If I Told You Once: A Novel (7 page)

Anya was pleased by his attention, I could tell. I could see the familiar, languid, lazy expression creep over her face. Ari held her eyes and eased slowly, fluidly closer.

Anya smiled. And then she ever so slightly loosened her coat, showed him a patch of white skin at her throat.

Ari reached out slowly to touch a stray bit of hair. She laughed nervously. And then Ari grunted, leaped, pounced. Suddenly she was splayed out in the snow. Ari had his mouth at her throat and was tearing insistently at her clothes, twisting her head this way and that, pressing and tugging at her limbs, sniffing in her ears and eyes.

He was just a child. He was only trying to see how she worked.

Anya screamed.

She screamed and screamed and would not stop screaming, not when I pulled Ari away from her, not when I slapped her face, not when the company of soldiers in their ugly brown uniforms came running stiffly through the trees, barking orders to each other and surrounding my brother with their guns.

They had been tracking my brother for two days; they had recently lost his trail but Anya’s voice led them back.

I stood and watched as my brother was taken away. The officer of the company stood beside me and barked orders. He wore tall shiny boots and carried a riding crop which he flicked impatiently against his leg. Between orders he ground his teeth; I could hear the rasp and squeak.

He sent one of his subordinates to fetch a horse and bring Anya back to the army camp. The other officers will be very glad to make her acquaintance, he said. I told him about her feet; he shrugged and said she would not need them.

I could not look at her as she was taken away. Her screams still echoed in my head. That gaping mouth.

Now I stood alone with the officer. I was not afraid of him. I could see his viciousness, it was something I understood. I had seen it before.

You should give up on my brother, I told him. He will never learn.

I’m not yet convinced of that, he said.

He’s too old, I said, he has been the way he is for too long for you to change him.

There are ways, he said.

What if there were others just like him? I said. Other ones, as big as him, and as strong, but young enough to teach the way you want.

What are you saying?

We have younger brothers, I told him. Take one of them, take all three of them, train them, and give up on Ari.

The officer chewed over the idea. I heard his teeth clicking.

What is the name of your village? he asked finally.

My village was too small to have a name.

So he said I would have to show him. He hoisted me up behind him on his horse, and we rode, to the jangling of bit and spurs, over hills and through forests, and I clung to his belt and felt immense hatred for the layer of red, bristly flesh that bulged over the collar of his uniform.

I did not know what would happen next. My younger brothers were not at all like Ari; they were ordinary, big headed, knobby kneed little boys with runny noses. I did not want to give them up to this officer. In my desperation I had been thinking only of my mother. I thought somehow that if I brought this man back to my mother, she would find a way to make everything all right. This man’s viciousness was no match for my mother’s.

As we jolted and galloped over hard-packed snow, I thought of her and wanted to crawl into her lap. She had managed to bring me home after all.

I knew she would smell us coming, with her nose for soldiers. I thought of her eyes snapping, skirts whirling as she formulated plans.

My mother.

We rode until we came to a place that I knew so well, I knew the shape of the hills and the bend in the river. I felt a pang as I thought of home.

We crossed the last rise, emerged from the trees.

The village was gone.

It was a black scar in the snow.

We rode slowly down the only street. The houses were blackened skeletons, still smoking. A bloated cow lay in the road, legs in the air. Dogs, cats, goats lay in frozen twisted shapes in the gutters, daubed with red.

The smoke made black smudges in the sky.

I saw blotches and blooms of blood flowering on walls. I saw a boy’s cap in the road, cupping something dark and gelatinous.

I saw a familiar skirt. I saw a fork, a spoon. I saw a pair of severed feet, lined up as neatly as shoes beside a doorway.

I thought of Anya and how she could use them, and I heard myself laughing.

I pressed my face against the officer’s sour back so I would not see any more.

We are too late, the officer said musingly. He was riding slowly, looking about.

Such a pity, he said, such a waste.

I thought I heard a softness in his voice.

To think—three more just like your brother, he said. That would have been amazing. Our company would have been the best in the division.

He clucked his tongue at the horse as it shied at a child’s dress blowing on the wind.

I held myself stiffly away from him all the way back to the army camp.

I told myself that my mother had escaped, of course she had, she must have scented the impending disaster, certainly at this very moment she and my father were hiding in the woods with my brothers and sisters gathered around, roasting potatoes over a fire, my mother a whirlwind of activity and foresight.

I still felt hope, I did, I held my chin like my mother always did. I told myself I would be brave like her, and resourceful, and I would do what I had to do to save them all.

*   *   *

I ought to skip the next part of the story, you are too young to hear it.

But I won’t.

When we returned to the soldiers’ camp, the officer offered me another bargain, a trade. Your brother’s release in exchange for the pleasure of your company, he said.

Just a little while, he said. It won’t take long.

We stood in the mud, among tents and milling horses and the jangle of harnesses and spurs. A subordinate came to take the officer’s horse; as it was led away I saw that its legs were still flecked with the soot and debris that had once been my village.

I looked at the officer whose eyes were set too close together, pinching his nose. Hair in his nostrils. I thought of my mother, her power over men, men meaning my father, the way my father jumped to do her bidding and cowered from her though she was half his size. And I thought of Anya, who could make men act like fools or grunting animals simply by rolling her eyes at them.

I knew I was stronger than Anya. I had carried her on my back, I had dragged her through the snow. She was weak, I thought, and stupid, and not even whole, and yet she had driven a townful of men to madness.

If she had that sort of power, I reasoned, then surely I did too. I looked at the officer, who was tapping his riding crop against his boots, flicking away flecks of mud, admiring them.

I thought: surely I can get the better of him.

I thought: I will drive him mad, he will do whatever I say. Because that is what women do to men.

I thought: that is what Anya did, and I am far better than her, look at my two perfect feet. Cold but lovely.

That was my reasoning. I thought it sound at the time.

I nodded and the officer took me by the arm, not companionably, he grasped me near the armpit and jerked me toward the inn where the officers had their rooms.

And in that room, which was low ceilinged and too warm, I saw how his body drooped without the stiff uniform, saw the flabby ring of flesh at his waist that matched the one on his neck. And he laid his hands on me, hands that looked like disease, with their knobby joints and yellow nails. He began pulling off my clothes and I wanted to change my mind but the door was locked and it was already too late, I was backed into a corner behind the bed, a high bed with an iron frame made of bars like a prison cell.

He pulled off my clothes, layer after layer, and it took a long time, and I was aware suddenly of how my clothes reeked of goat and ash and the tart sweat of panic, and I was momentarily ashamed. But he kept pulling and tugging and did not notice, hardly seemed to see me at all, I was a service, less to him than his horse or the subordinate who had taken it away.

It was all happening too fast; I was not having the expected effect on him but it was too late, he snapped a cord and the last of my clothing fell and pooled at my feet. I felt as if he had gone too far, as if he had gone beyond my clothes and stripped off a layer of skin, my body felt raw and sensitive all over like a fresh cut, a hangnail.

This was the moment when he was supposed to grovel at my feet, look up at me with worshipful eyes like the men in Anya’s room. Instead he muttered something about chicken bones and boosted me onto the bed.

He threw himself upon me, and I undid my hair and let it fall all around so at least he would not see my face as he did what he did. He puffed and groaned and breathed his sour breath into me, and dug out the deep places in my body and scraped and chafed against them so long I thought I would develop calluses before he was done, and as he did this I looked up at the ceiling at a crack in the plaster that seemed to be branching and spreading even as I watched it, like the crack in an egg as the chick begins to peck its way out into a harsh new world.

When he was finished he lost no time in getting back into his trousers. He put on his tunic, polished his boots with a cloth and then put them on, gazing down at them fondly. He was brisk, efficient, on his way to a fine dinner, no doubt.

I asked him when I would see my brother.

He laughed into the mirror. He was smoothing his mustache with oil.

You’ll never see your brother again, he said.

You promised, I said.

If you want a promise kept you should get it in writing, he said.

Your brother’s no better than a horse, he added, if they can’t train him they’ll take him out back and shoot him.

I leaped from the bed, landed on his back, sank my teeth into his neck. I could not inflict much, his flesh was leathery tough meat, my teeth could not pierce it.

He smashed the handle of his pistol down on my fingers and I fell from him. He raised his foot to kick, but the polished perfection of the boot made him reconsider. He did not want to soil it, after all.

He stepped around me, put on his coat, paused at the door. I expect you to leave here before nightfall, he said. And he added: Rinse the sheets before you leave. There’s water in the basin.

He opened the door, paused, and said in a fatherly tone: You should be careful in the forest at night. There are timber wolves, they are unpredictable.

Then he was gone.

I stood a long time before the mirror; it was black speckled, rip pled with age, looking into it was like looking into a deep pool that sucked up most light and only gave a little back as reflection. But I could see enough. I saw how my bones stuck out like scaffolding, and the skin was sallow and rough. The officer had left bruises shaped like fingerprints all over my shoulders. There was nothing in my face that could tempt or intrigue; my hair was long but it looked only like hair, not like precious metals or sunsets or fires. Worthless merchandise.

How foolish of me to bargain with this.

How foolish to think I could move mountains just by being a woman.

I stood looking at the girl in the mirror who held her breasts in her hands and cried. Stupid girl, I thought.

I had never seen my mother cry.

Outside the sky was crowded with clouds dark as smoke, or smoke thick as clouds.

I washed and dressed and went to the stables and stole a horse because although I may have been ignorant of men, I understood animals and knew how to win their complicity. I ached between my legs and each step the horse took sent a jolt of pain a little farther up, a little deeper in.

My brother was nowhere to be seen.

So I rode away from that ugly place.

*   *   *

Those three old women who used to plague my village told me a story once.

I was a child then, their ancient faces frightened me.

I did not want to listen to them. I turned my face away and pretended that I was very busy thinking of other things, the way
you
do sometimes. But their words bored in.

The story went like this:

There once lived in the village a girl who was so spirited, so lighthearted her feet barely touched the ground. Her mother had to sew stones into the hems of her daughter’s skirts, knot clothes irons and horseshoes into her hair to prevent a strong wind from blowing her away. But the girl was irrepressible, she could run fast as a deer and all day long she flitted through the village, her bright sharp voice spangling the air around her.

Everyone in the village knew her. As a small child she had been inquisitive, appearing unexpectedly at people’s elbows to ask them questions. She pestered the blacksmith at his anvil, dodging the sparks; she floated through the clouds of flour at the baker’s, dug through the cobbler’s greasy leather. She might show up in any house, at any time of day or night, regardless of locks or manners. She would simply
be
there suddenly, an extra face at the dinner table. You might see her nose pressed against your window, feel her breath on your neck as you squatted on a stool milking into the bucket between your feet.

As she grew older she became taller but lost none of her lightness. Her mother often kept her inside now to work. But when she could get away she wandered through the village as before, stopping where she pleased. The villagers were used to her now; some anticipated her questions and answered them, while others good-naturedly ignored her.

She had a vitality they could not understand. They looked at her and thought she was happy, but in a way that made no sense to them.

She took to wandering the fields and forests, singing to herself, sticking weeds and flowers alike in her hair. The villagers saw her from afar; some liked to romanticize her, saying that her singing brought birds and butterflies flocking to her, perching on her shoulders and joining their voices to hers. Others said she had a low, rough voice, couldn’t sing a note, she just wandered aimlessly, dragging a stick over the ground, shamelessly idle while everyone else gathered vegetables.