by Mike Carey
The cat was not very much illuminated, her fur being jet black, but Drozde was able to see now how very big and round she was. Pregnant, clearly, and about to drop her litter. She hissed and gaped her mouth to show her sharp teeth, not at all appreciative of her audience.
‘We should leave her to it,’ Drozde said.
‘No, no.’ The girl wrung her hands. ‘Please. I love this part. You have to see.’
Drozde sighed heavily. ‘It could be hours before she—’
The cat shifted her weight and thrust one of her hind legs vertically up into the air, at the same time bending her head into her own crotch. Pale against her fur, a tiny half-liquid thing was trembling there, like a teardrop or a pearl. The cat miawled once, and the kitten was squeezed out onto the floor. Streamlined by the birth canal and the birth juices that drenched its fur, it was as blunt and smooth and shiny as the brass pendulum of a clock. The cat commenced to lick it into shape, even as a second head crowned between its legs.
One by one, five tiny shreds of life emerged and were delivered by their mother’s tongue. As soon as they could move they sought her teats, some of them squeaking like bats, others intent and silent.
Then came the sixth. It moved once but afterwards fell still. The mother cat sniffed at it, nudged it with her nose and licked it tentatively. But when it did not respond, she turned to her living offspring.
‘That’s Amelie,’ the little girl said with proprietary pride. ‘She’s mine.’
‘And what will you do with the kittens?’ Drozde asked dryly. She didn’t bother to point out that a ghost couldn’t own anything.
The girl shook her head. ‘No. That’s Amelie.’ She was pointing at the sixth kitten, which lay a few forlorn inches away from the meal its siblings were enjoying – the bounty that it would never taste.
‘She’s dead,’ Drozde pointed out.
‘No, she’s not. She’s going to be, but she’s not. This is when she was alive. Just watch.’
The forlorn little object, which had seemed as lifeless as a nail or a splinter, stirred and shook and uttered a thin, all but inaudible wail. Its mother leaned over its five siblings, now all securely locked onto teats, to nuzzle it briefly with her nose. The kitten arced its little body into the movement, like a flower following the sun.
Drozde’s skin prickled. The ghost girl’s words still made little sense to her, but it was clear that she’d known the kitten would revive. Perhaps she had some additional sense, an instinctive feeling for the edges and corners where life and death butted up against each other.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked the girl again.
‘You call me Magda,’ she said, after a slight pause.
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. Because my name isn’t a name where you come from.’
‘Well, it’s been very nice to meet you, Magda, but I think I have to go and sleep now. It’s late.’
The girl looked startled, her arms half-rising in a gesture of dismay. ‘But the others …’ she blurted.
‘What?’
‘They’re waiting for you. They won’t like to miss a night – especially not this night. You have to come, even if it’s only for a little while! You have to come and talk to them!’
‘Another time,’ Drozde said. ‘Not tonight.’ But the girl would not abandon her pleas, and in fact became more and more importunate, hanging at Drozde’s shoulder as she descended the stairs.
‘I have to sleep,’ Drozde repeated.
‘But not until you’ve talked. Silence is what breaks us, you said. You don’t want us to break, Drozde, you don’t. And the other one went away so you could come, so it has to be you that listens tonight or nobody will and it won’t count and everyone will just stand there and look at each other until—’
‘Enough!’ Drozde hissed. ‘Enough, Magda.’ Now that she was back on the ground floor again she was reluctant to raise her voice in case she woke Molebacher from his slumbers, but she had to stem this torrent. ‘Who went away? What are you talking about?’
‘I’m not to tell.’
‘And why does it have to be me that listens? Listens to what?’
‘The stories, of course. The tellings.’
‘It’s too late for stories.’
‘No! It’s too late for anything else!’
The ghost girl’s face was so earnest, so full of anguish, that Drozde had no choice in the end but to relent. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right, I’ll come. But this had better be something more important than a cat dropping her litter.’
‘It is,’ Magda promised, virtually bouncing up and down in the intensity of her eagerness. ‘It’s very important. It’s the most important thing ever!’
This time she took Drozde to the ballroom that she’d visited earlier in the day. Drozde wasn’t keen to enter. She felt she knew, now, who the others were going to be.
But the same stubborn streak, the need to prove herself unshaken and unshakable that had led her to follow Magda in the first place, made her step forward now into the cold, echoing space.
‘I’m here,’ she said.
The echoes answered her. But not only the echoes.
8
As though Drozde’s words were a signal, the shapes coalesced from the darkness on all sides. They clustered around her, much more densely than any living crowd could because their immaterial nature allowed them to overlap and interpenetrate. They were not like the ghosts she’d known before. They were like Magda, entirely human in appearance and as animated in their manner as any living people Drozde had met. And like Magda, they called her name as they advanced, hailed her, wished her well.
She braced herself for their touch, but they did not touch her. They stopped a few feet away from her on all sides, respectful of her person, and smiled in welcome. It seemed that Pokoj had its own population, its own economy. It was a republic of the dead, and it was offering her citizenship. She wasn’t minded to accept.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘And how do you know me?’
‘We are as you see us,’ one dead man said. ‘Poor souls left shipwrecked here when the boats that were our bodies foundered. As to how we know you, that might be a question better left until later. The way we see these things … It’s not easy to explain to those who haven’t experienced it for themselves.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Drozde said.
‘No.’
‘I mean, I don’t understand how it can be hard to explain. I don’t know any of you, but you all seem to know who I am. So tell me where we met before. Or have you spied on me without letting me see you? Did you follow me here?’
She knew as she said it that it couldn’t be true – that it was no explanation at all. She saw the ghosts as well as they saw her, so how could they have watched her without being noticed in their turn? And in any case a dead man didn’t move about. He stayed where he’d died, as though his death was a stake driven into the ground and he a dog tied to the stake.
‘We wouldn’t watch you if you told us not to,’ a woman said, her downcast eyes full of reproach. Though she had already seen it in Magda, Drozde was amazed all over again at this – that the faces of the phantoms were clear enough to show expressions. Most ghosts looked like freshly painted portraits left out in the rain, the details running together into abstract splotches of colour.
‘But you won’t tell me the truth?’ she demanded.
An unhappy murmur passed through the crowd.
‘You,’ Drozde said to a handsome man of middle age with a forked beard. ‘Do you know me?’
‘We are all friends here,’ the man said.
‘Answer my question.’
‘Yes. I know you. Everyone here knows you, as everyone here knows everyone here.’
She gave him a warning look. ‘Are you going to tell me that I’m your Drozde?’
‘Lady, I would not presume to such intimacy.’
‘Good. Tell me this, then: who are you?’
This time t
he question got a very different answer – perhaps because this time Drozde addressed it to a single person. There was a quickening of excitement among the ghosts as a whole, while the one she was speaking to seemed to draw himself up a little higher and to come into an even clearer focus.
‘You want to hear my story?’ he asked, with more emphasis on the my than seemed to Drozde to be warranted.
She wanted no such thing, but she felt by this time that she was in a situation she didn’t fully understand, and it troubled her. So, ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go on. Tell me your story.’
The ghosts shifted and reformed, like the glass beads in a kaleidoscope. Abruptly, they were facing the bearded man and turned inward upon him.
‘My name,’ the man said, ‘is Samuel Gelbfisc.’
I was born a Jew, in the city of Koszalin in Poland, under Casimir Jagiellon but before the Nieszawa statutes (may the paper on which they were written run with boils like diseased flesh!) deprived me and the rest of my race of so many of our rights and freedoms. In that time it was still possible to be a Jew in Poland and to pursue a trade – as I did, working and learning under my father and then upon his death inheriting his thriving business as an apothecary.
I was born a Jew, I said, and in many respects I am a Jew still. Not in respect of religion, however. I renounced my faith when I was twenty years old. This was out of love for a woman, and I learned from that experience how little such loves really mean. Also, how inveterate is the hatred of some people for anything that is different from themselves. Her parents did not accept me as a putative son-in-law, for all that I had kissed the feet of Christ. They sent my Josie away to school in Tarnow, and when she returned she was betrothed to another.
Enough of that. I make no complaint, for I was too young then to understand what I desired and we were unlikely to have made each other happy. I found love enough later, with women and men alike, but never stayed long with any of them. That early disaster with Josie had made me mistrustful of human affections – at least, of their durability. I preferred a fire that burned very hot and died all the quicker for it.
It might be supposed that I had reverted by this time to the faith of my forebears. But it was not so. The God I believed in cared nothing for the vestments, the trappings of religious ritual. He was to be found as easily in the droning Latin of the Catholics as in the ecstatic swayings and intonings of the Chassidim. In fact, I found Him most often in solitary prayer, and went to church only because it was expected of me.
But church was, I must admit, a boon in business. I met many customers in chance conversations at the church gates, and was often recommended to others through acquaintances I’d made in the course of what was only nominally an act of worship. I wasn’t alone in this. Jesus may have chased the moneylenders from the temple, but I guarantee you they crept back again as soon as His back was turned. That’s the way of it, and always has been.
In 1492, just after John became king, I decided to go on a pilgrimage to see the scarred Madonna at Jasna Gora. Again, this wasn’t primarily a matter of piety. It was a pleasance first, and after that a commercial speculation. The Nieszawa statutes were law by then, and it was harder now for a Jew to trade from fixed premises. As an apothecary I was able to adapt to this better than most, but by consequence I’d become an itinerant, seldom staying in one town or city for more than a few days at a time. A pilgrimage suited me nicely, allowing me to visit suppliers and former clients in many places across the country.
My fellow pilgrims presented a great diversity and variety, from the very amiable to the very aloof. I made no secret of my origins, since my name – which I had not changed – already marked me out as a Jew. To those who asked, I told my story. To those who stood by, purse-lipped and hard-eyed, I said nothing.
With one group in particular I became close friends. They were the Lauzens, a family of four from Kalushin. Alojzy Lauzen was a merchant, most of whose trade was in wines and spirits. He enjoyed life and liked those around him to enjoy it too. He had come on the pilgrimage for the sake of his wife, Etalia, who had been unable to conceive again after the difficult birth of their first child – Tomas, now twelve – which had lamed her. She thought that the icon of the scarred virgin, which was said to be particularly responsive to the injuries of women, might restore her and make her fertile again. The fourth member of the family, and the most recently acquired, was a cow, Erment. Her presence on the pilgrimage was explained by Tomas’s weak constitution and a recommendation from a physician in Kalushin that he should drink a great deal of milk.
I liked Alojzy and Etalia very much, but I liked their son better than either. Tomas was a child of uncommon intellect and open, ingenuous spirit. This was his first experience of the world outside his hometown, and he was devouring it as a monkey eats fresh fruit. To see a hump-backed bridge with Tomas, or a campanile, or even a haywain, was to see it for the first time. He took such pleasure in the unfamiliar, he made the banal lading of the world into gaieties and festivals.
It goes without saying that Tomas was fascinated by the apothecary’s art. He was fascinated by everything! When I began to explain to him how I worked, mixing minute amounts of potent pharmaca with exquisite care, he besieged me with a thousand questions. From where did I source my potions and powders? How did I know what concentrations to use, and which simples had which effects? Since the relative volumes were so crucial, what about the metal of the vessels I employed, or the mortars and spoons I ground and stirred with?
I answered all these questions as well as I could, and also showed him how certain rudimentary tinctures could be brewed. Under my instruction he made a simple from andrographis, poplar and bee balm, which he mixed into the milk of the cow, Erment, and served to his mother to ease the pain in her hip. It gave her a great deal of relief, and the boy no less pride.
Our southern progress was leisurely, to say the least, and my friendship with Tomas grew each day. I demonstrated for him a great many minor mysteries of the art – such as are not profound but produce a great spectacle when they’re performed. I showed him the fire that continues to burn when submerged, the kettle that pours potions of different colours on command, the sea-stone that flows like water and yet becomes still and solid at a touch. These things are really no more than the tricks of mountebanks, but their explanation touches on deeper truths, and Tomas would not rest, after seeing each such marvel, until he had learned all the whys and wherefores of it.
I have said we made a slow and casual progress. I should say, besides, that we broke our journey each night in conditions of relative comfort. Only seldom – two or three times, perhaps – did we sleep by the road, at risk from footpads and at the mercy of foul weather. More usually our guides contrived to stop in the evenings at a post inn or hostelry, or if none was close enough they would beg lodging at a monastery or abbey, pleading the pious purpose for which we travelled.
And so we came here to Pokoj, not by design but by chance. It was an abbey then; we passed it on our way to the village of Narutsin, where we intended to seek a place to stay. It had rained heavily for some days before, and as sometimes happened the rain had made the Mala Panev break her banks at Ortzud. The spate cut us off from Narutsin, and although it might have been shallow enough to ford, we didn’t want to take the hazard. We turned back to the abbey, which lay just half an hour behind us, and asked for shelter there.
The monks of Pokoj were Benedictines, and they gave us courteous but cautious welcome. The lay brothers would see to our needs, of course, but the abbot himself, one Father Ignacio, came into the refectory to greet us. We were introduced to him one by one, and when he came to me and heard my name, his nose wrinkled as though at the smell of a fart.
‘A Jew?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But converted, Father, to faith in the Messiah.’
‘You can’t change a Jew,’ Father Ignacio said, his face still twisted into a caricature of disgust like a carved gargoyle. ‘If you could, Christ would have m
ade his ministry to them.’
Historians know, of course, that this is exactly what Christ did. It was only after His death that Paul took His teachings out to the Gentiles. But I did not say this. I only smiled and reminded the father abbot that Jesus had counselled the forgiveness of our enemies.
‘It’s not my forgiveness you stand in need of,’ Father Ignacio growled. And having thus identified himself as my enemy, he walked on down the line to speak with the other pilgrims. He did not stay with us for the meal, but only said once again that we were welcome to such hospitality as his house could offer. He looked at me as he said this, as if he would dearly have liked to make an exception, and then he retired. I hoped that this would be the last I saw of him, but alas something happened that night that brought us into disastrous contact with each other.
The boy, Tomas, fell sick. He retired early, complaining of a malaise. Something he had eaten, he said, must have taxed his stomach. I was the last – apart from his mother and his father – to say goodnight to him. Afterwards, before I retired myself, I gave Etalia a digestive powder, which I told her to give to her son if the gripes worsened.
The next morning Tomas was not at breakfast. I asked Meister Lauzen how the boy had passed the night, but he shook his head and turned away without a word. Grief and fear sat heavy on his brow. Tomas had not slept well, Etalia told me. The pains in the boy’s stomach had persisted – if anything, they’d worsened. She’d mixed my powder in a little milk and given it to him shortly after the abbey bells rang for lauds. It had not seemed to help. This morning Tomas had barely stirred. He seemed sunk in a terrible lethargy from which he woke only to moan and whimper and then fall back at once into fitful slumber.
I asked if I might be permitted to examine him. ‘Certainly,’ Etalia said. ‘We would be grateful, Meister Gelbfisc.’ She led the way to the room that had been assigned to them, close by the calefactory. I knew the acuteness of the boy’s affliction as soon as I entered the room, first by the sharp smell of his sweat and his vomitus and then by his pale, sweating face.
