Rosewater and Soda Bread

by Marsha Mehran

  When her hands were about three feet apart, she took a deep breath, swung her elbows out, and swept her fingers in again.

  Estelle gasped. From the center of her belly, where the girl's hands had stopped, a powerful surge was taking over. It was as though she was being lifted from the very core of her being, a pulling sensation arching her back off the mattress.

  Then: heat, a warm rush of pooling blood similar to the sensation she had felt in her hands that other day.

  Before Estelle had a chance to say anything, the girl's hands began to move again.

  As though pulling invisible threads, her fingers plucked, plucked, plucked, pulling heat from Estelle's navel.

  On and on the girl kept unspooling, as the widow watched her in pure awe, no longer frightened by the heat emanating from her body. There was an intense concentration in the girl's gray eyes as she plucked the threads that were visible only to her. Still a teenager, somehow she also looked older than time itself.

  Estelle had intended to shut her eyes and welcome a soothing darkness, as she had done when the girl had treated her hands before. But this time she decided to leave her eyes wide open, and what she saw were the dreams of a little princess.

  “SO YOU SAW A PICTURE, like an image, when she touched you?” Marjan asked in puzzlement.

  “No, no, you mistake: not a picture but a film. Like an old film, with some color. And she did not even touch me this time.”

  Estelle waved her hands in the air, showing their limber state. “I think when she put her hands over me, I see her memories. I see her thinking. Like energy too.”

  Marjan sat back in her seat, sifting through what the widow had just told her. “And it's happened twice now? I don't understand—two times you've seen a film?”

  Estelle nodded, licking her upper lip. “Two times, yes. Monday and last night. Tonight she is very tired from all the walking.”

  The older woman paused and looked at Marjan. “I know this is amazing to hear, darling, but it happened. I have my eyes open, but I still see this film. It was a film of a little girl. She was wearing a beautiful white dress and turning, turning in the same spot. Like trying to make herself dizzy. That is all I saw and then the film was finished. And my hands, my feet, even my hips—no pain. Nothing for three days. Like magic. Strange, yes?”

  The Italian widow was too busy licking her sugared sweat to see Marjan shake her head; nothing was strange anymore, she told herself.

  Baraka, the blessing of Allah, is given only to a select few in a lifetime. These chosen people are able to fully transmit the dam, or breath of life, onto the sick and needy. It is the dam, the rhythm of the breath accompanied by prayer, which heals most ailments. The chosen healer with the power of baraka is called the hakim …

  Marjan turned the page, her eyes scanning the small print; the Canon of Medicine was certainly living up to its name in length: the edition that Filomina Fanning had procured for her from the university library in Dublin was a condensed version of the five-volume masterpiece written by the physician over a thousand years ago, but it was still proving too vast for a quick skim.

  She had spent the last hour scouring the book, and although thoroughly captivated by the techniques of breathing to heal ailments, she hadn't found anything on the peculiarities of healing hands. As much as she hoped to locate some clues within its pages, she was growing somewhat discouraged. She squinted at the fine print. No, nothing about hands transferring memories. Massage and oils, yes. Sandalwood oil, for example, when dropped onto the ledge of the ear, cures the body of all egotism. A perfect ablution before prayer. Here it was again, the universal pregnancy diet, all those foods she had been so anxious about serving.

  Still, nothing like what Estelle had experienced.

  Marjan frowned. Estelle had said that she felt a warmth course almost immediately through her body when the girl drew her hands above her, followed by a freezing sensation where the girl began pulling the air. Then she saw the picture of a young girl, in what looked like a white dress, twirling on the tips of her toes.

  A young girl with red hair.

  It was as though the girl was transferring her emotions or desires, maybe even past experiences, to Estelle while she tried to soothe her arthritis. A whirling little girl. Marjan's eyes followed the stairs in the kitchen. She thought she had heard a noise on the landing above her. It was only dawn, too early for either Bahar or Layla to be awake, she reminded herself. She wouldn't know where to even begin explaining her latest finding to her sisters. She brought her eyes to her hands, resting them in the hollows of her palms.

  Healing hands. Transference of memories. A whirling little girl. What was she not understanding about all of this? She looked up again.

  Whirling. It was a practice done in many circles. Among the Sufis, those followers of a mystical strain of Islam, it was a treasured practice, as sacred as the prayers to Mecca. Sufis believed that whirling brings you closer to the center of God. It was a method similar to Estelle's meditation garden, where she traveled in a circular pattern while praying or thinking of her problems. By whirling, you align your core to the earth's core. Legend had it that the dance started with Rumi, who wrote poems to the Beloved nearly three hundred years after Avicenna wrote his Canon.

  How was it that the image Estelle had seen was that of a girl whirling?

  The knock was soft, hesitant. It came twice, then paused before sounding once more. Marjan reached behind her and opened the kitchen door. A familiar face stared back at her. “Hello,” she said, looking up at the old woman on the stoop.

  The woman brought her hand to the knot on her head scarf. “I'm Marie Brennan. I live across the street.” Her voice and hand were both shaky.

  Marjan smiled politely. “Of course.” She closed the Canon and turned to greet the woman fully. “How are you?”

  Marie blinked and looked down at her orthopedic shoes. “Thank you. Good. Thank you.” She continued to stare at her shoes.

  Marjan tilted her head. Dervla's sister had never been to the café before. “Do you want to come in?” she asked, pushing the door open.

  Marie looked around uncomfortably. The alleyway was quiet but for a soft cloud of flour billowing out of the bakery next door.

  “I came as early as I could, I can't stay longer than a minute the most.”

  “Is there something wrong? Are you all right?”

  Marie tightened her lips, looking as though she might burst into tears right there on the spot.

  Marjan opened the back door wide. “Please, come in.”

  FADDEN'S MINI-MART had changed very little since Marjan had bought her first bag of groceries there. The same rows of raggedy turnips, rhubarb, and parsnips piled in deep wooden bins; fishing tackle interspersed with ladies' stockings and cans of Batch-elors baked beans; jams and biscuits galore, lined in neat pyramids along the back wall. The same leprechaun haunting its midnight aisles. “Hello, Danny. How are you doing?” Marjan said, stepping into the shop.

  Behind the Formica counter, Danny Fadden jumped in surprise. “Oh! Hello there, Marjan! Grand, grand. On a bit of a creative zephyr, to be exact.”

  Danny pushed his large glasses up his red nose and smiled. As Marjan approached the counter, she noticed the shopkeeper's hands: they were covered by Rorschach splotches of indigo ink, which had also found its way onto his chin and wrinkly brow.

  “What are you up to now?” She glanced at the large bound notebook opened on the countertop.

  “Back on the C's. I've the first draft finished, you see, so now it's the meticulous act of correspondence, check entries against entries, making dead certain I've not missed any cross-references.”

  Danny pushed his glasses up his nose again. “You see, Marjan, every fairy creature out there has a like, a relative or twin, in every language and culture there is. Take the cluricaune, for example.A happy cousin of the leprechaun but for his preference for red vino instead of the Kilkelly stout. Now, the cluricaune meets his mirror in t
he English boggart—not to be mistaken for that lovely scoundrel of the silver screen, mind you—which in turn is almost identical in temperament to the croissant-mad rongeur d'os of the Normandy coast. Who, in a roundabout stroke of fairy paterfamiliarity, is similar to the bullbeggar of Somerset, and the spirit—which, to be perfectly frank, has a bit in every pot of every land.” Danny took a deep breath, his eyes burning with inspired light.

  Marjan shook her head. “My goodness. And how's your Finnegan doing?” she asked, following local protocol. It was customary practice to ask after the shopkeeper's fairy before tending to the more prosaic business of groceries and the like.

  “Mighty. Had his summer holidays in Cabo San Lucas. That's Mexico country. Got back and left me this just on the Monday.” Danny disappeared under the counter and emerged a few seconds later with a large piñata bull.

  “Tucked in behind the case of Beamish, so he was. Wouldn't have a clue what it was doing there but for his IOU.” The grocer cleared his throat and read from a piece of green felt he held in his hand:

  Had me a sweet señorita in the land of tequila

  A couple of mariachis for the afternoon archies

  Nevertheless, missed my Beamish the best

  Promise my pesos at the end of my rest.

  Andale Andale Andale!!! IOU El Finnegan

  A stranger to Ballinacroagh would have been quick to flee the mini-mart right around then, but like the rest of the patrons who frequented the shop, Marjan knew that Finnegan was a leprechaun who visited the mart on Sunday nights for a rig or two of his favorite stout. The wily shoemaker would always leave an IOU note promising the shopkeeper payment in full someday soon, but payment never came. Payment enough, most patrons agreed, was the smile of camaraderie brightening Danny Fad-den's usually lonely face.

  In fact, Marjan was one of few in town who knew of the leprechaun's true origins: according to Fiona Athey who had in turn heard it from Evie Watson, whose information came straight from the horse's mouth, her on-again off-again boyfriend Peter Donnelly, Finnegan was a high school prank gone out of hand. Although graduated and on their way to larger debaucheries, the Donnelly twins still kept up their ruse of a leprechaun stealing stout, for they knew how important it was to Danny Fadden's creative life.

  Marjan trailed her hands slowly along a display of Cadbury's chocolate fingers. The biscuits were among Layla's favorites. She grabbed a box and approached the counter again. “Danny, what do you know about healers? People who have special powers?”

  The grocer sat up on his stool. “Well now, that is one of our greatest legacies. Going back to the times of the Druids themselves. Sure, those bearded fellows had their work cut out for them, planning out fates and fortunes for all those kings and minions.”

  “Could any of them bring out sickness, heal with their hands maybe?”

  “Let's see now. … What I know of healers is limited, not as standard as I'd like to be on the matter, that's for sure. Spent too much time on this Encyclopedia of the Folk, you know. … Healing with hands, you say?”

  Marjan nodded. “Special hands. Not like ordinary fingers. Sort of like webs.”

  Danny's bulbous eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses. “Webs,” he whispered and tore through his notebook, flipping pages until he reached the middle. “Webs … only one bit about webs here. But nothing to do with healing. That's it, here we go: the merrow.”

  Marjan waited for the grocer to read from his encyclopedia.

  Danny cleared his throat once more. “The merrow: siren of the sea, Irish to the core. Cousin to the mermaid, who finds her home in Atlantis, or as the Celts call it, Hy Brasil.

  “Merrows have legs like the rest of human folk but carry fingers with webbed skin. From time to time they make their way to the land, escaping the chains of domesticity below. It seems the poor creatures are mated to rather ugly mermen, squat little toads. They much prefer the company of men onshore.”

  Danny looked up from the book and grinned. “Sure, why wouldn't they?” he said mischievously, pushing his glasses up his round nose.

  The mermaid again.

  That fairy tale wasn't going to help solve this problem, Mar-jan told herself. She thought of what Marie Brennan had warned her about that morning:

  “They've written to the bishop in Tuam. It'll take a month to reach him; he's off on his holidays at the moment. But there'll be a mighty price to pay when he gets the letter. Oh, a mighty price.”

  Despite Marjan's offer of tea, Marie had chosen to remain standing just inside the kitchen door.

  Marjan had leaned forward in her seat. “What do you mean? What price?”

  “The price—the price we all have to pay!” Marie's voice quivered; she clutched her black purse fervently to her chest.

  Marjan thought that the older lady might faint. She certainly did not look well.

  Marie lowered her voice. “Dervla is going to tell the bishop that Estelle Delmonico's practicing devil worship. And that she's got some sort of witch up there with her. And that Father Ma-honey is in on it, channeling the source from his radio station! There's no way to stop it! It's done already!”

  Marjan shook her head at such a preposterous accusation. Imagine Father Mahoney channeling spirits. What would Dervla Quigley think of next?

  “Will I ring this up?” Danny pointed to the products on the counter.

  “Thanks, Danny. I'll have a bottle of buttermilk as well.” She pointed to the large glassed-in refrigerator in the corner.

  Danny tapped his fountain pen against his broad forehead. “Now that's what I was picking at my mind just then! You'd think I was off with the fairies!” He rushed out from behind the counter and made his way to a refrigerator filled with soda and milk cartons. “I knew there was something I was meaning to give you as soon as you walked in. I just wasn't able to pin the thought, for my Finnegan.” He swiveled around, a bouquet of luscious red roses in his hand. “This came for you late last night. From Buds of Mayo in Castlebar. Café was closed, so they dropped it off here. Had to keep it refrigerated, so.” He handed Marjan the flowers. “There's a card in there.”

  Marjan opened the envelope. It was from Julian.

  A thousand heartfelt apologies. Had to get myself to Galway for new contractors ASAP. A nightmare of pipes bursting, servants'quarters knee-deep in lake water. Half a mind to pack it all up, really. Be back day after. Dinner then? Please?

  Your slightest look easily will unclose me,

  Though I have closed myself as fingers,

  You open always petal by petal myself as spring opens

  (Touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

  —Julian

  CHAPTER XV

  MARJAN HAD PLACED the roses in a ceramic vase next to the samovar in the dining room. The red petals gave the tea boiler's golden belly a healthy blush, reflecting with a satisfied glow. As she always did in the mornings, she lifted the top half of the samovar and filled it with water before placing the top back on and plugging the whole thing into the wall. She flipped the power switch, listening for the hum of the samovar's inner coil as it started to heat up.

  The samovar had come with them from London, along with most of their knickknacks and crockery, the delicate fluted teacups with their filigreed handles and the multicolored pots that lined the mahogany service counter.

  Everything had been packed and shipped over within days, their plane ticket to Ireland bought with the last of their savings. The money they had borrowed from Gloria to start the business,along with Estelle's generosity, had seen them through those frightening first months of business.

  In Marjan's estimation, Estelle Delmonico had a heart bigger than the whole of Ireland. It seemed almost preordained that she should be the one to have found the mermaid girl, that it was Estelle who had taken her in and not someone who might have gone straight to the authorities.

  Bubbles began to surface inside the samovar. With a spoon in her hand, Marjan leaned down and tapped its center,
testing the sound. The lower the ting, the closer the water was to tea quality. The sober sound reverberating back told her she needed to wait a few more minutes for that perfect cup of bergamot. Nothing like a good cup of tea, especially on a cold morning like this.

  “Where did you get those?” Bahar asked, coming in with a tray of baklava. She slid them into the glass cabinet and walked to the mahogany counter. “Very expensive,” she commented, gingerly touching one of the rose blossoms.

  “I suppose they are,” replied Marjan nonchalantly, turning away from the vase.

  “So?”

  “So?”

  “So, where did you get them?”

  Marjan picked up a purple teapot, took off its lid. “They were delivered from a florist. Julian sent them.”

  “Huh.” Bahar crossed her arms over her thin chest. “Keen, isn't he?”

  When Marjan did not respond, Bahar turned to her with a penetrating stare. “What's going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This Julian. Are you in love with him or something?”

  “Now why would you say that?”

  “Siobhan said you were all made up and walking into the Wilton Inn the other night,” Bahar replied. “Said he never showed up.”

  Marjan scooped up two spoonfuls of loose bergamot leaves, added them into the teapot. She had wondered when Bahar would mention her non-date with Julian. She had been prepared for a grilling about it for the last two days.

  “My whole life is an open book, I see. When did you get this bit of news?”

  Bahar shrugged. “Just yesterday, when I was at the Fish Hut getting the whiting.” She paused. “She asked about you-know-who as well.”

  Marjan whipped around, the tea leaves sprinkling across the countertop. Bahar pretended not to notice the small mess. She took a teapot of her own, relishing her hold on a bit of information.

  “What did she want to know?”