The next day, Konrad found himself back in the same spot, staring at the statue. This time he was sure—wasn’t he?—that the statue had moved forward just a little bit more, barely pushing herself off the slab, the muscles tensing in her forearm. And her lips, perhaps just by a quarter of an inch, had ever-so-slightly moved apart.
This time, he didn’t speak out loud, for fear of some visitor overhearing him, so he moved towards the statue cautiously. Licking his lips, he put his mouth close to the statue’s ear and whispered, ‘Can you hear me?’ He waved his hands in front of the blank eyes, trying to detect any blink or any movement—no matter how quick. But nothing.
He moved a step back and considered her. This time, Konrad didn’t think he was stupid or crazy. He was sure she had moved since the last time he’d seen her. He just didn’t know what was causing it. His heart beat quickly. It took him away from the digging and the calluses, the cleaning and the mud. In fact, this was a discovery, a secret only for him, and this excited him. He’d always had a good mind, he’d done well in school as a boy. But this job—and more than that, his marriage—had deadened him, made him forget what it was like to be curious, to imagine things that no one had ever seen.
He thought of other things he was curious about. Like what Guadalupe’s lips tasted like, like what it would be like to have her alone in the house all to himself.
The next few days were a blur. More flowers to distribute, the burial of a tuberculosis patient no one showed up for, a bit of rain. He’d visited Beatrice’s grave only once in that time, putting a yellow carnation he’d found strewn on a pathway, after replacing the now-dead red one. Konrad glanced through the ancient registry of the graves to see if there was any information on Beatrice. Nothing. No entry under that name in 1878. It was as if she’d never existed. He was filled with questions, but there’d been so much to do that he couldn’t investigate the mystery any further.
Days later, when he’d finally found the time to visit Beatrice again, he witnessed a change in her face. This time, she didn’t have that haughty look, and the softening of her lips had gone away. It was only a minute change, a slight tensing in the bronze muscles of her cheeks. No one else wandering the graves would have noticed, but she now had a disdainful look, a cold and distant look, as if she’d been displeased by something. He advanced towards her carefully, like a veterinarian approaching a wild horse that’s caught up in barbed wire. ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘What’s got you so upset? Is it . . . is it somethin’ I done?’
No response, just that cold, blind look, with her head tilted slightly up. And for the first time Konrad noticed that there were two small perforations where her nostrils would be, as if to allow her to breathe. Leaning his head towards the nose holes, Konrad could hear a sound like when you put a shell to your ear. It was almost like a very soft inhalation. He realised the statue was hollow.
He stepped back and studied her again and he thought, just maybe from the position of the eyes, that she was looking at the flower he’d placed in the bottle the day before. ‘What,’ he said to her, ‘you don’t like yellow?’
He stood staring at her. Then he scratched his head and walked down the alley, lost in thought. As he approached the huge front gate, Konrad ran into Doc Bettenmeyer, the local undertaker. Or rather, he smelled first that apple-scented tobacco from the pipe that he always had clenched between his teeth. Even before he’d turned the corner, just from the smell, Konrad had imagined the dishevelled old man, grizzled beard a few days old, hands in his pockets, staring towards the tombs. As the man came into view, exactly as he’d pictured him, Konrad muttered, ‘Now, I wonder if that’s what it is?’
‘Hi, Doc,’ Konrad said.
‘Well, hello there, Konrad. How are things?’
‘Can’t complain. Can’t complain. Say,’ he said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, although his heart was beating quickly. ‘I got a question for you. Just somethin’ I was wonderin’. You used to be a medical doctor in El Paso, right?’
‘That’s right,’ he said, chomping on his pipe. ‘But I got tired of all the noise. My patients are a lot more quite now.’ Doc Bettenmeyer made the same joke each time he met Konrad, and Konrad was used to ignoring it.
‘Well,’ Konrad said, ‘I got a medical question.’
‘You’re not feelin’ ill are ya?’
‘No, I’m as fit as a fiddle.’
‘And your wife?’
‘That woman has an iron constitution . . .’ He cleared his throat and said, ‘No, what I got is one of them hypo-theoretical questions.’”
‘Hypothetical.’
‘Yeah, that’s it, about the senses. Uh. . . .’ Not quite sure how to begin, he said, ‘Ya know, how blind people got that language where they feel bumps on a paper?’
‘Braille?’
‘Yeah. And deaf people, they got a language with their hands?’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Well, what happens if you’re blind and deaf and can’t feel nothin’? Like your skin is all dead and cold? Could you, I don’t know, could you listen through your nose?’ Then he quickly corrected himself, ‘I mean, could you understand people through smells? Talk through them, I mean?’
The doctor thought for a moment, sucking on the apple-scented pipe that had burned out some time before. ‘Well, I ain’t never seen anything like that, but a long time ago I did read an article. That was all the way back in medical school, so it’s kind’a fuzzy, but the story was so strange it stuck in my mind. It was an entry from a field surgeon’s journal during the Boer War.’
‘The what?’
‘1880 somethin’, you know, during the reign of Queen Victoria, in South Africa? The English?’
Konrad rubbed his jaw.
‘Well, this article was about a young British soldier, a Welshman, I think. Anyway, he’d been blown to bits by an artillery shell during a night campaign. By all rights, he should have been dead, but the next morning, they found him still alive. He was blind, deaf, his mandible blown clear off, with most of his tongue, arms and legs torn to shreds. They stuck a breathin’ tube in his chest, ’cause there weren’t nothin’ else they could do, and waited for him to die.’
The doctor coughed a little and adjusted his pipe. ‘But he didn’t. He kept clingin’ to life. And the days turned into weeks, as they pumped ground-up oatmeal down his stomach. His dog tags were missin’. Not one man from his unit was left alive to identify him. They tried talkin’ to him to find out who he was, but it weren’t no good. They couldn’t even draw messages on his skin (you know, the way little kids do as a game?) ’cause what was left of the flesh on his torso was scorched and filled with blisters. So they all gave up.
‘That is, they all gave up, ’cept for one pretty little nurse. She’d been a perfumier’s assistant before the war (it’s funny the details you remember), and she was convinced she could communicate to him through smells.’
‘Yes, yes?’ Konrad said, trying not to sound too anxious.
‘Well, she brought all these supplies, flowers and essences and what-not and established a simple communication between them.’
‘How, how did she do that?’
‘Well,’ the old doctor said, scratching his head, ‘it’s been a long time since I read that article, but I seem to recall that oHow, HOwshe first introduced herself, so to speak. She gave herself a scent, like a name. She wore a special perfume, her own mix, so, every time she walked into the hospital tent, he’d “see” her, and distinguish her from all the other smells. Then she had to name him, establish his own scent. Sort of like “Me Tarzan, you Jane”.’
Konrad stared at him blankly.
‘Oh, never mind,’ the doctor said, taking out his pipe and waving it at him. ‘I just mean to say she’d walk into the room with her own special scent, and then she’d spray a little of a new perfume she’d mixed, just for him, on his pillow. So, once they’d identified themselves, then they could talk through the common language of flowers.’
<
br /> ‘What do you mean, “language of flowers”?’
‘The Victorians were quite a symbolic people. Each flower meant somethin’. Oh, I don’t remember it all, but, you know, like red roses mean love and white lilies mean death.’
‘I see,’ said Konrad, and a whole new world seemed to open up before his eyes.
‘Yes,’ the doctor continued, ‘because they were from the same era, the nurse and the soldier shared a common language of flowers, and she could communicate. Again, simple things. For example, she’d spray her scent in the air (meaning “Jane” or whatever her name was), and then she’d take out a flower that meant “happiness” (I don’t remember which that is) and passed it under the stub of his nose. So, in that way, he understood, “Jane is happy”.’
‘And could he talk back to her, somehow?’ Konrad asked expectantly.
‘Well, she thought she was having some effect, because, every time she did this, he would make his food pipe gurgle. But he couldn’t do anything else. After a few weeks, he succumbed to his wounds. I really don’t remember anything else. . . Now, what’s goin’ on, Konrad? You’ve never been interested in medicine before.’
‘Nothin’, Doc. Nothin’s goin’ on. I just thought, you know, how sad it would be to be blind and deaf and then, on top of that, not havin’ a soul to talk to. It would be a terrible thing, wouldn’t it, bein’ trapped in your own body?’
‘Yes, Konrad,’ the doctor said, tapping out his pipe on the heel of his shoe. Groping his jacket pockets for a box of matches, he said, ‘Real terrible.’
***
A few weeks later, Konrad was back at the gravesite of Beatrice, thumbing through an old, stained book, called Flowers and their Meanings in Victorian England. It had used up what little savings he had, and he’d been on pins and needles while he waited for it to be delivered from El Paso.
‘Uh-huh, uh-huh. See?’ he said, putting the opened page before the blind eyes of the statue. ‘Victoria, Queen of England from 1837 to 1901. And you died in 1878, which makes you a Victorian, too. Which means,’ he said, slapping the book, ‘we share “a common language of flowers” that I’m about to decipher.’
But the statue didn’t seem to take heed of Konrad’s explanation.
‘Uh-huh!’ he exclaimed, slapping the book again. ‘Now I get why you were all moody with me. It says here, yellow carnations are a sign of dis-disdain . . . or rejection.’ He jumped up, took the yellow carnation and hurled it towards the shadows, where it upset the cat who ran under a broken-down bench. ‘I know yellow’s not a smell, but you must smell the difference between red and yellow carnations, right?’
Still, no response from the statue.
Putting down the book, Konrad turned to his wheelbarrow, which he’d filled with a jumble of flowers he’d picked up from the trash and some he’d stolen from other graves. First, he grabbed the head of a red carnation, crushed it and rubbed it on his palms and forearms. ‘I hate the smell of these,’ he said to the statue, ‘but you must recognise this as my scent. It’s my “name”, right?’
He placed a bunch of red carnations in her bottle and picked up his book again. ‘Now, we gotta pick a name for you. Let’s see, let’s see,’ he muttered. ‘Daisy’s “innocence”. No,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘you don’t look innocent, that’s for sure.’ He laughed, but then he said uneasily, ‘I didn’t mean no disrespect by it, you know?’ He flipped through the book and read, ‘Gardenia means “joy”. Maybe, maybe. Calla, now that means “regal”, and you, baby, are regal, no doubt about it.’
Then he furrowed his brow and said, ‘Wait, wait, what about this. . . ? It says poppies signify both life and death, as well as magic Now, that’s a good one for you, don’t you think? You’re dead, but you’re also alive. And that’s gotta be some sort of magic. Yeah, poppies are a good one. And I think I got just enough.’
He hunched over the wheelbarrow and forced his rough hands to make delicate movements. Humming and hawing now and then, the sweat pouring down his brow, he finally grunted a sigh of satisfaction and stood up, his back cracking. ‘There, that’s about right,’ he said, admiringly, raising the small crown of interlaced poppies he’d just made. He walked over to the statue and said, ‘I, Konrad,’ and waved his palm under its nose, then he waved the garland of poppies under its nose, and said, ‘You, Beatrice.’ Very gently, very respectfully, he placed it on her head.
Konrad stood back and admired his work. ‘You’re sure a beauty, you are,’ he said. She still hadn’t changed expressions. ‘Well, I guess I’d better let it sink in, but I’ll be back tomorrow.’ As he pushed the wheelbarrow back to his shed, he found himself wondering if he’d be able to grab a few minutes alone with Guadalupe while his wife did the washing up.
The next day, Konrad got to work, irritable as anything. Not only had he not had a chance to be alone with Guadalupe, but his wife complained all throughout dinner about his salary, how it wasn’t possible to get a good piece of meat with what little he made. She’d gone on and on, embarrassing him in front of Guadalupe. How he’d just wanted to make her shut up!
The only good thing about the evening was that, as he passed Guadalupe in the narrow hallway on his way to bed, she’d run her nails down his chest. Then he caught a glimpse of her, swinging her hips, before she disappeared into the parlour where she slept. That got Konrad’s heart racing, but it lasted only for an instant. As he put on his night clothes, the thought of getting into bed with the monstrous Dolores made his skin crawl. He couldn’t sleep a wink all night.
As a result, Konrad went to work in a temper. He tossed the flowers on the tombs. He smeared the nameplates instead of wiping them off. When he had to dig a fresh grave for a small child who’d died of the croup, he scattered dirt everywhere, on the walkway and on the other graves. And the worst part was he didn’t care. He felt humiliated at home. Now he felt trapped at work, a place where he was normally so peaceful and calm. And then, as a wave of bitterness broke over him, he threw down his shovel and decided to visit Beatrice.
This, as it turns out, was the best thing he could have done.
As he turned the corner to her tomb, he found her radiant. Her face was full of exaltation. At the sight of her, reclined upon the marble slab, the crown of poppies fitting her like a diadem, all his worries dissolved immediately. Dolores could go on and on about her meat. She could belittle him and criticise him, but this proved he was good for something. This proved there was something special about him.
Konrad took off his hat. He approached the statue and waved his hand, as ever smelling of carnations, under her nose. ‘See? I’m here, my queen. Konrad’s here.’ For a while, he just stood there, gaping. Then he thought, ‘I must try something else. I must see if I can make you move while I’m here. What a sight that would be!’
He took out the book from his back pocket, now smeared with mud. He flipped through the bent pages, muttering, ‘What should I say? What should I say?’ He rubbed the backs of his hands against his lips and then traced his grubby fingers along the lines of the book, muttering ‘What do I have? What do I have?’ Then he spotted a pot of marigolds on a nearby grave. ‘Um, let’s see . . . marigold means “desire for riches”. Okay, why not say that? It’s the truth, ain’t it?’
He took out a poppy from her garland and wafted it under her nose. ‘Beatrice,’ he said. Then he took out a red carnation and did the same, ‘Konrad,’ and then, lifting up the pot of marigolds to her face, he said ‘wants to be rich.’ He repeated, ‘Beatrice, Konrad wants to be rich.’ He waited for a moment, seeing if she would nod her head or something. Again, there was no movement.
He burst out laughing, ‘What, you got nothin’ to say? Yeah, well, I guess we’d all like to be rich. Just like I bet you’d like to be lyin’ on a feather bed instead of this cold, marble slab, but there’s nothin’ doin’ is there?’
Konrad thought he could see a twinkle in her eyes. Then he realised it was just a stray ray of light reflecting off the window
of a nearby mausoleum. Still, maybe he’d made a connection after all.
As Konrad went to work the next morning, his path crossed old Doc Bettenmeyer’s.
‘Hey, Doc,’ Konrad said, hurrying by. He wanted to get to Beatrice’s tomb to see if she’d moved during the night.
‘Say, Konrad,’ the old man said, blocking his way. ‘Wait up! Did you hear about the desecrations last night?’
‘Desecrations? I just got in.’
‘Well, it seems some kids broke in and smashed up some tombs, some of the oldest ones.’
Konrad’s heart beat faster, He was hoping one of the tombs wasn’t Beatrice’s. He said, ‘That’s strange, ’cause I locked the gates myself. How’d they get in?’
‘Dunno. When I got in early this mornin’, everything was locked up tighter than a drum. Must’ve come in over the walls. And they must have brought hammers with them, too, ’cause they smashed right through the doors of the crypts.’
Konrad grunted, ‘Stupid kids,’ and brushed past the doctor. He started at a measured pace, but, as soon as he’d turned the corner, he took off at break-neck speed. He prayed that Beatrice was still intact. How awful it would be if, just when he was beginning some sort of conversation with her, some dumb kids had smashed her up!
His heart beating fast, a slight pain in his chest, Konrad ran headlong, slipping on small patches of early-morning frost that had formed in the shadows of the tombs. As he came upon her grave, he stopped suddenly. The sight took his breath away, even as his chest heaved from exertion. Beatrice lay on the tomb, a triumphant look on her face. She’d moved since yesterday all right. Her ankles were together, knees slightly open, reclining like an odalisque in a sultan’s tent who’s bested his many wives and concubines to reign supreme. Swathed along her arms and wrists and wrapped about her neck were strands of antique jewellery, pearls and emeralds set in platinum and gold. On her fingers were diamond and emerald rings. The stones glinted in the sun, although the metal was tarnished, as if it had been buried underground for a long time.
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