Palimpsest (29 page)

Where does it begin? What may one hoard and yet avoid this congenital plague? How many silos of barley, how many vineyards, how many horses with buttery flanks, how many houses with crisp Weckweet finials may they acquire before this gentle disaster settles down upon the wombs and seed of those who love sealskin and rubies? Accountants from Zarzaparrilla Street have been fed with chocolate and songbirds’ livers, tobacco like corn silk rolled into linen for their pleasure, yet none have been able to locate the tipping point, at what decimal doom descends.

If we have passes, we may be able to look within the ponderous pearwood doors and glimpse classes in session. Let us say we have, let us treat ourselves to the costly jewel of a hall pass. Nightfall courses have just begun, the children are all in their rows, hands folded slackly before them. The teacher has not yet arrived, indolent wretch! Yet why do they not move, you ask? Why do they not pelt each other with erasers or crack jokes about the stock market, as the spoiled offspring of the affluent are wont to do?

Because they are not finished.

The children of Palimpsest’s aristocracy are born with a terrifying blankness: they are receptive, they respond to stimuli, they learn to walk and they learn to sit very quietly, but they do not speak, they do not run and play, and they have no faces, no hair, no genitalia at all. For this reason, in whispers they are called Brauria, a word from a language the fashionable cannot be concerned with remembering, signifying “little bears.” For bears in epochs long dead were said to be born formless, shapeless, and licked into bear-form by their mothers.

The Brauria are small dolls, posable, pliant, but they are unfinished, unreal, and the day a lady of rank gives birth, wrapped up in her lionskin with purple rings on her fingers, she prays she has not earned enough to earn this. She listens for the cry of her child; it does not come. And she knows it is St. Folquet’s for this one, and all its brothers and sisters to come. When she rises from childbed, she will begin to give away her dresses one by one, her houses, her lovers, hoping to descend once more into grace.

But, lady, weep not! At St. Folquet’s is hope, at least! When you leave your jewel-studded basket at their doorstep, it is not an orphan, not
exactly
an orphan, you abandon to their care.

For the children do hear, they do receive, and their lessons are easy for all that. For fifteen years the students are calm and even-tempered, motionless. They must be washed and fed intravenously, and this is delicate work to be sure, but they grow, as all children do. And they are taught as though they could recite, do sums, and debate with vigor the concerns of the day. Their clumsy feet are taught to dance, their soft spines shaped to posture with dread machines.

And when they are fifteen, they are finished.

It is a ritual of intense secrecy—at least, the wealthy believe it to be a secret. In a dark room the congenial little bear is seated, and another child enters, a true child, no older than her subject, with sparkling eyes and wicked jokes on her lips. Great goblets of water are provided for her comfort. Slowly, with infinite care and diligence, the child begins to lick the skin of the Braurion, just as a mother bear might before the bears decided collectively upon the inefficiency of this method. Every inch of skin is subject to her tongue, and she is merciless, though her own mouth becomes sore and tired, and though the process takes five days and nights—she has immeasurable endurance; she is strong.

And beneath the blankness a grown person emerges, with an aquiline nose and a mole on the left cheek, with red hair or skin like coffee, with graceful hands or full breasts, with excellent posture and a fine, clear brow. On the fifth day the Braurion is no more, and in his or her place sits an exceptional soul, tempered by so many years of forced silence, of reliance on the utterly rarified spirits at St. Folquet’s, a soul who knows his Latin and her calculus, his rolls of kings and her ecclesiastical history. They are proficient in the composition of poetry and have extraordinary memories, trapped as they have been within themselves. They are soft-spoken, sweet-natured, and have a remarkable felicity for dancing.

They are not returned to their families—how could they be returned? No one has a name or a face until he or she is finished, and to determine who belongs to whom is a tedious enterprise the responsibility of which no man is willing to take. From St. Folquet’s the little bears, now bears entire, go into the city and make their fortunes. It is extremely common for them to marry the child who licked them into being. The bond does not easily break.

But where do they come from, the boys and girls who minister to the Brauria for five days and nights? How are they convinced to do such a thing?

They are brought from the Aviary, of course. From the poorest of places, the Folquetters come to find those peculiar, clever, outcast children who are born into every part of Palimpsest, whether stews of goose or cat bubble over the hearth. The faculty bring in harvests of children, one for each of their poor charges, and until the young paupers are fifteen, they sleep well in their own soft barracks, the walls trimmed with garlands of wintergreen. They are taught no less than the Latin and calculus and ecclesiastical history of the Braurion, and more, for they are keen and quick and boisterous, and the faculty adores them after the maddening silence of the rest of the student body. They compose the essays on the nature of the serpent and the bull, and debate it merrily. They are doted upon, and fed sweetmeats on beds of beet and coconut. And they do not return to their families, either.

Years hence, the ladies with their lionskins may come across a lovely young woman with a fiercely inquisitive young man on her arm, and she may notice that they never cease to touch one another in small ways, even as she chooses oranges and he squeezes quinces in the market. And she may ask:
Is this my child?
But it is not for her to know, and in such a manner no one family rules Palimpsest for long.

_______

Save Casimira, always save her.

_______

There is a cat asleep in the bull’s bronze mouth. Its paws flop over the hoop of the ring thrust through his flaring nostrils. November scratches its ears; it yawns. Her fingers still tingle with the bees’ exhalations; she wonders if she will ever get used to the feeling of it, of being possessed of a million arms which may reach out to anything. She pauses and listens within herself—but the bees are still in drunken celebration of her coronation and have nothing useful for her. A girl is dancing Cossack-style for coins on Zarzaparrilla Street. An old man has died of drink in the doorway of a bookshop on Vituperation and 9th. Nothing she cares for or can use. Instead, November considers the names:
Oleg Sadakov. Amaya Sei. Ludovico Conti.
She whispers them, like little rosaries. She almost thinks she knows what to do.

November holds up her hand; her skin is a mass of stings and welts, little ropes of hardened skin where venom flew fast through her veins. But she smiles—the wounds make a kind of map of her known world, circumnavigated by pain and need, an echo of the black lines on her face. She will never be clean again, or walk without wincing, but the joy of the bees of Palimpsest shrieks in her.

St. Folquet, presumably, stares at her from the face of his building—a tall statue of polished red wood, its features half-eaten by wood lice, the thin, imperious saint holding in one hand a divining rod and in the other a cello bow. At his feet infant bears rock on their haunches, regarding him with ursine awe and adoration.

Though deep in the city, the street is empty—November can see nothing but the long canyons made by buildings stretching up into the heavens, so far, so high that the moon is hidden. The sky seems to have given up a silent battle against the city and surrendered its heights to concrete and marble. But yes, there it is, she had known it would come for her: a carriage sliding up its slick tracks and small, surely green-shod feet stepping toward her, a hand slipping into hers. She knows the weight of Casimira’s hand by now and enjoys it. It is familiar, kind, like sinking into warm water, to be held thus.

“Would you like to go in?” Casimira says brightly. “I donate a great deal toward the upkeep of St. Folquet’s; I am sure we would be welcome. The new graduates will be having their last meal.”

“Did you graduate from this place?”

Casimira smiles in her secret way. “Don’t be ridiculous. Though,” she pauses thoughtfully, “Aloysius did, you know.”

“Then why donate so much?”

“It can only benefit the city to have endless waves of exceptionally capable, even brilliant, folk unfettered by class and family connections. They change the world once a generation. That is certainly worth something.”

The two women pass under the knowing gaze of St. Folquet and into a grand hall filled with tables, which are draped in black linen and spattered with empty plates, starkly white against the tablecloths. The professors, when they finally sight Casimira, draw up to their full height and smooth the wrinkles from their stern and byzantine clothing, which to November is a blur of suit tails, high boots, corsetry, epaulettes, and dashing capes. The women have partridge feathers in their hair, the men have crow. They encourage the students to stand, and though the Brauria are awkward, shy of their new faces, their new voices, they rise as one and applaud Casimira, their benefactress, their mistress.

She demurs, too far above them to need their praise, and leads November to a long bench like one found at a monk’s mess hall. A young man moves aside to allow her access, blushing beneath exquisite features. He clutches the arm of a radiant young woman, whose gaze is appraising and steady. She does not blush at all.

“Casimira,” November says quietly, so that they will not be overheard as the suddenly loquacious children laugh and tell old jokes which are for them raw and new. “When will I feel like myself again? I feel all the time as though I am about to fall into a great depth, and my blood is always singing, singing as though the world is ending. So many voices, all those bees—I know all their names! How can I know all their names?”

Casimira turns to her in frank joy, and her face in that moment is so full of surprise and sisterly recognition, of relief in the presence of a compatriot, that November does not suppress the need to touch her: she presses her cheek to the matriarch’s and kisses her roughly, a savagery which may only exist between queens. The children around them exchange grins and stare—they have not yet learned not to stare.

“Never, poor girl,” Casimira says when they part, and her eyes are full of tears. “You are like me now, the only one like me. It will never stop, and you will know all their children’s names, too. And the names of everyone they touch, everyone they sting, for they will not be able to wait to tell you, to report to you all they know, to make you proud of them. You must be gentle, for they are tender-hearted as you and I cannot be. You have their stewardship, and it is a great task.” She squeezes November’s hand. “But you have me, and I have you, now. And we shall not either of us be alone again.”

A great bell sounds and supper arrives—a tiny roasted finch placed on each plate, its head and beak and body intact, overflowing fig and breadcrumbs from its unfortunate mouth. The faculty and graduates draw great black napkins from beside their plates, and Casimira follows suit, smirking slyly as she lifts it and drapes it over her head. As one creature, the hall plucks the tiny birds from their plates and slips them beneath the napkin whole. November stares as two hundred people eat draped in black, as though they were witches, heads bent in prayer to worlds below their feet.

The meal goes on and on—there is no other dish, and November can hear the crunching of avian bones. She does not wish to shame them; November veils herself and takes the finch by its roasted beak, pushing it into her mouth with two fingers, her remaining blessings. It is sweet, at first, the burnished skin and meat, glazed in something like brandy and something like plum wine. But as she chews—methodically, for it fills her mouth to bursting—the organs rupture, bitter and bilious, a taste like despair, like the loss of love. And deeper, the bones shiver and crack and cut her—the taste of her blood flows in, salty as tears shed over a ruined body, mingling with the marrow, and it is sweet again, sweet as herself, herself remaining at the end of all trials.

And November can see why the veil is needed. No god should bear witness to a woman devouring a meal of herself.

She swallows what is left, finally, and lifts the veil from her face, wiping a smear of blood from her lips. Across the city, three souls clutch their bleeding mouths in shock and agony. The hall is empty; they have all gone, and only Casimira remains at her side.

“Are you ready to go home?” she says. And November is.

_______

The house is hiding behind a column when they arrive, dressed as beautifully as November can imagine a boy dressing, in turquoise silk with a wide white collar and pink satin slippers, his belt buckle ivory, his hair combed to brilliance. He has made himself special for them, but he is bashful now, and November kneels, holding her arms out to the boy. In her, the bees dance:
Mother, oh, Mother and
Wife, stay with us, this is your home!

She holds tightly to herself—she is so spread out now, there must be a list of all the things she is that are not herself. But at the bottom of her heart, she is still November, still the child of a librarian and a woman who caught a shark when she meant to catch a little fish, and she smiles at the boy encouragingly.

My dress; my sail.

He flies to her, his arms small and tight around her neck. Casimira watches them like a satisfied brood hen.

“I have another gift for you, November. A secret in a story. Not so important as the first. Yet it is my hope that in time it will become as vital that you know it.” Casimira sits down on the floor in the center of her hall, and the house climbs up into her lap, kissing her cheek with a loud smack.