She smiled, the action causing her lips to split further and sending dark lines of red down them, but she didn't seem to mind.
“You like to rest, maybe? I be quiet.”
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head to clear it of thoughts. “No, I want to talk.”
“Oh-kay. What about?”
“I … I don't know.”
“What are interests? What do you do back home?”
I shook my head. I couldn't admit that I had been in a psychiatric care facility for the past five months, nor mention anything that had gone on in the past few years. It was both too unbelievable and too unbearable to bring up, and doing so would only counter the point of paying her to be there with me.
“No, I meant … I mean, I'd rather just listen to you talk, if that's alright.”
“About what?”
“About … anything. I don't care.”
“But what do I say? I will bore you.”
I shook my head again. Something was stirring in my head just beneath the coronal suture as though the tissue was threatening to melt away and leave the skull broken in two pieces again, and it hardly mattered to me if she whispered or screamed or spoke in another language, so long as her voice rose above the ones trapped inside my mind.
“Just – anything. Say anything, Ilona.”
“I do not just speak gibberish, yes? Conversation does not work this way.”
“It doesn't matter to me – honestly.”
She squinted her eyes as she decided what to say.
“We could speak about your family, yes? You tell me about father in Holland.”
“No, that's ...” I put my hand over my eyes to block out some of the light. The thought of him sitting in the house with the replacements that he had gathered to brush away every hint of the original wife and son he had had was just as tormenting as the one of my mother trapped beneath the earth, and the thoughts of either of them were no less persistent in my mind than anything else I hoped to get away. “I'd rather not.”
“Oh-kay, we can talk about something else. You are from Connet-cut, yes? What is this like?”
“Connecticut? It's … fine.”
“You are living there alone?”
“I … yes.”
“You are very young to live on own; I am living with father until much older. Twenty-four.”
“I’m eighteen,” I said, unable to come up with a lie but unwilling to tell the truth, either.
“It is east, yes?”
“Yeah, it's on the east coast.”
“On water?”
She eyed me with a slight turn of her head, watching for my reaction.
“Yes,” I said crossly.
“But you are not liking water, yes? Maybe you should live in forest.”
I scratched at my lips, still dry from the medication, and peeled back some of the skin as I considered as much. Despite my dislike of the ocean and the way that I had once loved the woods, the knowledge that that was where Miss Mercier and the local girls had all been murdered had made the place seem just as unpleasant as the water had become.
“I don't think so.”
“No? I am thinking that you would like forest, Eh-nim. Very peaceful. Very warm.”
“Not really. I went to school in Maine – the woods were freezing.”
“I am meaning comforting,” Ilona said. “Inner warmth. Feeling of home.”
“Did you grow up near the woods?” I asked. I ran my eyes over her heavy makeup and scarce clothing again, trying to picture her in a cabin somewhere tending to a wood stove, but the image wouldn't come.
“There were many trees, yes.”
“And where was this, exactly?” I asked, trying again to place where her accent was really from, but she gave a knowing smile in return.
“Sixty north, thirty east.”
I frowned; I had never been good at geography.
“Right,” I said. “So if you like the woods, why'd you come to Amsterdam?”
“There are trees in Amsterdam.”
“Right, sure. Not where you were hanging out, though.”
“I do not spend all my time there. On free days, I walk through forests and parks.”
“Really?”
“You are thinking I am joking?” she asked, narrowing her eyes again.
“No, I just …” I glanced at her heeled boots again, wondering how she would fare trekking over rocks and tree roots in them. “It's just surprising, is all.”
“Why is this?”
“No reason. Just ...”
“Just what?”
She was baiting me to say the words lingering on the tip of my tongue, and the closer that they got to escaping the more certain that I was that I should keep them to myself. The idea that she would was fond of nature seemed to contradict everything else about her as though it was impossible to wear such glossy, pointy high-heels and enjoy bird-watching as well.
“It's just … you're a prostitute,” I said at last.
She raised her eyebrows.
“And?”
“And … I don't know. It just doesn't seem like the sort of thing … someone like you would do.”
“Someone like me?” she repeated. “Prostitutes are all same?”
“No –”
“But we are all mindless? Headless?”
“No, that's not what I –”
“I am not own person? I cannot like normal thing? This is shocking?”
“No,” I said more firmly. “It's just – it's not a surprise that you like nature: it's just a surprise that – since you do – you'd choose to be a – a prostitute.”
She narrowed her eyes in her characteristic way, running the dark pupils over me as she debated how best to react.
“This is where life brought me,” she said. “Is it choice if we do not decide?”
“I … I guess not.”
“I like to think this, too,” she said. “But choices brought me here, so perhaps not.”
I folded my arms over one another as I considered as much, absently wondering which side of her theory I preferred. I certainly hadn't planned for things to go the way that they had, nor could have ever guessed back in the dorm room at Bickerby that flipping through the pages of Miss Mercier's file would have meant that I would be sitting on the train with her in search of Jack; but I had known something when I had heard the music late at night and felt the strong sense of calling when I stared out into the ocean, and I had known that there was something unspeakable about my mother's health just waiting to be heard, so it shouldn't have been so shocking that I had gone the way that I had.
Ilona cleared her throat.
“Oh-kay, we speak of something else. You tell me about opera, yes?”
“Opera?”
“You say you like,” Ilona said. “Which one are you liking?”
I shook my head without meaning to, but she looked at me with a patient stare as she waited for the answer. I gave a half-hearted shrug.
“Have you ever heard of Rusalka?”
She blinked and turned her head as though something had shifted in her memory, but then said, “No, I am not knowing opera. It is popular back home?”
“No, not really.” I paused and surveyed her, wondering where her sudden thoughtfulness had stemmed from. I tried to place her accent again, still wondering if it could possibly be the same as I had heard in the opera, but despite being similar to the titular character's, it was too difficult to know for certain. “Do you know Czech?”
She shook her head.
“No, I am not knowing this. Though my father brings home utopenci when I am young – best in world.”
“What’s ooto-penchy?”
“Utopenci. Drowned men, yes?”
“Your father brought home drowned men?”
“It is literal translation, yes? Name of dish for pickled sausage in Czech Republic.”
I was too hung up on the image of an unknown man dragging water-logged men through his front d
oor while Ilona sat at a table, silverware in hand and ready to feast, to pay much attention to what the food really was.
“You have weird name in English, too,” she said, taking out the pastry that she had stowed in her pocket earlier and waving off my horrified expression. “'Hot dog,' yes?”
“To be fair, some of those are probably really made with dog meat.”
“Well, perhaps some of utopenci are made with drowned men.” She smiled at my horrified expression and then leaned back in her seat. “So what is opera about? Rusalka?”
“Rusalka? It's – it's about a water-sprite,” I said.
“What is this?”
“A sprite? It's like a … not quite a mermaid, but a spirit of sorts that lives under the water. A nymph.”
The description wasn't very accurate, and I wished that I could convey the way that the creatures really looked: the spindly limbs and drawn faces with hollowed eyes and cheeks, and overly-long hair that crinkled from the water, and the bluish hue of the skin and greenish tint to the eyes. I could imagine them perfectly well without ever needing to see a picture; they were the things that crawled their way into my dreams and cropped up in my vision whenever I looked at the water. I wondered if I had formed the images sometime between my mother's accident and the stories of the dead girls that Jack and I had found at Bickerby, or if they had always occupied a place inside my head. I should have taken the photograph of me standing by the stage after the performance that I had found in my father's office. The swollen moon casting over the scenery and darkened backdrop was so haunting, and yet I still had had the urge to pull myself up onto the stage and walk through the dead trees to stare down into the solidified river. I wondered again why he had kept it rather than one of the pictures of me in my proper school attire standing by the gates of Bickerby, or on some birthday or holiday surrounded by presents. Perhaps he liked to see me beneath the artificial glow: perhaps it cast me in a light more fitting to the identity that the diagnosis gave.
“And why are you liking this Rusalka?” Ilona asked.
“I don't know. I like the story, I guess. And the music. She – Rusalka – sings to the moon at one point.”
“Why is she doing this?”
“She wants to become human.”
“And does she?”
“Well, eventually, yes.”
“How is this happening? Man in moon makes her human?”
“What? No, she – she sort of asks the moon to lead her to someone.”
“And it does? I am not sure this is making sense.”
She eyed me skeptically with a raised eyebrow, and I shrugged in response. The story sounded a bit childish out loud – and perhaps it was – but it made sense to me. It wasn't like Turandot with its ruined ending, or the myriad of other operas about unprecedented tragedies or overly dramatic dialogues: it was a fairy-tale that was more life-like than any of its supposed realistic counterparts, solely because the love in the story had no reason and no explanation, and the deceit was so uncalled for and so shockingly accurate. And while I knew that the moon couldn't really help someone find who they were looking for, I did know that the sight of it hanging in the sky remained the same no matter where the viewer stood, and that, at least, was comforting.
“It's an opera,” I said. “It just happens that way.”
“So moon makes her human. Is that whole story?”
“No, that's just the beginning, really.”
“So what happens now? Why does she want to be human?”
“She – do you really want to hear the whole thing?” I asked, not bothering to hide my surprise. It was undoubtedly a part of her profession to feign interest in what her clients told her, perhaps giving sympathy to unhappily married men, or understanding to lonely ones, and while I didn't especially like the idea of her pretending to find interest in a subject that no one, really – apart from my mother – had ever truly shared, I appreciated that she made no qualms about doing so for any other reason than the fact that she was getting paid.
“It is good story?” she asked.
“I – I like it, yes.”
“Then I like to hear whole thing, yes,” she concluded, indicating for me to go on.
She pulled her boots from her feet and settled back again, and even in the sunlight her eyes were so dark that it was impossible to tell where the pupils ended and irises began. She certainly didn't look like Rusalka from the opera – her expression was so narrowed and her features so sharp, and she had none of the wishful longing for something so beautiful that had made my mother's eyes swell with tears when we watched the performance unfold – and yet it occurred to me that she was probably more like the character than my mother had ever been even so.
“Okay, I guess.” I had to pause to remember the story completely, reworking it in my head so that I could attempt to tell it eloquently. I had never possessed the ease of story-telling that my mother had that allowed her to articulate the characters and scenes with such detail that the picture would form in front of my eyes. If anything, my version would tear every bit of excitement from the story and leave it bare. “So … so there's a water-sprite named Rusalka, who lives in lake with her father, a water-goblin, and her sisters. Water-sprites can live forever because they don't have a soul, but it upsets Rusalka because she's in love with a human prince who hunts deer near the lake that she lives in, but she can't embrace him because she's invisible to him.”
I cleared my throat, already feeling as though I had left out a dozen or so details; the feeling was oddly reminiscent of when I had told the story of Turandot to Beringer, and something raked at my insides to hollow it out further.
“So her father sees that she's upset, but he tells her that she wouldn't really want to be human because they're so full of sin. But Rusalka's confident and claims that they're also full of love, and as a water-sprite, it's a feeling that can't be felt. Her father tells her that if she really wants to become human, she has to visit a witch who lives on the shore, but he warns her again that it's bad idea, but Rusalka ignores him and goes to shore anyway where she sings a song to moon to ask for help.”
“She sings to moon?”
“Yeah, it's the most famous aria in the opera.”
“But why is she doing this? I thought witch is supposed to help her.”
I paused.
“Right, well, the witch will help make her human, but the moon will bring her to the prince, I guess.”
Ilona made a face.
“No, this is not making sense,” she said.
“It's – it's explained because the moon is the same everywhere. It follows you wherever you go and looks down at everyone at the same time or whatnot, so it'll know where he is.”
She seemed to think it over.
“But so does sun,” she said. “Why not ask it?”
“Because the sun leaves during the night, but the moon stays during the day.”
“Not really. It is barely visible.”
“Right, but it's still there,” I said. “When the sun's gone, it's gone.”
“But it always comes back, yes?”
I sighed, no longer willing to argue with her.
“Whatever, I guess,” I said. “So anyway, Rusalka goes to find the witch and asks her to make her human. The witch says that she can make her a potion that will do it, but that drinking it will take her voice.”
“So it is like Little Mermaid, yes?”
“Sort of. I mean, it's based on it, except … instead of dying and turning into sea foam if the prince doesn't love her, Rusalka and the prince will both be damned. Forever.”
Ilona paused to think it over.
“This is good. I think I am preferring this version.”
“You'd rather be eternally damned than turn into sea foam?”
“Yes. At least I would still have my soul, yes?”
I didn't answer, unsure of whether or not I agreed.
“You tell me next part now,” she said, waving me along as I
lapsed into silence.
“Right.” I settled back into the seat, absently picking lint off of my sweater as I drew up the rest of the story. “So she drinks the potion and loses her voice, and then wanders out into clearing where the prince is searching for deer. He sees her and they fall in love –”
“This is quick.”
“It's an opera,” I said in explanation. “So they fall in love and he brings her back to his kingdom, announcing that he's going to marry her. But then a few of his servants start talking about it, and how weird it is that they just met and whatnot and how she won't speak to the Prince or tell him her name –”
“She cannot write it down?”
“She's a water-sprite,” I said. “They don't use pens. Anyway, the servants think he'd be better off sticking with the foreign princess that he was originally planning to marry, since she's not cold and mute, but the prince goes forward with the wedding anyway and throws a ball to celebrate. He's annoyed that Rusalka still won't talk to him, though, and the foreign princess goads him for his choice in brides, so he eventually sends Rusalka off and rejoins the celebration with the other girl.”
The train pulled beneath a tunnel and cast us in darkness, and when it pulled out again there were lines of lemon trees on either side of us. As Ilona and I simultaneously looked out across them, the sunlight pooling through the window cast patterned shadows across our skin.
Ilona took out another cigarette from the pack that I had given her and lit it, taking a drag from it and exhaling without removing it from her mouth to billow smoke from her nostrils. The gray mingled in with the air and drifted over her shoulder, leading my eyes away from her face to the aisle behind her.
“It is good story,” she decided after a minute, though her voice was suddenly distant. “But too sad, I am thinking.”
In the aisle behind her, standing just off in the distance, a boy was staring over at us. He was oddly dressed in too-big clothing, his spindly form weighed down by them despite the summer heat outside, and his eyes bugged out from behind thick, over-sized glasses. Even thousands of miles away and he had still managed to find me, the look in his eyes a reminder that no matter how at ease Ilona's presence had allowed me to be, nothing of the sort would ever exist beneath my skin. The breath I had been about to take compressed in my chest, and I barely noticed as Ilona tapped my knee with her foot.
Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2) Page 18
