The Sunday morning service is over, and the evening one, too. And although Susanne would ridicule me if she knew, I enjoyed the services. I woke up at the morning service in a prairie of bodies, the red modesty cloth riding my thighs. Although I’m not sure whether I lay down or whether I was “slain in the spirit,” as Susanne would say, I felt refreshed. I felt good.
Rune is writing now; I wonder what. Knowing he has difficulty reading, I’m not surprised to see he scribbles, scratches, scribbles. His hand rests as his eyes traverse the page. Then he scratches and scratches again, until it seems little legible could remain. His glasses slip down his nose; he nudges them up, fingers the cleft in his chin.
The telephone rings. At first I’m not sure what it is, then I remember, and I think, How odd people choose to let the outside world enter their private world so shrilly, and without invitation. I expect Rune to stop working, stop the ringing, as I’ve seen him and Susanne and the preacher do: scramble to the receiver with what seems urgency, lift it, welcome the world. But he doesn’t seem to hear the call. The phone rings again. Where is Susanne? I think. Where is the preacher? I look down at the work spread before me: Susanne asked that I translate the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, the Essene Gospels of Peace, the Sophia of Jesus and the Book of Enoch. But I can’t think with the ringing. The phone has rung nine times, ten times, eleven, twelve. I stand and walk toward the noise. Toward the door hiding the phone, not the noise. And I open the door to a closet of sorts. The phone booth, Susanne calls it. There is nothing inside but a crammed-in desk and a squarish black phone. I lay my hand on the receiver: What do I say? But the ringing stops. Still, I lift it, imagine my words passing in, and through. I unscrew the microphone and find two thin metal plates. I know carbon granules lie compressed between the plates, and I imagine the sound waves of my voice compressing and decompressing those granules.
“I feel obliged to make you aware, young miss, that you have an audience.”
I turn. I see Rune. He stands just feet away. His long fingers are folded together; a clump of hair sticks behind one lens.
“The phone rang,” I say. I hold the receiver in my right hand, the microphone cap in my left. I feel hot, bright. I try to screw the cap back on, but the threads won’t align.
“I take it you didn’t like what the caller had to say?” He lays his hands over mine, over the cap, the receiver. I know he’s teasing—I’ve heard him tease Susanne this way. And yet he’s not smiling. And his eyes rummage mine. I slip my hands away, leave the receiver and cap in his hands.
“I just wanted to look inside,” I say. “See how it works.”
“How does it work?” He exposes the inner microphone. “Show me, and I’ll keep this little tryst to myself.”
And so I do, and I feel myself relax: this is a world I know. No men with exposed midriffs. No preachers with extraordinary powers. No divine incarnations of anything.
“Come with me,” he says when I’ve finished explaining and screwed back on the cap. “I may not have any idea what you just said, but I do have some talents.”
I walk with him across the nave, over to the table where he’d been working. “Mor and Sanne aren’t here,” he says, although I didn’t ask. “They went to pick up a few things. For Wednesday night. There’s a dedication then, for one of those babies who were wailing at the end of this morning’s service. But you wouldn’t remember that, would you? You were otherwise engaged.”
I feel my skin again brighten.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he says. “Mor’s a force. She could mow over just about anyone.” He reaches up and takes my hand in one of his hands, my forearm in his other, and he leads me to sit with him. There’s a large piece of paper on the table before him, but it’s blank. “What were you working on over there?” he says. He gestures toward Mother’s vault.
“Some translations for Sanne. She really thinks it’s possible I was born of a virgin birth….” But as soon as I say this, I wish I hadn’t: it sounds absurd.
“She’s toying with you, Aslaug.”
“No, really…,” I say. But then I wonder, Is she toying with me?
Rune still holds my hand, his skin warming. He looks into my eyes, his face so close I can feel his breath. Gold paint speckles his dark hair; he smells metallic. “You’re shaking,” he says; there’s no teasing in his voice now. “Are you cold?”
I’d like to lie, but I shake my head.
“Who are you?” he says.
“Who’s my father?” I think he believes somehow I know.
“God, Aslaug. You and Sanne have one-track minds. I was talking about you. I don’t care who your father is any more than I care who mine is.” But then he stops, reconsidering his words, it seems. Realizing that we may be talking about Mikkel either way.
“But you know who your father is,” I say. “It’s different.”
“Is it? I mean, I know my father’s name. That he cheated on my mother—”
“Maybe he didn’t.”
“He did,” Rune says. “Mikkel had had more than one affair, long before Maren entered the picture. That’s why their marriage was falling apart.”
“But Sara said their marriage was difficult because they didn’t share the same faith—”
“Classic chicken and egg. The faith issue became important because of Mikkel’s infidelity. It didn’t precede it.”
“How do you know this?”
He shrugs. “Mikkel said he wanted to explain what happened between him and Mor ‘man to man.’ Give me a fucking break.”
Mother was not averse to cussing. I’d looked fuck up in the dictionary years ago. When Sanne uses the word, it seems meant to shock, but I don’t feel shocked by her; I’m used to Mother. But I do feel some shock now. “So you do think Mikkel is my father.”
“I didn’t say that,” he says. “Christ.”
“But you think he is.”
“No. I don’t. You don’t look like him, all right? And you don’t have syndactyly. But I don’t think you were born of a virgin birth either, okay?” He takes his hand from my hand, cups my face like it’s water in a creek. “Aslaug,” he says, “it doesn’t matter who fathered you. You are who you are. Quit wasting your life with this crap.”
“It’s not that easy,” I say. But maybe it is that easy.
“Why isn’t it?” He releases my face, lets his hands drop away. “Are you going to change who you are, how you act, what you do with your life, because of who your father is?”
“It’s not that. I just want to have a context. I want to understand how I fit into the world—”
“But your context may become your prison.”
“What does that mean?”
He cups his own face now. “I don’t know what it means,” he says. “I guess I feel I know what my limitations are, you know. These clinicians when I was a child describing what I was, what I wasn’t, what I’d never be. I was just six when Mor took me out of school because of my so-called challenges. At six I was boxed in. Or out, as the case may be. And then knowing about Mikkel, what he is. Sometimes I see him in me, and then I’m sure I’m going to be just like him. Like I know my fate. And then there’s Mor….
“You know, Aslaug,” he says then, “when we were growing up, Sanne and I used to talk about you in secret. I wasn’t even sure you were real. I thought I remembered you, but maybe I just created the memories of you from Sanne’s stories. But when Sanne read me that article about you, and then when you arrived, it was like this mythical goddess came to life.” His fingers roam his mole, the frame of his glasses, the hollow of his neck. “Sanne would never admit it, but you stole her limelight. Before you came, she focused on the idea of you, and it was her thing. It was her way of being provocative. But now that you’re here, well, it’s the real thing that’s provocative.”
“I’m just Sanne’s toy, remember? Nothing much provocative about that.”
“Actually, you’re my toy,” he says, and he smiles, and his upper lip is g
one. “Kidding. But honestly, about Sanne, she was always the perfect child. She was always what I wanted to be. So smart. No issues. And then she went ahead and created issues. God knows why. I swear, she spent hours and hours on the streets in Bethan studying the ragamuffins so she could mimic them. Then, when she got bored with that, she started in on Maren and you. I was relieved in a way. Her shenanigans took the spotlight off me. But now the spotlight is on you, and I don’t think Sanne likes it. She wants to feel she’s unique. Special. Not just part of the masses. It’s not that Mor doesn’t love her, it’s just that Mor loves everyone. I think Sanne felt rejected by Mikkel, even though it’s Mor who left Denmark. And then Mor took on a whole new family by starting this church.”
“Sanne is special to Sara,” I say. “You both are. It’s obvious.” And I think of my mother. I was Aslaug Datter, my mother’s daughter. I was special to her. But now I’m a ploy. A means to an end.
“What’s obvious to me—and Sanne, too—is Mor’s interest in problems. My problems in particular. And how my problems reflect her failings. I mean, I love Mor. And I know she loves me. But she feels a lot of guilt about me. She feels responsible. It’s hard to love someone who makes you feel so guilty. The people in the church, she has no baggage with them. They need her, and they’re easier for her to love. I’d like for once to feel love without the guilt.”
“Why does Sara feel so responsible? So guilty about you?”
“Because she is responsible, at some level. But that’s another issue.”
“It was hard for my mother to love me, too,” I say. “I don’t know why. I felt I failed her, a lot. But I also felt I’d fail her no matter what. Like I was tainted, you know.”
“Yes, I know. The tainted seed. We’re both tainted seeds. What was she like, though, your mother? What was Hartswell like?” He pauses, then says, “I already know everything about you, though, of course. Sanne filled me in.” And he laughs.
So I tell him. I tell him of Mother and our house. I tell him of the area where we lived, where the flowers bloom like living jewels and the fog hangs heavy. I tell him of the nights, so close to here, and yet there the sky stretches to the oblivion in layers and layers of stars that can’t live here. I tell him of the smells: of freshly baked bread and Mother’s tea and pollen. And I realize I miss my home.
“Was she good to you?” he says.
“My mother?” I don’t know how to answer this question. She was my mother; I was her Aslaug.
“I wanted to show you something, remember?” he says. He flips the paper spread before him. It’s a drawing of me. “What do you think?”
I try to smile; I try to say, “I didn’t know I had an audience.” But I can’t; I’m not sure what I feel.
“You don’t like it,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I do.” The picture shows me as I was an hour earlier, a book open before me, my hair loose around my face, a background of stained glass and dark wood. “I’m just surprised. I thought you were writing. I didn’t even know you’d seen me there.”
He stands, takes my hand again. “Come with me,” he says.
Together we walk down the stairs that lead to the underbelly of the church, where the narrow bedrooms spread from the hall like insect legs. I’ve never seen inside Rune’s room, although I’ve known where it is. The doors to each bedroom are short and rounded at the top, the tiny windows swing open and closed, and Rune’s is closed and covered with dark cloth. He unlocks the door. I’m surprised by this, surprised it would be locked. We step inside. There are no windows to the outside in his room either, and the room is dark. He turns on the light.
Paintings and drawings of me hang everywhere. On the walls, the interior of the door, the foot of his bed. Pictures of me talking, reading, eating, writing, sleeping. They are beautiful, the paintings. Strange and beautiful. Like the purple passionflower—the crown-of-thorns flower. Bizarre; perfect. My body is my body, and yet, how do I know? I’m both exaggerated and understated. And my face: I see myself in these pictures as I feel myself, not as I’ve seen myself. He’s captured something in me I thought was mine only.
“I don’t understand,” I say. I’d grown up never seeing my face, wanting to see my face. Now I want to run from it, from them. I spent my childhood alone, unobserved except by Mother, and Grumset. It seems wrong someone could study me like this, capture me without my knowing. And yet, I’m touched. And relieved in a way: he feels something, too.
“Rune?” I hear Sanne call down the stairs. “Are you down here?”
“Coming,” he calls. He lays his hands on my arms, turns me toward him. “I don’t understand either,” he says, then his arms slip from my arms to my ribs and he tickles me. I laugh, even though I don’t feel like laughing. He stops the tickling; I see he’s not laughing. “But they’re good, don’t you think? It’s the first time in my life I actually feel good at something.”
“Rune,” Sanne calls again. “Where’s Aslaug?”
“Resting,” he says, and he nods toward my room. “She’s not feeling well.”
I step into the hall.
“Feel better,” he says, and now he smiles.
I walk down the hall and into my room.
“Aslaug,” he says. And I turn back. “Sanne and Mor don’t know about this—the pictures, I mean.”
I look into his eyes; I try to understand. Then I close my door.
As I climb into bed, the rigid springs of the mattress come alive; they squeal and moan, as if I’d sprawled atop Mother’s aching hips or cancer-laden spine. The noise seems more pronounced on this night, more jarring. And the stiff knobs of old springs seem to have proliferated during the day. Finding a comfortable place to settle in, fall asleep, proves difficult. But I want sleep. I want some reprieve from what just happened with Rune; I want some reprieve from my mind.
Yet I lie here for what seems hours, and still I don’t sleep. I slip from the bed, out of the room, into the bath, and I bathe. Then I return and lie down. The small bedroom is hot as usual. I turn on a light, open the Essene Gospel of Peace, and I read, until the preacher knocks on the door; I’d forgotten she’d be coming.
She inches open the door. “You’re awake,” she says, and she steps in. “Rune said you aren’t well.”
“I’m better.”
“Hungry? I know you had no dinner. We ate late. You were resting. Sanne prepared this for you while I cleaned up.” She hands me a tray of rugbrød with blue castello cheese, and a glass of homemade schnapps, as she’s given me every night since I first came. “A Danish tradition,” she told me that first night. In the short time I’ve lived with them, she’s made me aebleskiver and aeblekage and wienerbrød. Mother made these dishes when I was a small child. Not often. And Mother made schnapps: she’d steep apple or dandelion or blackberry or elderberry in Danish aquavit, and sometimes she’d mix in some dried plant. But she never gave any to me. But Sara does each night. And twice she’s sat with me, drunk with me, even though she says she doesn’t drink. That preachers don’t drink. I find the schnapps relaxing and soporific. And the ritual of consuming the schnapps feels soothing to me, nurturing. When Mother was alive, my daily life was so predictable. Now little is: little but this schnapps, and Sanne’s white garb.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m hungry. Thank you.”
The telephone rings; I hear it through the ceiling.
“You’re welcome, Aslaug. Sweet dreams. We’ll start your schooling at nine tomorrow, if you’re feeling well enough.” The preacher plans to homeschool me, as she does Sanne and Rune.
The ringing stops.
“Okay,” I say, and I watch her walk out. “I’ll be ready.” She shuts the door.
“Mor?” I hear Sanne’s voice in the hall. “There’s a call for you….”
I adjust the tray on my lap. The preacher is growing on me, I think, as Sanne said she might. And I think of the phrase “growing on me.” I’d never heard it until Sanne said it—I’ve never heard many of the phrase
s Sanne uses. But this one I like. I’d like to think maybe I’m growing on the preacher, too. I think it’s possible I am, as if these services today had a way of nourishing each of us with the other. The way the church flutters to life when the preacher shakes that tambourine. And her touch. When I walked to the front of the church, felt her palm on my skin, I think she could see there was more than a trickle in my spirit. Because I got it—I felt it—my spirit. And despite what Sanne says, the preacher didn’t push me. Although it felt like something did.
I eat the cheese and bread quickly, almost without tasting it. Quaff the schnapps.
Then, as I’ve done many nights in this stale room, I strip off my nightgown before I lie back down. Although I’ve just bathed, I’m sweating, and the cotton fabric of the nightgown was clinging to my skin like it was blanketed there, like it was glue. I drop to the bed; the sensation of the worn sheets against my skin feels almost human.
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Are you going to cross-examine the witness, Counsel?
—Yes, Your Honor. Detective Hoder, you didn’t find any evidence linking Ms. Hellig to the fire at 7 Kettil Street, did you?
—Other than she was standing there watching the place burn to the ground, watching those people burn up inside? Nope, not a thing.
—So you found no remnants on Aslaug’s person of kerosene from those rags that started the fire, right?
—Nope. None.
—And you found no fibers from the kerosene-soaked rags on Aslaug’s body either, right?
—Not a one.
—And nobody witnessed her starting the fire, correct?
—She was the only witness to the fire, as far as we know.
—So your answer is no?
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