Palimpsest

Oleg called her name again, and Ludo moaned a half-mangled, tongueless version of it, all vowels, and in their coupling and tripling was an orgy of naming, Adamic, atavistic, Edenites with a world of stars and bread and salt to name and label and list in their proper places.

Signe-de-Renvoi

THERE IS A HOLE IN THE CENTER OF PALIMPSEST.

Which is to say, there is a hole in the center of me. Surely you suspected before now who spoke. Who always speaks.

I do not mind the hole. It is like a fontanel, where all the parts of my skull come together, and do not fit exactly, not exactly, but well enough. The Albumen drains into this place, and on the other side of the world, a single stone weeps white. The river is thick and the reeds are recalcitrant enough that it long ago became a great Delta, and in this Delta is a city, a small city, a hidden and secret place within the great and sprawling city which has had so many names.

My boys are so close to it now. The gates can smell them. I have let them cheat. I held back the shadows like curtains so that they could meet before they ought to have, before they met the girl with the riverbanks on her face. I was too eager, too eager to see them together, like characters in a play. I could not wait for the fourth act. Will you forgive me? Even I require absolution, even I.

_______

There is a little harbor here, places to tie boats. All creatures need boats who are not fish, and even I am not a fish. I watch them with a dozen eyes as they knot their little ship to the pier. I watch them climb onto the long grass of the Delta. You’re here, my boys, it will be all right now, I promise. I will look after you. I always have, haven’t I?

_______

Ludovico helps Oleg up onto the strand, and there are men and women there watching them, with long, outlandish hair braided up and out like electrical wire, with smooth faces and clothes spangled in stars. They just watch, they do not move. There are houses clustered in patches like mushrooms, with round windows and broad lawns. There are strawberry gardens and cucumbers growing long and fat. It is a pleasant place. Starlight flickers over chimneys puffing sage-smoke. The Albumen crashes into the gaping hole in the center of the city a distance off, a waterfall like snow, and three little mills turn at its crest.

Oleg walks to the nearest man. He is short, mustached, his cheeks round and friendly, a pocketwatch chain dangling absentmindedly from his pocket.

“Where is Lyudmila?”

The affable man’s whiskers droop. “Now,” he says, “which would you prefer? I can pretend I haven’t the foggiest, welcome you to Signe-de-Renvoi, plate you up a nice helping of beet-greens and pan-fried koi, and pour you wine that’ll make you believe in God. We’ll have a nice evening and you can be on your way, whatever way that is. Or I can tell you that she’s just in that house there, and she’s been crying for weeks over you, and you’ll run off before I finish talking and there’ll be no beets for anyone—”

But Oleg is already gone. The man chuckles behind him, and Ludovico tries to keep up, but Oleg does not want him there. She is his sister, and the door of the little house makes a satisfying sound as he slams it in Ludo’s poor, baffled face.

Lyudmila is sitting in a large green chair, and indeed she is crying, and there is a kettle on in the rear room, and beet-greens sizzling in a pan with golden, buttery koi. She looks up at him with reddened eyes.

“Tell me why,” he says softly.

“Why what?” She sniffles, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

“Why they made you. Why you came to me.”

“What do you want, Oleg? You are so difficult! You are why we have to have this place, why we have fought to carve it out of a rushing river and three blades of grass. It is so exhausting to be always guessing. I ran away because you wanted something to chase. I did not come back because you knew you did not deserve it. I am only crying because I thought you would want it.” Abruptly, she smiles brilliantly, abject joy spilling over her face. “I can be overjoyed to see you, too, or scorn you and make you grovel, I can whip you like a horse to do your penance. Just tell me, just tell me, please.”

“Mila, stop it!”

“I came to you, Oleg, Icame to you, a whole city in one body, because you were so alone, and you missed her so much. I wanted you to love me, me, the girl from Novgorod and the city, together, inseparable, the child of their mingling. I wanted you to be happy. I made shoulders and feet and breasts and hair out of the substance of you. I did my best.”

“Why me?”

Lyudmila cocks her head to one side, finchlike. “Who said it was just you? I am a Pecia. One manuscript in many pieces, many copies. I am Palimpsest, many pieces in one manuscript. I do it for everyone who weeps and longs and wants. I ca

“I wanted my real sister, in the real world, as she has always been, in her red dress and her wet hair.”

Lyudmila stands and crosses to him. She takes her face in his hands and her eyes are so big, so gentle and sorry, and she kisses him like a sweetheart, like a good woman courting a lost soul. “Oleg,” she whispers, “my poor boy. My poor, poor child. There is no Lyudmila in that world. There has never been. Little Mila died before you were born and she never left the cities of the dead. She works in a hat shop there and has a little cat. You take pills to keep your hallucination away, and they do not always work, so she appears to come and go. You, in that place called New York, have seen and heard many things that are not there, and that is what they call madness.”

Oleg shudders and sobs without sound or tears against her, and she smells so much like his Mila, of wet reeds and high clouds, and he did not want to hear this, he did not want to hear it on the boat and he does not want to hear it now. He buries his face in her breast, seeking her comfort, blindly, knowing it to be true, unable to turn his heart to look it in the eye.

“We come here, Oleg. The Pecia, when we are not wanted anymore. We plant strawberries and raise goats. We make holiday cakes and marry and have our dances known to no other. We are Pecia; together we are one long book of marvelous things. But I want to be Lyudmila. We all want to be what we were made to be. It is in our nature to want such things. We are set in motion, we ca

“I am sorry I hurt you.”

“You did not hurt me, Oleg. Unless you want to have hurt me. At your word bruises will bloom on my belly and blood will trickle from my cheeks. Or I will kiss you and tell you stories about the Prince of Drowning, who is a dashing fellow with blue boots, and we will eat fish together and plant rhubarb under the moon.”

Oleg kisses her sternum, her neck, her cheek, her eyelids. He wants to choose something brighter, shinier. Something doctors would approve of, would judge “progress.” But she is so close, and she smells like a river, and he is not a doctor. “Be her. Be my Mila. Forget, forget that you were ever a Pecia, forget everything in you that is Palimpsest and be my sister, be from Novgorod, be a dead girl who loves me. And let me forget, too. When I see you again, let me forget that I knew you were a false Mila. Let me forget that you told me she was never real. Let me believe forever that you are my own girl, who never left me. Let me forget it all. There can be no love between strangers. Be Lyudmila.”