Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32

by Kelly Link

  Play back-up on this one. I’ll play it smart, promise.

  Love you.

  An excerpt from Prodigies

  a novel by

  Angélica Gorodischer

  Translated by Sue Burke

  Part One: Illusion

  1. Nothing Will Be As It Was

  On the day Madame Nashiru arrived at the boarding house on Scheller Street, a brief tremor passed through the house, unnoticed by everyone except Katja. The foundations of the world did not shudder, plagues did not break out, first-born did not die, there were no catastrophes, the waters of the Genil River did not inundate a dozen towns, black death did not arrive at Addis Ababa, the sorcerers of Yauyuos did not dream about dogs with human heads, the walls of Nerja Cave did not crack, ships did not sink in the inlets of Baffin, volcanoes did not erupt, islands did not disappear, orchards did not suffer drought, the lintels of old cathedrals did not become besooted, cemetery guards did not worry needlessly, nor did police officers or transportation inspectors or sergeants or jailors or tax collectors or judges or executioners; but the house shook, and Katja, who was in the courtyard bending over a tin-plate pan, looked at the water and told herself that there are beings with wings and yet they hide them. She did not know what she meant by that, but she was used to those sudden obscure thoughts, so she was not frightened and did not stop what she was doing to stand still and think about what it might be, what it might mean, why she had thought it, if it was a memory, something she had heard in passing, whatever it was. She already knew how, silently and unsurprised, to tell herself things that seemed meant for someone else and perhaps they were, whose meaning escaped her like a fairy, like a fearful little animal that might also have wings, hidden or not, with hardened forewings that enclosed tender, weak hindwings that the wind, even the wind could rip. She let them escape, it’s okay, you can go, I won’t stop you, the afternoon is too beautiful, close your eyes at night and may nothing foul from mirrors or from far away trouble your mind, and don’t think about it in the morning. There are beings who have wings and yet they hide them. In the pan, the water rippled as if from a puff of wind, and Katja waited; waited, rag in hand to clean the windowpanes, until they calmed. I’m not going to put a rag there—she had created and understood that thought. I’m not going to put a rag there into the winged beings between the drops in the water. She waited while Madame Helena welcomed Madame Nashiru, and the house felt suspicious, but only Katja noticed.

  The wood, the soft skeleton that persists, that can burn and rise up against a backlight when only a well and a stairway into emptiness remain, the wood was what felt it the most since it had never stopped living, or fossils, coal or ashes, never: in the beams and the doorframes, in the lintels and the parapets and the banisters, in the baseboards and the parquet, in the floors and the windowsills, in the framework, in the cheap pine of the attic, the imperfect lignin fibers twisted, created a tiny space between themselves, then stretched and returned sadly to their places, searching for each other, fitting a convex curve into another’s hollow, obedient. The trees the world over, they say, it has been said and affirmed again and again in towns and long ago, touch each other, every single one, with a single root that starts in a lake called Yize, runs seven miles and divides into seven roots that each divide into seventy roots and each divide into seven hundred roots and so on beneath the whole world including the seas, and they feed the trees. Katja was convinced, how could it be otherwise? And looking at the rough trunks in the park, she would try to see the network like veins, would look at her wrists and the crook of her elbow and then at the ground where she was walking. She had tried to tell Wulda what she knew; of course Wulda was stupid and understood nothing, her fingers were wool and her brain a stone, looking at her the way a dog would look at her while she was talking. Wulda’s head did not quiver, but the stones in the foundations of the house did in raspy voices that became a chorus in the marble in bathrooms, kitchen, thresholds, and steps at the entrance, and in white grains of years-dry mortar that slipped from moldings. The fretwork and grilles, peaks, gutters, window catches, hinges, lightning rods and faucets, wrought iron, ceiling rosettes, chimney grates, railings, door plates and fences whined as if rust were eating them. The gables and fascia, soffits, mullions, corbels, cornices, and toothing stones moved slightly. Nothing returned to the way it had been before, nothing held the same place as it had, but Madame Helena, satisfied, asked the new guest to follow her and told her no, oh no, please, don’t bother even with the hatbox, the maid will take it all to your rooms right away. The stones, wood, and metal became quiet; smooth water showed Katja’s face leaning over it, the rag to clean the windowpanes in her hand; the house breathed, walls straightened, windows cleared, doorjambs shined, and panels gleamed. Where were they, Katja asked herself, and she answered herself with something she also could not understand: in childhood. Perhaps winged beings went there. Or perhaps not: she had heard the words, but from whom? From Luduv, of course, in her ear.

  2. In Black

  As always, Madame Helena wore black, although not full mourning: often with a green brooch, a golden-yellow foulard, or piping or cuffs; but of course no lace, not even as edging, enlivened the dark outfit, and she walked a step, only one step and no more to avoid seeming rude or in any way discourteous, in front of Madame Nashiru, a guide showing the way and at the same time doing justice to the house, neither too fast nor too slow, letting the new guest take in its solidness, the good taste of its decoration and lighting fixtures, and above all the exceptional quality of certain pieces of furniture, paintings, and items of porcelain or silver. In addition and with a bit of effort, she was trying not to think too much about something highly indelicate so that her face would show only friendly interest: Madame Helena wondered whether Madame Nashiru could walk as fast as she could in case she had to hurry. She had heard or read somewhere that in Japan, mothers and grandmothers, ill-natured old women drenched in their own rancor, enclosed newborn girls’ feet in wooden boxes so they would not grow, and men planning to choose a wife made certain that the candidates had diminutive feet and selected the woman with the smallest ones. Did they line them up and tell them to take off their shoes? Did they say something like I love you dearly but your feet aren’t small enough? Did they walk down streets and through salons with their eyes on the ground looking for the feet of their dreams? Were there contests, competitions, and prizes? Did upper-class women make use of boxes that were more discrete, lush, inlaid, carved, painted, impossible to remove, inviolable, and therefore more effective than the ones worn by poor women? Did they single out some girl at school or in parties for not having feet as small as the other girls? She had not seen Madame Nashiru’s feet, hidden beneath the hem of her dress, and she would never look down to try to find out whether they were normal or frighteningly small, with her instep arched like a hump of angry flesh. Perhaps she could get a glimpse of them some night in the salon if Madame Nashiru were to cross her legs when Madame Helena was convivially passing around bonbons after dinner, or if she were to lift her dress to keep it dry as she was going out on some rainy day. Nonetheless it seemed that Madame Nashiru walked with an almost ethereal ease, and her face, when Madame Helena paused to raise a curtain or open a door, was as placid as it had been when she had crossed the entryway and offered her gloved hand. Madame Helena concluded that Madame Nashiru’s feet must be normal, that no one had enclosed them in tiny wooden boxes the day she was born, she had never cried out in pain or had tried to remove the cursed binding while some old woman with tight lips advised her with secret pleasure to be patient and endure it the way she and her mother and her mother’s mother had endured it; she could even accompany her to Mr. Vorge’s shop, the shoemaker on Rede Street who made her shoes, and watch her display her feet without any shame when the apprentice took the measurements. Which was merely a passing thought because she would never do anything as unsuitable as be seen in the street with Madame Nashiru, that was certain, calling attention
to herself in a city where so many people knew her, alongside a foreigner.

  Madame Nashiru did not dress in black: she wore a two-piece mustard-yellow suit with brown piping and buttons. The collar of her jacket was open over a yellow silk blouse. Her hat, gloves, and Madame Helena supposed shoes were brown. She carried a fox muff in her right hand and a brown leather purse on her left forearm. She wore a two-strand pearl necklace and matching earrings, pearls so purely iridescent that Madame Helena had wondered, seeing them as Madame Nashiru arrived from the outdoor light, shining in the darkness of the vestibule almost with the glow of diamonds, whether they had just been taken from the sea, if they still dripped, wet and salty, onto Madame Nashiru’s shoulders. Madame Nashiru smiled and nodded. She was obviously satisfied by what was to come in the house on Scheller Street.

  3. Treasures

  Mr. Pallud heard the women pass his door. He heard the steps of the formidable Lundgren, mistress owner madam and proprietress of the house, and other steps, muffled and faint, light but not hasty or imprudent, alongside Madame Helena’s unmistakable steps; steps on a known surface, obedient and dominated from time immemorial, steps of the type the general might take when he went out to the field to count the dead after a battle while he awaited the arrival of the king who came to congratulate him for the success of the campaign—do generals count the dead or do they assign that dirty job to their most unlucky noncommissioned officer? In any case, the general would not walk that other way over the field of battle or any other ground; he would walk with a straight back, head set between raised shoulders, eyes scornful but not moving in any direction with respect to nearby buildings, or left or right according to who may be speaking or coming to speak to him, but instead gazing far away at the misty road where the king would be arriving. The conquistadors must have strode through the New World the way Madame Lundgren moved through her house from sidewalk to garden and basement to mansard, Mr. Pallud was certain of that each time he thought about the day when he would leave: with confidence and admiration, firmly, without deceit or divine heralds or purveyors of death, frightened but with no trace of it on his face, sporting his worn boots and the fine tooled leather breastplate stained by sweat and wine: is it possible that I have crossed the sea, defeated scaly monsters, and traveled back here? Possible that the plants earth sky women rivers mission to propagate the true faith and the gold and the silver cities and storms belong to me? It was then that he decided that yes, he would leave, not only the house and the city but the region country continent and known world: to leave for the Americas, put his clothes and treasures in a giant trunk—and whose could be those other steps, those fickle and almost noiseless steps swallowed up by the rug, dampened by the walls, half-heard on the other side of the windowed door, whose?—to take a ship with a gold and blood-red keel and a sharp cutwater, a ship five hundred feet long, with an irascible captain, goblets of icy wine on the deck, confidantes at dawn, jackets in the afternoon, to debark in a port on the other side of the world, Lima perhaps or Buenos Aires; Buenos Aires, that’s it, buildings of glass streets paved in gold brown women with swinging hips cloying music next to a warm sea. The new guest, the source of the unrecognized steps, they would be hers, the new guest who had been announced by Katja, Kati-Kati, that insolent girl who cleared away the platters and plates with an almost festive curtness, they would be hers, golden steps, no, silken uncertain steps, a lady’s steps. Talkative Kati-Kati, high collar and long sleeves decreed by that Lundgren woman, but if you stretched out your hand, since in the end she was only a servant, in a move slipping down her backside toward the unobtainable, she would act as offended as if she were the Madame. In those distant countries of white cities populated by squat men smoking cigars beneath moustaches and enormous straw hats while they watched their women with baleful eyes, Mr. Pallud could win admiration for his bearing, his still-blond hair, his clear eyes, his fine white hands. He would open a store to display his treasures and set the prices so high no one could buy anything. He would drink sickly sweet coffee and liquors, traverse the streets beneath the sun wearing a raw silk suit leaning on a bamboo cane with a gold haft, and he would marry the heiress of some millionaire rancher who would of course be unfaithful but it would not matter to him. He would have friends. Perhaps he would hold some quasi-official position. He would acquire influence. He would be surrounded by mystery and very young girls who would serve him day and night with smiles full of bright white teeth. He hoped the new guest would be lodged one floor up in the exterior room that had been unoccupied for so long: he would prefer someone who walked lightly like young Gangulf, who moved like a fox, light like someone under suspicion, light like the sparrow hawk that hunted barely touching the ground, like a sloop that veered to catch the final wind, like the vole and the sundew, like venal sin.

  Mr. Pallud’s room did not face Scheller Street or the garden; it faced a side patio. Mr. Pallud spoke of “my rooms” but it was only one room with an arcade that formed something like an angle, a corner that authorized him to use the plural although it was in no way another room. There he had placed a table and around it shelves where he exhibited his treasures. He often moved them around, looked for locations more favorable to each of them when he cleaned them; he would caress them, play with them, talk to them; he would invite the other guests to look at them while he recounted where he had obtained each one, how much it had cost, how he kept it shining or soft or how he had restored it, the history he knew or imagined. The rooms, the room cut by the arcade’s jambs and lintel almost in two, had very pale wallpaper, just right to reflect the light that entered through the only opening to the outside, a large window wider than it was tall in the wall opposite the door, which was also off in the corner. This window had a false balcony outside with a stone balustrade against a blind wall below the windowsill held up by small columns, nine of them, on whose curved sides were carved interlaced oak leaves. Mr. Pallud, when he took the room, had asked that the blinds and lace curtains that covered the window be removed, and although that request had seemed strange to Madame Helena, she had agreed, thinking that it was no more than the whim of a bachelor and involved no inconvenience, no risk to leave this window bare since the side patio was closed and no one could see it from a neighboring house. This false balcony and true window were well protected from sight and noise: from coach wheels on the pavement and the shouts of children who played on Scheller Street during good weather. So, without curtains, in silence, and with white walls, the room was well-lit by day and Mr. Pallud could busy himself with his treasures and fill notebooks, now about to finish the fifth one, with sketches, descriptions, and the history of each piece. At night Mr. Pallud would light a lamp on the mantel of the fireplace, pull up a chair with its back to the circle of light, and read until late. He read the seven volumes of Heindesberg about the history of toys from the neolithic to 1850 and the treatise of Des Moines about miniatures. At times he also read a copy of The Life of Paeonius of Menda, published in Nuremberg in 1799, by an unnamed author. . . .

  An excerpt from The Entropy of Bones

  Ayize Jama-Everett

  Chapter One: The Time I Choked Out a Hillbilly

  Last time I’d been this deep in the Northern California hills I was on a blood and bar tour in a monkey-shit brown Cutlass Royale with the Raj. Now I was on distance running from the Mansai, his boat, to wherever I would finally get tired. From Sausalito to Napa is only sixty or so miles if I hugged the San Pablo Bay, cut through the National Park, and ran parallel to the 121, straight north. About a half a day’s run. Cut through the mountains and pick up the pace and I could make it to Calistoga in another three hours. From downtown wine country I’d find the nicest restaurant that would serve my sweaty gortexed ass and gorge myself on meals so large cooks would weep. The runs up were like moving landscape paintings done by masters, deep with nimbus clouds hiding in craggy sky-high mountains. Creeks hidden in deep green fern and ivies that spoke more than they ran.

  Naraya
na Raj had taught me in the samurai style. You don’t focus on your enemy’s weakness; instead, you make yourself invulnerable. My focus was to be internal. In combat, discipline was all. But in the running of tens of miles, that discipline was frivolous. My only enemy was boredom and memory. Surrounded by such beauty, how could I not split my attention? Nestled in the California valleys, I found quiet, if not peace.

  I also found guns. Halfway between Napa and Calistoga, the chambering of a shotgun pulled my attention from the drum and bass dirge pulsing in my ear buds. The woods had just gone dark, but my vision was clear enough to notice the discarded cigarette butts that formed a semicircle behind one knotted redwood. Rather than slowing down, I sped up and choke-held the red headed shotgun boy hiding behind the tree before he had time to situate himself, my ulna against his larynx, my palm against his carotid. He was muscular but untrained . Directly across from him was an older man, late thirties, dressed for warmth with one of those down jackets that barely made a sound when he moved. His almost fu-manchu mustache didn’t twitch when he pulled two Berettas on me. I faced my captive toward his partner.

  “Wait . . . ,” Berettas said, more scared than he meant to sound.

  Drop them. I commanded with my Voice. The gun went down hard. I used the Dragon claw, more a nerve slap than a punch, to turn the redhead’s carotid artery into a vein for a second. When he started seizing, I dropped him. To his credit, Beretta went for the kid rather than his weapons. I continued my run, mad that I’d missed a refrain from Kruder and Dorfmeister.