Gingerbread

by Helen Oyeyemi

  17

  Miss Maszkeradi wouldn’t tell Tamar and the Lees which country the third house was in, but she did say that the house was located on an island, the most beautiful island in the world. “Though when I say ‘most beautiful,’ I don’t mean ‘least scarred’ . . .” The portfolio photograph was 95 percent beach, and perhaps 5 percent house . . . though at that distance the “house” could have just been a cardboard box.

  “More soon, ladies—we’ve got a tracking team on the ground out there, and if they’re able to catch up with the house, you four will need to prepare for a minimum flight time of fourteen hours . . .”

  “Catch up with the house?” Margot said. “You talk as if it stands on chicken legs and keeps running away.”

  With more than the usual edge of hysteria to her voice, Miss Maszkeradi said: “Oh, the merry dance this house has led me. This house! It really isn’t a house one can speak of unless one knows. If I manage to sell the damned place before I die it’ll be my greatest triumph . . . I’ll be an icon among estate agents.”

  Margot had only one question left. In Druhástranian, she asked: “Drahomíra, my dear . . . are you by any chance Druhástranian?”

  She was answered in English, and Harriet held her phone away from her ear to protect it from the Maszkeradi trill: “Of course I am . . . I mean, aren’t we all?”

  Tamar and Margot turned their full attention back to organizing new homes for newly assembled families. There were other houses to be viewed, and far more professional agents to deal with at the same otherwise august estate agency, even if those agents did show a puzzling deference to Miss Maszkeradi, describing her as the agency’s “ace.” Perdita was on hand to advise, but she had school too, and as she herself put it, “I’ve got this social life now . . .”

  GCSE exam time was drawing near, and Harriet had example flashcards to prepare, buzzwords to imprint, flagging attention spans to boost, and like any conscientious teacher, she overprepared to the extent that if her students slipped even half of these terms into their answers, they’d do all right. There was a surprise email from Alesha Matsumoto of the Parental Power Association too; Alesha asked about Perdita and hoped Harriet wouldn’t miss very many more meetings. So Harriet turned up at the next PPA meeting. Both Perdita and Margot tried to make Harriet promise she wouldn’t bring gingerbread this time, but she appeared in Gioia Fischer’s sitting room with a defiant look and a repeat tin of gingerbread for each PPA member. And she was welcomed with open arms and without exceptions. Eh? She’d expected to have a chance to say something snippy to Emil Szep; Emil Szep, who’d “very much hoped” she wasn’t saying his kids were bullies; Emil Szep, who’d said that to her even as Perdita lay in a hospital bed. But this same Emil Szep was overjoyed at Harriet’s return, was the soul of solicitousness, was the first to tuck into the gingerbread, and said so many worshipful things that she had to be gracious. In a quiet moment Harriet went up to Hyorin Nam and whispered: “Did something happen to Emil? He’s making me think of that man whose personality completely changed after a brain injury . . .”

  Hyorin said: “I’ll tell you later. In the meantime . . . what about us, Harriet Lee?”

  “Us?”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “Eh?”

  “Well, it looks like one thousand paper cranes and one recipe do not a friendship make. Fair enough, but that brilliant news about Perdita getting well—why did I have to hear it from Alesha and not from you?”

  “Oh—” Paper cranes and a recipe do not a friendship make . . . what was it Harriet had been half thinking at the time . . . that the cranes and the danpatjuk were two signs, but she should wait for the third. It hadn’t occurred to Harriet that she herself could bring about the third sign.

  “I,” said Harriet.

  “Yeah, you,” said Hyorin.

  “I think I owe you a coffee.”

  “And?”

  “Cake?”

  “And?”

  “A turnip that’s actually a convincing marzipan replica of a turnip?”

  “And—”

  “What more do I owe you, Hyorin Nam?!”

  “I just wanted to see if you’d keep adding things.”

  Over coffee Hyorin revealed that Emil Szep’s personality change was political: he was plotting to replace Gioia Fischer as head of the PPA. Rather than abstain from voting, Harriet asked if there wasn’t a third way.

  “Couldn’t you just take over, Hyorin?”

  “What, you want me to get in Gioia’s way at the same time as causing a problem for Emil? This is like asking someone to stand between two axes aswing, all for the sake of a paper crown.”

  Harriet saw she had some work to do. There was a third way, and the third way was PPA member recruitment. Her gingerbread came in handy there.

  As for the third house and the last last last last chance to meet Gretel, Harriet didn’t forget about that. She remembered all right, but in the midst of revision sessions and PPA meetings, in the midst of film nights and arts and craft classes (Harriet, Hyorin, and Alesha were learning how to paint on glass), Harriet Lee occasionally put a question to herself: Would I drop all of this and go if Miss Maszkeradi phoned right now and said this island house had been secured?

  Most likely yes, Harriet would go. This was Gretel-related, after all. But she’d go at walking pace instead of at a mad dash.

  One day, on her way to work, Harriet Lee saw that a shop had opened on a side street she normally crossed as a shortcut. She was running late for a staff meeting, and the display in this shop window extended her delay: it teemed with detail, like a Bosch painting, or the ascetically decadent gates that lined the streets of Druhá City. The scene was a valley-wide picnic. A river rushed around a series of bends, whispering like starlit silk, and hills shot up and dropped flat in its wake. The picnickers were teddy bears, and they were feasting on latticed jam tarts—ah, that must be what was on sale, that’s what all this made Harriet want to go in and see about—what kind of jam tart could inspire such unions and divisions among these valley-dwellers, such feats of physical strength, such breakthroughs—for instance, the intellectual one that Tesla look-alike over there seemed on the brink of?

  She checked her phone—she’d come back. Or maybe looking just once was enough; all her experience as a baker combined with years of experience as an eater told her there was no way these jam tarts could taste as good as they looked.

  Someone came to the shop door as Harriet turned away: “Excuse me—excuse me!” Harriet turned back and saw the shop’s proprietor; they both smiled. Ever since Gabriel and Rémy had first graced her bedside, Harriet had looked upon beauty as an amusing thing for nature to do. The perfect coordination of different shades of sun-blushed brown seen here, for instance—skin, eye color, short hair that waves as if air is water. This person wanted to know why Harriet hadn’t come in. She tapped the window as if reminding the teddy bears to be on their best behavior.

  “I mean—is the overall effect too twee? Do I add more bears? Subtract some of the food? I was thinking of doing that any way, because of mice. I don’t know . . . I like it as it is, but . . . you didn’t come in. What am I doing wrong?” The woman was a native speaker of a Romance language; Harriet couldn’t narrow down the accent any further than that—and another thing: there was a sudden click of precognition, on then off, the near future as a memory, there was romance with a lowercase “r” too, this woman would nip Harriet’s lower lip just before they kissed for the first time. And Harriet would like it. Really, really, and a lot. It was a slightly awkward thing to know about someone before knowing their name. So Harriet introduced herself and learned that the woman’s name was Salomea. She told Salomea she loved the window display and that she’d be back later.

  (Later, when I’m not in workwear, later, when I’m wearing a more appropriate shade of lipstick and am ready to prai
se your baked goods no matter what, later when I’ve had time to daydream about this a little bit more, later when I’m not running late anymore . . . )

  “When? What time?”

  “Salomea,” Harriet said, then went quiet. She didn’t know what to say next. Salomea opened the shop door and waved Harriet in: “After you.”

  Inside, the shop was more laboratory than toy shop; tubes and vials . . . vials of jam . . . and sparkling glass cloches through which you could see mannequin heads wearing jam tarts with a certain insouciance, as if the pastries were berets. Harriet sat down at a round table in the center of the room and Salomea assembled a selection of bite-sized tarts; as she did so, she told Harriet that bite-sized was best, that as an infant she’d waited until she had two good strong teeth and then, hello, world; she bit her way through it. “If I have a gut feeling that something will taste good I just bite it. It’s really worked out well; you’d be surprised . . . but I suppose the problem with instinctual biters is that they usually can’t be bothered to take another bite; they just leave the rest . . .”

  Oh. Still, remembering how delicious seeming biteable to Salomea would turn out to be, Harriet still found the courage to attempt flirtation. “Which two were your first teeth?”

  Salomea laughed and showed her, laughing still more when all Harriet could think of to say was: “They look sturdy; you can tell they’re pioneers.”

  Harriet tried not to look at her phone when it rang—it would only be someone from the university—but it was Miss Maszkeradi. To Salomea, she said: “Sorry—just a second—” and to Miss Maszkeradi, she said: “Hello?”

  “Hello, Harriet, are you busy? Is this a good time to talk?”

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s about the third definitely not haunted house . . . I don’t think you can count on viewing it any time soon . . . we’ve just confirmed it went out to sea last night . . .”

  “Went out to sea?”

  “Harriet, this house, seriously, this house . . .” There was a spray-mist sound as Miss Maszkeradi drew on the solace of some bottled serenity or other. “May I speak with you confidentially?”

  “Yes, of course,” Harriet said, accepting Salomea’s pantomimed encouragement to put the call on speakerphone.

  Miss Maszkeradi told them the legend of the third house, the island house. The legend began at the foot of a volcano’s bed, the volcano having lain dormant amid fields of silver grass for hundreds of years—long enough to have acquired at least six different and equally accurate names, long enough to have watched over many lives and deaths, and many changes, of which the appearance of this third house was one . . . a minor change for a mountain, but a big headache for an estate agent—

  “What year were you born, Harriet?”

  Harriet told her.

  “Right. That was the year that some disembodied voices were heard talking amid a few fronds of silver grass one night—”

  Miss Maszkeradi thought Harriet would interrupt at that point, but she didn’t. She and Salomea were on the same side of the table now, cuddled up and listening. And so Miss Maszkeradi went on to relate that the two friends who heard the voices talking were convinced at first that there were people talking out of sight—the voices were talking about building a house. They’ll be here soon, and we don’t even have anything ready for them, one of the voices said, and a second voice replied: Whose fault is that? Mine? And then the first voice said: Don’t start, I don’t want to get into this, let’s just make the preparations . . .

  Night sky, silver grass, and a scattering of yellow, green, and red dots, the cold light fireflies emit from their bellies—that was all the two witnesses saw as they overheard this conversation. Could it have been the fireflies talking? Quite a discovery, if so: not only do fireflies speak, but they speak Korean. The fireflies may not have been the ones speaking, but they do appear to have been the ones who built the house—

  “This heartless woman, selling us on a house we can never buy,” Salomea whispered.

  It seemed to the two witnesses that there had been tens of fireflies at first, but once discussions regarding measurements and positioning had been concluded, thousands more fireflies flocked to that spot and—all this is sworn to—grouped themselves according to hue of phosphorescence. The yellow team tackled the foundations, and the green team sorted out the roof, and the red team did everything else. They worked all night, and the witnesses watched all night and couldn’t identify the material the fireflies were working with. It dripped like honey but quickly set into glass-like panes, which the fireflies shaped before setting them into place. And the shaping of these panels was one of the loveliest things the witnesses had ever seen. The panels were cut with light, but not as cleanly as lasers cut. The fireflies would gather into one glowing body. There was a red team, a yellow team, and a green team—and when everybody was ready, they flickered as one and the panels were divided at the spot of the collective flickering; rough at the edges but the pieces looked very nice together once the house was standing in three dimensions. It looked like a house you could eat. By then it was morning, and the fireflies made themselves scarce. Naturally the two witnesses wanted to have a look inside this house. They approached but didn’t reach it. They walked through the silver grass for a long time, even ran, to see if that would speed anything up, but the house never got any closer. A German hiker had slightly better luck a few weeks later; nobody knows why . . . the house seems to have moods. Anyway, the German hiker recognized this as a gingerbread house, a classic gingerbread house at that, straight out of a story he’d been told as a child. A group of tourists from Kyoto who also managed to snap some photographs of the house don’t think the house is made of gingerbread; they reckon it’s made of thinner, crisper stuff . . . That’s yatsuhashi, they said. Both the hiker and the tourists got close enough to see a signboard set up in front of the house, and neither party was able to read it, though Miss Maszkeradi’s familiarity with Druhástranian meant she was able to tell them what the sign said:

  Only those who have nothing can enter this place.

  Until recently, when it went out to sea, it was said that the house didn’t really move; it only seemed to move. After all, the only thing that’s changed about it in the years since it first appeared is the overnight addition of a nutritional label that states the millions of calories the house contains. But in the year 2013, a woman whose name we don’t know made it to the front door of this house. The woman made it to the front door but couldn’t get in; the door was locked with a double lock the woman took her time inspecting. She states that only two strangely shaped rings can unlock the door of this gingerbread house. Yes, rings, the type you wear on your finger . . .

  Harriet Lee, you’re right about that house being a last last last last chance for you and Gretel. That it is and that it will be, and a long time from now, when you have nothing left, we’ll meet at that house and pass through it. You can hardly hear me right now, and that’s good. Better to listen to Salomea repeating that you’ve got to watch out with instinctual biters because they just take one bite and then leave the rest. Yes, Salomea is repeating this with the slightly anxious bravado of someone who is no longer sure that theory is going to hold up to practice this time.

  Oh, you’re definitely not listening to me anymore, Harriet Lee. So for now I’ll just say that I, your scribe, your friend, hope I’ve also managed to be a friend to all your other friends. Let’s talk when we get to the house, that third unhaunted house.

  See you there.

  (Just as I’ve seen you here.)

  October 17, 2016, Bupyeong-gu, South Korea—April 4, 2017, Prague, Czechia

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Dr. Cieplak, thank you, Marina Endicott, thank you, Sehee Choi, thank you, Tracy Bohan, thank you, Jin Auh, thank you, Sophie Jonathan, thank you, Misun Seo, thank you, Yoonjoe Park, thank you, Sarah McGrath. And I’m grateful
to Sora Yu and all at Seoul Art Space Yeonhui.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, along with five novels—most recently Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2013, she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.