Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  “No. Zoya is dead.”

  This stopped the priest halfway through his first bite. Thinking about what she’d said, he slowly resumed chewing. “What kind of dead?” he said.

  Elga rubbed her face with her hands. “Dead dead. Does it matter? She’s dead to me.”

  The priest nodded. “Right. So she is alive.”

  Elga shrugged. “Only until I find her.”

  “What did she do now?”

  “Bah, what didn’t she do? First she kills her fat lubovnik, puts his head right through a spike, then she leads the policemen straight to my house. Two of them. Two policemen. Trouble. Much trouble. I tell you this too, I think she did it on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? But she has betrayed me, and that comes with a cost.” She dramatically crossed her throat with her finger.

  “No need for the theatrics, Elga, I know what you mean.” The priest shook his head. “But that does not sound like Zoya.”

  The old woman threw up her hands “She has always been a messy one. And I am tired of cleaning up after her. She makes me act like some ugly maid scrubbing the floor, working on my hands and knees with my fat ass up in the air, ripe for a kick. It is stupid. I am too old for this.”

  “You are the same age you have been for a century,” he said.

  “No, I am much older, you just do not see. It happens too slowly.”

  He chose to ignore this; he knew he did not understand the laws that governed Elga and her sisters. He had tried to once, but that was a long time ago. “Any idea where she is?”

  “No. We left town fast, before Max could sniff her out.” Elga dug her finger into her nostril and then flicked the snot on the ground. “Listen, I’m going to need you to send some of your village idiots with that truck to my place to pack my work up. It’s safe there, should be no trouble, I put a curse on the door.”

  “No trouble? Really, Elga? I hear the word ‘curse,’ and I tend to think there might be trouble.”

  Elga was quiet. The priest scratched his head. “The farmer down the way has two boys who can help move your stuff. He has a better truck than mine. Whose car did you come in?”

  “I don’t know.” She set the keys on the table. “You can have it if you want. I wouldn’t drive it, though.”

  The priest looked at her suspiciously, then he went out the door. A minute later he came back inside. “It’s a police car, Elga. You want to tell me where the policemen are who came with that car?”

  “You got me.” She shrugged.

  The priest went over to the icebox and slid a bottle of vodka out of its small freezer compartment. He poured himself a shot and then splashed another shot into the empty soup bowl. The rat went at it. The priest sat back down. “Why don’t you tell me what you want, Elga?”

  “Maybe put the car in the shed. Then get those farm boys to clear out my place. I can store things here for the time being. And I need your help getting a new girl.”

  “A new girl? Why?”

  “I told you, Zoya’s dead.”

  The priest closed his eyes, letting the comment pass. “Where will we find this new girl?”

  “That hospital in town. Get me a job there tomorrow.”

  “What if they’re not hiring?”

  Elga nodded. “One of their workers is sick, they’re going to need help to cover for her. I can be that help.”

  “You’re confusing me, Elga. The worker is sick? How do you know this? Are you talking about an event that has happened or will happen?”

  Elga looked at him like he was an idiot. He knew time and tense did not concern her, they would be chopped and thrown in the stew with all the rest.

  Max the rat was done with the vodka. He tottered around drunk for a few steps before slipping off the edge of the table. The priest deftly caught him in the palm of his hand before the rat hit the floor and placed him back on the table. “Seriously, Elga, you can’t barge in here with so much nonsense. When will it stop?”

  She dismissively shook off the priest’s question. “There is no stop.”

  XIX

  Vidot the flea arrived at his doorstep, near dead with exhaustion and hunger. He had briefly caught a ride on the back on a stray cat that had carried him less than a dozen blocks before it turned its tongue against him. He had barely escaped unharmed and had hopped the rest of the way, dodging deep oily puddles and fat automobile wheels. But now, finally, he was home. He crawled under the main entrance door to the building and through the large lobby before beginning the laborious job of jumping, one by one, up the three flights of stairs to his apartment. Finally reaching the top, he used the last of his remaining strength to crawl under his door and into his hallway. He was home. He knew no real remedy for his condition could be found here, he would work on that tomorrow. For now, he simply needed the solace of feeling safe from the nightmarish world of unexpected predators and oversized poodles that lay outside. For Vidot at this moment, no sight could be more reassuringly welcome than that of his beautiful wife. He longed to smell her hair, to fill his lungs with her perfume, find calm in her radiant presence.

  The radio was on but the front room and the kitchen were both empty. In two hops he had leapt into the living room, where he paused to have a look around. He half expected to find Adèle sitting in her favorite red chair, reading one of the flowery romance novels he loved to tease her about. But the living room was empty too. It was then Vidot heard the sound of her voice.

  It did not take much of a detective to realize what was going on. Hopping toward the bedroom, he was devilishly pleased. He had often wondered, on those occasions when he was stuck working at the station late into the night, if his wife ever longed for him and, fantasizing about his touch, brought herself to pleasure. He had always secretly wanted to see her in such a state. Yes, he thought mischievously, this was his golden opportunity. So, almost giddily, he hopped to the doorway to spy on his sweet Adèle.

  She was there, but she was not alone. There was a man with her, wrapped up in her clawing arms, making love to her with a fierce and feverish devotion. Reeling from the sight, Vidot was not immobile for long, as the hurt and betrayal filled him with a wave of furious electric adrenaline. Without reflection or hesitation, a mighty leap sent him onto her naked lover’s back, where Vidot began attacking the stranger with all the fury he could muster.

  It was not very much. The man did not stop in his exertions and an enthralled and ecstatic Adèle kept her lover entirely focused. They were both utterly engrossed in their passionate wet kissing, biting, nibbling, licking, grabbing, and thrusting; with every rough touch this interloper elicited deep guttural moans from his wife. Vidot had never heard Adèle like this; it was as if she were a completely different creature, a feral animal bathed in sweat, wholly possessed by feverish lust and hunger. Boiling with rage, Vidot scrambled up deep into the thickness of the stranger’s dark hair and, like a crazed Gaul in the heat of battle, vengefully sank his teeth deep into the man’s skull. Take that, you bastard! Vidot wanted to scream.

  Almost immediately he felt he was losing his senses. The flooding, intoxicating rush of the man’s blood overwhelmed and disoriented him with its rich savory nourishment. Vidot’s mind went soft and woozy and he found it hard to focus, his consciousness wholly immersed in the warm, pulsing waves of pure sustenance. Forgetting himself and his terrible circumstances, he sucked greedily, instinctively focused on absorbing all the blood he could. As his belly swelled his senses reeled and his head felt dizzy. His legs weakened and he scurried to reset his footing, trying to stay upright. As the man and Adèle simultaneously reached the peak of their ecstatic convulsions below him, the oblivious Vidot keeled over and passed out cold.

  He awoke in absolute darkness. Was this death? Had he been pitched into the cold blackness of purgatory? He almost hoped so. He got back on his legs and tried to shake his tiny head clear. So many odd and terrible events had unfolded so quickly that he felt he was prepared for the worst.
He began to make his way and though he was unable to see a thing he quickly realized that he was still in the dense, dark forest of hair atop the man’s skull. He could make out a few muffled voices and then he heard a door slam. The surface he was riding on seemed to bob both forward and downward in a gradual sinking manner, indicating to Vidot that they were descending the stairs. It was then he realized he was being carried away from his home, away from his Adèle, away from every ideal he had ever possessed of love, harmony, and domestic happiness, trapped beneath the surface of another man’s hat.

  XX

  Up in the Pigalle hotel, Zoya checked on her concoction. Finding it dry enough, she removed a long-stemmed clay pipe from the bureau and placed the small owl ball in the chamber. Tucking herself into the corner of a white cushioned chair, she struck a match and inhaled deeply. Then she lay there, waiting.

  It did not take long. The ceiling above her soon dissolved from solid to liquid as the walls subtly ruffled like a theater curtain with actors busily moving behind it before the show. Spectrums of light flickered, casting visions that quickly pooled in around her. Soft glowing red and powder blue hallucinations rose from the floor, translucent figures finding their form, crossing past one another in a busy collage, some familiar, some unknown; street scenes and tiny sets of homes, offices, hallways materialized in different corners of the room, their motions choreographed by the rhythmic words of the whispering women wrapped and enshrouded in obscuring layers, ghosts from the ancient vanished covens who now crowded around Zoya. Each voice layered over another, narrating in cacophony the many-dimensional scenes playing all around.

  Zoya kept control, maintaining her concentration; she was well practiced in this art. More than a century ago, when Elga first gently dropped the owl ball into the pipe for her, she had been taken on an anxiety-ridden journey into darkness that disclosed a wild and chaotic universe, purposeful in its intention but unfathomable in its cause, its myriad of forces so overwhelmingly powerful Zoya barely survived witnessing it all. But she lived, and learned, and now she could choose the thread she wished to explore amid the tumult, focusing on the ghosts’ discordant tones until she isolated each tableau she wanted to follow. There in the corner, by the love seat, a miniature Oliver volleyed in an early-morning game of tennis, while over by the base of the sink she saw her rabbit Will making his way through the crowd to work, looking a little worried, but more steady in his step than he knew.

  She looked around, trying to locate Elga. There was a street carnival and a small bedroom where two lovers lay entwined, a fog passed across their bodies, blown from the tops of rows of boiling beakers that sat in a busy laboratory; then trees grew up between the industrious scientists until they all disappeared into a dense forest. A parliament of owls flew out from the high branches, spreading their broad wings to clear the room of every vision, causing it all to vanish like vapor in the air. She looked around the empty apartment, frustrated; there was more to discover, she sensed it, some crucial element was lurking below.

  She lit the pipe and inhaled again, this time more deeply and with subsequent greater effect. Flickering to life in the kitchen space, a rat’s giant head stared out at her. On the rodent’s forehead a man stood like a mountain climber on a peak, or a captain on the bridge of his ship. Not recognizing him, she watched as he leapt above her, becoming a giant now, far larger than the former dimensions of the room. He soared up into the night sky above, then looped and spun like a diver in the air, falling straight into the open mouth of an alto saxophone. Suddenly all the noises of the ghosts ceased and silence filled the room. From deep inside the brass horn a small noise emerged. Zoya could not tell what it was. She leaned in, listening closely, until finally she discerned the voice of a child, a little girl, who seemed to be crying, from fear or solitude. Then more voices joined in, another chorus like the ancient covens but this one somehow more familiar. They grew louder, chanting gibberish and calling out to Zoya. Her eyes went wide with recognition—yes, she did know these voices, she knew these old crones. The chorus steadily increased in volume until they seemed to be screaming. A trembling quiver took hold, sending her body backward onto the floor and shaking her breasts, arms, and thighs in an epileptic frenzy. The voices’ pitch rose steadily inside her head, building in tempo until its harsh and screeching amplitude made her skin flush, her eyes roll back, and her jaw grind hard. Then, finally, in a flash, a great crack of light broke through, shattering the blackness like glass.

  It was over. She blinked a bit and stayed there on her side without moving, thinking over what she had seen, what she had heard. She spoke to the empty room: “Mazza, Lyda, Basha, you old cows, back for what?” Then she was silent, as if they might answer. Her senses awake and alert now, she could feel the three, pulling at her the way tides draw in boats. What was their intention? What were they up to? She ran through the visions again in her head. There had been no sign of Elga, which was odd. Why would the old woman be hiding? Finally, she wiped the sweat off her brow and rose to light the kettle. She needed a cup of tea. Her mind drifted back to Will, not because of anything she had seen, but simply because that was where her mind wanted to dance. For amid all the gnarled knots of mystical weaving, he was the uncomplicated one, simply a strong and healthy rabbit, bolting about the field without any sure knowledge, only a bit of naïve wisdom and wholesome innocence guiding his way. It relaxed her to think about him. If only it could last.

  Book Two

  The whole fight is for the conservation of the individual soul. The enemy is the suppression of history; against us is the bewildering propaganda and brainwash, luxury and violence.

  —EZRA POUND, The Paris Review

  I

  It was almost one in the morning as a still quite sleepy and bewildered Superintendent Maroc sat in his office, listening to his subordinate explain what had happened. Two officers, one an investigator and the other a patrolman, had vanished from the streets of Paris, along with their patrol car. Worse, there had been yet another strange murder, over on rue d’Astorg. Responding to calls, policemen had found the owner of an antiques shop with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Further investigation revealed that the man’s tongue had been cut out of his mouth, and despite their searches through the shop’s bureau drawers, ancient urns, hat boxes, humidors, and jewelry cases, the investigators had been unable to find it.

  “So we are missing a pair of policemen, a police car, and a tongue,” concluded the officer, summing up his report.

  Superintendent Maroc said nothing. One of the missing policemen, the smug and judgmental Vidot, had always been a constant pain, and in any other circumstance Maroc would have been happy to see him gone. The other, Bemm, was unknown to the superintendent. Maroc had only recently been appointed to the station, did not intend on staying long in the position, and had very little interest in getting to know any of the men. The only reason he had taken any note of Vidot was because the man was so perfectly insufferable.

  “Should we inform the families?” asked the officer.

  Maroc shook his head. “No, not yet. Call tomorrow and tell them that Vidot and Bemm are off on an important undercover assignment. Maybe they’ll turn up. I don’t want any trouble or newspaper coverage on this.”

  Over a year ago, Maroc’s benefactor, Papon, had been promoted to prefect of police and had promised to find a prominent position for Maroc in the customs section, where opportunities for furtive profit abounded. No suitable position had been available at the time, so Maroc had been temporarily assigned this job, while Papon arranged for personnel to be reshuffled. Maroc knew he had to be reasonably patient, all he had wanted was peace and quiet in the interim, and for the first few months he had gotten his wish: the normal parade of pickpockets, petty burglars, counterfeit rings, and abusive spouses (sometimes fatally so—wives were occasionally beaten and strangled, just as husbands occasionally ran into cooking knives) had done little to disturb the station’s smooth operation.

&nb
sp; But now, suddenly, a series of bizarre and inexplicable events had begun erupting all over Paris. On the same night that a machine gun had been fired out of a car at Senator Mitterrand, a few blocks away a man was found hanging dead on the spikes above rue Rataud. The first story had, fortunately, overshadowed the second, and while the Mitterrand case proceeded to quickly unravel into a farce (the politician seemingly set up his own assassination attempt in a foolish ploy to gain popular sympathy), the second case had only grown more complex. The loss of a patrol car along with two of the policemen who had been investigating the Leon Vallet murder was not a story that could be easily kept under wraps, and when it did come to light it would certainly not reflect well on the superintendent.

  Through the open doorway, Maroc stared down the empty hall, thinking that while he had never enjoyed the sight of the self-righteous Vidot, with his sarcastic, all-knowing little grin, he sincerely hoped for nothing more than to see the man come sailing into his office now, smug smile and all. But looking at his watch and realizing he would not be getting home to bed until at least three, he suspected the chance of such a simple solution was small. His gut told him that solving this would be drawn out and complicated, and, he reflected with a heavy sigh, there was rarely any profit in complications.

  “Tomorrow morning, go through the shopkeeper’s inventory,” Maroc said, returning his attention to the officer. “See if anything is missing. And tell Gilbert down in the morgue to keep both his and the corpse’s mouth shut. At this point, any loose tongues will only confuse things.”

  II

  “Surrealism!” shouted Guizot.

  Will had returned from lunch to find his client bouncing up and down in his office waiting for him. Hanging his hat and coat up behind the door, Will sat down at his desk. “Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur Guizot. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I didn’t know we had an appointment.”

  “We did not!” His client grinned and opened his arms as if ready for a hug. “I had a vision, Will! A magnificent bolt of illuminating lightning! I was smacked right in the brainpan just as you were smacked in that eye of yours! Ha ha. Really, though, what happened to your poor face? An angry husband?”