Let the Dark Flower Blossom (32 page)

And he was real.

Or at least real enough.

He was Zigouiller, as she had named him.

She stood watching him sleep.

All at once, without regard to sequence or consequence:

A glass swan fell to the floor and shattered.

A sleeping dog woke.

A remarkable thing happened to Beatrice.

Salt had a sentence in his head.

Dr. Lemon dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled down.

Beatrice collected the broken pieces of the swan.

The last light in the doctor's house was extinguished.

A bird flew from a branch.

Snow lay white in the woods.

Snow fell upon the ruined fountain.

Inj lay naked on her hip.

She lighted a candle.

Inj asked Schell, did he? had he really killed his wife?

How did he do it?

Did he plot? Or was it done in anger?

Schell laughed.

The roses on the wallpaper trembled.

The black cat leapt upon a table.

The waves crashed upon rock.

Eloise stood in the doorway looking at Zigouiller asleep in her husband's bed.

Eloise was thinking about the burning roof and tower.

And Agamemnon dead.

Bruno cried out in the night. He woke from a dream in which he was being chased by a flock of geese. He called for his mother. And when she came to him, he asked her for a story.

While reading to her son from his favorite book—the one about an impossibly curious little bear who gets his head stuck in a honey pot—Elizabeth Weiss paused upon the page.

Bruno tugged at his mother's sleeve.

She began reading where she had left off.

The bear cracked the pot. And ate the honey.

When the last page of the book had been read—

Bruno turned back to the first page.

And Liz began again.

Olga, in the kitchen, covered a pan with a dishcloth.

Dibby sat on the floor in her husband's study with her legs curled beneath her. In the desk drawer, she found the tin box.

She turned the box over in her hands.

Chester, no, it was Julian, no, it was Chet, nearly opened his eyes. A thought, an idea, a desire, almost woke him. He wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Dibby lifted the lid.

And then she stopped, as though waiting to be stopped.

No one stopped her.

Just like in the movies.

She was small.

She was dressed in black.

Dough began to rise.

Dibby opened the box.

It was empty.

Except for.

One photograph, blurry.

A picture of Roman and a dark-haired girl on a beach.

Dibby didn't recognize the girl.

Dibby sat on the floor.

Looking at the photograph.

The girl was not beautiful.

Dibby reached into the desk drawer.

Her hand found—without looking—

Her fingers rested upon the scissors.

Dibby took the scissors.

She cut the photograph into two.

And she cut each piece into two.

Until there were many tiny pieces.

There was no Roman. There was no girl.

Dibby threw the pieces into the fireplace.

She rose from the floor.

She stood at her husband's desk; the monumental mahogany desk—and then she sat in his Herculean chair.

She took a blank sheet of paper.

She rolled the paper into the carriage of the typewriter.

Dibby set her fingers to the keys.

For a moment she faltered.

Like a branch after the bird has flown.

And then her heart fluttered upward.

And she knew just what to say.

She knew how to finish Roman's story.

The bear found the honey.

And a train chugged up a hill.

Bruno fell asleep.

Elizabeth kept reading.

A spider spun silk in a bathtub.

Eris held the dinosaur in her hand.

Inj was naked.

Like a girl painted on a Grecian urn.

Inj kissed Schell.

Snow was falling.

Everything fell.

The snow.

The blankets from the bed.

The bottle from the table.

The bottle spilled.

Knocking over the candle.

The flame caught the path of brandy.

And followed it—

The fire crept along a strand of green twine.

The green twine bound a stack of newspapers beside the woodstove.

The newspapers caught fire.

The fire spread to the wallpaper.

It burned the flowers.

It climbed along the curtains.

The fire spread to the kitchen, where it ate cake.

To the study.

It read every book.

It read each letter.

It crawled. It crept.

It roamed.

It ran.

It wasn't afraid of anything.

The fire ran along the walls.

And took hold of a painting.

First the swan.

Then the girl.

Then the dark woods burned.

Susu Zigouiller before the mirror in an airport bathroom studied her face.

On a mantel over a fireplace a broken clock began to tick. And kept up time for eighteen minutes before suddenly, and perhaps even reluctantly, giving up the ghost.

Eloise stood beside the bed, holding the knife.

Louis was arguing the rules of the game.

Susu was boarding an airplane.

A red ball rolled.

The knife fell.

Eloise let the knife fall from her hand to the floor.

So no one knew.

No one suspected.

Except a French bulldog.

That time could stop and start.

Of its own mechanism.

Of its own desire.

Of its own free will.

Such miracles will happen now and again.

R
OMAN TOLD HER ABOUT THE WOODS.
It was the night when he and that girl, the actress, what was her name? Harlow—had that fight and she fell into the champagne fountain in her white dress and the picture of her ran in the tabloids. He pushed the girl into the fountain. The photographers kept snapping flash after flash,
and Ro was laughing. The girl lost it. They had to drag her away into an ambulance. Ro was talking about the actress, how stupid she was. How stupid actors were. He said, he asked her, “Why'd you have to go and marry an actor?”They drove home through the dark night. He said—

“Eloise.”

He had a story.

Maybe it would be the beginning of his new book.

Did she want to hear it?

“The story starts in an old farmhouse,” he said. “They went out into the woods, three of them, that day. Two boys and a girl.”

“It was snowing,” he said. “One on each side of her, they walked, and the girl between them. She was carrying ice skates. They walked toward the frozen pond. And when they returned in darkness, there were only two of them.”

She said, “Shut up please please please, will you?”

He said, “Something terrible happened in the woods.”

He said, “The girl was dead.”

She said, “Stop it.”

He said, “No one ever found out about the girl. And so the boys never talked about it or her again. They never talked about the girl or the woods.”

Did she like the story so far?

At first he had been sickened by it.

Then horrified.

Then guilty.

And then the story had taken hold of him.

He thought about it.

He imagined it.

He tried to understand it.

“Envy,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“The girl,” he said.

“What about her?” she said.

“The gods must have envied her,” he said.

She wanted him to stop talking, but he didn't stop.

Or wouldn't.

He talked of gods and girls.

He was talking.

The car stopped.

They were home.

Home?

The house by the water.

It was a hot night.

He took her arm.

In the dark.

It was quiet.

They walked to the house.

He said something about the sky, about the stars, about the constellations.

Wasn't the sky beautiful?

Wasn't Discord the most beautiful of the gods?

Or was she a goddess?

He said Fate was a girl with scissors.

They sat in the kitchen. And wasn't the light the sky the world beautiful then? They drank. She drank. He kept filling the glasses. He smoked. He said that he hadn't written a word of the story. He liked to know how a story was to end before he began writing it on paper. He said that he didn't know how it ended. Her dress was black. The green typewriter was on the table. He said, “If you were writing it, how would it end?” He picked up the clock. He said that he was going to write a book about what happened in the woods.
He was winding the metal clock. She told him that Zig would be back soon. “
Fatherland
,” she said. “What?” he said. She said, “Zig's movie, they're shooting it at night.” He said, “Who the hell would want to be in a movie?” He said, “Wouldn't you rather be a character in a book?” Then he would always know where to find her. He said that he would like her to be a girl in a novel. He said that he would always know just where she was in the world.

He said, “Do you believe me?”

The clock was on the table.

He took her arm.

He took everything.

Was it late or too late?

It was too late.

Metaphorically speaking anyway.

Zigouiller was standing in the doorway.

Watching them.

He was angry.

He took the clock and threw it smashed it up against the wall. It stopped. He smashed the clock against the wall. He called her a whore.

It was.

It really was.

A stupid thing to say.

Wasn't it?

Ro hit Zig.

Zig hit Ro.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

Things were broken.

Cups, the clock, a plate.

Time stopped.

Literally, figuratively.

What did it matter?

What did it signify?

Things get broken every day.

As though smashed by some invisible hand.

Glass, bottles, bones.

What happened to that black dress?

Zig smashed the clock.

Ro picked up a broken plate.

He laughed.

Ro said that he was hungry.

He asked Zig, are you hungry?

Ro poured himself a drink, and one for Zig.

They drank.

She took the eggs from the refrigerator.

She broke them in a bowl.

Zig did not look at her.

He found a screwdriver.

He had the pieces of the broken clock on the table.

He was putting the clock back together.

Shelly came in, then.

The day was hot and ugly.

The clock was broken.

Shel asked her.

Did she want to go to the hospital to see the actress?

He wanted to get flowers.

Would she go with him to get flowers?

The girl liked yellow daisies.

Zig and Ro were eating eggs.

She didn't really want to get flowers for the girl.