If I Told You Once: A Novel (5 page)

I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets. They should have been empty. I had brought nothing.

And yet I drew from my pockets several chunks of bread, some large leathery mushrooms, a carved wooden comb.

Gifts from my mother. She must have known all along.

In another pocket I found a pouch filled with my mother’s favorite herbs, the ones without names, dried and tied in bundles. There were plants like miniature trees, like tangled pubic hair, seaweed, bird feathers, crumpled paper. The smells rose up from the bag and fought each other.

My egg was knotted in my petticoat.

How stupid of me to think I could leave home without my mother knowing. She had known I would leave before I did. She had allowed me to leave. Perhaps she had watched, and tugged at me with her eyes merely to test my resolve. It seemed no matter how I tried to escape, I was still entangled in my mother’s plans.

I saw her braid swinging.

I saw her figure plowing smoothly through the snow before me, as if she had cart wheels beneath her skirts instead of legs.

I walked for five days.

On the evening of the fifth day I saw smoke in the distance. As I came closer I came upon a village, not unlike the one I had left. I wanted to go to one of those houses, ask for a place to sleep. But I couldn’t; they were too familiar. I had the sensation that whichever house I called at my mother would open the door. She’d fill the doorway, dusted with flour, sleeves rolled, arms folded, children clinging constantly to her skirts as if they’d been sewn there as ornaments.

So I skirted the village as night fell. I smelled bread baking.

How ugly the trees were now. Behind me the lights of the village glowed like warm embers.

Then, like a granted wish, I came abruptly to a clearing in the woods, and a small house with a peaked roof and smoke curling from two chimneys. A stone path led to the door, and I found myself knocking on it before I’d had a chance to think.

I could hear rustling inside, the crackle of fire. The doorstep on which I stood was worn, and the spot on the door where I’d rapped my knuckles was a silky smooth depression in the wood, as if countless hands had knocked before me.

Yes? said a voice and the door opened slightly. I stared into eyes that were a disturbing yellow, lashless and unblinking.

She looked me up and down. The eyebrows rose in crafty peaks.

Are you in trouble? she asked sharply. She wore shoes tipped with iron.

I nodded.

Well then, she said briskly, come inside, though you should have known to come to the back door.

The room inside was small and familiar. Wooden chairs, a low bed, a stone floor. Bunches of herbs hung drying near the fire. A piece of knitting lay interrupted on a chair.

She helped me remove my clothes. What I had at first thought was a hat perched on her head was in fact a dense mass of silvery gray braids wound together, a huge round loaf of hair. Her hands were spotted with age.

She hung my clothes on a chair to dry and said: Why don’t you sit and warm yourself for a minute? I opened my mouth to speak but she clicked her tongue at me and turned away.

There was a smell in the air, musty, faintly sickishly sweet; I could not place it. On shelves nearby stood stoppered jars and bottles of the sort people used for pickles and preserves. I looked closer and saw stored there twisted roots suspended in brine, the pale floating bodies of frogs, the milky globes of cows’ eyes, and jars and jars of a viscous liquid, reddish brown, with a dry crust on top.

A kettle stood on the hearth, and two mugs. Had she been expecting me? No, the mugs had been recently used; dregs of tea clung to the insides.

I heard the woman scrubbing her hands vigorously in a tub of water. Did you happen to bring anything to give me? she asked, peering over her shoulder.

I shrugged, shook my head.

Ah, they never do, she said to herself. She turned then and came toward me. I quickly backed away. Are you ready, then? she said. Her bared arms were terribly thin.

Don’t be changing your mind now, after you came all this way, she said. Hop up on the chair now, there you go. Her voice was firm; she grasped my arm and I found myself standing on the chair. Strands of my hair hung before my eyes like the bars of a cage.

She looked up at me with those yellow eyes, she put a hand on my thigh to still its trembling. The smell in the room was strange and terrible, a sweet rottenness; I could taste it.

My tongue seemed to have gone to sleep.

I saw that she held in her hand a bit of metal, like a piece of twisted wire.

Lift your skirts dearie, she said, you know it has to be done.

Her voice carried such command that I automatically gathered my skirts in my hands; I had lifted them nearly to my knees before I came to my senses and pushed her away and tumbled off the chair.

Hush, hush, she said and reached out to me, but I scuttled away from her on all fours. Hush, she said as I tried to explain myself at the top of my voice.

I quieted when the woman put away her horrible wire. She did not seem amused by the misunderstanding, but she gave me a bowl of soup and said I could sleep in the shed. I asked for her name; she told me to call her Baba.

That night as I lay in the shed, warming myself beside Baba’s yellow-eyed goat, I wondered about this strange woman. I thought about the house, how it had appeared as I approached with the stone path and the two chimneys. I realized there must be a second room, a second fireplace I had not seen.

*   *   *

I woke thinking of Ari, and found the goat nibbling my hair.

I thought I would move on that morning, but Baba came to me with a cool assessing look and said she could give me work if I cared to stay on for a few days. She had wood that needed splitting, and there were errands I could do for her since she did not like to go down to the village. In return she offered me a place to sleep.

I accepted, though I did not like or trust her. In the daylight her eyes took on a thick muddy color, like pus.

I did not like to admit to myself that I had left my mother only to find another. A grim substitute. I tried not to think about it.

So I spent days chopping. My father had taught me how to swing an ax. I worked myself into a rhythm and Baba stood by the back fence, watching.

She needed a great deal of wood; it seemed she kept both fireplaces burning much of the time. By now I had noticed the door that led to the room I had never seen. Although Baba entered it several times a day, she never invited me in. She sometimes emerged with dirty dishes, stale bed linen. I sometimes heard her voice through the wall, mingled with another’s.

From the village gossip I learned that Baba was the local herb woman, both midwife and doctor. There were whispers that she was a witch: some swore they had seen her flying through the air in a bucket; others insisted her house could raise itself up and walk about, on a pair of giant chicken legs.

And they whispered about the girls from neighboring villages who came to Baba secretly in the night, hoping she could save them from disgrace with that piece of wire that made me think of a rabbit snare.

One day a girl my own age beckoned me aside and told me something more, about the men of the village going to Baba in the dark hour before dawn, but her breath was so heavy in my ear that I could not understand what she said, and when I asked her to repeat it she blushed deeply and ran away.

In the evenings, sometimes, Baba combed my hair. I did not like the way she gathered my hairs from the comb, so carefully, then balled them and slipped them in her pocket.

I did not like her much.

During the day I saw sick villagers come to her door for ointments and tonics. Sometimes at night there would come a knock at the door to the shed where I slept, and I would find a pale nervous girl shivering outside. I’d bring the girl through the connecting passage to the main room, to Baba, who would immediately send me back to bed. I sometimes lay awake listening for the cries, the sobs, and Baba’s stern, soothing tones. In the mornings the floor would be scrubbed and clean.

Also at night came the older women worn out by childbirth. Baba gave them herbs to toughen their wombs, keep a new child from taking root. These women seemed more ashamed than the girls; they bowed their heads and gulped, these women who had borne ten or twelve children and felt guilty for calling a halt to it.

I watched all these things and stored them away.

One day in the village I heard rumors of a soldiers training camp nearby. The people spoke of a new recruit, a monstrous man of unnatural size and animal appetites, who ate flesh raw, wrestled bulls to the ground, and howled at the moon. The army officers hoped to train him, he would make a marvelous killing machine. The officers were having difficulty teaching him, he seemed not to understand their words and would sit moaning and scratching for hours. When provoked he went on rampages. People said he had already killed two men during one of his panics. But the officers would not give up, they would break him like a wild horse if necessary.

As I heard the story, my heart leaped up, then dropped like a stone.

It was Ari. I was sure of it. I would find him if I could, and take him with me wherever I went. It seemed an easy plan, in my head.

I did not like the way people spoke of him. He was not the monster they made him out to he. The things they said were true and not true at the same time.

Soon after, I was awakened late in the night by footsteps. The house was full of the heavy bumbling sounds of men. Their smell, manure and iron, reached my nostrils. I opened the door that connected the shed to the main room of the house, and peered in.

More than a dozen men from the village crowded the room. Baba stood among them, yellow eyes unblinking. No one spoke. Each man handed her something: a bag of sugar, silver coins, a basket of eggs. The men seemed restless, shifting their feet, with sweat standing out on their faces and necks. When Baba had received all the gifts she went to the door of the secret room, unlocked it, and led the men inside.

About fifteen minutes later they emerged. They seemed even more agitated than before and did not want to leave. But Baba herded them out and locked the door behind her. The men filed out into the snow.

On subsequent nights I awoke more and more often, to hear the shuffling of heavy feet and to witness the silent ceremony of gifts and visits to the secret room.

The next time I passed through the village I overheard the men talking in the blacksmith’s shop. They were talking in hushed tones of a love sickness, they spoke of going to Baba’s house to get the cure. It was a dangerous addiction, they said.

One of these men passed me later in the street. He was black haired and red skinned; he gave me a mocking smile, touched his cap. and went on his way.

I recognized him. He was one of Baba’s nighttime guests; his wife had borne him fourteen children and had recently come to Baba for an herb to stop a fifteenth.

I chopped wood and great horny calluses rose up on my hands.

One morning Baba was called away early to assist at a premature birth. When I was sure she had gone I began exploring her shelves, peering in boxes, holding jars up to the light. I heard a faint tune; at first I assumed it was something in my own head. But it did not go away, it went on and on and grew faintly annoying.

It was coming from the secret room.

It was the same voice I had heard many times before. But today it was clearer than ever.

I turned to look and nearly dropped the bottle I was holding. She had forgotten to lock the door, it was slightly ajar.

I put the bottle back on a shelf and walked toward the door as softly as I could, which was not soft at all, considering my cloddish shoes.

I pushed at the door and stepped inside.

The room was swathed in lace, yards and yards of it, the sort Baba spent hours knitting in the evenings. It draped the walls, hung in festoons from the ceiling. A fire burned brightly in a stone fireplace. The room was so warm I felt the sweat pop out on my face.

An enormous bed filled most of the room, a high bed covered in more lace, finely woven shawls, and quilts. And on this bed lounged such a girl as I had never seen before.

She lay sprawled in a loose robe, regarding me with unconcerned green eyes. She had the softest, whitest flesh I had ever seen; her face, her throat, her hands were smooth and unblemished. Her robe had fallen open in the front; I could see one of her breasts, a pale perfect mound. It looked like something rich and creamy you could eat with a spoon. Most extraordinary of all was her hair: somewhere between red and gold, it hung loose from her head, cascaded over the pillows, her shoulders, lay on the floor in a thick shining carpet. I was nearly stepping on it.

That rotten sweet smell was even stronger here.

Her face was pale and flowerlike; the cheeks were two spots of pink that I suspected were painted on. I gaped. She did not seem human; I wondered if she was something Baba had created: carved out of soap, baked in the oven, cultivated in the dark like a mushroom.

Close the door, cow-eyes, there’s a draft, she said. Her voice was that annoying singsong that had faintly haunted the house since I arrived.

I closed the door and stepped closer. I knelt beside her and studied her. I could not resist poking her arm; her flesh was as cushiony as it looked. It was flesh that had never worked or sweated under the sun. I poked her again. I fingered a thick handful of hair. She was a fascinating plaything. She lay there limply, regarding me indifferently.

Baba said there was a girl here, but she did not want you to see me, she said.

Why? I said, watching the hair slide and shimmer like water.

She said in her grating voice: I hate it here, I’m going mad in this room.

How long have you been here?

More than two years, I think. I’m not sure.

Why don’t you leave then? I said.

At that she raised herself up and began tossing aside the blankets that covered her lower body. Her legs entranced me: smooth, white, hairless. And then I saw that she had no feet.