Let the Dark Flower Blossom

by Norah Labiner

  25.

  Dr. Lemon was dying.

  26.

  Mrs. Stone found a tin box. French, a pretty thing—decorated with seaside pictures. Scenes of girls on a beach. Of cakes and oranges and parrots. A little dog ran along the shore. Dibby had never seen the box before. She reached into the drawer. And just then—she heard—

  27.

  Eloise picked up the fallen book.

  28.

  Laughter, a crash, a door slammed. It was Olga with the boys. Olga, the new nanny, brought Chester and Julian home from the ice rink. They were in the kitchen, already fighting. Dibby heard them. They sounded so much like Ro. They were hungry. The boys were calling to her.

  She looked at the box—

  And she drew back her hand.

  29.

  Even a locked box is right twice a day.

  30.

  The girl sat beside Salt on the flight from New York to Detroit. She had procured for him an extra pillow and a blanket. When the attendant came down the aisle with the drink cart and gave Salt pineapple instead of orange juice, the girl made a small, but polite fuss. Salt hated flying. The girl said things to calm him. The runway was backed up in Detroit. They had to taxi for a while. Then they lined up in a queue waiting to land. When the flight finally touched down, the girl made sure that they were the first to disembark. They were in jeopardy of missing their connection; the girl grabbed Salt’s hand, and she navigated him through the neon-bright airport to make the next plane moments before the doors were locked shut.

  The small plane hit turbulence. They kept their seatbelts fastened. Salt went pale. The girl gave him pills from a prescription vial, and he closed his eyes.

  The girl, that is, Inger, whom Salt called Inj, was an absolute necessity.

  Inj rented the car in Duluth. She drove them on through bleak winter-stricken towns. At the Stockade they slept together in the small bed in the overheated room. And at the Kracked Kettle, he had pancakes; she ordered eggs. While Salt read aloud the crime blotter from the newspaper, Inj looked at the atlas.

  Salt did the police in different voices.

  Inj plotted their course.

  And so they came to Damascus.

  They took a boat across to the island.

  31.

  Snow fell.

  32.

  Inj paid the ferryman.

  33.

  The ferryman directed her to the inn. Where—

  34.

  A black-and-white dog barked at Salt.

  35.

  The box was a biscuit tin, the kind of thing that a child would use to hide treasures.

  36.

  Inj was beautiful.

  37.

  Dibby closed the drawer.

  38.

  Salt was miraculous.

  39.

  The black-and-white dog ran delirious circles in the snow.

  40.

  The boy from the inn put the bags in his truck.

  41

  When the bell rang, Eloise was studying the face of a broken clock. She knew who it was at the door. Eloise knew all that there was to know. And this knowledge was no consolation.

  42.

  It was Zigouiller.

  43.

  But then you already knew this.

  44.

  Susu crossed the hotel lobby.

  The pages of a newspaper rustled.

  A match struck.

  Cigarette smoke.

  Lemon wax and rosewater.

  The diamond tiles of the floor.

  A heel scuffed across the floor.

  A cough into a rolled fist.

  45.

  Susu was a remarkable girl.

  46.

  Where in his small bullish being rested the miracle of Salt? He was not tough or gentle. Neither kind nor merciless. Neither wise nor foolish. He did not tell jokes or say funny things. He was neither loud nor quiet. He was not taciturn or sweet-tempered. If he was not charming; there was an odd irresistible charm to him. If he was not a genius; there was a genius in him. He collected typewriters, puzzles, ink pens, postcards, and keys to doors that he would never unlock. If he had not yet done great things; it seemed that he would, or that he must. And if he had never uttered one brave or prophetic phrase; it seemed that he was just about to do so, at any moment; to say something important. People were waiting for him to do something extraordinary. And they were willing to wait. The universe had granted Salt a gift. He had been given the benefit of the doubt. And because of this, perhaps, this; and so much more: Salt had no doubt in his own abilities. Salt believed in himself. He believed in the axiomatic proof of his own genius. He was important. He was because he was. And he was part of eternity.

  47.

  Zigouiller took off his overcoat.

  48.

  While Liz spoke of the moral authority of homo faber in abstract and specific, Eris idly fingered a run in her striped stockings.

  49.

  Susu on the balcony drank from a bone-white demitasse.

  50.

  Eloise showed Zigouiller her house, room by room. She showed him her Mycenaean jars and Egyptian antiquities. Her fat Buddhas and lean bodhisattvas. Her writing desk and her ravens. A rock from Gibraltar, a silver knife for cutting paper. Athena, Chronos, a swan, a weeping virgin, candlesticks. A sofa, a chair, a fireplace. The damask curtains, the Persian rugs, Russian dolls that opened one to the next ever smaller, a cedar box, the morocco-bound folios on the shelves, her books. And he said, “I bet you’ve read them all.”

  51.

  Zola brought a red ball to Zigouiller.

  52.

  Susu leaned over the stone balustrade.

  53.

  Zigouiller rolled the ball across the floor.

  54.

  Susu looked down in darkness at the street below.

  55.

  Zola chased after the ball, skidding along the polished wooden floors.

  She brought the ball back to Zigouiller.

  He rolled it again.

  56.

  Is reality rock or paper or scissors?

  57.

  Each time Zigouiller rolled the ball across the floor to Zola, she brought it back to him.

  58.

  Eloise and Zigouiller took the stairs one by one.

  59.

  Louis Sarasine spoke of—

  60.

  On a nightstand a wristwatch ceased keeping time.

  61.

  Zigouiller told Eloise that he had played Odysseus in a rock-opera miniseries on German television. And she fell back laughing on the bed.

  62.

  There was no television in Susu’s hotel room.

  63.

  Eloise’s black silk nightdress was draped over a chair.

  64.

  Salt’s dark hair was close cropped; his thick eyeglasses fogged over in the damp. He wore a peacoat, no gloves, no hat; wound about his neck was an impossibly long red knitted scarf. He called his eyeglasses goggles. He called his scarf a muffler. He called his trip a journey. He was on a quest for an artifact. Like the heroes of old. He was determined to get here; to get to this place. He had traveled such a distance to get to this island. He was not to be stopped by the obstacles that might have thwarted a lesser traveler. His eyes were large and damp and dark. His hands were soft and white. A reporter for the BBC had described Salt’s hands as small furious doves.

  Salt stared up at a black-bellied bird perched on an icy branch.

  Inj called to him—Benny.

  He turned toward her.

  And then looked back to the bird.

  It had flown.

  It was gone.

  Oh well, eternity was far away; even from a place called Damascus.

  65.

  “What are the rules of the memory game?” said Louis.

  66.

  “People still want the old stories,” said Zigouiller.

  67.

  Sometimes late, out of pity or kindness, t
he night porter’s wife brought coffee to Susu.

  68.

  Susu had black hair and green eyes. She bore a striking physical resemblance to her mother. They could; they did; they used to place their hands palms flat against each other, and their hands met palm for palm and finger for finger; bone for bone.

  69.

  Salt and Inj drove on—that is, were driven by the boy who existed, like the ferryman, for only their necessity, for their journey, their story—through the snow to Schell’s cottage. Salt looked out the window. Inj watched him. In her hooded parka, her boots, her woolen cap and fleece-lined gloves: she looked, hadn’t Salt told her this himself?—like the last girl in the world.

  70.

  Why didn’t Dibby open the box?

  71.

  Inj was Benjamin Salt’s research assistant.

  72.

  The members of the Mnemosyne Society were dwellers in the field of memory.

  73.

  Eloise wanted the old stories.

  74.

  Susu looked very much like her father, too; didn’t she?

  75.

  Salt came to Pear Island to make the acquaintance of a recluse who possessed something that he wanted.

  76.

  “I call the recollection of images as expressed in a narrative: the memory game. Because,” said Louis Sarasine, “like all games it is an enterprise that is both childish and dangerous—”

  77.

  “Do you believe,” Eris asked Liz, “that ‘the novel’ is dead?”

  78.

  Inj looked at Benny sitting beside her in the truck. He was wiping his eyeglasses with a white handkerchief. She invested this small utilitarian gesture with mythic symbolism.

  79.

  Sheldon Schell was in bed suffering with a headache.

  80.

  Beatrice was in the kitchen watching Tomorrow’s Edge on the black-and-white television set and turning the spoon round in the mixing bowl, when she heard the knock upon the door.

  81.

  A French bulldog made her way up a staircase.

  82.

  Beatrice helped the guests with their bags.

  83.

  Salt looked around the room. There were flowers on the wallpaper.

  Inj sat on the bed. She leaned back against the pillows. Inj said that it was so nice to get out of the city.

  84.

  Schell turned on his side. He heard bedsprings. He smelled smoke and roses.

  And then the scent drifted away.

  85.

  A red ball rolled step by step down the staircase.

  86.

  “Why do we admire the way that an actor can memorize his lines? Or revere a painter who can call to mind the shadows of an afternoon long lost to time? Or delight in the exquisite lie of a writer who creates a world within a nutshell of infinite space? And yet,” said Louis Sarasine, “when having lunch with a friend who in the course of telling an entertaining story reveals that his story is a deception—we feel affronted. Yes?—Because we were lied to—but when is it, exactly, that we want the lie? Is it only when we set the rules of the game? Does the lie become its own kind of truth? Do we feel anger at having been duped—or experience a secret terrifying pleasure? If the lie can so please us—of what use is the truth? If it affords no real reality or moral high ground, what is its utility? Is it a crime for an actor to address the audience? Or for an artist to admit that he paints his dream of a garden and not the flowers in the vase before him? I say this: truth is the ax wielded by the listener against the teller. It is his only weapon. He demands not: tell me what you recall; not tell the story as you remember it. He says: tell me the truth.”

  87.

  Zola looked at Zigouiller.

  88.

  Eloise laughed.

  89.

  Zigouiller intoned, “I am Odysseus son of Laertes, known before all men for the study of crafty designs, and my fame goes up to the heavens.”

  90.

  Eloise stopped laughing.

  91.

  Have the grape blossoms opened? Are the pomegranates in bloom?

  92.

  Eloise’s nightdress slipped from the chair to the floor.

  93.

  Zola gave a mournful sigh and lay her head on the black silk, perfumed.

  94.

  Schell opened his eyes.

  He did not know where or who he was.

  Then he saw Beatrice’s white nightdress.

  95.

  A white nightdress was draped over a chair.

  96.

  What did Salt want?

  97.

  Dibby was typing.

  98.

  The story was dark and terrifying.

  99.

  Beatrice caught her reflection in a plate as she set it on the table.

  100.

  Susu would have rather been called a thief than a liar.

  101.

  Olga, the nanny, was making cocoa for the boys.

  She brought it to a low boil in a pot on the stove, with cream and cinnamon.

  102.

  Beatrice went into the bedroom, and she whispered to Schell.

  103.

  Chet and Jules, playing cops and robbers, burst into the study, calling out STOP THIEF! and each boy took one of his mother’s hands, lifted the hands, left and right, from the typewriter.

  104.

  Olga took three mugs from the cupboard and poured out the cocoa into them and set them on the table for Chet and Jules and Dibby.

  105.

  Salt put his ear to the wall.

  106.

  “We played games of memory as children. Some games involved repetition—like telephone—the repetition of a phrase that changes for the group as each child reinterprets it. One does not win or lose at this game, only takes part in a chain of meaning. What causes me to move from one word to the next? What causes me to recall in words: a perfume? I can say: it bore the single note of rose; and yet in my experience of this perfume, there were—or are—no words. In the transcription of the sensual into the literal, comes the lie. It is, of course, not the kind of lie that matters. It is the kind of lie upon which we depend for both our dreams and responsibilities.” Louis Sarasine paused. “For from that single note of a rose, one suddenly recalls a garden.”

  107.

  Beatrice sat beside Schell on the bed.

  She was tiny and slightly strange.

  With her large gray eyes and dark decisive brows.

  “Has it happened?” he asked.

  “Have they come for me?” he said.

  The curtains were drawn.

  The cat leapt from the window ledge.

  “There’s a girl too,” said Beatrice.

  “The girl,” Beatrice said. “Is beautiful.”

  “What girl?” he said.

  108.

  Eris said to Liz that these days the novel had about as much appeal as a monster from an old movie. One pitied it. One was horrified by it. For a moment even, the thing was adorable. And then one became annoyed that it hadn’t crawled off somewhere to die a dignified death. Instead it went around smashing into things and gobbling up girls and stomping on cities like Godzilla.