Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  A moment later, the door opened and the captain they had met in the hall entered the room with a second officer. She looked at the keys looped on their belts and held herself back from simply grabbing at them. That man back in the hallway had her jumpy, she could feel the clock ticking away, counting down. She always hated that clock. With a condescending tone, the captain explained that they had some questions regarding how she had wound up with Detective Vidot’s patrol car. “I already told the other one, why bother me?” she grumbled.

  The captain smiled politely. “Your explanation, madame, was slightly less than plausible. But maybe once you’ve given us more details we will be more ready to believe you. I will leave you here with Officer Aubert so you two can talk.”

  Elga nodded. She had been through variations of this at many border crossings and city gates and in the camps of captured artillery, and it was always the same mix of formality and stupidity from men who earnestly believed that they were being crafty. Some she confused, while many she killed, and Officer Aubert, who sat down across from her and opened his notebook with a patient smile on his face, would soon belong to the latter category. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

  “Do what you want,” she said.

  He lit his cigarette without offering her one. She knew this was part of the game: when he had first asked her permission to smoke, he was really saying “We are together,” while this subsequent failure of courtesy said “But I am superior.” She did not know if this was a trained nuance; she doubted it. All over the world, these interrogators acted out the same rote habits, like woodpeckers working their way down a tall pine thinking they are very clever in their search for bugs. But all the years of dodging questions and dealing with these pesky, prying interlocutors had left her with little patience. Besides, there was that man in the hallway and the clock was running. It was time to play her part. She leaned toward the man. “Now, my friend, do you want me to tell you the real truth about what happened that night? Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Aubert’s eyes lit up. “Why, yes, of course, that is why we’re here.” He dutifully readied his pencil at the top of the notebook page, prepared to commence.

  “Fine, but do not write this down yet. It is important you follow me with your complete attention. You can take notes later, now you should listen and watch,” she said, holding her finger up in front of his eyes. “Remember, the path of this story is very critical.” She started tracing out a map, an imaginary one that followed the imaginary steps she described from that night. He kept his eye on her finger. He did not know she was tracing out a maze that would enthrall his thoughts. Within two minutes his eyes would dim and he would be utterly spellbound, his mind would be soft, wet, and ready clay. Idiot, I should pity you, she thought, this is too simple. There is no observer looking in from a window, no one is sitting beside you. You are all alone here at this moment that will be your last, your end. The world has utterly abandoned you, leaving you at my mercy, vulnerable to the tricks of an old woman because they think I am so weak, so perfectly harmless. To them I am already dust.

  The policeman’s eyes grew wide. Elga felt like the mighty spider leaning forward, feeling that tug of the web as the fresh fly arrived.

  She knew the path that followed. When the spell caught, Aubert would open the door to the interrogation room and lead her out of the station. If anyone tried to stop them, Aubert would attack them. He would be her blind slave, fighting for her freedom, and once they reached the street he would take his pencil and shove it deep into his own throat. This would start a commotion and amid the confusion she would complete her escape. She looked from his pencil to his neck, eyeing that soft target, thinking of how men walk blindly through their lives, their Adam’s apples thrust out before them, unconsciously taunting every weapon. She was only seconds away from escaping this trap.

  But then, the door opened and the captain returned, this time with the tall man in the rumpled suit. Aubert snapped to and rubbed himself alert. Elga sat back, dejected. The clock had stopped, the path was blocked. She would have to find another way.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” said the captain politely. “I am afraid, madame, that you will have to leave now with this gentleman.”

  She looked around, trying to act confused. Even Aubert began to protest: “But I was making progress—”

  “Ah”—the captain held up his hand, cutting his subordinate off—“these are things we cannot control. Mr. Brandon’s superiors believe she is a person of interest, so we must release her.” With that, he folded his arms. Elga could sense his frustration with this turn of events.

  Ten minutes later she was sitting next to the man called Brandon as they were driven in a black Cadillac across town. He had not yet said a word to her, though hearing him speak at the police station she had gathered he was American. She also could tell that the French captain, a man they called Maroc, had a great distaste for him while at the same time being extremely deferential, even going so far as to give Brandon his handcuffs, which Elga now wore on her wrists. Throughout it all, and even now, she kept her mouth shut. She had learned long ago to be careful around men the police feared.

  All in all, though, she did not think much of Brandon. She had always found Americans to be a strange collection, almost as uniquely exotic as the fruits and flora that had come to her from that faraway land. She could remember the day—back how long now?—when a lone passing hunter, trading some venison with her, had told her of the uncharted lands newly found. She recalled chopping the deer meat up and cooking it into a greasy stew, listening as the hunter described this discovery between greedy, wet mouthfuls. She remembered him repeating the words “gold, gold, gold” as she tried to wrap her mind around all the other opportunities this unexplored country might hold, not in metal, but in richer, more powerful treasures. She recalled the end of that visit, watching as the hunter scraped the bowl clean with his thin, stained fingers. “I won’t be back,” the hunter had said, “I plan to work my way aboard one of those ships to go find my fortune. I am not too old yet for the New World.”

  “Bah!” Elga had shaken her head. She offered him a cup of mushroom tea before he left. He thanked her again, sipped the tea down quickly and was reaching for his kit sack when the poison hit. It had been an act close to mercy. She had seen the rash on his neck and his brown mottled eyes and, recognizing his illness, knew too that he would not be able to endure the coming pains of the season. So, she pushed this bearer of one New World off into the next. She had emptied his pockets of every kopeck, smoked and packed the deer meat, and left his corpse for the crows.

  She was not sure if he’d been babbling fable or fact, but curiosity was enough to pull her out of her woods. Wrapped in the hunter’s old coat, she journeyed alone across the countryside, catching rides on serfs’ barrel carts and bartering mules until she finally reached the booming port city. As she arrived and her nose sniffed excitedly at the heavily scented harbor air, her heart beat hard, it was nothing like she had ever experienced. Amid the brine, fish, and sewage stench, fresh new fragrances filled her nose, raw and potent aromas she had never encountered before, pungent with possibility. Eyeing the tall-masted carracks parked between their herring buss and dogger sisters—all laden low against the waterline—Elga nodded to herself and set to her business.

  Stevedores, merchant runners, shipping clerks, and wharf rats swarmed about the busy docks as the ships’ heavy cargoes were unloaded. Shaded in the darkness of their barnacled bows, Elga went to work, bargaining charms to the superstitious in exchange for samples of untested seedpods, wild grains, and dried root, whatever the sailors could bring her, all the while noting other sharp-eyed harridans working their own trades at the edges of the market. She sensed these ladies weren’t whoring, peddling, or working the scrimshander trade, these were her own sisters, all answering the same call, sniffing the curious wind back to the source, and it was not long before she fell in with their lot. They each earned
their keep by hustling in the taverns, pickpocketing crew, and tricking coins from mates first and second with their lush harlot lures, then regrouping later down the dark dead ends of broken oyster-paved lanes to swap their cribbed kitchen notes and pool their collected bundles of new mystery. Bunches of weeds and clumps of chopped stalks went into their dark variations of stewing slumgullion and red goulash as they rubbed their hands bug-eyed and busy with a simmering excitement. Buckbean, swallowwort, thimbleweed, and sweet gum proved powerful, while hobblebush, coolwort, and black tupelo offered more subtle possibilities. Elga remembered being especially proud of the secrets she coaxed and pried, over weeks, from the sly black persimmon. She stayed there by the sea for more than threescore years, working with her hoyden sisters as they labored over their exotic cargoes like bees in a honey hive: moving from candlelit garret rooms to low-ceilinged brick cellars, slaving over clay ovens, mixing, sizzling, blanching, stirring, reducing, then boiling and basting some more, all the while shouting, whispering, coaxing, chanting, and hissing out roughly hewn phrases and untried incantations, marrying the brews to their tongues, finding the consonants that harmonized and the vowels that stuck wet to the tumescent seeds, stalks, and spoils from the new land.

  Finally, Elga left the others and returned to her forest, loading three fresh and healthy mules with the bundles of her hard-wrought bounty. Now that she was done, she gave little more thought to the New World, she had what she needed. Over the years she would hear tales of European exiles fleeing persecution, vanishing beyond the sea’s horizon to build their newborn cities of God. Eventually, some returned to the Old World brandishing wordy manifestos proclaiming their right to liberty, along with the finespun white cotton and cane sugar to trade, all handpicked by their land’s ebony slaves. To her, this New World seemed like a rough stew of notions that even now, centuries later, seemed unmixed and unblended, too many of the ingredients far too strong in their righteousness and certainty while also much too bitter with contradiction. Elga doubted if she would ever like the taste.

  Sitting in the car with the American, she felt it was maybe time for someone to go find another New World, for having built their great cities all the way out to the Pacific, these Americans now seemed to stay busy by constantly running about, bumping into one another like a passel of fattened hogs who had long outgrown their shit-laden sty.

  The car pulled up in front of a building that had two men standing out in front. As the car stopped, one of the men knocked on the building’s front door and a little bald man with round glasses came out. To Elga, the bald man did not look quite human, he looked more like a white shrewmouse.

  As the little man came over to the car, Brandon rolled down the window. “What happened?”

  The little man did not answer at first, but looked over at her instead. “Well hello, Elga Sossoka.” She stayed silent. He nodded. “It is an honor to finally meet you. You must have great good fortune to have lived for so long and come so far across so many lands. Perhaps we can borrow some of your luck to change our own poor fortunes. That would be a welcome turn of events.” Then he returned his attention to Brandon. “You see, we had a serious setback. I’m afraid your friend Jake has died. I don’t know precisely how it happened. It was a simple clinical exercise, purely academic. I for one certainly did not foresee any obstacles. This Will fellow did not appear to have that much fight left in him.”

  “I’m confused. Jake’s dead? How?” Brandon asked.

  “As I said,” the little man replied, his tone a bit impatient now, “I do not know. You see, I was interrupted in my work by a group of enormous Negroes who burst into the laboratory firing tommy guns. Zoya Polyakov was with them. They killed Jarl and Malte and then took this Will away. So, your friend Jake’s death is only one part of our problem.” He began explaining what had happened, and although Elga tried to keep up, the many details made it difficult to follow. The one word that did catch Elga’s ear, sticking like a hungry tick to her ear, was the name “Zoya.” The girl had been here, only hours ago. Hearing the name, Elga’s blood flared and her brain hummed with violence. She sat forward and tried to listen more carefully. Finally, frustrated with all the words, she interrupted: “You are looking for Zoya?”

  The little man stopped talking and turned his gaze to Elga. “Why, yes, we might be, do you happen to know where she is?”

  Elga nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know. There are a few places to try. I was hunting for her too. We can hunt for her together now.”

  The little man looked slightly baffled for a moment but then looked at Brandon and smiled. “Yes, Elga, by all means, let us hunt for Zoya together.”

  X

  Witches’ Song Ten

  Oh I do, I do and I am never done

  adoring that which is the automobile.

  No, not only one, but all together,

  the massive swarm, seething and choking,

  teeming and festering, these slithering steel insects,

  black, red, and baby blue, swelling veins stiff,

  enfolding the globe in their great gray

  gaseous cloud of progress’s passion.

  Mere metal boils bubbling upon the earth’s surface,

  shuttling and speeding while oh how I adore

  being nestled inside, armored against the world,

  sinking into the plush ovum of velvet comfort.

  Our first rides were with virile old generals

  who lured us to seduction, humping us amazed

  till their hearts exploded as the tin radio played that fine new jazz.

  Yes, yes, this is truly a carriage for creatures such as us.

  I know, for you it’s your century’s most wondrous innovation,

  but it is truly no more than the same infernal tale,

  man burning for power’s gain,

  peat and straw, cow pies and corpses,

  all manner of forests torn bare,

  whole mountains chewed free of their coal,

  all this, all that, merely kindling to burn.

  Caves and campfires first, then hearths and stoves

  sooting your great cities black

  before adding a coat of locomotion steam, and now

  the inferno trapped, locked in iron, internal combustion,

  no different, not a whit,

  only wheels on gears on stone on steel,

  a new can of burning, always forward motion.

  Man inflames everything he finds,

  first squatting naked, roasting poached fowl,

  then dropping bombs from those droning trumpets buzzing high

  as the floating pond geese gaze up in awe

  at what is so coming down.

  Man was born to char the earth and

  when there’s no swamp gas, black tar, or proud timber to tap

  he sends out his canines hunting rabid far afield.

  While, awaiting their return

  he solemnly builds the looming tall pyres

  that will burn every enemy down.

  XI

  Vidot regained consciousness as he was hanging out at the end of a thread of hair, floating in a high wind. He did not know how long he had been lost in that dream state. In a way, he wished he was back there now, it had been so reassuring to feel like a whole man again, in his old suit, walking the streets of his neighborhood with two strong legs and a sure and steady gait.

  When Vidot had first watched Bendix inject the needle into Will, the flea had nervously wondered what the best course of action might be. After Will’s initial ear-shattering scream, his host had collapsed into a deep slumber, only twitching slightly, with no outward signs of pain or discomfort. Vidot had thought it might be fine to simply watch and wait. Bendix was busy cleaning up and putting things away, only returning every few minutes to take notes on Will’s condition. As the scientist finished a third observation of his prisoner, one of the gargantuan men came lumbering down the stairs. Bendix pointed at Will. “He’s been in the dream state for
about ten minutes. I suspect it will only be another five or so before Jake completes his task. Then I’ll need you to dispose of the body.”

  “Where?” asked the giant.

  “The basement,” said Bendix. “with the others.”

  This sentence set off all sorts of alarms in Vidot, as he realized the fatal danger Will was in. Immediately, Vidot’s professional instincts took over. He was thrilled. As a policeman, he had always waited for this moment, when he would actually protect the innocent from a real looming threat. Policemen generally arrived too late, not because they were lazy or incompetent but because nobody ever called them until the window had already been smashed, the blade had been stabbed, or the head crushed. By the time he and his colleagues arrived, the safe was bare, the blood was cold, and the only thing left for him to do was dry the tears, collect the clues, and help sweep up the shattered glass. This did not bother many of his peers, who were happy enough to simply cash their checks and go home, but Vidot lived perpetually on the balls of his feet, waiting for that desperate moment when his sense of duty and honor would be called into action. He longed to leap in front of a speeding car to save a heedless child or push a bystander out of the path of an oncoming bullet.

  What could he do? His options here were even more limited than the dutiful police dogs that offered no more than sniffing, barking, or bites. Still, his sense of urgency was strong. Which is why, though he knew it was an insane and potentially even suicidal act, Vidot the flea did the one thing he could do: he valiantly and forcefully bit into the flesh of Will’s skull, sucking up his dangerously drugged blood and plunging himself into the strange and mysterious world below.