The Fire (18 page)

The ovens, I noticed with appreciation, had already cooled down and she had mucked them out in preparation for my task for the week ahead, which would save me time tonight.

Rodo was right about one thing. Leda was a swan, a
soignée
creature of both detachment and strength. But she preferred to be called Leda the Lesbian, both as a vocational badge of pride, I think, and a way to keep certain clients at arm’s length. I could understand her concerns. I’d be worried about the length of unsolicited arms, too, if I looked as rakish and come-hither as she did.

The sweep of her swanlike neck was exaggerated by a short-cropped silver-blond shock of hair – like a flattop crew cut. Her translucent white skin, artificially arched eyebrows, lips perfectly outlined in bloodred paint, and lacquered cigarette holder all contrived to give her the look of a stylized art nouveau illustration. Not to mention that her costume of preference, weather permitting, was what she was wearing, even now, at midnight beside the cold hearth: nothing but sparkly Rollerblades, a rhinestone-studded T-shirt, and men’s satin boxer shorts. Leda was, as the French say, ‘such a one.’

Leda turned in relief when she heard me on the stairs. I dropped my backpack on the floor, stripped off my down jacket, and carefully folded it and placed it on top.

‘The prodigal returns, thank heavens,’ she said. ‘Not a moment too soon. “Massa Rodolpho Legree” has been driving us all in circles ever since you left.’

Leda’s concept of Rodo as a slave master was shared by anyone who’d ever manned the kilns on his behalf. As in a military drill, obedience became second nature.

By way of demonstration, tired and hungry as I was, I was already on the move to the woodpile. Leda set down her cigarette and drink, slid off her chair, and followed, swishing behind me on her silent Rollerblades to the back wall, where we each pulled a stack of hardwood so I could start building the new fire in all four of the large stone hearths.

‘Rodo said if you got here tonight, I should stay and help you,’ she said. ‘He said the fire must be done right tonight

– it’s important.’

As if that familiar admonition would help either my bleary eyes or my travel-addled brain get focused, I thought. Not to mention my growling stomach.

‘What else is new?’ I said as she helped me plop the two large ‘andiron logs’ into place in the first hearth, which would serve to support the others. ‘But Leda, I haven’t really slept in days. I’ll get things going here in all the hearths – they’ll take a few hours to establish before we can cook. Then if you’ll watch the fires, I can go home and get a little shut-eye. I’ll be back before sunrise, I promise, to start making the bread.’

I’d finished stacking the triangle of upper logs atop the andirons and shoved some crumpled paper beneath. Then I added, ‘Besides, it’s not so urgent everything tonight be done on our drillmaster’s schedule. You know the restaurant’s always closed Mondays—’

‘You don’t know what’s been happening around here,’ Leda interrupted, looking uncustomarily concerned as she
handed me another pile of paper. ‘Rodo is holding a big
boum
tomorrow night for a bunch of dignitaries, here in the cellar. It’s very private. None of us has been invited even to work the tables. Rodo said he wants only you to help him cook and serve.’

I had those first glimmers that something might be terribly wrong. I tried to relax as I shoved some more crumpled paper under the nascent fires. But the timing of this unannounced soiree of Rodo’s bothered me – just a weekend away from my mother’s in Colorado, a party that Rodo himself had actually
known
about, as I recalled from his voice mail.

‘What exactly do you know about this party?’ I asked Leda. ‘Do you have any idea who these “dignitaries” might be?’

‘I heard it might be some high-level muckety-mucks from the government. Nobody knows for sure,’ she said. She was hunkering down over her blades as she passed me a few more sheets of crumpled paper. ‘They made all the arrangements with Rodo himself, not the catering manager. They’re throwing it on a night when the restaurant isn’t even open. It’s all very hush-hush. ‘

‘Then how did you learn so much?’ I asked.

‘When he heard you’d left for the weekend, Rodo threw a real hissy fit – that’s the first I learned that he wanted you and you alone for tomorrow night,’ Leda explained. ‘But as for the
boum,
we all knew there was some private function cooking. The cellar’s been reserved for two weeks—’

‘Two weeks?’ I interrupted.

I might be jumping to conclusions, but this seemed more than synchronicity. I couldn’t help hearing Vartan’s comment:
You and I have too many coincidences in our lives.
I was growing horribly certain that there was no such thing as a coincidence when it came to the way my life was running these past few days.

‘But why would Rodo single me out for this shindig?’ I asked Leda, who was kneeling beside me wadding newsprint. ‘I mean, I’m hardly a seasoned caterer, just an apprentice chef. Has anything happened lately that might prompt this sudden interest in my career?’

Leda glanced up. Her next words confirmed my worst fears.

‘Well, actually, there was a man who came by the restaurant a few times this weekend, looking for you.’ she said. ‘Maybe he has something to do with the gig tomorrow night.’

‘What man?’ I said, trying to quell that familiar adrenaline rush.

‘He didn’t give his name or leave a note,’ Leda told me, getting to her feet and brushing off her hands on her shorts. ‘He was pretty distinguished – tall and elegant, with an expensive trenchcoat. But mysterious, too. He wore blue-tinted sunglasses so you couldn’t quite see his eyes.’

Terrific. This was the very last thing I needed – a man of mystery. I tried to focus on Leda, but my eyes went all crooked. I was nearly reeling from four days’ deprivation of food, of liquid, of sleep. Synchronicity, serendipity, and strangers be damned, I needed to get home. I needed to lie down in a bed.

‘Where are you going?’ Leda said as I stumbled toward the steps in a blur.

‘We’ll discuss it in the morning,’ I managed to say, as I grabbed my jacket and backpack from the floor on my way out. ‘The fires will be fine. Rodo will survive. The enigmatic stranger may return. And we who are about to die salute you.’

‘Okay, I’ll be here,’ Leda said. ‘And you take care.’

I headed up the steps on wobbly legs and staggered into the deserted alley. I glanced at my watch: it was almost two a.m. and not a creature was stirring; the narrow, brick-paved
lane was dead as a tomb. It was so silent that you could hear the waters of the Potomac in the distance, lapping the trestles of Key Bridge.

At the end of the alley I turned the corner to my small slate terrace bordering the canal. I fumbled in my pack for the key to my front door, illuminated by the golden pink light of the single streetlamp marking the entrance to the shadowy path that descended into Francis Scott Key Park. The low iron bicycle railing surrounding the terrace was all that kept one from toppling over the side of the sheer rock retaining wall that dropped sixty feet to the motionless surface of the C & O Canal.

My cliffside dwelling provided an astonishing overlook across the vast expanse of the Potomac. People would kill for a view like this, and probably had in the past. But over the years, Rodo had refused to sell this weathered structure, due to its proximity to the Hearth. In exhaustion, I took a deep breath of the river and pulled out my key.

There were two doors, actually, separate entrances. The one at the left led to the main floor with its iron bars and shuttered windows, where Rodo kept important documents and files for his flickering fireside empire. I unlocked the other – the upstairs, where the slave laborer slept, always within handy availability to the fires.

As I was about to step inside, I bumped my toe on something I hadn’t noticed, lying there on the step. It was a clear plastic bag with the
Washington Post
inside. I’d never subscribed to the
Post
in my life, and there were no other residents in the alley it might belong to. I was about to dump the bag, paper and all, into the nearby city trash can, when under the limpid pink light of the streetlamp I noticed the yellow stickie that someone had attached with a handwritten note:
‘See page A1.’

I switched on my house lights and stepped inside. Dropping
my rucksack on the floor of the foyer, I yanked the newspaper from its plastic bag and pulled it open.

The headlines seemed to be screaming at me from across time and space. I could hear the blood beating in my ears. I could hardly breathe.

April 7, 2003:

TROOPS, TANKS ATTACK CENTRAL BAGHDAD…

We’d taken the city at six a.m., Iraqi time – only hours ago, barely long enough to get the news into this paper. In my dazed stupor, I could hardly absorb the rest.

All I could hear was Lily Rad’s voice haunting the recesses of my mind:

It was never the game of chess that your mother feared, but another Game…the most dangerous Game imaginable…based on a rare and valuable chess set from Mesopotamia…

Why hadn’t I seen it at once? Was I blind?

What event had happened two weeks ago? Two weeks ago when Taras Petrossian mysteriously died in London? Two weeks ago when my mother sent all those invitations to her birthday party?

Two weeks ago – on the morning of March 20 – U.S. troops had invaded Iraq. Birthplace of the Montglane Service. Two weeks ago was when the first move had been made. The Game had begun again.

Suddenly I realized that I was no longer a prisoner, neither in body nor in soul; that I was not condemned to death… As I was falling asleep, two Latin words were running through my brain, for no apparent reason:
magna mater
. The next morning when I woke I realized what they meant… In ancient Rome candidates to the secret cult of magna mater had to pass through a bath of blood. If they survived, they would be born again.

– Jacques Bergier,
Le Matin des Magiciens

It is only this initiatory death and resurrection that consecrates a shaman.

– Mircea Eliade,
Shamanism

Dolena Geizerov, Duhlyikoh Vahstohk

(Valley of Geysers, the Far East)

He felt as if he were rising from a great depth, floating toward the surface of a dark sea. A bottomless sea. His eyes were closed but he could sense the darkness beneath him. As he
rose toward the light, the pressure on him seemed to increase, a pressure that made it difficult to breathe. With effort, he slid his hand to his chest. Against his skin was a soft piece of cloth, some sort of thin garment or cover with no weight at all.

Why couldn’t he breathe?

If he focused on his breath, he found it came more easily, rhythmically. The sound of his own breathing was something strange and new, as if he hadn’t ever heard it clearly before. He listened as the sound rose and fell in a soft, gentle cadence.

With his eyes still shut, in his mind’s eye he could almost make out an image hovering near him: an image that seemed so important, if only he could grasp it. But he couldn’t quite see it. It was all rather vague and blurry around the edges. He tried harder to see it: Perhaps it was a figurine of sorts. Yes, it was the carved figure of a woman, shimmering in a golden light. She was seated within a partially curtained pavilion. Was he the sculptor? Had he been the one to carve it? It seemed so important. If he could just pull the draperies aside with his mind, then he could see within. He could see the figure. But each time he tried to imagine this task, his head was flooded with a brilliant, blinding glare.

With extra effort he finally managed to open his eyelids and tried to focus upon his surroundings. He found himself in some kind of undifferentiated space filled with a strange light, an incandescent glow flickering around him. Beyond, there were impenetrable deep brown shadows, and in the distance a sound that he couldn’t identify, like rushing water.

Now he could see his own hand, which still rested upon his chest, faded like a fallen flower petal. It seemed unreal, as if it had moved here of its own accord, as if it were someone else’s hand.

Where was he?

He tried to sit up, but found he was too weak even to
attempt the effort. His throat was dry and scratchy; he couldn’t swallow.

He heard voices whispering nearby, the voices of women.

‘Water,’ he tried to say. The word barely passed his parched lips.

‘Yah nyihpuhnyee mahyoo,’
said one of the voices: I don’t understand you.

But he had understood her.

‘Kah Tohri Eechahs?’
he asked the voice in the same tongue in which she’d addressed him, though he couldn’t yet place what it was. What time is it?

And though he still couldn’t make out forms or faces in the flickering half-light, he could see the slender female hand that descended to gently rest over his own hand, where it still lay upon his chest. Then her voice, a different voice from the first – a familiar voice – spoke just beside his ear. It was low and liquid and soothing as a lullaby.

‘My son,’ she said. ‘At last you have returned.’