then you would know the reason why I caught up with you, this time it was no game, just to show I meant it, and I did not even know that it lay within me like the meeting of two rivers, a friendly pond filled with warm water to wash injuries; but seeing me, seeing me gloomy with white fists, raised and exposed without protection in the gray plain, or beneath sunny racks of vines and withstanding it all, you knew then it was not so, what your sister had filled with words, she who saw us both, who tolerated the wind and proclamations, orders, who had such a weak hold on life, held by spider silk, the devil’s spit, the stigmata of a sliver, she was the one of the two who came down to this country, not sensitive to the cold there, deceptive and soft like betrayal, yet she was there and calling because she had lost everything when she lost you and I wept to see you and was left with nothing, the winged beings that used to come because you gave me back the threshing floor, the yoke, the warm manure on the black soil, they returned you and you gave me the echo of everything that has been said and sung and branches of coral, strings of pearls, strings of fish eggs, lianas, in a single presence the delirium of speech that has color and weight, the lime finally encrusted on the dinnerware, on the wall, in the clay baked in the back of the oven and tomorrow will be an eye as I will be the blue and gold world, I who delves, who announces, who lies, arc and oil lamp, and listen, she who sees you in the children’s corner although there are no children, in the hoofs of the horses enraptured by fire on the stones, the polished marble that will be the gravestone or cheek or rim for water greener than the green young branch, where the ghosts cannot see, she who finds you in the embers and in the obstinate frost on the shortest day of the year, Luduv, shadow of my eyelids, cup for my thirst, stanza sung by basil on the windowsill, Luduv the lamb, harmony of my lips in prayer, the rocking of my hands, island of my eyes, sparkle of my mirrors, watchtower, water changing direction, color of my blood, pebble in my mouth, Luduv luminous mark of day, the name of music, beat, sparkling crystal, mysterious word in books, first hint of light, brother better known and loved for me than I myself, rock and spring, now, never, and always, the whole world and time, the whole sky, the bees, the sickle, riverbed, ivory and gems that only existed so we could be together through the veins in geography, because I am eye and you have been word, smoke, and wind, hidden life, the bones of the thick earth when the floods recede and shoots begin to rise up, because my hair ties you and the roots of all the world’s trees rock us the way we rocked in our mother’s belly and we will return again and again, Luduv, to reflect the eyes of plants, sail into waterways to live in Casabermeja or Naumi-Velé, bury betrayal, singing, Luduv, as we run from the voices of deserted throats, break glasses, raise up sandstorms, frighten and batter death, Luduv, and name ourselves.

  25. Battles

  The smell of coffee caught him looking at his feet: it was eight twenty-four in the morning and he was barefoot, dressed but barefoot, ready to go have breakfast after his long walk, wondering rather vaguely and indirectly, due to an imprecision that was plaguing him, about the possible need for another itinerary to seek the assurance that he had lost something insignificant at some point, a little thing that had interrupted the rhythmic mechanical movement that was his life. It was insignificant, barely a wedge, axis, or valve, something wholly unsuspected due to its size, as banal as the last toe on that left foot, and yet it had held him captive in front of the biggest fountain in Krieger Park waiting for the sun to rise or sitting on the bed breathing in the smell of coffee and looking at his bare feet. As always, he still trusted the darkness; he believed that there in the shadow, without moving, he could better overcome a sudden attempt by blood to leave his body, who knew if it was because shadows were dark like blood in battles, like platoons of dead men scattered on a hill or sunk into a delta that no one had to worry about anymore. He felt he must continue to contain not only his blood but all liquids within his unfaithful body, not let them escape, not permit them, once spilled, to reunite in the growing outer darkness, to protect himself and help his body withstand lengthy hours and days. And yet, if he were to cross the corridor diagonally toward the side of the house that faced the garden, he would leave the darkness and find the light from the glass door and nothing more: nothing more and it would be the wrong move, like having amassed an impulse that would never be resolved with action. He would review battles in the library at the first desk to the right, he would reconsider them from the point of view of the winners and the losers, and correct positions and plans. He would compile this into a book, the battles of the world by General Rainer von Gerthmann, which would show how it would have been possible to win the ones that had been lost, and to win those that had been won better, faster, and with fewer casualties; he would do it, put on his shoes, go have breakfast, and then be ready to begin the exposition of the first battle: first he would make a detailed description of his own tough, strong body entering the little grove of birch trees by the east flank, blindly determined and with no need to give it excessive attention but accidents in the terrain will no doubt require an earlier exploration with hands, fingers, their soft fragile gloveless tips touching each stone, each fountain, each lobe, each eyelash, and above all the navel, where, they say, orientals drive in their curved sabers to disembowel their despicable bodies and fall laboriously forward to die on a cushion of blood and viscera. To lie down on a cushion of blood like the dead who might not have died in battle: it takes five men to move, aim, and fire a cannon and they must not be killed, five well-fed, well-clothed, healthy men free of desire or resentment, each one’s eyes on his assigned mechanism and nothing else; tough, impassioned men ready for the endless t
oil of war machines, of armored vehicles, the plumed hat for saluting the multitudes, men like him given to cut through the fabric of dreams and guard each hour so that not a minute would be lost beside the fountains in Krieger Park in the deepest dark of the dawn of day. Without a doubt leaving Mr. Kämpfer behind with his eyeglasses and smile and always-clean pens ready to make notes in blank books at the library, entire populations evacuated and Mr. Kämpfer with them, so he could reconnoiter the terrain like someone on the lookout for victory, but that could wait because once the enemy was decimated, its leaders captured, lesser prisoners exchanged for some man who had fallen into their hands because that was also inevitable, a few tortured as a lesson, flags flying, new maps drawn, the results of lightning conquest or disaster reported, he could leave and eat the breakfast that was getting cold on the table and, barely warm, it would reach his lips, tightly closed so blood would not try to escape, bubbling up in the pure night and overcome by the strength of old discipline. Once the enemy was dead, there would be no pity compassion mercy pardon or sympathy, dead weaklings and fools and barbarians and those who wear pearls and offer greetings with gloved hands and bend at the waist in a bow to fall dead with the curved saber slashed through a neck, tearing through flesh fine as paper, and eyes that he would have wanted so many times to see open in just the instant when he jumped from shadow to shadow, like the one in battle who is always the first to snatch the flag of mortification. Dead and nothing remains of them, not even memories or hints upon waking when the inescapable actions of every morning are undertaken, and for the first time the key ring is not where it ought to be, where it has always been every morning, even the gloomy ones going back years and years, he would never know how many nor did he want to try to calculate them because it was impossible to count the years: cadavers could be counted in fields tainted by fires, by red moons, by whirlwinds of smoke, and by boasts that would seed future wars, but not the years that were lost, confused by the haste of minutes and the predicaments of hope, years that began long and clear and passed in a single speech with knells and young wine, ingenious convictions, pillage, and arrogance, to end waving arms and stamping feet in the depth of nightmares, magnificence under a park pavilion, the drone of water given shape by a basin, the inexplicable intruding woman rising up in the fog of breath.