Let the Dark Flower Blossom (23 page)

Liz told Eris the story of how she met her husband.

The book that Eloise had not been reading fell to the floor.

“We take the truth and turn it into a lie. This,” told Louis Sarasine to his esteemed friends and colleagues, the members of the Mnemosyne Society, “is how memory works. We see, we experience: an event, an object, a person—real things that exist in our real world, made of bone or blood, of stone or steel or paper—and we say: this is reality. We make an imprint of this reality: a memory; and recreate and represent, revise and reorder, and change and become, even with each change and each act of recollection, certain of the solidity, the factual nature of our art. The drawings on the walls of a cave, the blood on the doorjamb, the face on the shroud; the sign,
the symbol, the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel: each its own exquisite lie. If these are lies: the recollection of a face, a shape, a shadow; then what do we call truth? In what do we believe? The transcendent thing that signifies beyond significance? This thing called god? The creator, the authority, the artist. What if he is a liar by his very nature? What if he loves ink more than his audience? What are we to believe or to disbelieve? What will we do now? And what of tomorrow and the next day? We fear the truth of our truthlessness. We fear more the idea of an indifferent god than no god at all. We would rather have nothing than settle for less.”

Eloise looked around the room: her escritoire; the sofa, the chairs, the woven rugs, embroidered pillows, apples, roses, pens and cream-colored paper, a chess set, a statuette of the virgin, a lamp with a glass dome; the fireplace, a hand-fascinated box, the gilt-edged photo of her daughter.

On the last night of the year, in an ancient city, as she walked to her hotel along a twisting stone street, Susu looked up at the sky to see the stars composing the Northern Cross of Cygnus, over the neon of a McDonald's sign, as though directing her homeward.

Eris looked around Elizabeth Weiss's bohemian home—she saw the framed alpine postcards, the collections on the bookshelves: tin toys, snow globes—

The inkpots and antique typewriters.

She said, “God, that's a sweet story, but tell me—”

“What?” said Liz.

“Is it true?” the girl asked.

Eloise ate an apple.

Susu came to her hotel.

Dibby Stone had inherited the upkeep of her husband's empire, and she was entitled—or obliged—no; obligated—to the excavation of its artifacts. The manuscript of his final novel had been returned to her by the police. Ro had written it longhand on unlined paper. It was found with him, in the room where he died. Tattered, fray-edged: it had traveled the world with him. It was tied and knotted with a length of ribbon. The fact of the book, of its composition of paper and ink, caused Dibby to fear its very persistence; its existence. The murderer—the thief, really—hadn't known, couldn't have understood the value of the manuscript, and instead had taken his watch, that absurd Italian timepiece. Dibby knew all about murder. She liked to read mystery novels. The kind where a body turns up in the garden, and then a sleuth says clever things. This, of course, was not that kind of book. As if kindness had anything to do with it. Dibby dared not untie the knot on the manuscript. It seemed an act of
undoing;
not just of the knot, but of him. As though the knot, more so than the book, were the last of Ro. So she had placed the manuscript on his desk. And there it had stayed: unread. Through the summer and into the fall. Now it was winter. Snow fell, as she stood with her palm flat against the paper, the page—; she wondered:
what is the story about?
and, for no reason more tangible than the force of her desire, Dibby pulled at the string.

It bears noting that when he arrived on the island, Salt was not alone. He had brought with him a beautiful blonde girl. The girl was called Inj.

The knot came undone.

Dibby set the first page on the stand.

A white sheet of paper was rolled into the carriage of the typewriter.

In the hotel lobby: men in rumpled elegant clothing—spies or gamblers or deposed monarchs—sat on worn sofas reading newspapers and smoking Turkish cigarettes. A serene-faced plaster lady in blue with her nose chipped away, but her eyes were forgiving; weren't they? stood near the doorway—patiently—between a potted palm and an elephant umbrella holder.

Susu yawned.

She was tired of bones and candles and the eyes of watchful gods.

A metal key struck a page, inking a letter.

The good will not be rewarded and the bad will go unpunished.

Dibby began typing the handwritten story on the green typewriter with the blacked-out keys.

Dr. Lemon did not deserve the fate that Fate had assigned him. Nor did he warrant the plot imposed upon him by the author of all plots.

Dibby let no pause fall between reading a word and translating it into type. She took the first page from the carriage. And she rolled another sheet into place. She saw the typed words—his words once, her words now—appearing black on the white page. And though she vowed, with a transcriptionist's honesty, to be true to the original—she had to make
some
changes, didn't she? She had a responsibility to fix, to mend and to amend, to correct him, to repair his faults and flaws. His spelling errors, his stream of consciousness ramblings, his words blotted into obscurity with jam or coffee or was it blood? Where was his dictionary? She began to search through his desk. It was as she opened the drawers one by one—that she found in the bottom drawer—a box.

Dr. Lemon was dying.

Mrs. Stone found a tin box. French, a pretty thing—decorated with seaside pictures. Scenes of girls on a beach. Of cakes and oranges and parrots. A little dog ran along the shore. Dibby had never seen the box before. She reached into the drawer. And just then—she heard—

Eloise picked up the fallen book.

Laughter, a crash, a door slammed. It was Olga with the boys. Olga, the new nanny, brought Chester and Julian home from the ice rink. They were in the kitchen, already fighting. Dibby heard them. They sounded so much like Ro. They were hungry. The boys were calling to her.

She looked at the box—

And she drew back her hand.

Even a locked box is right twice a day.

The girl sat beside Salt on the flight from New York to Detroit. She had procured for him an extra pillow and a blanket. When the attendant came down the aisle with the drink cart and gave Salt pineapple instead of orange juice, the girl made a small, but polite fuss. Salt hated flying. The girl said things to calm him. The runway was backed up in Detroit. They had to taxi for a while. Then they lined up in a queue waiting to land. When the flight finally touched down, the girl made sure that they were the first to disembark. They were in jeopardy of missing their connection; the girl grabbed Salt's hand, and she navigated him through the neon-bright airport to make the next plane moments before the doors were locked shut.

The small plane hit turbulence. They kept their seatbelts fastened. Salt went pale. The girl gave him pills from a prescription vial, and he closed his eyes.

The girl, that is, Inger, whom Salt called Inj, was an absolute necessity.

Inj rented the car in Duluth. She drove them on through bleak winter-stricken towns. At the Stockade they slept together in the small bed in the overheated room. And at the Kracked Kettle, he had pancakes; she ordered eggs. While Salt read aloud the crime blotter from the newspaper, Inj looked at the atlas.

Salt did the police in different voices.

Inj plotted their course.

And so they came to Damascus.

They took a boat across to the island.

Snow fell.

Inj paid the ferryman.

The ferryman directed her to the inn. Where—

A black-and-white dog barked at Salt.

The box was a biscuit tin, the kind of thing that a child would use to hide treasures.

Inj was beautiful.

Dibby closed the drawer.

Salt was miraculous.

The black-and-white dog ran delirious circles in the snow.

The boy from the inn put the bags in his truck.

When the bell rang, Eloise was studying the face of a broken clock. She knew who it was at the door. Eloise knew all that there was to know. And this knowledge was no consolation.

It was Zigouiller.

But then you already knew this.

Susu crossed the hotel lobby.

The pages of a newspaper rustled.

A match struck.

Cigarette smoke.

Lemon wax and rosewater.

The diamond tiles of the floor.

A heel scuffed across the floor.

A cough into a rolled fist.

Susu was a remarkable girl.

Where in his small bullish being rested the miracle of Salt? He was not tough or gentle. Neither kind nor merciless. Neither wise nor foolish. He did not tell jokes or say funny things. He was neither loud nor quiet. He was not taciturn or sweet-tempered. If he was not charming; there was an odd irresistible charm to him. If he was not a genius; there was a genius in him. He collected typewriters, puzzles, ink pens, postcards, and keys to doors that he would never unlock. If he had not yet done great things; it seemed that he would, or that he must. And if he had never uttered one brave or prophetic phrase; it seemed that he was just about to do so, at any moment; to say something important. People were waiting for him to do something extraordinary. And they were willing to wait. The universe had granted Salt a gift. He had been given the benefit of the doubt. And because of this, perhaps,
this;
and so much more: Salt had no doubt in his own abilities. Salt believed in himself. He believed in the axiomatic proof of his own genius. He was important. He
was
because he
was
. And he was part of eternity.

Zigouiller took off his overcoat.

While Liz spoke of the moral authority of homo faber in abstract and specific, Eris idly fingered a run in her striped stockings.

Susu on the balcony drank from a bone-white demitasse.

Eloise showed Zigouiller her house, room by room. She showed him her Mycenaean jars and Egyptian antiquities. Her fat Buddhas and lean bodhisattvas. Her writing desk and her ravens. A rock from Gibraltar, a silver knife for cutting paper. Athena, Chronos, a swan, a weeping virgin, candlesticks. A sofa, a chair, a fireplace. The damask curtains, the Persian rugs, Russian dolls that opened one to the next ever smaller, a cedar box, the morocco-bound folios on the shelves, her books. And he said, “I bet you've read them all.”

Zola brought a red ball to Zigouiller.

Susu leaned over the stone balustrade.

Zigouiller rolled the ball across the floor.

Susu looked down in darkness at the street below.

Zola chased after the ball, skidding along the polished wooden floors.

She brought the ball back to Zigouiller.

He rolled it again.

Is reality rock or paper or scissors?

Each time Zigouiller rolled the ball across the floor to Zola, she brought it back to him.

Eloise and Zigouiller took the stairs one by one.

Louis Sarasine spoke of—

On a nightstand a wristwatch ceased keeping time.

Zigouiller told Eloise that he had played Odysseus in a rock-opera miniseries on German television. And she fell back laughing on the bed.

There was no television in Susu's hotel room.