Still

by Charlee Jacob

  “I’m sorry, Miss Snow.”

  (I’m sorry, Agnes. And Rosaluna’s nameless newborn. Your darkness remains without the epitaph SOLVED.)

  No, he studied the cases as yet without resolution, still trying to unearth the truth. And he mourned for every one of them, especially those who were mysteries and the orphans of mysteries. Because they were his and he owed them this.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 2

  “In Greece children born on Christmas Day are doomed to become Vampires in punishment of their mother’s sin of being so presumptuous as to conceive on the same day as the Virgin Mary. During their lifetime such children are known as Callicantzaros, and in order, if possible, to obviate further developments it is customary to burn the soles of their feet until the nails are singed and [thus] their claws clipped.”

  —M.D. Conway

  Demonological Devil-Lore

  1949

  Private Robert Soloway went away to serve in World War 2, then stayed for the Berlin Airlift. In 1949 he brought his war bride, Katrin, home with him to Los Angeles. The poor, overcrowded district they lived in was called El Vagabundos—but most just called it The Vagabonds. In the ’30s the place had been overwhelmed with people fleeing the Dust Bowl. Many of these vagrants ended up living on the street. While Robert at least could get an apartment, his young wife couldn’t help staring at those who were displaced.

  A young woman with very little English, Katrin gave birth to their son at the end of the year. They named him Robert Jr. The baby’s hair and skin were so white, he seemed to glow like a Christmas angel. He was given the nickname of Pearly.

  ««—»»

  1951

  Robert Soloway left his little family to serve in Korea. In the two years he’d indulged himself being a civilian, he’d only managed to teach Katrin a few words of English.

  He never did press her too hard for it. He knew about the terrible scar on the back of her head, buried under blond waves—an injury from the stock of a rifle. She had other scars on her breasts and around her hips, but it was the crack in the skull that isolated her. Now, leaving her alone with a baby, he wondered how she’d manage. But he had to go fight. He felt his main obligation was to his country. Without a strong nation in a free world, all the English one might learn would be pretty useless.

  He screwed her hard the night before he left, knowing it had to last them both a long time. He was proud she didn’t cry when the morning came and he said goodbye. But he had to admit he’d never seen her cry. Nor had he ever seen her cross. Sad, yes. She was usually that. But he’d always known why.

  “Try to make some friends, Katy,” he encouraged her. “No one makes it all alone.”

  Lots of Californians had blond hair and blue eyes. But with her language problem, Katrin felt virtually ostracized. She tried hard to understand and to speak differently. Was there really a time in her life when she spoke ten languages fluently? That only seemed like a dream, the way we do all sorts of things in dreams we can’t do when awake—like fly.

  Many of the residents in The Vagabonds had lost husbands and sons, drafted to serve in World War 2. Having too little to begin with, they were less willing to be forgiving of the enemy.

  Katrin felt their distrust and hatred. She stayed very meek in her dealings with people in the neighborhood, in the grocery or at the post office saying oh-too softly, “Ik spreek geen Engels. Ik begrijp het niet. Kunt u mij helpen?”

  Asking for assistance but only rarely receiving it.

  ««—»»

  1953

  Robert Soloway Senior died while serving in Korea, only one month before the armistice was signed. His body was shipped home but they wouldn’t let Katrin see it. She set Pearly on top of the coffin, whispering to him, “Vader…vader…”

  Soloway left a small pension to his wife. It got them by. Katrin couldn’t get work anywhere and was very lonely. She had no friends, her only companionship being her boy. She liked animals.

  Pearly had seen her feeding milk to stray cats and bits of tinned meat to stray dogs. He had also seen them go to sleep, never to wake up. Sometimes he pet them until they grew stiff. He wished he had one at home to play with.

  Katrin would remember what her husband told her before he went away. “No one makes it all alone.”

  But in Europe, even when surrounded, she’d often felt alone.

  “T’is sad ting to be honger and to haff nobody in vreselijk world,” she told her son. “Peace beter. T’is vriendelijk, ja?.”

  She’d hold Pearly and he’d sense the slight tremor in her body, running through her like an electric wind.

  ««—»»

  1954

  Pearly followed his mother as she started to show her mercy to the hobos who hung out in the park or drank cheap wine all day in the alleys.

  “Hey, it’s Lili Marlene!,” they’d cry when they saw her coming. They sang the old German song, or at least hummed it if they didn’t know the words.

  They lined up obediently, courteously as she took sandwiches out of her handbag to give to them. Or gave little cupcakes with yellow icing which she baked in the dingy fifth floor walk-up. Not everything was dosed, only one here and another there. It was mercy’s own lottery.

  Thin and pale, she always dressed in black which made her blond hair seem to be the color of bone.

  Pearly thought, she’s beautiful.

  He’d seen the bums sleeping in the park, sleeping in the alleys. Some of them growing stiff and finally smiling so big the grins threatened to split their faces in half. He knew she’d given some of them peace and that they were happy for it.

  ««—»»

  1955

  No one in The Vagabonds (except, apparently, for the vagabonds themselves) liked the Widow Soloway. They considered her stuck-up, an Aryan monster who ought to have perished when the Russians stormed Berlin. They saw her refusal to adopt the language of America as disdain, after living there for seven years. Mrs. Schur confronted her one afternoon as Katrin and the boy were buying cans of deviled ham and day-old bread.

  “I lost my husband and two sons in the war. And we had relatives who were gassed at Dauchau. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but your late husband turned traitor the moment he brought home an enemy for a wife. Now that he’s dead why don’t you move back to Germany?”

  Katrin’s face grew whiter than usual, almost as shining as her son’s. She might not have understood everything Mrs. Schur said, but she had the gist of it. She shook her head slowly, replying, “Ik kom uit Nederland, niet Duitsland.”

  “I can’t understand that Nazi crap, you skinny bitch,” Mrs. Schur snapped.

  Five-year-old Pearly stepped protectively in front of his mother. “She says she’s not German. She’s Dutch.”

  Mrs. Schur sneered as other people gathered around them. “Oh, yeah, sure she is. And I’m the queen of France.”

  This made the unfriendly crowd laugh.

  “Yeah, well it’s a good thing my mom doesn’t understand much English, so I can tell you what a crotch-nasty smelly cunt you are without embarrassing her,” little Pearly retorted.

  “You little bastard, somebody ought to wash out your mouth,” some guy said. “I never heard such talk from a pint.”

  “You volunteering to do it?” Pearly demanded, his own silvery hair standing on end, he was so mad. “I’ll kick you in the nuts so hard they’ll be snot in your nose.”

  “Nee, kind!” Katrin laid a gentle hand on his shoulder to silence him. Then she shrugged and apologized to the others. “Het spijt mij!”

  She gave her shopping basket to her son and rolled up one black sleeve. There were stark numbers tattood on her arm.

  “Bergen-Belsen, dan Auschwitz,” she explained.

  From then on, when they didn’t speak to Katrin Soloway, it was out of shame.

  ««—»»

  1956

  It was December. California saw an unusual, practically historic bout of cold rain
. At least it was cold compared with what they were used to. Katrin offered sandwiches and cupcakes wrapped in cellophane to the homeless in greater numbers, an angel of mercy flitting through the storm. Pearly tagged along behind her, soaked to the skin.

  He was supposed to be in first grade. But his mother had been having convulsions lately. He’d come home and find her twitching in her bed, face a tortured mask. She’d shake so badly sometimes that the bed’s legs would stagger across the floor. The guy that lived directly below would pound on his ceiling with a broom handle, crying out, “Hey, pipe down! You takin’ polka lessons up there or what?”

  Pearly didn’t want to leave her alone anymore, even if most of the time she seemed to be fine.

  “You gotta go to the doctor, Mama,” he’d tell her when she came out of it. “Doktor. Voor morgen.”

  She’d just grin as if she felt silly, replying, “Nee nee. Ik heb een oud hoofd wond.”

  And then she’d grin and shrug one elegantly rounded shoulder. As if she wasn’t sure if even her Dutch was right anymore.

  She’d go right back to making sandwiches and cupcakes.

  It would be Pearly’s seventh birthday tomorrow. The Drago family, from the building next door, had been evicted for being four months in arrears in their rent. The Dragos’ belongings had been hauled out to the curb, pretty well picked over by the neighbors as far as anything which might even remotely resemble items of value. But they’d had a Christmas tree, a spindly thing with very few ornaments and danderous tinsel clinging to it. Katrin rescued the angel from the top for Pearly. A strange, pale-looking thing, one of the Drago kids had painted the wings a vivid red.

  He’d seen her wrap it when she thought he was asleep.

  That night of rain, when they finally went home, he could see several men following them. Their shapes in the storm made them seem to be composed out of flashing daggers. He kept looking behind him. They were always there.

  “Het is koud,” Katrin said to him and smiled, shivering for effect. “Brrrrr!”

  “Mama, some of them bums are followin’ us,” he warned, tugging on her hand and trying to point behind.

  If she saw them, she paid no attention. Getting to their building, she and Pearly went up the stairs. Pearly practically crawled because he was so tired. Katrin finally picked him up and carried him. She smelled like rainwater.

  The men came up behind them, keeping a distance. They passed one of the neighbors coming down the steps, and the neighbor held his nose. There wasn’t enough rain in the world to wash the stink off these guys. But he didn’t challenge them. He took one look at the rage in their faces and pressed himself against the banister to let them by.

  On the fifth floor, Katrin unlocked the door. She and Pearly went in. She closed it and locked it. The place was stifling after being shut up all day. She hated the closeness, the suffocation. She managed to say, “Fresh air,” as she walked straight to the window and opened it.

  She turned back toward her son, shaking. She did that sometimes, suffering a minor version of her convulsions. One of her blue eyes drooped as if she were winking at him. She half-smiled—more of a grimace as if her lips were being drawn back from her teeth with wires. She trembled, but it wasn’t from the unusual chill in the air.

  Then all of a sudden the minor seizure stopped. Her smile was real.

  “Open up you bitch!” someone in the hall yelled. They pounded on the door. “You poisoned our pal Joey!”

  Pearly ran into a corner and tried to make himself even smaller than usual as the men broke the door down.

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER 3

  “Now your head, excuse me, is empty.

  I have the ticket for that.”

  —Sylvia Plath

  Ariel

  December 24, 1956

  Nearly Christmas and there was a madonna lying dead on the pavement.

  Recently Nikita Khrushchev had told the U.S., “We will bury you!”

  Zane had thought, “Yeah, yeah, buddy. Get in line.”

  He didn’t have time for the bomb or the cold war. And this lady on the pavement…her death had nothing to do with those things. This was closer-to-home madness, a personal annihilation.

  He looked up, saw the open window, cheap curtains blowing in the wind. He counted one, two, three, four, five. Five flights she fell. At least the rain had stopped.

  A lot of people had gathered on the street, pressing in for a look. Traffic stood still.

  There were strings of lights here and there, failing dismally to make The Vagabonds look festive. About all you could say about them was that, with the street lamps, they made sparkling patterns in the puddles of rainwater and in the wet streaks down the buildings and on the windows. But Zane thought that it made the place seem to be on fire. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d see an illumination and turn, turn, thinking, Oh great, now we need a firetruck out here, too.

  From various car radios and out of the shops open late for last-minute Christmas-purchases came strains of various seasonal hymns, combining recordings of Elvis Presley doing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ with Teresa Brewer and ‘A Tear Fell’. FELL. FELL.

  No fewer than four theaters nearby. Movies were great for those with no hope, nothing else to do. One showed THE UNDEAD, another THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and a third, X, THE UNKNOWN. Creepy, considering.

  The fourth had the THE SEVENTH SEAL on its marquee. A poster advertising it showed a knight playing chess with Death. Zane made a mental note to see the movie later, based solely upon this image. Could he see himself this way? As someone who played chess (or at least checkers) with Death?

  The woman had landed on her back, arms and legs not that awry. Almost as if she’d simply laid herself down for a rest. Zane considered that most women who committed suicide usually did so in the supine position. Maybe they did it because they thought of death as repose. Maybe they did it because they believed it a plus to be found deceased yet neat.

  This lady had not set herself down gently. It just sort-of appeared so. A closer inspection—but not too close—revealed the fallacy. The untidiness of her demise.

  (This is my job, Zane said to himself. Coming in to messes. That knight shouldn’t be playing chess with Death. No game that might be unsoiled, unspoiled.)

  If he could be permitted to view himself as a modern version of this knight, then he guessed he ought to be at a game of football with Death: splashing, running, wrestling and mangling in the mud. A contest that left the participants staggering, out of breath, with stains on their clothes. Something which showed they had fought and the contention (for their very lives) had been fierce.

  Yet there was nothing especially wild about this woman in the street. Not at first sight. Her expression was calm. There was even a little smile about the lips (and it was much too soon for rigor so it couldn’t be that.) The hem of her dress was folded neatly enough around her knees. She still had both shoes on.

  It was mostly the mess from her head which snitched that she’d come down a long way and hard.

  Still, he could see that she was as blond as Marilyn Monroe. She’d had the features of an angel at the top of somebody’s tannenbaum tree. Close enough and he could tell the back of the skull was gone, but there were still wisps of white gold around the face which remained beautiful.

  The eyes were open. She smiled, sure.

  Could she have gone out the window smiling and kept on smiling until she actually struck the ground? Was it even possible that this was a cadaveric spasm, frozen at the moment of sudden death? Gravity and the full-body strike, a common shattering through the skeleton and muscles, blood clenching in the circulatory system, brain supplying a final tweak the mouth was meant to describe as a contortion yet ended up relaying as a smirk.

  Or, as if: she’d gone out the window by her own or divers hands, had realized she was going to die and a grimace began to twitch at those full lips. The split second preliminary to a scream before impact…a scream th
at never came because there was insufficient time.

  At any rate, a smile, eyes open but not staring as if in terror. She might have been posing for a photograph to grace a family Christmas card.

  Hell, maybe she’d just read that ‘Bridey Murphy’ book and thought she’d been a swan in a previous life. Swan/swan dive/swan song. Zane remembered the parties when the book was selling big time, those invited told to ‘come-as-you-were’, instead of ‘come-as-you-are’. He’d read the damned thing and asked himself whether he believed in reincarnation. Jesus, he hoped not. Come back and die, come back and die. Was it possible? He saw ghosts in his dreams. Then what reincarnated? There might be levels to the soul, as layers to an onion. A part to be damned, a part to be blessed, a part to try again. All in black she was a broken crow. Except for that blond hair…that is, what wasn’t blood red/brain pink.

  Janie was a blonde, but it was from peroxide. He wondered if his ex had changed it, dyed it auburn or let it go back to its natural fawn brown. Maybe she’d gone gray, the color of unfiltered cigarette smoke. The color her hair had always appeared to be in the black and white pictures he took of his wife in the 1940s.

  (Auburn, a euphemism for the sanguine. He wouldn’t think ‘red’ for Janie. What lay on the pavement, now that was red.)

  Zane let his gaze sweep the faces of the onlookers. It unsettled him, how many actually sported expressions of guilt. They stared at their feet, then at the sad body, then away. If they ever met each other’s eyes, they quickly glanced back down at their feet. Definitely, these were folks who were feeling some degree of responsibility. He’d seen these poses all too often with killers, nabbed before they had the chance to work up their postures of innocence and fully establish inside their own minds the excuses for their actions until they could lie with ease.