Read The Necessary Beggar Online
Authors: Susan Palwick
The Necessary Beggar (2 page)
It is a very ancient blessing, very holy. It has the power to assuage many crimes, for after it is spoken, anyone in the crowd who bears a grudge against anyone else is obliged to seek out that person and say, “I forgive you in the name of the Necessary Beggar.”
These customs have great power among the living. They cannot reach the dead, who attend their family weddingsâif they do so at allâonly as finches or caterpillars or leaves, who cannot speak in human tongues. There is another story, older even than the one of how Gandiffri earned its name, about how once the dead could speak to us, and why they can no longer: the Great Breaking, we call it, the rift between the worlds of the present and the past. It is a very sad tale, and it reminds me of my poor Darroti. I did not like to tell or hear it even before our exile, and now the very thought of it hurts me. You will excuse me, then, if I do not tell it now. You will learn it soon enough, for it is part of the larger tale told here. And if that tale ends happily at last, I still have learned that all the mending in the world cannot heal some broken things. Could the dead gossip with us over breakfast every morning, still we would miss them, for life is more than speech.
The Great Breaking is why we always bless and thank our food before we eat it: for anything, fruit or flesh, may contain the spirit of some beloved person. We must believe that the dead delight to feed us, lest we starve, but we must also pay due reverence. And so coming to America was hard for us adults, for every television commercial of someone gobbling unblessed potato chips, unhallowed ice cream, made us blanch. The first time we saw a
television set, at our friend Lisa's house, it was playing an ad for Smuckers jelly in which children smeared the stuff on pieces of bread and stuffed themselves, while animated fruit danced across the screen. We stared, aghast, although little Zamatryna immediately began humming the tune the cartoon fruit were singing.
television set, at our friend Lisa's house, it was playing an ad for Smuckers jelly in which children smeared the stuff on pieces of bread and stuffed themselves, while animated fruit danced across the screen. We stared, aghast, although little Zamatryna immediately began humming the tune the cartoon fruit were singing.
Lisa had gone shopping for food to feed us, and was not there to explain this atrocity. “They didn't bless the bread or the fruit stuff,” Macsofo said, somewhat wildly, and Erolorit, frowning, suggested that perhaps the first piece of bread and jelly had been blessed to include all the others. “But they didn't bless the first one either!” Macsofo said, to which Erolorit countered that maybe they had, and we just hadn't seen it. Macsofo shook his head. “Brother, what good is a blessing no one sees?”
Harani was in the bathroom, vomiting. Aliniana cried for a week. The children were puzzled but willing to adapt, and soon developed an inordinate fondness for Smuckers jelly.
At first we blessed all our food, as we had at home. But soon enough we stopped. It is easier to bless food you have grown and made yourself, and we still bless the yield from our own garden; but supermarket food rarely seems sacred here. Aliniana and Macsofo buy the parve Jewish food whenever they can find it, and Erolorit says prayers over entire bags of groceries, and Harani over the stove. But the children became good American consumers who could not eat just one Pringle, and who rarely remembered even to bless the first one. I remember Zamatryna-Harani, when she was eleven, pulling a bag of popcorn out of the microwave and telling her uncle Macsofo, “You want me to bless each
piece?
Are you
crazy?
”
piece?
Are you
crazy?
”
“You would bless each ear of corn,” Macsofo said, “but all the kernels may not be from the same ear. You can bless the bag, but say something about the different ears of corn. That will be good enough.”
Zamatryna was already eating. “Too much work,” she said, around a mouthful of hot popcorn. “Uncle Max, if the popcorn were haunted, I'd know.”
“How? How would you know? How can you be sure?”
“I'd know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It would be, like, scary popcorn. This isn't scary popcorn.”
Macsofo looked pained. “The dead are not frightening, Zamatryna. The dead love us. You have been watching too many horror movies.”
Zamatryna stuck her arms out straight in front of her and began lurching around the kitchen. “Night of the Living Popcorn,” she said, in her best horror-movie voice. “Woo-woo-wooooo! Would you just chill?”
“You are not listening to me, Zamatryna. I am saying that the popcorn does
not
have to be scary to contain the spirits of the dead. The popcorn loves you. You should thank it.”
not
have to be scary to contain the spirits of the dead. The popcorn loves you. You should thank it.”
Whereupon Zamatryna laughed so hard she choked. Then she gave Macsofo a hug and said, “If the popcorn loved me, I'd know that, too. Really I would. It's just, like, popcorn. If it's dead people, I'm helping them be alive again by digesting them, okay?”
Macsofo nodded. “Exactly! But you should thank them for feeding you!”
Zama shrugged. “Or they should thank me for giving them a body again. I'm going to go do my English homework now. I have to write a poem.”
Zamatryna-Harani loved popcorn at least as much as she loved poetry. She loved movies and shopping malls as much as she loved math; she loved the Gabbing Girls, the latest teen lip-synching sensation, as much as she loved gardening. She was a good American child.
And so we were all of us stunned, when she told us that her wedding must be performed by the Necessary Beggar. Even Aliniana was stunned, and it was from her reminiscences of Lémabantunk that Zamatryna had grasped the importance of the custom in the first place. Certainly I had never told her of it, for I knew better than to impose old ways upon her in a new place. Her parents had told her about their own wedding, of course, for little girls always ask for such stories, but they had never thought for a moment that it would occur to her to follow the tradition. Our headstrong, assimilated Zama, with her letter sweaters and her laptop computer and her cellular telephone, instructing Jerry not to buy her a diamond ring, but instead to give the money he had saved to a Necessary Beggar? What kind of American child was this?
Jerry was the only person who didn't seem a bit surprised. “It's just like her,” he told me, much later. “That's why I love her.”
The problem was how to achieve what Zamatryna had commanded. For, of course, the United States does not honor its beggars. They are not empowered to perform marriages. They are considered curses, not blessings. And there was the further difficulty that Nevada, where we lived, had just passed the Public Nuisance Act of 2022 commanding that no one was to live on the streets, and the Reno police had plucked all the homeless people they could find up into county transports and had taken them away.
That is why the entire family, plus Jerry and Lisa, wound up climbing into Lisa's SUV and driving to the first place in America we had ever seen, eleven years before: the place, I suppose, where the story of Zamatryna's wedding truly begins.
Bodies
The door into exile was blue, and it shimmered. “Don't be afraid,” the child's mother told her, but Zamatryna-Harani, standing in the Plaza of Judges in the somnolent warmth of high summer, was afraid anyway. The Plaza of Judges was vast, paved with smooth gray granite stretching away on either side into a distance that could have held fifty houses. Along the edges of the Plaza rose stone statues ten times taller than a grown man, the stern images of all the Judges who had ever ruled upon the fates of the citizens of Lémabantunk. The child could hear bees somewhere, although nothing grew on the Plaza; above everything stretched the sky, serenely blue. In front of them was the door, a different, more dangerous blue.
Zamatryna-Harani's nose itched, but she didn't scratch it. With one hand she clutched her little bundle of things, and with the other she clutched a fistful of her mother's skirt. She was afraid to let go of either one, lest somethingâher things, her mother, herselfâbe left behind. Her mother couldn't hold her hand, because all of the grown-ups were carrying possessions: cooking pots, bags of clothing, sleeping mats. Their hands were full and they wore bundles on their backs. All of them looked like Mendicants, but it was no honor.
Zamatryna didn't want to go away, but she knew they had to, because all the grown-ups said so. Twenty days ago, Uncle Darroti had done something terrible, and now he cried all the time, and Grandfather Timbor and Uncle Macsofo and her parents wouldn't leave him, and she and her cousins couldn't leave them, so they were all going together. Her twin cousins Rikko and Jamfret, who were only a year younger than she was, pretended it would be a splendid adventure, but she knew they were only
boasting. She had heard Rikko crying one night, while Jamfret tried to comfort him. Her other cousin, the baby Poliniana, three years younger than Zamatryna, had cried openly, in front of all the grown-ups. Poliniana's mother, Auntie Aliniana, had cried too, and Zamatryna's parents had told her she could cry if she wanted to, that no one would laugh at her. But she hadn't felt like crying, not then. She had felt like being very quiet.
boasting. She had heard Rikko crying one night, while Jamfret tried to comfort him. Her other cousin, the baby Poliniana, three years younger than Zamatryna, had cried openly, in front of all the grown-ups. Poliniana's mother, Auntie Aliniana, had cried too, and Zamatryna's parents had told her she could cry if she wanted to, that no one would laugh at her. But she hadn't felt like crying, not then. She had felt like being very quiet.
That had been after the first Family Council, where the adults had had long, worried discussions of how best to go into exile. Most of the time, Family Councils were about boring things like how much rice to buy or what color the new curtains should be, and children weren't included. But everyone was included this time, because what had happened was so important, and would affect them all forever.
And so the family gathered in their inner courtyard, and sat on the ground in a circle, and drank tea, and tried to plan. They were having the finest weather of the year, with clear skies and warm breezes. Small lizards basked on the walls, among the honeysuckle vines, and hummingbirds hovered above the sweet blossoms, drinking the nectar. Zamatryna tried very hard to pay attention, although she would rather have been playing with her pet beetles or memorizing a poem. She had been working on learning the
Epic of Emeliafa
, the woman who had first learned to plant gardens. She loved the poem, with its vivid descriptions of loam and weeds and the first tender green shoots of the pea plants.
Epic of Emeliafa
, the woman who had first learned to plant gardens. She loved the poem, with its vivid descriptions of loam and weeds and the first tender green shoots of the pea plants.
She forced herself to mind the grown-ups, but as hard as she listened, exile was far more difficult to imagine than Emeliafa's first harvest of lettuce. The family would be living somewhere else, but no one knew where, and Zamatryna, who had been born and lived her entire life in this house, tried to think what it would mean. Would it be like being at her friend Lalli's house? Would it be like playing hide-and-seek under Grandfather's carpet stall in the Great Market, except that you would live there forever?
But every time she asked a question, the adults said only, “We don't know,” and she grew more and more confused. No one who had been in exile could report back to advise how it should be done. The Judges said that no two Other Worlds were the same, although they promised that all were habitable, an infinity of welcomes. There was no way to plan a life in a place you couldn't picture, but the family had to try. And because they did not know where they were going, knew only what they were leaving, the Councils turned into endless discussions of what they should bring with them.
Zamatryna's father, Erolorit, wanted to shield his brother Darroti from any further shame. He favored wearing their best things, so that wherever
they arrived, the people there would think they were just visitors on vacation, rather than the family of a criminal sent into disgrace. “But we will not be on vacation,” Grandfather Timbor had pointed out quietly. “We will be in exile. And we do not know if there will be other people there at all. So we had best bring what we will need to live.”
they arrived, the people there would think they were just visitors on vacation, rather than the family of a criminal sent into disgrace. “But we will not be on vacation,” Grandfather Timbor had pointed out quietly. “We will be in exile. And we do not know if there will be other people there at all. So we had best bring what we will need to live.”
“But then we will look like Mendicants,” Uncle Macsofo had said, frowning. “We will be claiming a position of honor we do not have, andâ”
Grandfather Timbor stopped him with a raised hand. “We will be Mendicants in fact. It will be no pretense. We will need to ask for many things to live in this other place, if there are people there to ask at all. And if there are not, we must bring as much as we can of what we would ask other people to give us.”
Macsofo still looked worried. “It does not seem right. It seems a mockery to act as if we are Mendicants ourselves. We are going there because a Mendicant is dead now.”
At which Auntie Aliniana let out a little wail, and Uncle Darrotiâwho had not stopped weeping since the fragrant dawn when the City Guard had found him, clutching a bloody knife and swaying over the fallen body of the Mendicant womanâgave a low moan, the whimper of an animal in pain. Zamatryna's mother, Harani, put a hand on his arm and said gently, “We have to be able to talk about this, Darroti, even if you cannot tell us why you did it. You know we love you. You know we will not desert you. But we cannot keep silent about this thing, because it has changed our lives.”
“I should have killed myself,” Darroti said thickly. “That is what other people have done who have been found in such shame. I should kill myself now. That way the rest of you could stay here. That wayâ”
“Enough,” Macsofo said, his voice sharp. Zamatryna saw his hand trace an X in the air, a quick slashing movement; it was the signal adults used to tell children to cease whatever they were doing, or to stop speaking, to remain silent. Her uncle used it now without thinking, even though his younger brother was no child. Darroti had been speaking madness since the Judges' sentence. Macsofo and Erolorit had been forced to take turns guarding Darroti to keep him from harming himself. “No one wants you to die, Darroti,” Macsofo said impatiently now. “That would not comfort us, and it would not bring Gallicina-Malinafa back. It would only be a deeper pain and a more terrible disgrace, for you know full well that the Judges' sentence must be served, and were you to cheat themâ”
“I would be serving the sentence.” Darroti's voice was dreary, already lifeless and terrible. Poliniana, Zamatryna's sweet baby cousin, crept next to
him and took his hand, stroking it as if it were an animal, but he acted as if he did not even know she was there. “I would go into the exile of death.”
him and took his hand, stroking it as if it were an animal, but he acted as if he did not even know she was there. “I would go into the exile of death.”
“We will not let you go there,” said Erolorit, his voice gentler than Macsofo's. “We will not permit it, and if you love us, you will stop talking this way.”
“I am a fool and a coward.”
Zamatryna's mother shook her head. She looked as if she wanted to join Darroti in weeping. “You are our kin, Darroti, and we love you. If you go into the changelessness of death you will always be in the pain you carry now; in exile you will still be alive, and may grow happier. We do not know, after all, that this new place will not be a paradise. And our home is each other, not these walls.”
“That is right,” Grandfather Timbor said crisply. “And it is fitting that we go away as Mendicants, for a Mendicant has been killed and sent where no one can speak to her anymore, and we are following her fate, although we remain alive. And in any case there is no way around it. We must bring anything we think we will need, as much as we can carry, because we do not know what will be waiting for us.”
“Then we should carry nothing,” Macsofo said, “because all we can truly bring with us is our names.”
“A cooking pot is its own truth,” Grandfather Timbor said mildly.
So then there began the discussion of what, of all the things they needed to live, they should take with them, since they could not carry everything. Aliniana stopped crying long enough to say that they should bring food, flour and tea and other things that would keep, but the others disagreed. “We cannot carry enough food to live on for long,” Erolorit said, “and if there is no food in exile, we will not live long anyway. We must assume that there will be food, and merely bring things in which to cook it.”
“But we might not find the food right away,” Harani said, frowning.
After some minutes of discussion, they decided to bring enough food for three days. “And seeds,” Zamatryna said, “so we can plant things if there is good soil,” and everyone praised her excellent suggestion, and she was proud.
“And several types of clothing, because we do not know what the weather will be,” Harani said.
“And cloth for tents, and sleeping mats,” said Macsofo with a sigh.
“And you men must bring your prayer carpets,” Aliniana said.
“I want to bring my pretty slippers,” Poliniana said. She was still holding Darroti's hand. “The ones with the jewels on them, that Uncle Darroti gave me for my birthday when I was small.”
All the grown-ups except Darroti smiled, although Zamatryna didn't know why. “They no longer fit you,” Aliniana said. “You outgrew them long ago, little one.”
“I want to bring them anyway. They're beautiful. That's why I've kept them. And I love them because Uncle Darroti gave them to me.” Darroti blinked then, and wiped his eyes with the hand Poliniana wasn't holding, but still he didn't smile.
“You shall bring your slippers,” Grandfather Timbor said quietly. Thus it was decided that each person would be allowed to bring one small precious thing, one memory of home, even if it were not useful. The rest would be decided by necessity, as well as they could guess it.
And so now they stood in the Plaza of Judges, staring at the blue door. No one had come to see them off; that would only have made it more difficult to leave. Farewells had been quiet, friends coming by the house to hug them, to share a meal, to say prayers. They had given away their furniture and wall hangings, their fine festival clothing. The Judges would choose who would live in their house now.
Zamatryna had let all of her pet beetles out of their delicate reed cages, wishing each one well as it flew away. It had been difficult for her to decide what one thing to bring with her. At first she had thought she would bring one of her books of poetry, but there were so many that she could not choose, and anyway they were already in her head, except for the portion of the
Epic of Emiliafa
she had not yet learned. She worried that she would never be able to learn any more, never hear any poems again, but then she realized that she could ask the adults to recite poems for her, since they had memorized them, too, when they were small. She thought about bringing one of her beetles, but beetles didn't live very long, so she freed them instead. Finally, she remembered what Poliniana was bringing, and chose a doll that Uncle Darroti had made for her when she was much smaller, and he was still happy. She was a little ashamed not to have thought of it right away.
Epic of Emiliafa
she had not yet learned. She worried that she would never be able to learn any more, never hear any poems again, but then she realized that she could ask the adults to recite poems for her, since they had memorized them, too, when they were small. She thought about bringing one of her beetles, but beetles didn't live very long, so she freed them instead. Finally, she remembered what Poliniana was bringing, and chose a doll that Uncle Darroti had made for her when she was much smaller, and he was still happy. She was a little ashamed not to have thought of it right away.
A doll, clothing and bedding, extra shoes, a loaf of bread. That was her bundle. She squinted at the blue door, wondering when they would walk through it. It was only wide enough for them to go through single file. They had been standing here too long.
“Let's go,” Grandfather Timbor said, and Aliniana whimpered and fell to her knees. Macsofo and Erolorit got her up again.
“Alini,” Macsofo said, gently enough, “you have to walk. I cannot carry you and carry the cooking pots, too.”
She nodded, looking ashamed. Her children were whispering among themselves. Darroti stood a little apart from all of them, his eyes closed.
Grandfather Timbor went over to him and said, “I will walk next to you until we reach the door. I will go through first, and you will follow me, and the others will follow you. Do you understand, Darroti? Yes? Very well. Come along, children.”
Grandfather Timbor went over to him and said, “I will walk next to you until we reach the door. I will go through first, and you will follow me, and the others will follow you. Do you understand, Darroti? Yes? Very well. Come along, children.”
And so Timbor led them. Zamatryna was afraid to look at the door; she looked at the ground, and recited over and over to herself, “My name is Zamatryna-Harani Erolorit. Harani is my mommy; Erolorit is my daddy. My name is Zamatryna-Harani Erolorit.” Macsofo had said that they could only bring their names with them, and she was afraid that unless she kept her name uppermost in her mind, she might lose it.
Her mother went through the door. Zamatryna, now clutching the back of Harani's skirt rather than the side, followed. The door was cool and tingly; it smelled like seaweed and lightning. Zamatryna felt rather than saw the Plaza of Judges wink out of existence behind her. In front of her was a long blue tunnel. She felt the hair standing up on her head, felt her cousin Rikko behind her, murmuring a lullaby, a rhyme sung to babies, and just as she realized that the tunnel in front of her was empty, that Timbor and Darroti and her mother were no longer thereâWhen had she let go of Harani's skirt? How could she have let go of her mother's skirt?âshe took a step and found herself, impossibly, surrounded by a jostling crowd of people. “My name is Zamatryna-Harani Erolorit,” she whispered to herself, simultaneously bewildered and awash in relief that she still remembered her name.
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