“There was, on the island’s northern shore, a monastery presided over by a monk named Hieronymous. Clara heard about this from an old woman whom she met one day in the village, as she stood watching the fishing boats set out—blue and red and yellow—in the first light of dawn. The old woman approached Clara. ‘Kali mera,’ she said, ‘chari mou.’ Clara spoke enough Greek to understand the old woman, who explained that she’d noticed Clara wandering around the island and wondered if perhaps she was looking for the monastery. It was hard to find, located on the windward coast, in a small cove. The old woman gave Clara directions. It was rumored, she said, that the monk Hieronymous had killed someone and that he’d now chosen to live out his life as a penitent. It was a crime of passion, the old woman said, committed in his youth.
“Did I say that Clara was beautiful? Because she was. And as she made her way north the following day, across the island’s high central spine of rock and shrub, she imagined the effect of her beauty on a man whose life encompassed lust and murder and atonement.
“The monastery was built out of a darker rock than that found on the southern coast, and it was surrounded by the black fingers of cypress trees. Clara arrived there in late afternoon. She wasn’t tired. Her skin was golden from so much walking in the sun, and her hair was the color of honey and hung in a thick braid to her waist.
“What did she expect? An old man whittled down to a holy thinness? Something like the ascetic Kelpius, whose portrait hung above her great-aunt’s bed? As Clara approached the monastery, the wooden door swung open and out came a tall figure in black robes. He was, perhaps, forty-five or fifty, and even in his robes she could see that this was a man who spent his days in physical labor. His face was almost black—his eyes blacker still. ‘God be with you,’ he said in Greek. Then he led Clara into the monastery, which was cold and dark. The walls were empty; a single wooden bench faced an altar upon which many candles burned. ‘Not a great artist, I’m afraid,’ Hieronymous said, pointing upwards. Clara was startled. She thought he meant God. ‘The mosaic,’ Hieronymous said. ‘You’ve come to see our mosaic?’ On the domed ceiling Clara could see the face of Christ Pantocrator; he held a small globe in his hand. ‘Oh!’ she gasped, and the monk bowed slightly. ‘The resemblance is accidental,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice it at first. Or, perhaps, we’ve come to resemble each other over time, like an old married couple.’ ‘Perhaps,’ Clara said. She stood waiting. It had occurred to her, you see, that this man was the promised twin. And if the monk is twin to Christ, she mused, what does that make me?
“But whatever communion she expected was not forthcoming. ‘I have to go attend to the hives,’ Hieronymous said. ‘You may stay here to pray’—and here he smiled slyly, so that Clara felt anger welling up in her heart—‘if that is your inclination.’ ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I belong to no organized religion. Still, I would like to sit here a moment. It was a long walk.’ ‘As you wish,’ the monk said. He strode to the door and then turned so that he was facing Clara. Behind him the sky was bright blue. ‘This is a holy place,’ he said, ‘and, as such, open to all people. But there is an anteroom—the door is there, to the left of the altar—and, as you are a woman, it is forbidden that you enter that room. I trust you to honor its sanctity.’
“Clara sat down on the wooden bench and took a deep breath. Even though Hieronymous was gone she could feel his black eyes watching her from the ceiling. She tried to focus her attention on the candles, but her gaze kept shifting to the left—to the door. ‘Why,’ she said out loud, ‘should a mystery be withheld from me, simply because of my sex?’ Her anger at the monk’s mocking voice transformed itself into righteousness. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘I’ve traveled a very long way.’ And so, after several minutes had elapsed in this fashion, she got up and opened the door.
“Now she found herself in a small room without windows. There was a chair in one corner and a box on the floor—a box about the same size and shape as a steamer trunk. Everything was covered with dust. Clara blew the dust off the lid of the box and saw that it was carved with a representation of the Anastasis: Christ was raising Adam and Eve from Limbo, lifting them up like dolls, while the Devil writhed, bound and gagged on the floor, surrounded by a flying mass of broken locks and oddly-shaped keys. She only hesitated for a moment, and then she opened the box. There was a soft moaning noise—it might have been the hinges.
“The box was filled with bones, a jumble of bones. The disorder was so complete that, at first, she noticed nothing unusual. But then, here and there, she began to see stirrings, small purposeful movements: the bones were arranging themselves into a recognizable form. At the very last, from somewhere at the bottom of the box, a skull flew up to settle on the tip of the spine, and then slowly rotated to face Clara.
“‘It’s taken you long enough,’ the thing in the box said. A string of armbones reached up and a fingerbone slid across her cheek. ‘So pretty,’ the thing said. ‘For whatever good it’ll do you. Where is he now?’
“Clara was terrified. ‘What are you?’ she asked. The thing in the box laughed. ‘You’d do better to ask who I was. The beautiful Margarita, betrothed of Iannis, whom you now know as the monk Hieronymous—that’s who I was. Who, because she dared to smile at other men, became the subject of his sainthood. Who, you might say, died to make him holy.’
“The thing raised its other arm from the box, and Clara saw that it was holding on to a small, ivory-handled dagger. ‘What do you want from me?’ Clara asked. ‘Ah, my dear, you’ve got it backwards,’ the thing answered. ‘It’s only a matter of time before he finds out that you disobeyed his orders. And then, as surely as the sun rises every morning, he’ll try to kill you. I am merely providing you with a means of defense.’
“As Clara took the dagger from the thing’s hand, she could hear the sound of the front door to the monastery opening, and the sound of the monk’s feet crossing the stone floor. ‘As beautiful as you are,’ the thing said, ‘I was more beautiful by far’—and then it collapsed back into a pile of bones.
“‘Ah, there you are,’ Hieronymous said. Clara stood, caught in the act of closing the lid of the box, preparing herself for the monk’s fury. But he was smiling. He came over and put his arm around her waist. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he said. ‘The sun is shining and it’s so gloomy in here.’ Together they walked beneath Christ’s stern face and through the front door. ‘Sit down,’ he said, pointing to a grassy rise. ‘Here’s some wine and some goat cheese I made myself.’ ‘But I don’t understand,’ Clara said. ‘I thought you’d be angry.’ The monk poured wine into her glass and handed it to her. ‘Why should I be angry?’ he asked. ‘I knew from the moment you arrived that you’d go into that room. Besides, you’re so beautiful. How could I be angry at so beautiful a woman?’ The monk leaned over and kissed Clara. She had been kissed before, but always politely and tentatively, by young men of romantic, rather than passionate, disposition. Now she was frightened by the force of her response. And so they became lovers, and the night closed over them like a hand.
“The next morning Hieronymous was standing at the water’s edge, looking out to sea. Clara came up and stood beside him, shyly. ‘There’s a storm coming up,’ he told her. ‘If you’re going to get back before it hits, you must leave immediately.’ ‘But I want to stay with you,’ Clara said. ‘That’s not possible,’ he answered. His voice was cold. ‘You disobeyed. How could you think that I’d want you to stay here with me?’ Clara began to cry; she threw herself into his arms, and as he tried to push her away he suddenly froze. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. It was the dagger, which she’d slipped into the pocket of her long green skirt. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. His arm swung in an arc and the dagger flew through the air, landing in the sea. ‘You were going to kill me, weren’t you?’ Clara began to back away from him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He laughed. ‘You pitiful thing,’ he called after her, as she walked up the hill away fro
m the water. ‘You could never hold a candle to Margarita.’
“Clara returned to America. This time the passage was smooth, which was fortunate, because she was with child. Her father arranged for her to spend her confinement with an old couple in the country; the ignominiousness of her eventual reappearance in town, carrying an infant girl, was mitigated by her bravado. Clara became an outspoken champion of free love. She explained to anyone who would listen that this was the logical result of her earlier mysticism. Union was what was important; whether spiritual or physical, it didn’t matter. When asked about the consequences, she grew fierce. Her love for her daughter was complete. They went everywhere together. The child, whom Clara had christened Margarita, was dark and wild, like a little gypsy.
“One night, shortly after Margarita’s fifth birthday, Clara was returning from a gathering at a house in a bad part of town, near the waterfront. As usual, Margarita was with her, tagging along at her side. Suddenly, out from behind a corner of a building, there sprang a crazy man—he was dressed like a sailor and had a dagger between his teeth. Before she knew what was happening, the man thrust the dagger deep into Clara’s heart. Margarita started screaming and the man ran away. ‘Mama, Mama,’ Margarita said, but nothing happened. Clara was dead.
“It was only later, while she was sitting upstairs in her mother’s room, as the downstairs filled with sorrowful and whispering friends and relatives, that Margarita found the bottle. Clara had hidden it in the very back of her wardrobe, on the floor, behind her shoes. The child picked it up and looked into it. She could see a ship suspended in blue water. It was a pretty thing, the way it swayed back and forth, and it was perfect in all its details: the masts, the decks, the miniature crates and barrels. Margarita squinted her eyes and looked closer. Something was moving up one of the shrouds. So hard to see—she pressed her eye up against the glass! A man was climbing the shrouds. He was climbing and his back was to her, and then, all of a sudden, he turned around. She smiled, because, you see, she recognized him. It was Jesus Christ. Margarita knew. She’d seen the pictures.”
Of course, he came back. From time to time, during the years following your birthday party, Rogni would reappear and tell me stories. The story of Clara, for instance, he told me on a dreamy afternoon during the summer of my tenth year. I’d been sitting on a hill in the sun, eating a piece of melon, when, from amid the teeming around me of insect life, his body gradually pulled together—a darker shape within that particulate cloud, giving off as refuse a scattering of grasshoppers.
“Kathleen,” he said, “why are you smiling? That’s supposed to be a sad story. Clara dies. Didn’t that make you sad?”
“Well,” I said, “sure. But the little girl has Jesus in a bottle.” I sucked on the melon rind, extracting every last bit of juice. “Besides, I’m happy because you’re here.”
“I didn’t get it right,” he said, looking off across the valley, where the hot white bands of the roads held the green and lavish world together. Then he turned to face me. “I’m worried about you, Kathleen,” he said. “I’m unreliable. I come and go. You ought to have some friends. You don’t have any friends, do you?”
I was so embarrassed by his solicitude that I could barely stand to tell him the truth: how I was the tallest girl in school; how I traveled its hallways like Gulliver among the Lilliputians; how my heart was broken daily by the sight of the graceful arms of my classmates, curving around their books as they climbed, without stooping, from the school bus. “Most of the kids I know are morons,” I said.
“Clara was proud, too,” Rogni reminded me. He leaned back on his hands in the grass and, for a moment, the outward contours of his body were like winds and dust in orbit around a small, dense star. Such metamorphosis, I’d learned, generally preceded flight.
“There’s Amy Gertner,” I said. “I guess you could say she’s my friend.”
Amy’s father was the Episcopalian minister in Conway; she was as unpopular as myself, so that our friendship only served to intensify our positions as outcasts. Once I spent the night at her house and it was a horrible experience, confirming my belief in the ubiquity of adult irrationality. At the dinner table Reverend Gertner presided, waving the serving fork over a platter piled with chicken parts. “Well, Kathleen,” he consulted me, smiling. “Which do you prefer, white meat or dark?” I warmed to his hospitable smile. “White,” I answered, “please,” at which he speared a thigh and dumped it on my plate. “Picky, aren’t you?” he sneered.
“Amy’s okay, I guess,” I said. “And there’s Mrs. Klink, the science teacher. She let me borrow her binoculars.” I held them up, by way of demonstration. “I saw an indigo bunting this morning. That’s a kind of finch.” I didn’t tell him that Finch was my secret name now, nor that the secret name I had for you was Grackle.
“And what about Willie?” Rogni asked, as if he could read my thoughts.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hardly ever see her. I don’t know what’s happening to her.”
Rogni got up and looked down the hill, to where a troop of Cub Scouts was making its way, single file, in our direction. “She needs you,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “sure.” I looked away, angry, to watch as the pack leader unfolded a large map, then gestured magnificently, extending his arms outward like the Reverend Gertner. When I looked back, Rogni was gone. Something like a small cloud passed across the face of the sun and I thought it was him. “Thanks a bunch,” I said.
And then the Cub Scouts were all around me, tumbling and making merry noises. “Listen up, fellas,” their leader said. “Leave the girl alone.” He approached me and I knew, from my experience with Daddy, that he was nervous, because of the way that telltale section of his jawline jumped up and down. “Look,” he said. “This is Roundtop, right?”
“No,” I said. “Roundtop’s over there.”
“Damn!” He folded the map and put it back in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said, running his hand over his crew-cut head. I watched as the individual hairs flattened out and then sprang up row by row. “There?” he asked, pointing, making sure.
I nodded; carefully I began gathering my things together into my pack.
“Well,” he said, “they never have to know.”
I shrugged and got up. “This is just a hill,” I said. “It doesn’t have a name.” I spoke loudly, so that I could not be accused of complicity, but the little boys were busy playing keep-away with one of their regulation beanies. It wasn’t until I started to walk away from them, down the hill through the dense, whiskery stems of the late-summer flowers, that I heard one of them say, “It is too her sister.”
Willie, there was no getting away from you. Grackle. Of course, no one else saw you that way; Grackle Willie, the avid flitting eyes, the fanned-out and obtrusive tail, the cheek cheek cheek passing for song. What others saw was a thin, white-limbed fourteen-year-old. You commanded admiration and censure, both of which I’d seen in the faces of our schoolmates’ parents, on the rare occasions when you would let me tag along with you into town. Certainly most of them had seen you—your body the curved bow, the taut string, the arrow itself, preparing to fly and then flying—in the production of Nutcracker last Christmas. A black-haired woman with iridescent eye shadow came up during intermission to introduce herself to Mama. “Such talent,” the woman said sternly. “You must not let such talent go to waste here.” She waved her arms around, taking in the whole brown auditorium, with its rows of folding shellacked chairs, its residual odor of disinfectant and bananas, through which wafted the alien notes of Emeraude, My Sin, Tigresse; on the walls were the murals in which dim, patriotic giants played flutes, or shook hands with Indians, or raised flags. The woman handed Mama a card. “Call me,” she said, and then walked back to her seat with that same strangely kneeless swing of leg from hip socket by which you had taught me to recognize ballet dancers. “Well,” Mama said, dropping the card into the vastness of her alligator bag. She appeared shy and embarras
sed. “Let’s not tell your father about this, all right, sweetie?” She smiled. “This can be our secret.”
The thing is, Willie, I wasn’t surprised by her desire for secrecy. I’d noticed the look in your eyes when the young man lifted you from the floor—your arms and legs extended in glowing points—I’d seen how his hand disappeared under all that sequined tulle and I had made a guess at where it was he held you steady.
Ever since your tenth birthday party, you’ll remember, our family had preoccupied itself with trying to figure you out. By day you were Willie the ballerina, your hair pulled back tightly from your face, fastened into a small knot at the top of your head; you carried the blue bag with you everywhere, in which you kept your leotard and tights, your expensive new toe shoes. You hummed in the mornings, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, one leg raised straight out to the side so that your foot could rest, like a small bird, on the towel rack. By day you were the dancing Willie, recognizable and quick; it was at night that you became something else. I think it was because you could not stop spinning—you told me once how you would listen to the grandfather clock on the first floor, how its separate ticks would fly, one by one, up into your room, until there was no space left.
“It’s not so bad,” you told me once, “when they’re still up. You know? Then I can hear good old Dad’s clinking ice cubes and good old Jack Paar. But then they go to bed. And then I’m the only person awake in the whole world. It’s like I’m never going to fall asleep. Do you know what I mean, Kitty?”
Oh, Willie, I wanted to say “yes”—I wanted so much to be like you that I would have endured the curse of insomnia, if only we could be orphans together again. But I was a champion sleeper; I was the girl who’d remained asleep when an entire set of shelves mysteriously detached themselves from my wall one night, spewing books and dolls everywhere.
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