Stepping up to the headstone, Isabelle ran her fingertips over it. “This is a kind of ark. It’s meant to be a church. But I’ve always imagined it as a church floating on a barge over some river or ocean.
“Edmondson was a very religious man. When he was young he had a vision where God spoke to him and said be a sculptor. He spent most of his life carving tombstones and religious figures. To him a church was an ark—a shelter from the outside world and all the evil in it.”
Ettrich was moved both by the image and the concept. Despite the somberness of the moment, he smiled. “So the church is the ark and the world we live in is the flood?”
“Yes. Petras loved Edmondson’s work. He said it was simple to the point of being divine. He spent hours and hours looking at pictures. They always made him smile.” What she didn’t add was that Petras was studying an Edmondson book the day she visited him to learn how to bring Vincent back from the dead.
Standing there watching Isabelle touch the gravestone with such tenderness, Ettrich couldn’t resist touching it too. The moment he did, he found himself transported back to Petras Urbsys’s store—the store that had closed months ago, after the death of its owner.
First he smelled the sandalwood incense burning. Petras loved the aroma of incense and there were always several joss sticks burning in ashtrays filled with sand placed around his store. Ettrich found himself sitting on a green velvet couch in the middle of the room. He had sat there often before when they’d visited the old man.
Now a very much alive Petras stood behind the counter, looking at what appeared to be a large coffee table book of photographs. He wore thick reading glasses which he kept adjusting on his nose as he slowly turned the pages. When the bell over the door clinged he looked up. Isabelle walked in. She was dressed completely differently and her hair was much shorter than it had been a moment ago at the cemetery.
“Isabelle, hello! Such a long time since we’ve seen you.”
“We have to talk right now. Vincent is dead.”
Petras’s face showed no reaction to this news. He slowly closed the book and rested both hands palms down on it. Isabelle walked over to the counter and stopped directly across from him. “You have to help me now, Petras.”
“I’m so sorry for you.”
She nodded and continued to stare at him, her face blank.
“What are you going to do, Isabelle?”
She said nothing. She didn’t need to. He knew why she was here. Eventually she looked down at the book he had been reading. “Edmondson. You really love his work, don’t you?”
“Yes. He spoke to God with his hands.”
“Petras, you know why I’m here.”
“Yes, I do.” He pushed the book to one side of the long counter but continued to look at it, as if it could somehow help him.
“Will you tell me now? You promised that you would if Vincent died.”
“Yes, I did promise you.” He removed the eyeglasses and slid them into his breast pocket. He appeared resigned, defeated somehow. “In Lithuania when I was a boy, I saw many things that were wonders. No one would believe me if I said them all what I saw, but that is all right. It doesn’t matter because I saw them so I know that they are true. They are real.
“Many times when someone died, there would be things that were not fixed, not decided—” He appeared to be searching for the right word to use here.
“Unresolved?”
He pointed at her—one sharp jab in the air. “Yes, yes—unresolved. Like one dead man who did not tell anyone in his family where he hid his money, or who should receive a piece of his land. You know, things like that—sometimes they are big, sometimes small.
“No one wants to accept that they are going to some day die, so we try to ignore it. What happens then is we leave sometimes important things unclear after we’re gone.
“Then it becomes very difficult for the ones who are still living. So sometimes it is necessary to talk with these dead ones and find the answers to our questions. It is not a big difficulty to talk to someone after they have died, but you must know how to do it—”
“I don’t want to talk to Vincent, Petras. I want to bring him back here. I want to bring him back from the dead.”
Petras nodded that he knew exactly what she wanted. He jabbed his finger into the air again. “I can show you how to do both, Isabelle. I could do this for you. But why? Why is it necessary to do this?”
“Because Anjo said I must. He told me that at the same time he told me that Vincent was dead.”
Petras pointed to her large stomach. “The child still talks to you?”
“Oh yes. Since the first day he was conceived he’s been talking to me.”
“Show me this again, Isabelle.”
She had already shown him twice in the past but today was different because now she desperately needed his help. She waited and listened. Petras and Ettrich watched her closely for a sign of something—contact, recognition. Nothing happened for a long time and slowly a palpable tension began to grow in the room. Isabelle continued to wait, unfazed. Eventually she straightened slightly and passed the back of her left hand across her mouth. She looked at Petras and said
“ ‘I saw in the east world,
I saw in the west world,
I saw the flood.’”
She had no idea of the meaning of what she had said so she asked, “What does that mean? Do you know?”
The old man nodded and pointed to the Edmondson book on the corner of the counter. “It was how he described the time God spoke to him and what he was shown. That is what I was reading when you came in before. Exactly those words. Your child told this to you? Your Anjo?”
Impatiently she snapped, “Of course, Petras. How else would have known?”
“Yes, all right. Of course you are right—how else?
“So then I will show you. But first I must say something. There is one very great danger when you talk to the dead. It is the same for anyone: when you have learned how to go there, you will always remember the way. You will never forget. For some people this is a Katastrophe. Like the atomic bomb, you know? Once they discovered how to build it and then used it, they could not say Oh that was a mistake—let’s take it apart and put it all back in the ground again.
“That is why old people were asked to do this when I was growing up. It doesn’t matter if they know because they will die soon anyway.”
“Have you ever done it?”
He waved a dismissive hand back and forth in front of his face. “No, I am a coward. The only brave things I have ever done in my life were accidental. I have never had a need to talk with the dead.”
“But you know how to do it?”
“Yes.”
“Then show me, Petras.” She did not hesitate. Both men recognized that immediately and in their own ways, loved her for it. Ettrich particularly because he knew Isabelle intimately and knew she was not a courageous person.
“It is in your stomach—right here.” He put his hand low on his stomach, about where his belt sat. She did the same thing—put her hand down there too.
“Yes, that’s right—where your bauchnabel is. What is the word for that in English?”
“Belly button. What’s there, Petras?”
“Your death—your life and death are in this same place. Here. Here was where you were joined to your mother once. That line was what kept you alive when you were inside her body. But when you were born they cut it so that you could be in this world. When you die you will have it again.”
Incredulous, she could barely splutter, “I’ll be connected to my mother again after I die?”
“No, you will be connected in another way—but to everyone then, every thing, not only to your mother.” He saw confusion narrow her face. “All of that is not important now, Isabelle. What you want to know is this and I will show you. Put both of your hands on your stomach again.
“Once in every person’s life they dream of death.”
&
nbsp; She gave a small chuckle. “I dream of death all the time.”
“No, this is different. One time in your life you dream exactly how you will die. And it is the truth. You see everything very clearly and every detail. Where, when, how—everything. All people have this happen to them. Everyone. But because we have so many dreams in life, we forget this one as quickly as we do the others. We don’t even remember what we dreamed last night, right? How many dreams does a person remember?” Petras raised his index finger. “But once you dream the truth about the most important moment in your life. One time. You dream your death exactly as it will happen. For some people this is a nightmare, for others it is all right. For them it is quiet and peaceful.
“So, if you need to visit death or one of the dead while you are still alive, then you must find that one dream and enter from there.”
On hearing this, Isabelle’s head and heart warred furiously between skepticism and wonder. Could this really be true? “How do we know that we’ve even had the dream? Couldn’t it happen sometime in our future? Isn’t that possible? What about the people who don’t have the dream until later in life?”
Petras shook his head. “Everyone has it before they are eleven years old.”
“Eleven? Why eleven?”
“Pubertat.”
“Puberty?”
“Yes. Everyone has their dream before they become an adult.”
“Why? Why before?”
He started to answer but was interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing over the front door. Both of them turned toward it, annoyed at the interruption.
Ettrich watched all this from his perch on the couch. Obviously they were not aware of his presence there. Isabelle had never told him the details of how his resurrection had occurred. She’d said she was not permitted to. But now he was finding out exactly how she’d brought him back from the dead and he was fascinated. It was like watching a home movie of his life, but with the huge added advantage of being able to see what was going on simultaneously in the next room or in other people’s heads. He remembered a line he’d once read to the effect that you never really know who you are until you learn what others think of you.
“Guten tag.” A nondescript bald man wearing large brown glasses and holding a cheap brown plastic briefcase entered the store. He moved hesitantly, as if sensing from the first moment that he wasn’t welcome here.
Petras said to him in German, “I’m sorry, but the store is closed. Please come back another time.”
The man appeared confused on hearing this, but then grew highly indignant. He brought the briefcase halfway up his chest and held it there with both arms crossed over it in an X. “What do you mean, closed? The door is open and the sign in the window says open.”
“The store is closed. I’m the owner. When I say it’s closed, then it is closed. If the door is open and I say it’s closed, then it’s closed. If the door is closed but I say it’s open, then it’s open. Should I continue or do you get the point yet?”
“But you have no right to do that. There are municipal laws involved here—”
“Are you Kifnitz or Mangold?”
The angry man was about to spew out some more but Petras’s question stopped him cold. Closing his mouth, he licked his lips and looked apprehensively left and right like the walls were listening. “Mangold. But how do you know who I am?”
“That’s not important. Just tell them that she must be told. Tell them the child says she must be told.”
Mangold slowly lowered the briefcase. His voice was incredulous. “The child said that? Really?”
“Yes, the child. So go and tell them that and tell them to leave us alone.”
“All right. Yes, all right.” Mangold scurried away without saying another word.
Isabelle looked at the front door as it closed. Then she looked back at Petras. “Who was that? What were you saying to him?”
“What I’m telling you now is very dangerous, Isabelle. It has not been done for a very long time and there are many who think it should never be done again.”
“But you just said that they did it all the time when you were young.”
Instead of answering her, Petras crossed the room to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. He stood in front of it for a while, obviously looking for something in particular. When he located it he pulled a book down from a high shelf and brought it back to the counter where he laid it in front of her. It was a faint mustard color, thick, and judging from its musty smell, rough-cut pages, and beat-up condition, quite old.
“This book is very rare and valuable, if you can even find a copy still. I do not think that there are many of them left. It was written by a distant relative of mine, a professor at one of the universities in Vilnius.
“He was the greatest scholar of his time in national folklore and myth. This man spent his whole life going around my country searching for every story that he could find. Then he would return to his home and add them to what he had already collected. This book is the result. Thirty years he worked on it.” He slapped the book with his hand and paused both to let this information sink in and Isabelle to look at his treasure with new eyes.
“I have read the book several times. Some of it is very fascinating and of course some of it is boring. But you know what it is most of all? It is very sad. Why do I say that? Because it is all gone now, Isabelle. In Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, here in Austria… In all of the countries their magic has disappeared and will never return. The stories of the magic are still there, yes, but the truth of them is gone forever.
“If you go out into the country now anywhere, the people have no new stories like these because all of the magic has been stopped. Taken away forever. There is nothing mythic or magical on the earth anymore. Only the old stories have survived but without their beating hearts. Like the ruins of a great civilization that lived a thousand years ago.
“There are no more pigs that grant one important wish, or clouds that speak forgotten languages. No more trees that sing the end of the world… no more, Isabelle. They are all gone.”
“It was real? Those stories are true?”
Petras roared, “Of course they’re true! No one could make all of those stories up—they are too deep and inspired. Do you know where most of them came from? Simple farmers and laborers, peasants mostly, country people. Do you really think those idiots had the kind of imagination to make them up? All hundreds and thousands of them? No, they didn’t create these things, they saw them. They saw them, or their fathers or grandfathers did, and what they saw became part of the family history. Of course the stories were true.”
“But then what happened? Why are they all gone?”
“Because man used them terribly and almost always for the wrong reasons. Think of the history of this century, Isabelle. Think of the way man has behaved and showed what he really is at heart: a selfish, dangerous monster that destroyed much more than he has created, and did so many more bad things than good.
“Do you really think people today can be trusted with magic and the power that comes with it? No, not at all. We cannot even be trusted to preserve ourselves. We cannot protect us from us! So that is the very good reason why they took it all away. And it is very sad because losing those things has made our world a smaller, less interesting place.”
Petras broke eye contact with her and looking down, brushed dust off the thick book. “Somewhere in here is the story about entering death through that one dream we all have. Exactly like I told you. What is not here is the knowledge of how to do that. And you will not find it anywhere now because it has been removed. Why? Because it is too dangerous. It would be like giving snakes to babies to play with.
“All of it is gone now, Isabelle. The only thing left to see of that snake is its skin which are the sweet little myths and magic stories that we read to babies before they go to sleep. The skin is still very beautiful, but it is not the snake.”
“Who did this? Who took them away?” She point
ed toward the door. “Mangold? People like him?”
Petras shook his head. “He is only a messenger. But I cannot answer that question. It is something you must discover for yourself or not.”
“All right, I accept that. But can you tell me this—was it God? Did God take this magic away?”
Petras hesitated, as if deciding whether or not to say anything. “God is not one thing.”
Isabelle did not know how to react. She did not understand what he meant but knew that if she asked him to elaborate he would refuse. She did the only thing that came to mind. Putting both hands on her stomach, she asked, “Then show me this. Show me how I can find Vincent.”
“Vincent?”
Vincent saw his hand on the tombstone, but his mind was still back in Petras’s store with the old man and Isabelle. Trying to bring these two separate realities together was difficult for him. It was like staring straight ahead while slowly bringing your fingers in from the far left and right lines of vision toward the center.
“Vincent, nothing happened. It didn’t work!”
He was again in the cemetery, again standing next to Isabelle alongside Petras’s grave. He remained silent, still trying to grasp hold of where he really was and how much time had passed. She thought he was listening closely, waiting to hear what she would say next. In truth he was only stunned.
“I did exactly what Petras taught me but this time it didn’t work. Why? What does that mean, Vincent? Why didn’t it work? Why couldn’t I enter death?”
Ettrich noticed a bench nearby and led her over to it. After they’d sat down he slowly and in great detail described what had happened to him when he put his hand on Petras’s gravestone. Isabelle did not interrupt. She sat with her chin down and arms crossed tightly over her chest. He didn’t know what that body language signified but didn’t waste time trying to figure it out. More important was to tell her everything about his experience so that she could know it all and process it.
GLASS SOUP Page 8
