Storyteller

by David Crossman

  The voices were getting closer. Panic seized her. She had no idea how to explain what she was about to do. Even if the soldier spoke Czech fluently, he wouldn’t understand. He would simply have to have faith that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he would save himself if he would only follow Tomík.

  She grabbed Tomík by the collar and pulled both his shirt and undershirt off over his head. Tomík began to laugh. She then undid his belt and pulled his pants down.

  “I say! What’s all this in aid of?” said the soldier, inferring that she expected him to follow suit. “I couldn’t possibly . . .”

  Tomík was naked and nearly dancing out of his shoes, which she removed as he hopped alternately from one foot to the other, clapping his hands. When the last sock was off, without a word, so was Tomík, bounding toward the forest, and freedom.

  “You go with!” Marikya begged, knowing there wasn’t a second to waste in trying to explain. “Run away!”

  So urgent was the appeal in the woman’s eyes, and so evident the impending threat, that the soldier, against all his better instincts, hurried off up the field in the footsteps of the village satyr. Marikya didn’t wait to see them to safety. She ran into the house, back into the bedroom, and removed every sign of the room having been occupied by the Englishman. She emerged from Emika Postik’s back door just as the mob arrived at the front and, emptying a basin of bloody water on the flowers near the pig sty, went home by the river path.

  The German soldiers rumbled into town in two tanks, grinding to a halt in front of the knot of frightened locals. Their commander, a lieutenant, climbed down and assumed an authoritative stance. “You are keeping an English paratrooper for us, I understand.”

  The townsfolk looked at one another in astonishment.

  “He is here?” said the lieutenant, pointing at the house and casting a sharp glance at Kozytz who had wormed his way to the front of the crowd. Kozytz, nodded sheepishly. Someone in the crowd cuffed him sharply on the head. It was evident the boy had informed the Germans of the paratrooper’s presence in the village prior to warning the people of the enemy’s advance. All that acrimonious debate, which had shown them at their worst, had been for nothing.

  The lieutenant gestured toward his men and jerked his head in the direction of Postik’s hovel. Immediately they dropped to the ground and went inside. Seconds later they emerged with nothing to show for their effort. “Nothing, lieutenant. There is no one there.”

  The villagers were alarmed, but too fearful and confused to say anything.

  The lieutenant leveled an angry glare at Kozytz. “Did you lie to me, boy?”

  “No!” Kozytz cried. He, too, ran inside, but emerged more slowly. “He was here!” He cast beseeching eyes at his fellow townspeople. “Tell them, he was here!”

  The villagers murmured and mumbled and scuffed their feet in the dirt and made way for Father Hajl, who had been on the periphery of the crowd, to come forward as their spokesman. “Could you describe who it is you’re looking for?” he asked calmly.

  “What’s to describe, Father?” said the German. “A man fell out of the sky. We believe he was either dead or wounded. Are there many in the village answering this description?”

  “I have seen no such man,” said the priest. He tossed an inquiring glance around the congregation. “Has anyone seen a man who fell from the sky?”

  The lieutenant had seen many similar displays of bravado in villages and towns all over Europe. He knew how to deal with them. “Very well,” he said, scanning the topography with a suspicious eye. “I will radio for storm troopers to come and search your town, and scour this forest. If we don’t find any sign of the paratrooper, I will take you at your word and you may deal with this boy as he deserves.” Reinforcing his point, he grabbed Kozytz by the hair and lifted him half off the ground. “If we do find him, though, we will level this village, bulldoze it, and create here a concentration camp that you all will be the first to occupy. With the exception of this fine lad.” He dropped the sobbing Kozytz to the ground. “Who will make an excellent conscript for the Russian front. Right, boy? Eh? We have a deal?”

  All eyes appealed to the priest who, out of the corner of his eye, saw Marikya in the distance, picking up clothes in her dooryard. As if by Divine inspiration, he read in that brief tableau what had happened. “Search, please. By all means. You will never find this paratrooper you seek,” said the priest. “Of that I am sure. As to what you will do when you fail, we are powerless except for your honor to keep your word.”

  For three days the village and the surrounding forests were overrun with German troops who, from time to time, heard eerie laughter in the near distance. But nothing was ever found of the English paratrooper. Tomík, however, did turn up on the evening of the fourth day. Only his mother and the priest had noticed he’d been missing. The lieutenant kept his word, to which Tessa Hora stands in testimony to this day—unscathed except for the angry bite taken from the church steeple by the single parting shot from a German tank as it withdrew—and fundamentally unchanged but for the addition of a small statue of a naked boy that frolics forever in the fountain at the center of town, erected through the good graces of an anonymous benefactor somewhere in England.

  When Cummings entered Rat’s bedroom that morning, his visage displayed profound emotion, which is to say one of the lashes above his left eye flickered slightly. Previous visitors to the island had given certain indications that they found their nights in the mansion trying; some, as has been reported elsewhere, attempted to establish a distance between themselves and Sojourner’s Hall, with unfortunate results. Others had drifted quite beyond the reach of reason. One woman, he recalled, had spontaneously combusted. The mess was considerable. He winced inwardly at the memory of the difficulties he encountered attempting to remove atomized particles of blue hair and “Night in Soho” lipstick from the Persian carpet. Rat Badger had spent three nights thus far in the mansion, much to Cummings’ surprise. But had he survived the fourth?

  “Good morning, sir,” Cummings ventured. Rat was sitting up in the rustic bed, staring at the frameless mirror hanging by a wire from a nail on the wall in which he endeavored to see some modification in the reflection of his soul.

  “What do you think?” he said, directing Cummings’ attention toward the mirror. “Does it look any different to you?”

  Cummings ignored the invitation. “I regret, sir, I cannot see what you see.”

  “No?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But, you know what it is?”

  “I am reasonably comfortable with my hypothesis, sir. Yes.”

  Rat pondered. “It still looks like something the cat puked up. But . . . I don’t know. There’s somethin’ different. I think it’s gettin’ better.”

  “That is a good sign, sir.” Cummings opened the window, admitting a wisp of fog that briefly took on the appearance of the popular singer Caruso, then dissipated. “Interesting.”

  “Say what?”

  Cummings hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. He recalled himself. “You had a pleasant night?”

  Rat wasn’t sure. “These dreams,” he said, recalling his most recent experience as the mother of a retarded Czechoslovakian boy named Tomichya, “where do they come from?”

  “Oh, they are not dreams, sir.”

  “Of course they are,” Rat protested.

  “You misapprehend, sir. The experiences you have had had thus far have been entirely real in their most important aspects.”

  “Which are?”

  “Not for me to say, sir.” Cummings was troubled by the image of Caruso. “You seem to have eaten the begonias. Shall I remove them?”

  Rat wasn’t listening. His thoughts were elsewhere. “You know, Mamie scrubbed floors to put food on the table.”

  “Mamie, sir?”

  “My grandmother. She raised me.”

  If Cummings thought it best that Mamie not put that particular achievement on her resume, given t
he outcome of her effort, he didn’t say so. “Indeed, sir?”

  Rat was reviewing certain events in his personal history. “I wasn’t easy on her.”

  Cummings inferred this was an understatement. He cleared his throat in a conscience-pricking manner.

  “I was hell on her,” Rat confessed.

  “The observation does you credit, sir,” Cummings replied. Once again it was night and once again, as had become the custom, he was gently folding Rat beneath the covers and fluffing his pillow, such as it was.

  The activity aroused Rat from his musings. “Don’t tell me, I missed another day.”

  “As I said before, sir, you don’t miss them. In fact, you enjoy them thoroughly. The petit fours were an improvisation I hadn’t anticipated.”

  Rat didn’t know what the butler was talking about. “One of us is crazy,” he opined.

  The room had changed. No longer a nondescript European hovel, he was in an even less descript room about the size of a prison cell. An anemic light filtered through a single window set in the thick mud-clay wall, failing to make much impression on the oppressive darkness. It was stifling hot and the smell of rotting flesh was the only furniture in the room. As Rat’s eyes became accustomed to the dark, they nervously searched for the mirror he knew was there, somewhere. A thick fog poured over the windowsill and amid its tendrils he saw a piece of broken glass propped between the floor and the wall. There, in place of his own reflection, he saw that of an old woman. As his brain succumbed to her consciousness, he knew that she was Indian. A leper. Despite the burdensome heat of Calcutta, he was overcome with a chill. He pulled the ragged burlap blanket close under his chin.

  Cummings couldn’t make sense of Caruso, but it would be pointless to say so. He left the room with the uneasy feeling that Rat was about to learn the difficult lesson of . . .

  Peopling Dreams

  The fourth night

  The woman was Ranidya and she was dying. She had been dying most of her forty-eight years. That is the curse of leprosy: like the grave it consumes the flesh in bits and pieces; unlike the grave, it doesn’t wait upon death. Ranidya was not afraid of death, it was a place crowded with those she loved, and much of her own body had been sent on before her. With the remaining fingers of her left hand, she clutched the crucifix the Polish priest had given her—her only possession. It nestled comfortably into the impression it had long ago made in her palm. Her mind was clear, all her pain and discomfort were so familiar she hardly noticed them any more. Soon one of the Sisters of Mercy would be by with soup. If it was Friday, there would be rice. Was it Friday?

  Rice. Her mind sifted gently back through the years and came to rest on the image of her mother, not much more than twenty at the time, winnowing rice in the soft, warm breeze of Rajikuli. That was the year Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of good fortune, had mocked their prayers for an end to the drought by sending floods that swept away all they had. Long ago, under the Raj, the family farm had been one of the finest in the region. She could almost hear her father’s voice recounting memories of that lost grandeur. Those memories were the place he found his comfort—for there was none in the present, nor any promise for the future—and they brought brief life to his weary eyes. Gathering his family ‘round the fire at the end of another back-breaking day of toil, he would summon those ancient generations by name. He would speak of their celebrations and festivals. The pujas—prayers of supplication—they would perform for the gods, with the burning of ghee.

  “I knew a family once who sacrificed a goat! And the weddings! Oh, you should have seen. Every daughter of the family was assured a splendid dowry of linen and land, yes land! And rupees by the fistful! I am not lying! It was so!”

  Mother would smile a melancholy smile and count out the rice for her children, grain by grain. She knew nothing of those days. She was the wife of Hajim, poorest of the poor, whose inheritance had long ago been divided and subdivided by successive generations until all that remained was the hut by the river’s edge, and a share in the harvest of the community paddies. Hajim’s wealth resided in his loins, which were fruitful. Six children. Six mouths opening to six bellies, six canyons of want whose only hope of filling were the morsels that fell from the overladen tables of the past.

  When the floods receded, it was as if they had swept away the past as well. Hajim no longer spoke of it. He hired himself out as a mule—the name his neighbors on the hill had for those who worked as little more than mindless beasts of burden—for a handful of rice and a cup of milk a day. A handful of rice that would not feed one man, divided among eight hungry mouths. A cup of milk that would not slake their thirst and only make their bellies beg for more.

  One by one the children died, until there were only two, Ranidya and her sister, Chloe. (It was thought an English name might bring her luck. And she was lucky, at least regarding her looks, for many said she had the face of Parvati, beautiful wife of the god Shiva.) Eventually the work gave out and Hajim was forced to move his family to Calcutta. Not once did he look back at the proud and begging land his ancestors had owned; it had forsaken him.

  In Calcutta he found work pulling a rickshaw. For a while things were better. His daughters and his wife had rice every day. Sometimes twice. Even meat once a week! But the long hours of pulling the rickshaw through the crowded streets took their toll. There were other men, stronger and younger—also refugees from the countryside—who competed for trade. They could pull faster. That was the thing, you see. To pull faster. This meant more custom. More custom, meant more money, and this is what the owners of the rickshaws wanted.

  Hajim’s rickshaw was decrepit, yet he was forced to pull it farther afield to find business. Which meant farther into the slums, away from the neighborhoods of the British and other foreigners who paid well. Greater distance for fewer rides and less money.

  Every day, though, there would be rice. And meat once a week. How could Ranidya or Chloe or their mother know that he no longer ate? He would tell them he had taken his meal in town. He would describe in mouthwatering detail how this client or that had fed him bread and cheese. And fruit!

  “Yes, fruit! I am not lying! I am so full!” he would pat his sunken belly. “Eat, my children. Eat, my love! Have more rice!”

  Ranidya had been overwhelmed by the city at first. Sitting dumbfounded on her straw mat in the few square feet of sidewalk they had appropriated as their home, her senses had been unable to distill meaning from the cacophony of sounds. The sights were, to her, like those she had seen in a piece of balled-up foil she had found once: tiny shining canyons of confusion reflecting some of everything, but all of nothing, all blown up to a size big enough to live and breath and walk in.

  In time, though, she acquired city eyes and ears. Eventually she could define every infant by its cry, every animal by its cluck, crow, or grunt, every person by their voice, every child by its laughter, every rickshaw and bicycle by the squeak of its wheels. And soaring above them all was the Voice. Someone in the upper story of the building across the street had a gramophone and beginning just after sundown every day, they would play it. Western music. It was queer and seemed confined, as if the imagination of the composers was constricted by rigid rules. But then there was the Voice. When the Christian priest had struggled to explain God to her, she had automatically attributed to Him that voice. It would rise to madness, fall to whispers, note after note surging and leaping up a ladder to heaven, thrilling the rowdy street to a brief, reverent silence. The things that strange music defined, she couldn’t say, any more than she could say what delicacies were signified by the aromas that now and then wafted from the kitchens of the fine homes across the river, but whatever they were, they were wonderful.

  Later she learned the Voice had a name. Caruso.

  When Hajim fell sick, the rickshaw owner gave his vehicle to another man, someone equally desperate, someone who, like Hajim, had long ago stopped feeding his dreams.

  For long days Hajim lay on his c
ardboard mat, strength and life oozing from every pore. Soon the rice gave out. There was no meat that week. What food there was Mother got by begging. When she would leave in the morning, Hajim would turn his face toward the curb and weep. Ranidya knew things were not good.

  One day a man came and talked to Hajim. It was a man Ranidya had often seen in the streets, well-dressed and well fed. He must care a lot for the sick, she thought, for he spent much time among them, talking to them in whispers. They called him the bone man. Ranidya didn’t know why at the time. For several days he had passed by, and would look at Hajim with a question in his eyes. Hajim would shake his head and the man would go away. What this communication meant, Ranidya had no idea, only that Hajim had refused the offer in the bone man’s eyes adamantly at first then, as days dragged by, with less ardor. Until one day when the unspoken question came, Hajim hesitated, then nodded. Then the man came and spoke to him, and gave him some money.

  What a feast they had that night! Ranidya had never had such food in her hand. Meat? Yes, chicken and lamb! And rice! And fruit! And all from talking to the bone man. Why hadn’t Father spoken to him earlier?

  Hajim regained his strength and got another job pulling a rickshaw. Not as fine as the first, though. And heavier. He couldn’t pull it as far. Or as fast. Or as long. He died in the street, still yoked to it. Several men descended like crows and fought over the vehicle and the strongest or the wiliest trotted off with it to tell the owner. He would be hired in Hajim’s place.

  The bone man came by that evening after the family had collected the body and, in the midst of their mourning, spoke to Mother. She wailed when he told her the arrangement Hajim had made, but she took the money he gave her. She had no choice. For a long time she and her daughters followed the cart through the street, wailing. There would be no pyre for Hajim. No honor in death. He had sold his skeleton to the bone man. Medical schools in the west paid well for skeletons.