Palimpsest

The Pecia closes her eyes and tears tremble in her lashes. She smiles and the room quavers from the sadness of it. Oleg kisses her mouth and she returns it, hungrily, as hungrily as the dead ever are for warmth and blood and living, breathing lovers. She clutches the small of his back to her and pulls him onto the great green chair, where he can taste, on her tongue, the Volkhov, flowing muddy and sweet and deep between them.

THREE

A HOUSE OF NO WORDS

Oleg spent half a day helping November decide whether or not a suitcase was strictly necessary. They decided to err on the side of caution, and packed each of them a change of clothes and toothbrushes. She was not what he thought she would be, the thing so full of golden electricity that he could feel in Palimpsest just beyond the borders of himself. She was a ruin to look at, and he supposed he was too. They had all paid so much to cross the river before them. Two coins for each of them, perhaps so that the other one, the Japanese girl they did not yet know, could cross freely, painlessly, and the ferryman never catch her eye.

Ludo had given Oleg a small key, a present—it unlocked nothing, but was beautiful, small and exquisite, silver and old. He wore it around his neck now, and felt in small part that it was meant to fit within him, to slip between his bones somehow and force him open.

He had not seen Lyudmila in Italy. It is so much water for her to cross, he thought. She must have been frightened. It was easier to think of her keeping house in the New York apartment than to consider for even a moment what the woman who was and was not Lyudmila had said to him. Only a little while longer,he thought, and it will not be important.

Oleg ate ravenously now, eggs and bread and tomatoes and a dozen kinds of cheese, bacon and roasted chicken. He did not know how to speak to the lady of the house, the severe, shield-faced woman named Nerezza who had been there, silent and staring, at the lock, who had watched them bring a knife so close to his throat, who spoke perfect English but refused to speak it to him. Whenever he looked at her, she shrugged as if to say: I have done what I have done. Eat my food, take my home, you can do no more to me than has already been done.

Their days, for the moment, were mainly stolen kisses and laughter and long stretches of wrapping themselves around each other. November did not often talk to him, as she could not talk to Ludo, and so the barriers seemed natural to extend. They became not barriers, but a house of no words that sheltered them all. Oleg always brought November tea afterward. He wanted to. He needed to, to serve her, to be her Pecia, to be enough that what she had done to bring them all this far, what she had lost, had been worth it.

Ludo took him walking in the ruins, and though he did not speak, their kisses were frank and unfettered behind cypress and oak and grapevine, and the light, the light in those places was the impossible light of the rafters of heaven, and such lamps showed through, such lamps, and such laughing.

Signe-de-Renvoi

THE CITY SQUARE OF SIGNE-DE-RENVOIlooks out onto the great fall of the Albumen into the earth, ringed in both fig trees and pomegranate trees, so that the air is always sharp and rich and sweet. There are dances there, and when the skirts swirl under the high, high moon, there is nothing in the world like the blue lace that shows beneath them. A charming, handsome woman of a certain age keeps everyone’s glasses full, a champagne brewed from pears and frozen grapes. Her hair is so long she has braided it all the way around her body, twice, and this serves as enough clothing for her. She has a pet, a stately old tiger with his claws long pulled, his teeth long fallen out. He is a relic of tigerhood, a bygone age when great cats knew calculus and dactylic hexameter and held a court of dreams in the jungle.

She has forgotten her name. I brought her here so very long ago, and when she died I made a copy, and another, and another. She could not speak when she lived, and I have not felt right making her copies speak, and so we have never conversed but in the silent ways of lovers. Sometimes I think that the war struck half my people dumb in her name, in her honor. But that is surely fancy.

The tiger lived, though, and I ca

I do not know why I have done these things. I do not always know why I behave as I do. Does anyone?

But I ca

She is there tonight, dancing naked with her braids undone and flying like black serpents. I watch her in the body of an affable man with a loose pocketwatch chain, through his grandfatherly eyes, his age and his wisdom. I dance with her in his feet, and in her perfect ear I whisper the name I know but that she has lost like an earring:

Chanthou, Chanthou, my love, my wife.

_______

Ludovico watches the village dance. He would like to join in, but he does not feel right about it. He stands by the pier waiting for Oleg, patiently, as only he can be patient.

Which is not very patient,he reminds himself. But for Oleg I can try.

“And not for me?” comes a voice across the grass, and he knew it would come, he had prepared for it, he had tested its weight on the river and found that he thought he could bear it.

Lucia stands near him in a yellow dress, the dress of Ostia and the pecan-colored couch. Her skin is lion-golden and her hair a riot of loose, dark curls. He says nothing to her—he ca

You are not Lucia,he thinks. Please don’t tease me. You’re not her.

“Of course not,” Lucia says as though he spoke. “She would never come here. It is not . . . within her circuit of fashion.”

She steps into his arms with all the natural grace of a long-wed woman, and their kiss is genuine if she is not, deep and long, and he takes great good from it.

“I’m not Calypso, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says.

He laughs despite himself. It is a broken sound, like a plate falling. Even in this, she is a perfect copy—she presents the classical reference like a gift, a way of explaining herself, and so it is a gift.

“I do not come to offer you immortality and love of me until the riotous death of the magnetic poles in exchange for your humanity. There are no such choices. I am an honest city, I think you can at least grant that.”

He nods, and holds her hand as they walk along the little wharf.

“I want to give you what you need, Ludo. It is important to me, as I think you and I will shortly be friends for a very long time. You gave your voice for me, like the mermaid in the fairy tale. I was charmed. I was wooed. I admit it. And you are so close to me now, it is like Christmas Eve. Don’t you feel it?”

He nods, helpless to do more. They are quiet, and she skips a stone or two down the cream-churned river.

She stops and stands on her tiptoes to look him in the eye. She is so young and her brow is so clear. There are no frown lines in her.

“Are you ready?” she says, and her voice is strong and steady. “I love you. I have loved you for nine years, and I knew it was nine and not eight. I only said that to hurt you. That summer in Ostia was the core of us, and it was shining and warm and the color of pecan shells. All of this I did in a frenzy, a madness, but it did not touch us, in our walls, our lair. There, I was yours alone, and I was happy. I am your beast, and you are my saint, and I forgive you, for that is what noble beasts do, and I am a noble beast. And beasts forget, too. It is only the sadness of saints that they ca