Let the Dark Flower Blossom (26 page)

Sheldon Schell took his guest's proffered hand.

Oh, that soft hand was warm and damp.

“I've come to collect on a promise,” said Salt.

And didn't Schell feel terror then?

Said Louis, “She opened the box that night. She scattered the pages on the floor. And she set the story on fire. There was no page that did not burn. She told me that she started the fire. She told me that she set the house on fire. And I did not believe her.”

Salt said, “I have a sense, an instinct, that guides me like a hand. I speak in abstractions. I should speak only in the concrete. I should be speaking of objects and objectivity. I should be speaking of weight and heft and symbols. Of
the thing
and of the transformation of
the thing
. Does a clock contain the time? Of course not. Does a
teakettle contain water? It may. It can. Yet it may not. Or a key, what about a key? If it opens one door, will it open all doors?”

A drink, ouzo—she hadn't ordered it—was set before Susu on the marble of the bar.

The cat slept curled upon the white nightdress in a heap on the floor.

The white nightdress lay in a heap on the floor.

“My friends,” said Louis Sarasine, “tell me this: tell me why no version of her story will satisfy me? Tell me why I don't, why I can't believe her.”

Salt said, “Do you believe that there is a destiny that shapes our ends? Do you think that there is a connection between time and being? That no matter which course you take, you will end up, you will find yourself at the appointed hour, in the very place where you were going? I do. I do. Let the animals loose of the zoo and some will murder and some will create. Do you see? I've come to you—I am here. For both the ghost and the machine. What is one without the other? Do you think that I'm a fanatic? I must be a fanatic to devote myself so to someone whom I never met. I can barely speak his name. But, I did meet him. A long time ago. It was only that I didn't know that it was him. Let me tell you how it happened.”

Salt talked about fate.

The small glass was full.

Fate is a girl with scissors.

Susu did not think about the things that she had done in her short life as being either good or bad. If questioned she might have conceded that the destiny that shapes our ends is like a knot of rope that one grabs hold of when drowning, yet even as one is holding onto it, one's fingers begin to try to untie the knot. She lifted the glass and drank.

Salt said, “I wish that my mother and father had taken more care when they brought me into the world. I should have lived in a ruined abbey. Instead, I grew up in a cul-de-sac. I lived in a circle. The houses were the same one after another. It was a maze of streets, and I lost my way. They called me an idiot. I didn't speak until I was eight. My first word was
planetarium
. Then they called me a genius. I imagined that I was switched at birth with a prince. One day my real father, the king, would come for me. One day I was building a castle of cards when just such a king arrived. This part happens, as dreams do and must, in the present tense. My mother is talking to him. I am under the table. I hear voices. His voice. He lifts the flowered cloth and looks at me. I cover my face. I am covering my eyes. I know that I should not look at him. And then he is gone and there
is no more of him. Did it happen? Years later, I am in the library and I take a book from the shelf. I turn it over. I see the picture on the jacket. An old hardcover book with the photograph on the back. And suddenly there I am, under the table looking at his face peering down at me from under the cloth. He is the author. It is he, him.”

Beatrice walked ahead of Inj, breaking the path through the woods in the white white snow.

Susu went back to her room with a man she met in the bar.

It was not the first time.

Dibby did not stop typing.

“Roman Stone,” said Salt.

Susu was thinking of algorithms and lacunae.

Salt said, “I've said the name. I want to know the truth. I want the story. Will you tell me everything? Tell me about Stone. Tell me how he became a writer. Tell me if he was born to it, or invented his own idiom. Consider me an unruly child ruled by my wants. I want! I will stand on a chair and beat the teakettle with a wooden spoon
announcing: I'll do a dance! I'll sing for my supper! I am like a child demanding a jar from the top shelf; this thing is beyond my reach. Yet I must have it. It is right that I should have it. For I want it so. And if the jar falls upon my head, I'll take my lumps as the price of justice. Justice makes jam all the sweeter.”

Inj and Beatrice made their way back through the woods.

Inj couldn't recall the names of the birds.

Some were big and beautiful, with such wings.

Some were small and ugly.

It began to snow. The snow was heavy.

Already the sky was dark.

The dogs ran on ahead.

The girls walked.

And the snow fell.

With each page of Roman's manuscript Dibby found a new flaw.

Olga took the laundry from the dryer.

Schell and Salt sat together, as men often do.

On the wall there was a painting of a girl and a god in the woods.

Said Schell, “I'll tell you a story.”

Pru used to steal lines. She said:
Let anger be general. I hate an abstract thing
.

Susu had sold off what she could to pay for her wanderings: her diamond engagement ring, a cashmere sweater, a bracelet.

“Many years ago when I was young,” said Schell. “I thought about nothing but art, night and day. I had one dream. I wanted to write a novel. And it seemed very obvious to me that before I began to write my novel, I would need to find the perfect story.”

Salt pulled his chair closer.

If perhaps a plate or book had suddenly launched flying across the room to land smack against his guest's round face, Schell would have known that it was at the hand of Pru's ghost.

Olga folded a pajama top, leaned down, and set her cheek against the warm flannel.

Schell said, “I began to try to find the perfect story.”

“How?” asked Salt.

Said Schell, “I read books. I read book after book, but I did not find the answer. And when I did not find the answer in a book, I went to my father. I asked my father. My father knew all that there was to know—and this knowledge was no consolation.”

Susu imagined that she was sailing on a ship to Byzantium.

Schell said, “My father was a casket-maker, and he taught me what he could about the world. He had a workshop in our cellar. When we were children—we weren't allowed there—it was where he devised his plans; it was where he built his monsters. That's what we used to say, my sister and I. A story is a monster, I suppose. A story is an invention. And my father was an inventor. He designed—oh—wooden toys: birds with wind-up wings, soldiers, dancing ballerinas, dollhouses, mazes, jigsaw puzzles, and long-spinning tops. He grew ill, and little by little he gave up everything—except boxes. He worked at boxes. He had a monomania—an idea—he wanted to make a box that would neither open nor close. My mother took care of him. I was aware of my father's misery and my mother's beauty, and that fate had brought them together to live in a house with a twisted apple tree in their garden. I inhabited their little world, and I, as I say, through defense or offense, thought entirely about art.” Schell broke off, distracted—

He looked out the window.

The sky had gone dark.

“One night—it was summer. It was late. I was in bed. I couldn't sleep. And I knew that my father was in his workshop—

I crept down the stairs to the kitchen—

I remember—my hand on the door that led down to the cellar.

That door was always locked.

I turned my wrist.

The door opened.

What did I do?

I went down the stairs.

I was so quiet, step by step.

I saw him. My father—

He was sitting at his worktable—

By the light of a lamp.

It was night.

And there was nothing like it.

My father sat at his table.

The table was covered with papers.

The papers were covered with his designs.

He held a pencil.

At first he did not see me.

Then he saw me.

I came closer.

He sat, and I stood.

I stood before him.

I said, ‘How do I find the perfect story?'

My father was silent.

I waited.

I waited for him to speak.

He said nothing.

He looked down at his paper.

He began to write.

He wrote for a few moments—

Then he looked up.

He looked at me.

He must have forgotten that I was there.

He set down his pencil.

He picked up a ruler.

He said, ‘Be true.'

It was neither a command nor a statement.

It was a measurement.

Just then I heard footsteps.

A ghost?

It was no ghost.

My sister stood.

In her white nightgown.

She had followed me.

She came into the light.

My father looked at us with—

A kind of astonishment.

We looked so much alike, you see.

He marveled at us as at some elaborate invention.

My sister in her white dress.

It caught the lamplight.

For a moment I was angry with her.

I hated her, just then.

I pushed her—and she fell.

My father said nothing.

He gave her his hand, and she took it.

She opened his palm—

In it was a small gold key.

My father turned.

He held a box.

He gave me the box.

He gave my sister the key.

He gave me a box.

A wooden box.

Long gone now—

It was the perfect box for my story.”

“And then what happened?” said Salt.

No book flew from a shelf, no plate broke. No picture fell from the wall. No teacup crashed to the floor. No papers fluttered and lost their order. No postcard turned from picture to portent. No branch banged the window glass. No hand moved on the clock. No god ceased his ravishment of a ready virgin. No afternoon gave way to evening. No ghost made herself known.

Said Schell, “One day passed into the next. We had cake. We drank tea. My father killed my mother. Or maybe it was the other way around. I was the one who found them. There was a fire. The house burnt to the ground. My sister and I watched it burn. Then I went to college. And I met Roman Stone. Wasn't that what you asked me? How did I become a writer?”

Salt said, “That
is
a story.”

Susu on the bed.

Schell noticed a spot of marmalade on Salt's plaid shirt.

Beatrice did not know what god or grace or ghost impelled Inj to grab her hand. But Inj did. She did. And off they ran running through the falling snow.

With each flaw that she found, Dibby loved the book more.

Salt rapped his fingers restlessly against the windowpane.