The Gentling Box

by Lisa Mannetti

  “I have the same dream,” I began, thinking their deaths last winter had left their mark on all of us.

  “But Imre, how could I know . . .”

  I stopped; my heartbeat seemed to fill the silence in the room.

  “I wasn’t there,” she said.

  “Lenore told you—”

  She shook her head back and forth slowly. “Christ, I’m afraid.” She bowed her head, her hair swung down covering her face. “The sounds,” she whispered, “the sounds. The thick chunk of stone striking stone. White sheets fluttering in the wind. And then, then, the worst sound of all.” She hugged herself. “I hear the wet snap of sinew and tendons, the soft purring sound of teeth ripping into decaying flesh.” Her head came up, her mouth was drawn down in a rictus of fear and behind the begging look she gave me I saw the shadow of torment. “Oh Christ Jesus, help me.”

  Left him for carrion. “No,” I said, feeling a sour nausea. “No, your hands, your legs, your nightdress—all clean!”

  “Are they?”

  I stared at her. None of us had been eating much, we’d all lost weight. And maybe it was a trick of the light, but it was then I saw that against her wasted thin body, her belly was blown out—hard and round and full—like the swollen gut of a man who eats meat once a year on a feast day, and cannot stop himself from gorging.

  ***

  The rocks were scattered. One of the sheets I’d used as shrouds for their bodies was caught under a pile of the stony rubble; the other, a pale yellow in the early light, was a stiff, frozen wad; it lay partly revealed by the retreating snowcover.

  I took a step nearer, and my stomach jolted. Their darkened skin had gone the color of bad wine. Constantin’s face was glazed with an icy rime. His hair stuck out in white frosted clumps. His eyes were open as if he were terrified by his own destruction. The purplish cheek was gnawed through and I saw the whole length of the yellow teeth where the gums had receded. His throat was laid bare to the bone, the meat that was left looking clotted and torn. There were a few shredded bits of clothing here and there, but mostly their bodies were still clad. There was a long rent in Constantin’s muddy shirt sleeve; it hung by threads where the tender flesh of the underarm was bitten through. Something had gone for the soft parts of both men. Joseph’s innards were ripped wide, a forgotten hunk of intestine dangled near his hip. The white ends of the bones protruded through two of his fingers, gleaming against the sere black flesh.

  Something picked them apart like carrion. My mind spun around Mimi’s dream, the night in the potter’s field and my knees buckled. I was hot and dizzy all at once. Not something, I groaned inwardly. I heard a harsh throaty caw, and a crow settled on the lowest limb of the tree, staring at me with bright black eyes, wishing me away. But it wasn’t crows that had done this. They might peck at what had been exposed, but they hadn’t moved those stones. No. Not crows or vixens or starving hunger-maddened dogs. Not something. It was Anyeta. And oh Christ, how was I going to tell Mimi?

  ***

  Some part of her knew, I suppose; she’d climbed after me up the steep hillside. I’d stood over them a long while, twisting Joseph’s ring against the flesh of my finger, my eye drawn again and again—unwillingly—to the carnage.

  I wasn’t listening for her. I didn’t hear her at first, the snow muffled her slow steps. I heard her gasp and I turned, seeing her face go deadly white, taking all of it in at once. The huge beech tree she thought she’d seen in her nightmare, the fallen stones, the ruined bodies.

  “Anyeta,” I started to say, already regretting it…when Anyeta comes out, where does your wife go? Does she watch, wait, sleep? thinking she can’t live with this, not this guilt; she doesn’t remember—not really. But she suddenly lunged forward and seized my shirtfront, clawing at me.

  “Anyeta what! What are you talking about?” The spittle flew from her lips, her eyes blazed with a hellish light. The crow flapped off, its voice a rusty squeal.

  “Anyeta—” I couldn’t say the word, I flailed about uselessly, my voice sank, “took them—”

  “She didn’t! She couldn’t have!” Mimi begged. There was a pause, and she turned her enormous violet eyes up to mine.

  For her sake I wished it wasn’t so. I nodded sadly.

  Mimi’s hands dropped away and she began to scream over and over.

  ***

  She got through it, somehow she held on to herself and told me the story—the nightmare—that was her life all these long months since Anyeta had been running with the wolves. I like to think it was knowing I loved her that gave her the strength.

  Because after that day, when we stood alone on the edge of the woods under a gunmetal gray sky near the ravaged grave she was often Mimi. But she never spoke again.

  ***

  “I didn’t know,” she moaned, her face pressed down and against her palms. “I knew she was showing me the tree in my dreams for some reason, but I didn’t know why.” Mimi’s thin hand snaked out and she clutched me. “Christ, you have to believe me, I swear it on Lenore’s life, I didn’t know!”

  I swallowed uneasily, then nodded, and she went on.

  “Anyeta—she let me see some of what happened when she killed—the animals—but never all of it. It was always distorted, like watching through bad glass. Things were wavy, sickening,” she mewled, “but you never knew if you felt sick because of the glass or because of what you were seeing. I never tasted the blood—I think she was afraid I’d kill myself.” Mimi licked her lips. “But I knew she loved it. She liked to feel the warmth, the wetness flowing over her—like a pampered woman naked in a spa. She liked to breathe the scent. Sometimes I woke up and found she’d cleaned herself off, and at first I would feel this chest-heaving relief. Then as I came more and more to myself, I would first become aware that my breath was foul, that my hands and arms were slightly sticky, and oh my Christ, I would realize she’d licked herself.

  “I would hear a low evil snicker inside my head, and the fragmented image would come through. I’d see a blood covered hand, the pink tip of a tongue moving in the soft webbing between the fingers—lapping blood.” Mimi looked up at me. “Do you know what she liked best—after killing—afterwards?” She faltered, I saw her mouth quiver, and felt an answering quiver inside.

  “To take a man—to fuck him, Imre. She covered herself with perfume to hide the smell of the blood, and she rolled with a man; sometimes biting, always licking until all those smells mingled. Sex, dirt, blood. And then she slept.

  “Each time I came up, I scrubbed myself. I ran to the river, not caring if the cold killed me. I plunged in, wearing clothes she’d stolen and bloodied. I stripped them off—watched them drift and snag on the downfalls and twigs, wash up against the rocks.” She stopped, and I saw that her face looked blank, faraway, as if the image of the swift river water could blot out the terrible memories.

  “But no matter how long I stayed in the icy water, no matter how much I rubbed myself raw, I couldn’t undo her spells,” she sighed.

  “Pain helps. She’s afraid of the hurt, and that holds her back—for a while.” Mimi paused, slowly rubbing the gauze over the old wounds in her arm. “But it’s a hard thing. It’s hard to lose yourself, your body—”

  “I know.”

  “Do you?” Her voice was very mournful, and she shook her head. “I didn’t think there was as much as that yet, I didn’t think others saw it.” Her hands flew up, pushing off a heavy fringed shawl, awkwardly tugging the neck of her dress. “Ah, God, where is it up to now?”

  “Where is what?” I asked, but she was already going on, she couldn’t hear me—

  “To think she’s turned me into an animal! To feel the stubborn creep of the beast flesh, to know I’m marked. Men will keep away,” she nodded, biting her lip, “they will.” She tore the dress apart, the buttons popping like fire crazed corn, and she looked down. “So much of me gone. Do you see it?”

  My breath choked in my throat, my vision blurred and for a second,
I did. Her chest was covered with a mat of thick black fur. Here and there, grayish patches of skin shone through. I saw the breasts had gone completely flat, shrunken to a row of small pips low on her belly. They can’t be nipples, I thought wildly. She moved her finger through the mat of hair. “Six, now,” she said. “Like a dog.” Her voice was bitter.

  Restlessly, she yanked at the hem of her skirt, and I saw the narrow feet of an animal drowning in a woman’s leather slippers, the white stockings slipping down and the black satin ribbons tied and wound over a pair of hairy cocked ankles. The knees jutted like haunches. “Ah. I should’ve known you’d seen it over the last few weeks,” she said, “by my walk.”

  My vision dimmed, and I tried to shake her. “There’s nothing there!” I shouted. “It’s an illusion! For Christ’s sake, nothing’s changed—”

  “No?” she said, and I was aware of a peculiar glint in her eye. “Nothing,” she began to laugh sharply. “But I’ve seen men draw back when I pass, cover their noses to avoid the rank odor of the animal hide—”

  “You imagine it—”

  She shook her head, whining deep in her throat. “Then the change is here,” she said, touching her chest. I started to tell her that was so, but she cut me off. “I can only drink when I lower my head to the river. I snap up what food I find on all fours. My hands will not feed me,” she said, turning them over to look at them.

  And as she said the words I saw curved black nails, palms that were dark pads sprouting tufts of thick hair. Her tongue rolled out of her mouth, saliva glinting on the strong white teeth.

  “No,” I whispered, shaking my head clear, seeing the image waver. “No. It’s an illusion. Don’t let her infect us both.”

  “Keep Lenore away from me,” she said, suddenly canting her head, then listening—as if she heard a low noise carried on the wind. Or, I thought, groaning inwardly, caught a sudden whiff of scent from the open grave.

  “God has seen fit to punish me. How well it suits the crime! An animal shape for animal deeds.” She nodded.

  I stared, relieved to see Mimi, to see a woman’s shape. But I couldn’t put away the impression that her voice was a deep rumble in the well of her throat, or that her eyes had gone from their startling violet to a muddy brown that filled the sockets completely. I glanced up suddenly alarmed. Her eyes—the whites are gone—

  “Like a dog,” she muttered. “A carrion eater that feeds on anything it finds.” Her face went blank and she lapsed into silence.

  I saw her walking slowly back toward the caravan, her hips swaying crazily over ankles that looked unsteady. She took the mincing steps of some four legged creature trained to get up on its hind end, and my heart gave a lurch. I wanted to forget that pain. I made myself get busy, and I began piling the thick stones—one above the other—over Joseph and Constantin.

  Anyeta had used the vision of that eternal unrest—of lying paralyzed with the cold weight of earth—to push Zahara aside. I thought at last she’d found the thing she needed to wreak her destruction on Mimi, to break her. A small rock rolled down the sloped side of the cairn, and I put it back.

  With a pang I suddenly recalled the day Joseph had put Mimi into the trance. I saw Anyeta grinning, heard that evil snickering voice. First animals. Bite deep. The blood fills your mouth. First animals. Then children.

  “And then! and then what?” the old man had cried out commandingly.

  I saw her face go sly. And then we will see what the other one turns into . . . she chortled.

  I remembered Joseph, his eyes hooded, his thin fingers tented as he sat considering. Anyeta will use the secret byways of the mind to burrow deeply, to get at your wife’s dreams, her fears.

  The memory faded. Joseph had been right, of course. Mimi was tormented, a broken thing. I recalled hearing as a child that Romanian gypsies turned their enemies into trained bears, and it always made me sad to see one performing its slow parade of tricks, the red leather collar around its neck, its huge paws shuffling. As a child, I always looked for—thought I could detect—a terrible grief behind a trained bear’s eyes, the desperation of the human mind; dimmer perhaps but still aware. It was only a legend, I’d always thought, and yet here was Mimi locked inside an illusion that might as well be real.

  For the first time, I understood the lure of the hand of the dead. Anyeta was sweeping over us all with the relentless savagery of a conquering horde. There was only me—and Lenore. If I owned that power I would make that she-bitch pay—for this, for everything! Angrily, I shoved the last few rocks back in place, finishing off the crude structure.

  My gaze fell on the deep carving centered in the broad gray trunk of the copper beech. Through the bitter winter months the scar had gone dark and dulled. “Ah Christ—Joseph, Constantin, I need help, I need you to help me protect my little girl,” I said aloud, but there was nothing. Nothing left but the mute jumble of timeworn stones and the bitter knowledge of how they had been desecrated.

  There were gypsies—even gaje, I knew, who kept vigils over the graves of their loved ones for months on end to protect the remains from the resurrection men. If they could not keep watch, sometimes they filled the graves with chaff, because after body snatchers excavated, they used crowbars to pry open the coffin lids and pull out the corpses. But the chaff was soft: the grave walls collapsed, and there was no leverage for the resurrectionists to break through. It was a hideous fate; the remains were sometimes sold to unsavory medical men. In backwater countries the body parts were coveted, the eyes, fingers, even genitals hacked off for magic and charms. But what had happened to Constantin and Joseph was a thousand times worse. It was true that I had not been able to bury them properly in the frozen earth, that even if I’d guessed what would happen, I’d had no grain—but neither had I kept vigil—except perhaps in my heart.

  And more than anything in the world, at that moment, I wished I’d never used the acid, that I might press the glittering ring on my finger and hear the old man’s voice. And draw whatever small comfort might be there.

  Part 4

  _____________________________________

  Lenore

  All men kill the thing they love.

  —Oscar Wilde

  -50-

  A month later the graves were still undisturbed. The light was graying toward dark when I started back to the caravan. Above the treetops I could see a milky film of smoke from the chimney. And as I approached, my feet getting wetter, sinking into the soft spring mud, I could see the yellowish glare of lamplight. I paused briefly, realizing there were none of the usual pleasant associations of going home, of going inside where it was warm, where dark and cold were kept at bay. Now moving closer, I saw how the green curtains had gone sun faded and pale. They had a ragged tattered look. The wagon itself slouched to one side. My eye fell on peeling paint, a cracked window I’d mended hastily one afternoon with cardboard that had turned mushy and swollen. Looking at it, it was hard to believe I had I preferred staying in the caravan; but I’d been reluctant to spend the winter the way some gypsies did, in a clay hut covered with branches, or in an earthen cave hollowed into a hillside. I stood in the shadows, breathing fast, my heart quickening—although at first I couldn’t have said why.

  The wind shifted and I heard the metallic pi—ping! of two rusty tin plates I’d wired up (thinking to myself when a poor man has too much time on his hands he gets to fooling with junk and castoffs) as a makeshift gong to call Lenore in for suppers—

  —and then I had it. My mind drifted back to the first day we’d come to Romania, to Anyeta’s dirty junk filled wagon, to the old fear I had of living in a wretched cave, to the first time Mimi and I had gone to Hungary all those years ago. The caravan wasn’t our home any more. It was hers. And maybe, just maybe, I told myself, it was time to leave her country again and reclaim our own.

  ***

  Two sets of eyes locked on mine when I opened the door. Mimi’s violet eyes were cloudy with sorrow. Lenore flashed a look that sa
id she was alarmed. She began talking in a high rapid voice.

  “She won’t eat,” Lenore said, pointing first to Mimi’s hand curled loosely around a blue-speckled enamel dish on the lap of her skirt, then to a short handled metal spoon lying on the floor a few feet away.

  Lenore grabbed the full supper dish, grease congealing around the stew, and set it on the table with a bang. “I told her—her arm is all well! She can move it if she wants to, but she just sits there!” Lenore accused. “I put her fingers right around the spoon, she won’t hold it. It falls off her lap and she just sits there! Staring! If I raise her elbow, she lets it hang in space. Why is she doing this, Papa? Why?”

  I put my hand up for peace. Mimi turned those stricken eyes toward me and gave me a dreadful grin. A partly chewed chunk of what looked like meat fell out of the corner of her mouth and dropped onto the white bib Lenore had tied around her mother’s neck and shoulders. A line of glistening brownish drool oozed down her chin.

  “See!” Lenore said, lifting the edge of the stained bib and wiping Mimi’s mouth. “See what she does!” She turned to me. “Even when I put it in her mouth, she won’t eat it. Spits it out or keeps it under her tongue just moving and moving it around—like some kind of crazy cow—” Her voice hitched. Lenore’s hand went flying up to her face and she began to cry.

  Mimi’s eyes met mine. You see how it is, the haunted look said. What can I do? I won’t eat in front of her. You know why, Imre.

  I smoothed Lenore’s hair, her swollen blotchy cheeks, then cradled her against me. “She can’t help it, sweetheart.”

  “Why not?” Lenore said into my chest. “Why can’t she help it?” Lenore asked, smudging the back of her hand against her eyes. “She goes out at night—”