The Gentling Box

by Lisa Mannetti

  ***

  We’d ordered another round of drinks but they sat untouched before us. I pulled my dark gray coat tighter around me, not knowing if the cold I felt was from the lateness of the hour or the hideous tale.

  “She’s haunting the cemeteries because she’s trying to find out if there’s a way to take the life of one who never claimed it,” Joseph said in a low voice.

  “Can she?” I asked, my mind suddenly seized by the sound of that thick inhuman growl, Ask of me what you will.

  Joseph shook his head. “No, but her powers are great and she’ll try to convince someone to claim it. Someone young, beautiful.”

  I nodded, realizing it was something of a strain for Anyeta to maintain an illusion constantly. In her sleep, I’d seen the real shape of the body she’d taken—gross, obese. Zahara was nearly an old woman herself.

  “I think she’s also trying to find out if she can take a life without dying herself,” Joseph said. “She had enough of a taste of that torment when Zahara stabbed her.”

  “Is that possible?” I tried to work it out. How could she escape? I thought of those poor wretches who spoke to themselves on the streets, seemed to change personalities. Some called them mad, others said they were possessed—an icy chill suddenly gripped me, and I shuddered.

  “That I do not know,” Joseph shrugged. “We can hope.” I saw he was thinking now of Mimi. She would face that endless torment unless she found her way into someone else. An air of gloom seemed to descend all at once on the three of us. “I only know that you must go back to Anyeta—”

  “She saw me in the tomb—”

  He waved away my protest. “And yet, she has a hold on you; Anyeta knows that you can be turned to her own purpose. She will use you to lure another.”

  “Another woman?”

  “Or your wife.”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I whispered, remembering the way she made me want her in the tomb. “She—she preys on my fantasies, she—” I swallowed, seeing the Zahara of my youthful passion undulating beneath me.

  Joseph gripped my shoulder. “It’s much worse than you imagine,” he said. “Anyeta has set the wheels in motion, and Mimi has already claimed it.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw Mimi enraged with jealousy, stabbing Anyeta, the blood flying in a spray over our naked writhing bodies, sheeting Mimi’s face in a viscous red mask. I saw her tongue creep between her lips and I screamed—screamed at her to stop . . . too late. I grieved inwardly, made myself push the image aside.

  “You have to kill her,” Joseph said.

  Constantin made a grunting noise, twirled one finger in a wide circle around the top of his head.

  “No,” I said, suddenly aware, sick at the thought.

  “It’s the only way. She cannot take another’s life if there’s nothing—”

  “Oh, Christ, don’t make me do this!” I thrust my head into the cradle of my arms. “I can’t,” I whispered. My blood went cold, my mind suddenly numbed to the point of blankness. I felt Joseph’s hand at my shoulder, and I sat up. “Oh, Jesus,” I cried out, afraid to meet his eye.

  They wanted me to gentle her.

  -29-

  I was walking through the dark streets, the gentling device Joseph had given me cradled uncomfortably under my coat. My anxiety was growing, my thoughts centered on where I could hide it if she was already inside my caravan, if I saw the lamps lit. In one of the bins lashed underneath the wagon? Somewhere in the tangle of laprobes and leather harness jumbled in the lidded bench on the driver’s box? I shook my head. I was really trying not to think of all the things Joseph had told me.

  “Her ego is vast,” he said when I protested that she’d take one look at my face and read my thoughts as easily as a child scanning a first year primer.

  “She has power over you—she showed you the wolves, the attack on Lenore—even at the tomb, you saw her as the Zahara of your youth.”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I don’t want to go back! I don’t want to be a slave to her passions!” I felt disgust roil inside me like a nauseating stew. “Why don’t you do it,” I sneered. “You and Constantin, read her mind, come at her when she’s sleeping or knife her when she’s in the bath, the way Charlotte Corday assassinated Marat.”

  “I cannot.” The old man shook his head back and forth, his eyes were dark and brooding.

  “I saw you making the device! Vaclav was on the verge of gentling her when I—” I raked my hands through my hair. “When the wolves came,” I finished feebly.

  Joseph nodded, sympathetically I thought, as if somehow he not only understood but forgave me.

  “Vaclav slept with her,” he said simply. “I did not.”

  “Slept with her! What’s that to do with it?”

  “Every sexual relationship has elements of the struggle for power. My son slept with her under a thousand different guises—like an Arab lord choosing among the women in his harem. Yet there is choice, free will. In the end, he chose to see her as she was.”

  “What are you saying?” My mind conjured images of Vaclav laying his long youthful body over that old one, kissing the withered breasts, burying himself in the flesh of age. She would smell old, a dry unpleasant scent like yellowed newsprint.

  “To see her as she is—that is to break to the spell, the power she wields over you. Perhaps you will come to it yourself, Imre.” He toyed with the bright ring on his finger.

  “And how do I do that?” I said angrily. “How do I screw that old whore—without her knowing I’m not under her spell? Huh? The first time my hand twitches with revulsion when I put it in her, you better believe she’s going to know I’m not dazzled.”

  Joseph only raised his white eyebrows, gave a weak smile.

  In a fury, I shoved back from the table, paced toward the hearth. “Choice! You dare tell me I have a choice!” I advanced on him, my face close to his. “We both know you never chose.” I drew back and watched his face darken at the thought of the old memory.

  When I was a boy, Joseph was accused of adultery. His wife, a huge terrifying woman, caught him on the edge of a pasture grinding away over one of the troupe’s raven-haired beauties. In those days, an adulteress was sometimes beaten and dragged behind a caravan. In Romania I’d seen women whose eyes were a constant well of misery, their faces forever marked, their ears cut off, their nostrils slit. The kumpania shaved the head of the young woman who tempted Joseph; still, his wife and her cronies weren’t satisfied, and she was further punished by having her teeth smashed and broken. I remember seeing them pry open her mouth with a stick and battering her jaws with an enormous stone. But life isn’t fair; in most countries the wayward man wasn’t punished at all—except in Hungary, where the Roms were given the choice of being shot in the arm or leg. When the morning of his punishment came, Joseph was standing tall against a spring green hillside, looking brave, while the leader of the troupe stood ten paces away and leveled the gun.

  “Arm or leg?” the prima said, cocking the trigger.

  My eyes started. In the space of a heartbeat, I felt a flickering: Joseph had taught me a lot about horses; I recalled what he’d said over and over: When you ride, you must be one with the horse. He would need his legs to guide and work the horses, and he could wind up a cripple, but the arms and hands were important too, for the work with the reins. I held my breath.

  “Which?” the leader asked, and then I saw something I never forgot. Before he answered, Joseph’s eyes flicked toward his wife’s, her eyes narrowed, and very casually she lowered one hand slowly to her thigh. I saw the daunted look in his eye, knew what he’d say before the word came to his mouth.

  “The leg,” he whispered, lowering his head. The shot rang out, and he fell backwards, blood flowing from the wound to his knee.

  In the tavern, his eyes met mine and held me. “We both know why you limp, old man, and who chose that day,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “I let my wife choose, and she did it
cruelly, waiting until the very last second before she named my punishment. It was a mistake I regretted all my life; and yet, that moment changed me. Since that day I have let no other person choose my destiny.” He paused. “My own son Vaclav fell under Anyeta’s spell. I did not. My powers are not great, but sometimes it’s given to me to see things, know things. Ask yourself this—even if the gain of my power would be a small one, do you think during all those years Anyeta never tried to lure me?”

  I saw her gliding through his dreams, arms undulating, hips aswirl, heard the demonic sound of wild violins while she danced the old gypsy rhythms that made men grind their teeth and sweat.

  I slumped back in my chair. I knew she had tried to entice Joseph, and that he had resisted.

  He’d given me the hideous device and I’d left shortly after that, feeling as low as I ever had. Now, walking along the damp streets, his words echoed in my head. You can choose, Imre.

  The gentling cap felt harder, more unyielding under my arm and against my chest than it should have, I thought. I stopped and took it out to look at it, my breath whistling harshly out of my throat. Benign, I told myself, like all mechanical contraptions. Nothing but wood and leather and steel. It was nothing—no different from a cider press or a spinning wheel—until the deadly needles were triggered.

  And then it came to me, there was a way to catch the old woman off guard. Think of her as Zahara I told myself, and keep the knowledge she’s the sorceress whore like a small steel hidden deep inside you. I stashed the ugly cap under my coat and headed for my caravan.

  “Zahara, Zahara,” I whispered in time to my pounding feet. I crested a short rising hill, and in the distance I saw the shining shape of the caravan gleaming in the moonlight.

  Si khohaimo may patshivalo sar o tshatshimo. There are lies more believable than truth. I took a deep breath. She’s Zahara until the moment is ripe, I told myself. And then, I would let that hard steel inside me spring up and out as swiftly as a switch knife, and I would make an end of Anyeta.

  -30-

  Zahara opened the door, and as I stood on the threshold I was aware of the warmed air from inside the caravan mingling with the frosty chill outside. Behind her one lamp glowed softly near the bedside. She smiled at me and held her hand out. The movement was slow, graceless. The hand I saw was spotted, studded with thick blue veins. I swallowed, briefly narrowing my eyes, looked again and felt relieved. It was all right; the image wavered, and she was young. Just like the trick of seeing patterns in wallpaper; a flower shifts to an open-mouthed face, a leaf on a stem turns into a man leaning on his walking stick, and once seen, you can hold those new images forever.

  I followed her inside.

  The gentling device was wrapped and hidden in the folds of my greatcoat which I was carrying rolled up under my arm. She paid no attention to it, never even glanced at it and I decided to leave it on a chair, hide it under the mattress later.

  She stopped inside the darkened kitchen and turned to face me, put her arms about my neck. I felt the tips of her breasts tingling against my chest. Zahara, Zahara, I breathed inwardly; lies more believable than truth.

  “Ever think about having two women?” she whispered, then stepped back and held up her fingers in a vee, turning them back and forth. “What do you think would happen?” she asked, and my mind gave a lurch. Vague fantasies filled my head.

  My mouth went dry. Her voice whirred and hummed, “What do you think would happen? Would she kiss my breasts . . . lick me? Would you be jealous like you were of the farmer at the inn? Or would it be like paying me back? Getting even?”

  I felt my pulse racing, I licked my lips, then felt her wet mouth on mine. Her hands slid over me, one led mine under the crossed facings of the red robe she wore, guided me between her legs where my fingers touched warmth, wetness, and I felt myself go hard at once. She pulled me toward the bedchamber, a mother leading a child sleepwalking. She’s Zahara—

  Zahara—her name filled my half-dreaming mind.

  “Zahara.”

  I opened my eyes at the same instant the young woman on the bed called to her again. Her brows were plucked, her mouth and cheeks made up with a startling red, but she was dressed in the quaint peasant clothes of the region. A pale embroidered blouse contrasted with a dark apron. She raised her arms casually and removed a headdress like a long white veil banded with a blue ruffle. She set it on the bed, the train cascaded to the floor. Her waist was narrow enough to emphasize the curves and swells above, below. The girl stared at me with large liquid eyes.

  “I found her for you, what do you think?” Zahara said. She licked my ear, whispered, “She’s not more than seventeen, eighteen at most.”

  She was so young she wrung my heart. But it wasn’t her youth, not really. Her hair was dark, glossy, her face a tiny oval, dominated by the startling violet-brown eyes. She could have passed for Mimi at the same age.

  “Do whatever he wants,” Zahara said sternly, and I heard her step out of the room.

  I drew her up from the bed, put my hands into her hair, kissed her face, her mouth, the tender skin of her throat. Far off, I heard myself give a small groan: her hair, her flesh, that indefinable scent: she even smelled like Mimi, I thought, not caring if it was one of Zahara’s illusions or real. Bewitchment. Mimi, I breathed inwardly, eagerly. If I closed my eyes, it was like holding her again, hearing her again:

  Swear to leave when we no longer love, swear to love as long as we live.

  My heart’s own.

  Swear it . . .

  I heard the pleading note in her voice and then, as the rest of that old memory rose up in my mind’s eye, I saw myself transported back in time, standing on the summer prairie, watching a small herd of half-wild horses cropping lazily in the distance. The sun was glaring, the hot wind carried the dust, and I felt the small granules peppering my sunburned cheeks, filming my dry lips.

  It was the 13th of July, the feast of Saint Paul, and I had promised Mimi I would be home in time for the celebration.

  Was I going on the cattle drive? she’d asked, when I left the small town near Debrecen the week before. There was a twitch of nervousness in her voice, and my heart gave a start at the question.

  No, I told her. I’d always wanted to—some of the drives went all the way to the markets in Hamburg and Paris. And because the csikos—the cowboys—were loners themselves, they were more tolerant of itinerant gypsies than most gaje. But no, I wasn’t planning to spend weeks and weeks in a saddle, living rough among horses, cows, dogs, cattlemen. My intent was to get hold of a few horses to sell to the men who needed mounts for the drive.

  And just downwind, I thought, staring into the distance through a pair of binoculars, were three or four likely beasts. They had the look of horses that had perhaps broken through fences, and then wandered, seeking pasturage. Here and there under their dusty hides I saw dark patches that looked like healed over scars from brambles or wire; two roans had marks that appeared to be old brands. I wouldn’t sell those two, but the brands told me the herd was probably at least partly domesticated. It wasn’t exactly thievery, I told myself; more like selling a gift—everything you made was clear profit.

  Mimi had another baby started and we could use the cash. I hunkered down to camouflage the movement, wiped liberally at the sweat stinging the back of my neck. I barely glanced at the filthy handkerchief, just balled it up and shoved it in my pocket. I’d been out in the grassland for a week and this was the first prospect I’d run on—surely she would understand if I missed St. Paul’s day. I hoped she would; it was also a big day for the Roms who took up the Christian custom of feasting and celebrated the cult of Bibi, an old fierce woman whose name meant Aunt in Romany. She was said to drive men and women to insanity, to cause illness and all kinds of bodily evil. Some of the Bulgarians made ritual sacrifices of sheep and hens to appease her; but for most gypsies it was just a kind of excuse to make a feast of cakes and food—maybe put a gilt icon with a favorite Saint or the
Virgin on display. It was one day, one party; Mimi would get over it, I told myself.

  I began planning how I’d go about roping my quarry. Still squatting, I planted my elbows against my knees and raised up the shabby, leather-clad binoculars: experience had taught me it was best to decide ahead of time which three or four horses I wanted most, which would be easiest to separate from the herd of a dozen or so.

  Through the glasses I saw the gray brown dust rising in small puffs around the herd. The ground was uncomfortably hot and dry under my feet, but that was typical of the prairie—centuries ago the Turks had burned what had been forest, and all that was left was the patchy, grassy scrub that would grow out of scorched earth.

  The dust hung, tawny as a lion’s back, seeming to slant on a broad plane in the vicious light. I felt a hot blast of wind rising sharp and sudden; it coated the glass with grit so fine I couldn’t see. I lowered the binoculars, rubbed them with my shirtcuff, glanced down. Along side my right instep I saw a small pile—like an anthill—of gray brown silt. There was another banked against the sole of my left boot. The wind picked up and I saw the dust slowly swirling, accumulating fraction by fraction. I watched, fascinated; it was an optical illusion so quick it was impossible to tell if my foot was sinking into soft earth or if the dust was rising, creeping higher, burying the black toe of my boot. I began to raise the binoculars, saw my hands and wrists slicked with brownish grit like a fine wash of sepia; saw it clinging to the hairs on my skin, to the skin itself.

  Then I heard a low sound—the sound of deep pitched humming mingled with a barely audible hiss, and I thought of the singing sands in the deserts, the sound of the wind moving over the sand, the endless drone that was also a whisper. I looked up to see the sky gone dark.

  In the distance, a horse let out a nickering cry, broke into a lope, shaking its thick neck and head. I saw the dust rising from its mane. It began to run. The sky went darker; the swirling winds carrying tons of that alkaline soil becoming a roar. The air was filled with sand, a hot stinging fog. I was gravel-blind. I pulled my jacket over my head, tried to make myself as small as possible. The dust, the wind swept against me, a steady drag that pushed the grit right through my clothes where it stuck against my damp skin like a membrane of ash. I heard the engine-like sound of hooves pounding the earth, the brassy neighing of fear. I knew the horses had fled, trying to outrun the storm.