Thistlefoot, p.15
Thistlefoot, page 15
It speaks of revolution. Of small rooms where bookbinders and students gather, their voices low and certain. It speaks of the Bolsheviks, of an empire falling, of power gained and lost. It speaks of the blood that has been spilled and the blood that shall be. It speaks of the body it will one day be lodged in, a soldier in Denikin’s army. It speaks of pogroms and of Jews gathering in defiance, like a secret pulse beneath Gedenkrovka. It speaks the stonecutter’s name.
“So you see why my daughters are having trouble sleeping,” Baba Yaga chides. “This is not a fitting lullaby for any child, Reb Haim.”
Haim places his palms on the table. He becomes focused, the way a chisel becomes focused when set to a task. “Did you hear,” he says, “the news from Korostyshev? Gentile farmers, they lynched a Jewish man and his son. Sixteen years old. And the tsar’s soldiers, there to keep order, they claim—they looked the other way as the man begged for his son’s life.”
“I know what goes on,” Baba Yaga grunts.
“You know a great many things, don’t you, Baba Yaga? You always have your little ways of knowing.”
“I listen.”
The stonecutter nods. “And what if you could use this knowing for good? You could help us. Help your people. There is a resistance, a gathering of Jews who seek to—”
Baba Yaga raises a hand and tiny stitches of red thread seal shut the stonecutter’s mouth. “I do not care for the squabbling of men. I care for my daughters. That is all.”
Haim meets her eye. Her irises, nearly as black as the pupils within them.
“I protect them well on my own. You will not speak to me of this again, Reb Haim.” Baba Yaga’s stare is a carved stone. The bullets on the table are bright and heavy as moons. They wait. They dream of a pulled trigger.
The stitches through the stonecutter’s lips will dissolve…in time.
* * *
I’ll admit, I considered telling this story differently. In another telling, perhaps Baba Yaga joins the resistance and I lay egg after egg, fat with lead. Perhaps she and the stonecutter become lovers. It would not have been impossible—Baba Yaga has taken lovers before. One, a golem she built from clay. One, a maggot-heavy carcass of a black bear, sweet with rot. One, a traveling merchant, whom she bedded the way a mantis would, ending in devouring. Forgive us! Gossiping like yentas. But oh, what lovers she has had! Baba Yaga is a creature of hunger. Baba Yaga, with her daughters born from rugelach and rosewater and teeth. Baba Yaga, glutton and giver of secrets.
Listen, did you know that when moths are reborn from the cocoon as winged beasts, they have no mouths? As caterpillars they feast on green leaves, plump themselves into morsels, hide away in pale silk, and then reemerge to never eat again. Imagine! To live with all your hunger behind you. Our Baba Yaga is no moth. She is built of one thousand open mouths, and they are always wet at the jaw.
In this telling, Baba Yaga does not join the whispering bullets. She does not tuck into back rooms where maps and pamphlets flutter like severed wings upon tabletops, nor does she tuck into the stonecutter’s bed. Instead, she takes care of her own, as she has always done. She and Reb Haim never speak again. At least, not while he is alive.
Though Baba Yaga has had many lovers, she only has two sweethearts—Illa and Malka. Lovers are for eating. Sweethearts are for pressing a cool cloth to their foreheads when a fever spikes and whispering, Hush now, darling, sleep. Sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Li Fen bolted the final latch on the Estey Museum door, turning the brass key with a heavy click. It was one of her favorite sounds—evoking completion, like a ribbon being knotted atop a paper-wrapped box. Another day come to its end.
It had been a good day. Most days were—if you set the intention for goodness. Fen held intention in high esteem. That was the role of the artist, after all: to see the world not only as it was, but as it could be. An empty stage (only wood and curtains and renter’s debts) could become a forest inhabited by nine-headed birds and wise goats able to tell truth from lies. A canvas could become a lake, moony with magic toads, or a sky tangled with dragons. Surely, a day was the same. A blank page to fill with whatever made the imagination buzz. So yes, she could have taken today as simply another long stretch of aching hours giving tours to sticky-fingered schoolchildren with short-tempered teachers. But what was the fun in that? No—today, she had led small, growing minds through a labyrinth of sounds and sights. She had planted tiny pipe organs in their chests that would oompah-pah in their dreams.
Li Fen pocketed the key and made her way down the steps to the parking lot. She softened in the evening air. A good day, she told herself, a mantra.
A clatter rang out from the alley between the nearest two factory buildings.
“Hello?” she called, her voice cartwheeling off the looming slate.
Something moved in the shadows, and Fen’s breath caught in her chest. Intention. That’s what it all came down to. You could choose to be afraid or choose to be curious. She took a step forward.
The shadow shifted.
“Hello?”
With a rattle, a fat raccoon tumbled off a metal trash bin, and Fen giggled with relief.
What an odd-looking fellow, with hands like a tiny man and that plump waddle. They didn’t have raccoons where she’d grown up, a few hours outside Shenzhen, nor in Beijing, where she’d run her theater. Occasionally she forgot just how different things were here—and then she’d see a strange creature like that, almost mythical in its otherness.
Of course, it wasn’t the only reminder. The residents of the small New England town had their own ways of reminding her. Rude questions about her heritage. Mocking her accent or pulling their eyes into slants with their fingers. Certain moments made Fen want to buy the first ticket home, and damn the work she did here, the art she made, the community she had built for and with these people. But an artist sees the world not as it is. She sees its potential. And so, when the brash couple on the morning tour that day had asked whether anyone local might be available as their guide instead, Fen merely smiled, and complimented the lovely tulip brooch pinned to the woman’s lapel. Intention.
The raccoon scampered off into the bushes, and Fen fished through her purse for her car keys, coming up with nothing but loose coins and lip balm. No keys. She sighed, envisioning the green glass cup on the ticket counter where she’d last placed them—and where they almost certainly still lay. One of the drawbacks of the artist’s gift: sometimes you’re so busy seeing the world as it could be, you forget to keep track of the one you’re in. Turning back toward the museum, she bounced up the cement stairs. Just as she was about to slide the brass key back into the deadbolt, she heard another clatter. It was louder this time. Too loud, surely, for a raccoon…She spun, squinting into the alleyway.
“Is someone there?” Again, Li Fen took a step forward. Then another.
A man emerged from the darkness.
He moved oddly, like a jerky silent film skipping between stills. As he passed under the light of a streetlamp, she saw that one of his legs was badly twisted, his trouser torn, but he leaned on it like he didn’t notice. His back was hunched, as if bearing a great weight.
“Sir, are you all right?” Her pulse quickened—but if this man needed help, she would help him. Intention.
He lurched closer, wheezing.
The man was of medium height, and older than Fen—perhaps seventy—with thinning white hair tied back in a ponytail. She recognized him. He’d been in the audience for Mira’s kids’ final show, the one hosted inside the museum just before they’d left in a hurry. While some of the audience had been ornery, demanding their money back, this man had been easy and polite. He’d even offered to donate extra to help quiet some of the more demanding customers.
“Sir?” Fen stepped down from the stairs and approached him, slowly. A breeze sliced through the night, strangely warm for autumn. “Do you need help? Can I call someone?”
The man stumbled, landing on his twisted leg, and Fen reached out to catch him. His shirt was wet. Blood.
A cold fear slipped into Fen’s veins, but she pushed it away. This man needed help, fast. She had to stay clearheaded. “I’ll call an ambulance. Can you tell me what happened? Did someone hurt you?”
His head snapped up. Fen gasped. His skin…it shifted, as though a brushfire were writhing beneath. His veins had risen to the surface, but without the dark blue black of blood—instead, the man’s face was rivered in pure white, as if his capillaries had been hollowed and filled with smoke. White wisps seeped from between his lips and rose from his eyes like gaseous tears. She stared, transfixed, as he bared his teeth to emit a low, animal growl. Startled, Fen let go—but before she could pull away, the man snapped up a hand and seized her by the throat.
It was a sweet little cup—the green glass where her car keys waited patiently on the ticket booth counter. She’d gotten it from her brother, part of a set he’d received on his wedding day. The handle had cracked off, and he’d been about to toss it away when Fen had rescued it from the rubbish. It only needed a new life; for someone to see its potential. Would it miss her, her little cup, after all this was over? Would someone else adopt it? Or would it be thrown away? Lost to a trash heap somewhere, where no one would hold it again? Like my body will be. Her vision blurred from lack of air. Her sight, speckling with green light. She could almost feel the cold weight of her car keys—as if in some other dimension, some other version of her life, she hadn’t forgotten them at all, but had plucked them out of the green cup and pressed them into her hand as she’d made her way safely back to her Subaru…They seemed so solid, so present, the teeth digging into her skin.
No—what she felt was real. The brass museum key, still grasped between her fingers.
Li Fen choked, panicked, in the man’s grip. He squeezed and her eyes watered as she felt her windpipe bruise. Her hands fumbled. The key, sharp and glinting in her fist. Then, she drove the metal teeth into the man’s wrist with all the strength she could conjure. He dropped her with a howl. Li Fen ran. Down the alley. Up the museum stairs. Please, she prayed, shoving the key toward the lock. She was moving too fast, the first two attempts scraping past the opening without catching. Please. You will open. You will open. Intention…
The door swung free and Fen tore inside—slamming it shut behind her.
She stood paralyzed, staring at the locked door. Then, a bang sounded as the man slammed against it from the other side. Thud. Thud. Fen clasped her hands over her mouth. Though the building was old, the metal door had been put in only last year. It rattled under his weight but held. Thud. Thud. Thud. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, listening to the drumbeat of his body pounding against the door. Eventually, it slowed. Thud. A pause. Thud. Fen was shaking. She tasted rust—she’d been biting her tongue.
“Are you well, sudarynya?”
Fen yelped and spun. Another man stood mere feet away, beside a tall reed organ with pink and mahogany columns. He wore a long wool coat and a brimmed hat, his posture upright but relaxed. He leaned an elbow on the antique instrument—then, noticing the dust, frowned and wiped off his sleeve.
“Who are you?” she demanded, thrusting the key out in front of her. A pitiful weapon.
“Me? I am here to clean.”
To clean…Fen could have wept with relief. A janitor. He must have come in the back entrance after she’d closed up. She hadn’t seen him before, but there was a rotating cast of volunteers who kept the museum running, and she never could keep track of them all.
“You seem distressed.” His voice was velvety, a calming hum. It didn’t sound like the other Vermonters she knew, thick instead with unfamiliar intonation. Another immigrant, like her.
“Y-yes,” she croaked, and her hands flew to her throat in pain. Her larynx throbbed from the attack.
“Shhh.” He crossed the room to her, seeming almost to glide rather than walk. It was so the opposite of the lurching, stilted movements of the man outside that she couldn’t help but feel comforted by the contrast alone. “You have had a fright, no?”
Fen nodded. The man was close enough now to see the lines in his face—or rather, the lack thereof. His skin was smooth and glowing, as if warmed from within. He had an easy smile. The sort of smile you could trust. Already, she felt the adrenaline hush inside her. Outside, the thudding had stopped. Safe. She was safe. Thank goodness this man was here.
“T-there was a m—” Fen gagged, crumpling into a wounded cough. The bruises must be swelling. She could barely breathe.
“Quiet now, mechtatel’nitsa. Save your voice.”
The man put a hand on her back and she focused on his warmth. See, even in darkness, there are kind people. For every one who seeks harm, there’s one who seeks good. Believe in goodness, and the good will come.
Intention.
Another cough jolted through her.
“Here.” The man’s free hand slipped into his coat, reappearing with a small blue bottle. It was made of frosted glass, like her little green cup. He unstopped the cork with a thumb, and a strange perfume lifted from the vial. Hay and dust, like the farms from back home in late summer. And something else beneath it…a sharp, ashen stench, like burning hair. Fen’s stomach turned, and she swallowed to settle it, bursting into another fit of coughs when she did.
“Drink.” The man lifted the bottle to her lips, and she sipped gratefully, lifting a hand to steady it. Her fingers traced a raised shape on the bottle, some insignia. She focused on the gentle grooves. Symmetry, like spread wings. The aching in her windpipe calmed. But her heart—her heart galloped loose from its stirrup, bolting.
The room went white.
Thud. Thud. Thud. A knocking.
He’d returned. The man from outside. He would come. He would kill her.
Smoke crawled from her stomach up her spine as if she were a staircase. One step. Then another. Her shoulders buckled with fear. A shifting pressure settled there, as firm as if someone were crouched on her back.
She would never see her home again. Never see her brother and his wife and their new grandchild. She would never take her keys from the little green cup and feel the engine rev, never leave this place, not now, not ever again.
She looked up at the man in the wool coat. He seemed to glow like a low moon, golden light upon his skin. A beacon in the dark. Safety. He reached down. She took his hand.
“Come.”
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
She stood and the man led her. They crossed the antechamber and ducked through the halls. Past towering pipes trembling with silence. Along rows of dead melodeons and upright pump organs. All Fen could see was fog, hazy and blanched, creeping in from every corner, every wall. She clasped the hand as if it were a rope dangled over a cliff’s edge. A lifeline. They reached the second showroom, dark save for the white smoke tendriling before Fen’s eyes. Another scent filled the air—different from the bottle’s burnt rot. Different from the pinched smell of fear. Sweet and pungent. She squeezed the man tighter, glancing down for reassurance—and a wail boiled in her throat. She was clasping a hand, yes—but beyond the wrist, where the hem of the coat sleeve should have been, was only roiling smoke, elongating. The pale arm went on and on. It snaked through the room, stretching ten, twenty feet long, and vanished back around the far corner from where they’d come, out of sight. Refracted in the fumes, she could somehow see its continuation even around the bend, stretching farther, farther, until at last it reached the man’s body all the way back at the entryway door. He smiled. Turned the latch. Thud thud. Thud thud. The door creaked open and the man outside staggered through. A gaunt creature crouched on the man’s back, the same color as the terrible arm—and at once, Li Fen felt the weight on her own shoulders intensify. Knees jabbed into her back. She moaned. The hand holding hers let go—leaving something solid in its wake.
There was a box of matches in her palm. Red and worn at the edges, foreign black lettering inked over the back. A hot breeze pressed over her shoulder, lifting the room’s strange scent into the air—gasoline. Liquid pooled around her feet, thick and shimmering.
“I know it was here,” a tilted voice hissed in her ear. (Was someone behind her? Or had the voice scurried up the length of the long arm?) “The monstrosity. I know you saw it, helped it. But do not worry. Soon, no one will be left to remember. You will be absolved.”
Down the hall, she heard the smoke-veined attacker from outside stumbling close, his twisted leg cracking beneath the weight of the shadow on his back.
She closed her eyes. She would free herself. She would not be taken by a rabid stranger. She would write her own story. Fen’s fingers fumbled over the matchbook, flipping it open. She ripped a match free and dragged it against the striker. Once. Twice. On the third scrape, it caught. The flame crackled awake.
Intention.
Li Fen let the match fall.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A punk house in Amherst where they were paid fifty crumpled dollars and a bag of weed. Three town libraries and a private elementary school on the Cape. An arts collective built into an abandoned zipper factory in central Connecticut, slated for demolition. A birthday party for a wealthy professor in his manicured garden. Show after show, town after town, until they all began to blend together.
It had been three and a half weeks since their opening show in Brattleboro, and each day brought a new, eager audience. Every night, the stage flickered with the glow of pink paper lanterns, the fragrance of buttered popcorn and wet velvet, gathered voices floating up like bells.
