Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  “Am I late?” he asked, bright-eyed, kissing her cheeks twice.

  “No, do not be silly, you are on time. Please, have a drink.” He wanted scotch but she said, “No, no,” and made him order vodka. “I like this place, they let you have the whole bottle. We’ll start with two shots each, one right after the other, the way it is supposed to be done,” she said, “and then we can talk.” Zoya cut the owner off before he could break out in song and sent him scurrying off to bring them a bottle. She wanted Will to talk tonight, though she liked the fact that he didn’t always fill the air with unnecessary words. He reminded her a little of other taciturn men she had known, including her father. They were instinctively reticent and always careful with their phrases, for they believed the words they said mattered. Now, with the telegraph and telephone and newspaper presses going all the time, words spewed out relentlessly, in the form of facts, gossip, and endless opinions. She remembered the hope and idealism with which people greeted each of these chattering new innovations, as if more words had ever solved anything. Sure enough, the words poured out and the wars grew worse, the corpses stacking up until they were as high as the silent mountains.

  “I thought you’d be with Oliver,” said Will.

  Zoya shook her head. “Oh, he does not need me tonight, he has his friends. In any case, Oliver likes Oliver, he really does not ever need other people.”

  Will smiled at this. The bottle came to the table and Zoya poured. They downed the shots fast. Will seemed to get comfortable. She sat at the table, her legs set wide apart, her shoulders hunched over, as if she were an old friend about to tell him a secret.

  “So tell me,” she asked, “what are you doing here in Paris?”

  “I work in advertising.”

  “Oh yes.” She nodded. “You mean those posters, and the pictures in magazines?”

  “Yes, those.” Will smiled.

  “Of course I see the posters everywhere, all those smiling girls with nice round bottoms holding out champagne or cold cream. But I don’t pay much attention to them. Do they work?”

  Will shrugged. “Research shows they can work very well.”

  She was intrigued. “Really? How so?”

  Will seemed happy to find someone who was even slightly curious about his livelihood. “Well, there are lots of ways they can be effective. For instance, I’ve got a client who likes hitting his customers right between the eyes, as if he’s smacking them in the face with a two-by-four.”

  She looked confused. “What is a ‘two-by-four’?”

  “Sorry, a beam, a wooden plank. The point is, he likes to be very direct, to the point of being irritating. He’ll write a terrible jingle and play it on the radio nonstop until the listeners completely give up and surrender, run out to the stores, and buy all his products. For him it’s an assault: he works to break down their resistance. Research shows that can get results in the short term, but I don’t think it’s very smart. Now, his latest idea is to use Surrealism to cut through the clutter and—his idea, not mine—to make his customers go insane. I’m not sure that’s so smart either.”

  “What do you think works?”

  Even though Will had answered this in presentations to clients a hundred times before, it made him blush to answer the question now. “Seduction.”

  “You seduce them?” Zoya thought about it for a second and then her eyes brightened. “Yes, I see, so this client of yours believes it is a kind of war, but you think you can win with love. Maybe you’re both right. People can be conquered, certainly, but your idea is more like those pretty women I hear they have put to work in the airplanes now.”

  “The stewardesses?”

  “Yes,” Zoya said. “You see, it’s not enough of a miracle to be flying high up in the air, even all the way across the entire ocean, that magic isn’t enough, so they put someone pretty and seductive on the plane, now there’s a possibility of sex or romance, a temptation to lure you in. It’s right out of a folktale, a beautiful girl with a fool in a flying ship.”

  “Well, I don’t—it’s a little more simple than that,” Will stammered, her mention of sex making his heart skip a beat. “You really only have to show them a bit of a life they admire or desire, a story they want to be a part of, paint them a picture and then invite them into it.”

  “Ah, I understand.” She smiled, almost to herself. “So it’s not love, it’s merely a spell. So, then what? Tell me, what happens after these victims of yours buy your product and the spell is broken? When they awaken to find their life is as empty and sad as it was before, only now a little poorer too?”

  Will seemed suddenly self-conscious. “Maybe they feel that way, maybe not, depends on the product. But I wouldn’t call them victims. I think—”

  “I’m sorry, I am being rude.” She put her hand down onto his leg to reassure him and began to shift the conversation. “I am only trying to understand, your world is so very different from mine.”

  “No, it’s fine. I don’t get to talk about this stuff much outside of the office.” Will collected himself. “But it’s all boring, really. Tell me about you, where are you from?”

  “Russia, a small country town.”

  “And what brought you here?”

  Now it was Zoya’s turn to shrug. “Oh, I came here for my studies. For school.”

  “What do you study?”

  “Life, different kinds of life. I was interested in botany and for a long time I investigated various plants.” She refilled their shot glasses. “Insects and bugs too.”

  “Bugs?” said Will, his eyes brightening with bemusement. “I have to admit I’ve never been very interested in bugs.”

  “Oh, I know a lot about bugs, the ones in the sky, below the earth, in your hair and beneath your skin, even the ones churning now in your stomach. There are so many bugs, but I don’t want to talk about them tonight,” Zoya said. “Let’s try this, we’ll make it fun, you ask me a question about you.” She leaned in closer, she could smell him now. “Go ahead, ask.”

  “Okay,” said Will, thinking for a moment. “Why did you say I was lost?”

  “Oh, when did I say that?” she said with a wry smile.

  “At Oliver’s apartment, when he and I were leaving.”

  “Yes, I remember. I didn’t think you heard me. I said it because in the times I’ve met you, you did seem lost, like the autumn leaves that float so uncertainly in the sky. Even when I first saw you on the metro, I noticed it. There was some confusion in your eyes, a need for answers. I don’t think it’s a feeling you’re used to.”

  Will sat back in his chair and looked at her, wondering how she saw so much. Finally he said, “You’re right. I’m not used to it.”

  She smiled. “Well, too much certainty is never wise. You must always be ready for the chaos, bend with it like a tree in the wind. That is how you survive.” She poured him another shot. “You know, in Russia if you open a bottle it’s bad luck not to drink it all.”

  “The whole thing?” He took the shot and slammed the glass down, feeling light-headed.

  “Come.” She refilled the glass. “Drink more.”

  “Wait, wait, there’s also the other thing you said.”

  “When was this?” she took the shot. Her eyes grew wide as the liquor went down, and then she smiled.

  “Back at Oliver’s, you told me you had the answers. That’s what you said. What did you mean?”

  She slid another shot toward him. “Drink again. Then we talk.”

  So he drank. She had drawn him in with such simple tricks: the promise of easy conquest and the vague offer of solutions, these were the tides that always pulled men in, even simpler than the promise of flesh or money. Now all she needed to know was what troubles he was knotted in, for once she untied him from those, he would be as sealed to her as the silver rings that encircled her fingers.

  He talked and as she listened, she was filled with delicious wonder. Whenever he slowed in his narrative she would pour him another
shot while, at the same time, gently tapping out truth spells under the table. Over the next hour and a half, he revealed a lot. There were so many twists to his tale, even she was impressed: a knife, a dead Russian, a missing file, and too many other details for her to keep track of, light-headed as she was from drawing out spells and drinking down clear liquor. She had seen so much over the years that mankind’s mischief almost never amazed her. She had watched brilliant financial virtuosos ensnared in the intricate nets of their own weaving, and charismatic politicians impaled by the bloody revolutions their own rhetoric had sparked; there had been double spies shot at dawn and duplicitous dauphins poisoned at dinner, but she rarely came across anything as oddly convoluted as what this poor Will was enmeshed in. It amused her how, in an almost endearing fashion, he had fallen into it with a guileless innocence, reminding her again of a rabbit, dashing across a hunter’s field, bewildered by all the buckshot flying about. As he kept talking in their little drunken corner, the details continued to confuse her, but she knew she could sort them out once she had a clear head. There were other matters to attend to first. She pushed the bottle out of their way and leaned her dizzy forehead up against a wobbly Will’s. “I think we need a taxi now.”

  She was upon him the minute they were in the back of the cab, barely pausing to let him tell the driver “numéro vingt-quatre rue d’Artois.” Then her lips were on his. Immediately he surprised her, for she liked the way he kissed, like a man who wanted to swallow life. He pulled her tight in his arms, his hands grabbing up the length of her nylons. His desire was clear, but also his pressing need for some concrete thing to ground him amid all his current confusion. His left hand held her thigh, his right hand pulled her waist close against his. She smelled the soap in his hair as she bit at his ear while pushing hard against his body. He grabbed her face and pulled her lips against his mouth, the force of his action surprising her again, releasing an instinct in her that yearned for a kiss that could devour him too. It felt bestial, like the statues of the lions in the Tuileries gardens, attacking one another with a mutual muscular ferocity. She paused to catch her breath and pressed her palm against his chest. He was breathing hard too, his eyes wide, seemingly stunned and thrilled at this sudden encounter. You poor Americans, she thought, you will never learn to drink like Russians.

  A little over an hour later she lay naked in Will’s bed. She felt a soreness on her shoulder where Will had gripped her hard and she was bruised on her hip from where their bodies had collided. Yes, she thought, this is one reason I always come back to these beds, because intimacy changes the scale of the universe, folding down the vast and overwhelming horizon until there is only the small world that is my body, upon which toothsome storms, sweating floods, and soulful earthquakes break their mighty forces, and I lie ravaged and raw and blissfully alive. She surveyed her landscape, running her tongue across her lip, still slightly numb from pressing so tightly against his, tracing with her finger the small blue bruise on her arm. I meet these men and we draw these maps together, over and again, roughly exploring and intimately claiming our bodies as some kind of shared territory and then naming these with terms of deep affection. But maybe, she thought warily, it really is here, now. Or maybe it’s that something worse. She turned on her side and lightly traced her finger down the bridge of a sleeping Will’s nose, thinking, I am going to have to be careful, for this is no happy folk song.

  XVI

  Witches’ Song Four

  Yes, lust and love, yes, licking and sticking,

  yes, sweat and saliva, yes, yes, all that pent energy exploding

  into crystal white light. Me, I stuck with Lyda

  for all of that sugary goodness.

  Sweet fun and fat-cheeked, a hungry lover,

  a lusty girl, skipping over borders and boundaries

  and hauling around that fat dancing bottom

  that teased so many for a slap and pinch.

  No wonder the old river opened up

  and sucked her down, wet and hungry, I’m sure.

  Oh, we rode out many a waxing moon

  in our crooked attic lairs, perched high over

  the narrow streets of Moskva, Petrograd, and Minsk,

  sweet sybaritic dreams, devilish fantasies incarnate

  we wove, yes, seducing soldier, sailor, and monocled trader

  as we wrapped them up warm in our generous flesh.

  Luthiers brought us violins, butchers brought us tenderloins,

  we cooked, shocked, and burned, and whoever we lured in

  found themselves falling into our sweaty, writhing

  triumvirate cocoons as we unveiled, and indulged,

  always and truly good, attentive bacchante girls.

  In the moments of high tempo

  while she kept tongues tied up

  and firm limbs enthralled

  I would sneak and whittle chunks of fat

  from their ruble-thick wallets.

  Not the most honest way

  to make them pay their fare

  but we returned in kind, honestly, so,

  with benevolent blessings

  whispered into their sleeping, bare backs,

  kissing their shoulder blades over and again

  in fair and noble exchange.

  Truly we were better charms

  than any other diptych saints

  they stumbled upon.

  Nearly every crone bleats like a goose,

  “Oh, I didn’t choose to be this way,

  my papa went heavy with a spiked belt,

  my husband fucked my virgin daughters.”

  Ah, cry at the hurricanes, spit at the storm.

  You could pile these melancholies higher

  than all the tsar’s dead armies.

  We never had patience or time for complaints,

  such wasted words, tiresome as a winter’s rutabaga.

  Flee the darkness of the past, run or drive or fly away.

  Too many fools bear the burdensome bad of what was,

  it spills out of their saddle bags and stuffed steamer trunks,

  as they travel along slow bearing a heavy load,

  while life itself flies fast by.

  Running through nights with us you learned right,

  to ride light and keep your history shut tight,

  or leave it on the roadside far behind

  for the village clocks count in chimes

  all the time that is wasted,

  nursing grief to no profit.

  Elga never burdened us with her tale,

  and we respected her restraint,

  for the scars of fortune’s razor were not hard to see.

  And I never asked Zoya, either, nor did she talk,

  though we had guessed the shape of her history

  long before the beasts finished

  ripping out that old man’s throat.

  That’s about it, as for the rest, bah,

  our pack grows weary of the bitches’ barking,

  on and on sobbing sagas so sad any bard

  would bash his head in rather than recite.

  Cynical, yes, but we chose this life

  not because we were beaten or broken,

  not angry or aching—

  no man ever put me down, no—

  we picked this path only

  to drink at life’s fresh spring,

  ever and anon.

  We thirsted for the ripeness

  of a thousand soft fruits,

  oh, let me put my hands on a peach ripe this day,

  but, alas, see here, my palms are nothing but air now,

  and there would be tears in my eyes too

  if there were eyes for weeping.

  XVII

  Rita Hayworth, Monique Chevalier, and Belinda Lee all stared up at Noelle from the covers of the movie magazines that were strewn across her big hotel bed as the little girl sat, propped up by pillows, biting into another éclair. It was her third of the morning and the sugar h
ad her bouncing. She had also gone through five butter cookies and two fruit parfaits. She was so excited by Paris. This was truly the life of a fairy princess. She had never stayed in a place so elegant; the suite had two separate bedrooms and a large center room with a crystal chandelier and a full, deep fireplace. She had asked Elga if they could always live like this but the old woman said no. “Enjoy it now, but this is not the way we will live. Money attracts too many curious noses. We get what we need but we stay low, out of sight. Like hedgehogs and moles. But there will be nice treats like this from time to time”—she patted the girl’s head—“so gobble them up when they come.” Then she let Noelle order any dessert she wanted off the big room-service menu.

  When the clattering cart had arrived, the hotel boy placed the tray at the end of the bed and Elga signed the bill. Then the old woman took her doctor’s bag and disappeared into the bathroom, with Max at her heels. The room-service boy had given the rat a curious look, but Noelle had said, “Ceci n’est pas un rat.” The boy looked a little confused but left without asking a question. Alone in the room now, Noelle was wiping the last traces of chocolate and powdered sugar from her lips when she heard Elga call out.

  “Noelle, are you finished?”

  “Yes!”

  “How was it?”

  “Delicious!” the girl gleefully shouted, kicking her little legs with joy.

  “Ha, good. Come here, girl, I need your help.”

  Noelle jumped up from the bed and skipped across the room. Pulling open the bathroom door, she found Elga sitting on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub. Towels covered the floor and a few of the old woman’s odd jars of colored powders lined the counters. The steaming water looked funny to Noelle, it was same shade of deep dark green as the little slimy salamanders that lurked in her mother’s country garden.

  “Come child, I need you to take a bath now.”

  “Can I take it later?” Noelle edged away, scrunching up her nose. The room smelled like rotten eggs.

  “No, now,” said Elga, patting the side of the bath. “Hop in the tub and I will comb those knots out of your hair.”