The Necessary Beggar

by Susan Palwick

“Each Element wandered for a long time through the Void, weeping in great loneliness, but finally all four of them met, and they rejoiced, for they had found what they were seeking in the very punishment imposed on them for having sought it. And then they stopped cursing their Judges and blessed the Judges’ wisdom instead, and they formed a village, and that village became our world. And they loved one another so much that soon there were many children in the village. Fire and Air gave birth to the sun, to flames that need both their parents to survive; Fire and Earth gave birth to the moon; Fire and Water gave birth to oceans and rivers and streams. Earth and Water gave birth to the lands, to meadows and mountains; Air and Water gave birth to storms and rainbows. Fire and Air gave birth to Mind, to thoughts and fancies; Fire and Water gave birth to Sensation, to feelings.

  “Now these last two things were the most troublesome of the elemental children, for they were unruly and sought to marry everything they saw, and the mountains did not want the burden of thought, and the rivers did not want the burden of pain. And so the Elements, all four together, created new homes for Mind and Sensation, homes to which they would be bound: little simple plants and animals in which thought and feeling could dwell. Only living things are made of all four Elements, you see. But as change was the law of this world, the thing the Elements had come here seeking and therefore the one thing they could never banish—both their treasure and their curse—the plants and animals began to change, to become larger and more varied and more numerous, until there were more of them than their parents could count. All had different portions of Mind and Sensation, and people—who came last in the chain of changes—believed that they had more than anyone else.

  “Now the world was getting crowded with all these creatures, for they kept loving and marrying each other and having children. The Elements were loath to banish love and could not banish change, and so—to make room for more love in the world—they decreed that each creature’s body would die to make way for new ones, but that each creature’s Mind and Sensation, combined to form that creature’s Spirit, would float free above the earth, to inspire and protect all things still in their bodies. Thus it is that the spirits of trees maintain us in the hope of spring, even in the depths of winter; thus it is that the spirits of worms give us endurance to burrow in the darkness of our lives, seeking sustenance; thus it is that the spirits of birds allow us to soar even while we are still earthbound.

  “But the spirits of people were restless, ever ambitious, ever proud, always wanting to be something in themselves rather than merely to comfort or inspire others. Too often they caused dissension and disharmony, creating nightmares and regrets in those they had left behind. And so the Elements conferred with the other creatures, and it was decided that human spirits would be allowed to share bodies with simpler creatures, whose spirits could teach the human spirits simplicity, and give them peace. The more complex and troubled the person, the simpler the creature chosen for that person’s spirit. Thus the spirit of someone who had died while very young or very old, someone whose mind was easy and smooth, might share a body with a monkey or a dolphin or a dog, a complicated beast; but the spirit of a scheming prince would find itself in the body of an acorn or a grub, for only there could the prince’s plotting soul be taught to cherish basic things, rain and wind and food.

  “Now this system worked well, because spirits and bodies could still speak to one another, and the prince who learned simplicity could teach it to whomever among his former court sought the same lessons. And thus the friends and family of simple folk had wondrous converse with monkeys and dolphins and dogs, and the friends and family of the great learned to appreciate the gentle counsel of seedlings and slugs, starfish and salamanders.

  “But it came to pass that a very powerful prince lost his wife and son in childbirth, and was inconsolable. His son would have been his heir, and his wife had been his chief advisor. She understood the ways of the court better than he did, and knew whom to flatter and whom to avoid, which courtiers would respond to threats and which to gifts, and which tradespeople would manufacture gifts—if gifts were required—most quickly and cheaply. And she had been young when she died, and very beautiful.

  “The baby boy’s spirit became enclosed within a gray stallion, that he might learn power and movement who had died dependent and confined. But the mother’s spirit was housed in a reed, for her mind had shaped itself to the mazelike ways of the court, and she needed to learn the wisdom of straight lines, and of being part of an equal multitude rather than standing above and alone, and of valuing sunlight and water rather than gems and costly gowns.

  “Now the prince still loved them both, as much as he could truly love anything, and every day he rode on the stallion to visit his wife among the reeds. But whenever the stallion spoke joyously of the glories of freedom, of galloping under the sky, the father grew more angry and bitter that his son had not lived to run in human form. And whenever his wife spoke of the contentment of drawing nutrients from the earth, the prince despaired that he had lost his advisor, who had so cunningly guided him through the bogs of politics. And, just as fathers sometimes begrudge the bond between mothers and babies, which excludes them, the prince began to grow jealous of the growing love between the stallion and the reed, for both of them relished the wind, which meant nothing to him, and rhapsodized about the flavor of rain, which to the prince was only an annoyance which forced him to cover his head.

  “One day he rode to the reeds in a great quandary, for dark rumors were swirling in the court that his youngest brother and several courtiers were plotting against him. Yet he had no proof, and if he accused them or acted against them without cause, he would hurt his own cause with his father, the king, who already thought him unbalanced with grief. And so he urgently sought his wife’s counsel, for once she would have known just what to do.

  “He told the entire story to the reed, but his wife’s spirit said only, ‘How tiresome the court is! If you lived here by the river, you would know the magic of the dawn.’

  “‘But I do not live by the river. I live in the court, and must continue to live there. Help me as you used to do!’

  “‘This is truer help than any I ever gave you, husband. Learn to love the sunlight and the soil, and scheming courtiers will lose their power.’

  “And then the stallion said, ‘Oh, Mother, how true that is! How clear the sunlight is today, and how moist and fertile the earth!’

  “But nothing in his life but loss and rage were clear to the prince, and he understand now that he had lost not only his moist and fertile wife, but her counsel, and thus his own hopes of survival in the court. And bitterly he said, ‘Wife, are you happier now as a stupid reed than you were in my arms, when we loved one another and plotted the increase of our power?’

  “‘Oh, yes! I have learned happiness you never could have taught me, for the truest love is love of life, and the truest power lies in being part of many, as reeds are by the riverbank.’

  “And the prince, who no longer loved his life, and who thought he would be nothing if he were not first among men, flew into a rage: and he reached down and tore his wife’s reed from the soil, and broke it into two pieces, and cast them on the ground. And the stallion, in horror and terror at what the prince had done, reared up and struck him with its hooves, and the prince died in great pain.

  “And the Elements saw then, in grief, that the living and the dead could not be permitted to speak to one another, for the living who most needed the wisdom of the dead would ever be the greatest danger to the peace and comfort of the dead. And so the Elements decreed that henceforth, there should be silence between spirits still in human bodies and spirits who dwelt elsewhere in the world; and the broken reed, which the prince had cast onto the ground in the form of an X, became the symbol of that silence, the Great Breaking.”

  Little Darroti, listening to his mother tell the story in the warm garden, leans sleepily against her breast. He has not understood most of the tale;
it has washed over him in soothing waves, and he has caught only parts of it. He touches one of the pearly peas in his hand and says, “Then there might be a prince in this pea?”

  “Yes indeed, Darroti. And you would not know, because the spirit could not speak to tell you. And so you must bless everything you eat, lest some spirit go unthanked for helping your body grow.”

  Little Darroti says, “Thank you for feeding me, peas,” and puts them in his mouth. They taste like water and sunshine and love; their flavor fills him, the most wonderful thing he has ever known, and he laughs in joy.

  But dead Darroti, cocooning himself in that memory, finds he cannot remain there: for now he must remember everything else, too, all of the rest of his life, both the happiness and the pain, the memories coming faster, faster, until they reach the present, the now, the tent in the refugee camp in America, in exile, where his family is still grieving, where their grief is still like knives in flesh he no longer possesses.

  He understands then that he cannot escape into the past, for every moment of the past contains everything that has happened to him, and all memories will lead him back here. But he understands something else, too. For his spirit is not contained in a reed or a stallion or a pea. It floats unmoored in his family’s tent. And if that means that he cannot learn the wisdom of leaves or lizards, it also means that the history of spirits is different in this world. Perhaps there has been no Great Breaking here; perhaps the living and the dead still can speak to one another.

  He must pray that it is so, for his family’s pain is unendurable. Timbor staggers out of the tent now, to use the Porto-Sans; one of the Americans goes with him, and Darroti is pulled helplessly after them. It is his father to whom he is tethered, then, for his father’s pain is greatest.

  How can Darroti speak? How can he comfort Timbor? He tries to form words, but nothing happens. He tries to sing, but the melody goes nowhere.

  He weeps, in rage and confusion; he weeps, and watches as his father, stumbling through the dust of the camp, wipes his own cheek. The American looks up for a moment, frowning, and pulls off his hat. There on the brim is a dark circle, a raindrop, a miracle of water in the cloudless desert.

  4

  Rooms

  The weeks after Darroti died were terrible. It was August, and a life-sucking heat had settled over the desert. The sun beat mercilessly on the tents, and everyone yearned for rain that showed no sign of coming. What came was smoke: for there were brushfires all across the state, and even though the closest was miles away, the smell of ashes pervaded everything, making the air nearly unbreathable. In the drought, showers were rationed even more strictly than usual, and everything, including drinking water, tasted of burning. Two old people and a baby in the camp died of lung problems. Every day the Army people reassured the refugees that the fires were coming no closer. No one wanted to think about what would happen if they did, if the refugees had to be evacuated.

  “Let the fires come,” Erolorit said grimly. “If we had to be evacuated, perhaps we could escape, and get away from this terrible place.”

  “We would be recaptured if we tried to escape,” Macsofo said. “Either we would be recaptured or we would die of thirst.”

  Harani shook her head. “Hush, both of you. You’re scaring the children! Little ones, the Army will keep the fire away. No one else will die. Everything will be all right.”

  But everything wasn’t all right, couldn’t possibly be all right, for Darroti’s death loomed above all else. The adults were frantic with grief, and the children were bewildered with fear and confusion, and the family was beset by a seemingly endless stream of Americans. Many of their fellow refugees, even the few other children Zamatryna and her cousins had become friendly with at school, avoided them, for suicide was a shameful thing in many of their countries, a thing that brought bad luck to anyone associated with it. But Americans, determined to be helpful, flocked to the family’s tent. The family quickly discerned that helping, in America, meant fixing or erasing: an impossible proposition, since Darroti’s death could not be repaired or undone.

  The Army had initiated an investigation into how Darroti could have killed himself on the fence without any of the guards noticing and stopping him. They learned that one soldier guarding that section of the fence had fallen asleep at his post, and the other had gone to the Porto-Sans. An officer wearing a jacket decorated with a great many gew-gaws, an outfit entirely inappropriate for the brutal heat, came and stood stiffly in their tent, holding his hat in his hand. He told them that the Army apologized for its carelessness. He promised that both of the soldiers would be punished. “I really am so terribly sorry,” he said at the end, and his voice cracked, although it had been strong before.

  “Tell him,” Timbor told Zamatryna irritably, “that punishing these men will not bring Darroti back. Darroti would have found a way to do what he did anyway. It is not their fault. I cannot blame them unless I also blame Darroti’s own brothers, who also fell asleep. I do not want to blame anyone. What kind of land is this, where people are punished for doing what their bodies need to do? Tell him, Zamatryna. I cannot say it properly in English, and I am weary of wrestling with their words!”

  But the officer, when Zamatryna had told him, shook his head. “Those soldiers had a job to do, sir, and they didn’t do it, and now your son’s dead. And I just hope you’ll let us know what we can do to help you now.”

  “Nothing,” Timbor said in English. “Nothing, unless you let us leave the camp!”

  The officer looked pained. “There are laws, sir. We’re doing the best we can, but you have to give us better information.”

  And so they were visited by the same social workers and lawyers who had talked to them before, who asked them the same questions; but now there were new people, too, therapists and ministers and a puzzling procession of ladies bringing casseroles. Evidently this was an American funerary custom.

  “I know it’s a little silly,” the first casserole lady told Zamatryna. She had puffy hair of a yellow Zamatryna had never seen before, and she wore a shirt picturing animals with impossibly large eyes. But she smelled like flowers, and she was kind. She was the wife of the man who had worn the crossed sticks and yammered at them about Heaven and Hell, both places the family was now determined to avoid. “You get your food at the cafeteria tent, I know, and you don’t have anywhere to keep this. But it’s home-cooked, and food’s a real comfort when you’re hurting. This is what my sister-in-law brought to my house when my mama died, and it made me feel better, and I got the recipe from her, and now it’s what I bring folks who’ve lost someone they love. I hope you like it, even though it’s not anything you’d eat wherever you came from.”

  She’d brought paper plates and plastic forks. She insisted that the family sit on their cots while she served them the meal, and she listened respectfully while Timbor blessed it, instead of trying to force her husband’s blessing on them. It was very strange food, little bits of chicken and broccoli and raisins suspended in orange jello, but they were grateful for it, because it meant that they wouldn’t have to go to the crowded cafeteria tent, which was even hotter, if possible, than every other place in the camp. They ate all of the strange dish, so that the kind woman who had brought it to them wouldn’t have to take it back home, and they could tell that she was pleased.

  She must have told her friends, because after that there was a different casserole every night. None of the others featured jello: most included vast quantities of cheese. If many were nearly inedible, some were very good, and some of the people brought dessert, too, cookies and brownies and pies. One evening someone brought Rocky Road ice cream, packed in a cooler, and the cold sweet stuff was such a startling, improbable wonder in the charred heat that Zamatryna never ate ice cream after that without remembering the first time she had tasted it. For the rest of her life, Rocky Road ice cream would be the flavor of hope; for if there was ice cream in this horrible place, maybe there were other good thing
s waiting to be discovered, too.

  Most of the casserole people only visited them once, but the first lady, the one who had brought them the chicken in orange jello, came back many times. They learned that her name was Lisa, and that her husband, Stan, was the pastor of the Living Waters Bible Church. They were afraid that he would come back, too, but he never did. Lisa told Zamatryna that he was too busy building houses, which was the work he did to make money, because his church was so small. “It’s only ten people right now. Everybody comes to our house for Bible study on Tuesdays and worship on Sundays. They sit on folding chairs in our living room. Stan so wants a real church, but I tell him a real church is wherever two or three people are gathered together, just like the Bible says. When Mama died she left me her big old house, and just as soon as Stan gets enough money, he’ll fix that up into a fine church building. But first we have to clean out all of Mama’s stuff, and that’s slow work, because it makes me so sad. I sure do feel for your loss, honey.”

  Zamatryna didn’t understand much of this, but she liked Lisa, who praised her English and brought her and her cousins crayons and coloring books of their very own, so they wouldn’t have to share the torn, grubby ones in the school tent. Lisa brought books, too, and read to them, holding Poliniana in her lap while Zamatryna and the twins sat in front of her. She read them Dr. Seuss books, which made all of them giggle, and fairy tales which were frightening but had happy endings, and Bible stories, scarcely distinguishable from the fairy tales in their implausibility. The adults were wary of Lisa, but grateful to her for entertaining the children; whenever she came, they sat quietly and talked among themselves.

  One evening she came and said glumly, “I can’t read to you tonight, kids. I’m sorry. I thought I’d be driving Stan’s van, see, so I put the books in that, but Stan and I got our wires crossed, and he took the van and left me the Ford. I sure am sorry. We can play word games, or color.”