that the sun is only a rumor. It spread wildly everywhere, dark curls so cascadingly alluring that they looked as if they would swallow your hand if you were lucky enough to run your fingers through them. Her hair was so outlandish that even now, years later, I am compelled to create these ridiculous metaphors, which I know I’ll regret in the morning.
Her eyes, also, are going to force me to embarrass myself. They burned like the green hearts of jealous lovers who accuse each other at midnight. No, I’m wrong, they were not green: they were blue. Ocean waves tossed around her irises, like an unexpected storm ready to steal a sailor from his wife. No, wait…maybe her eyes
She appeared in the burn ward door dressed in a light green hospital gown, with those unsolvable eyes and that riotously entangled hair, and I waited for the gasp that inevitably came whenever someone saw me for the first time. I waited for her to cover her mouth with her hand, in shock and dismay. She disappointed me by only smiling.
“You’ve been burned. Again.”
Generally I make it a rule not to respond to bizarre proclamations by strangers, but, honestly, in this case my silence was because I didn’t want her to hear my broken toilet of a voice. My throat was healing, but my ear (the one that still worked) was not yet used to the corrupted quality. I wanted her to know only the voice I had had before, the one that could talk a woman into bed.
In the face of my silence, she spoke again. “This is the third time you’ve been burned.”
I steeled my courage and corrected her. “Once.”
A look of confusion crossed her face. “Maybe you’re not you.”
She moved towards my bed, her eyes never breaking contact with mine, and drew shut the thick plastic curtains around us so that our privacy was assured. She leaned in, within inches of my face, studying me. Nobody had ever looked at me like this, not before the burn and certainly not since. Her eyes, dancing between the blue and the green, had dark bags underneath them, as though she had not slept in weeks. When her lips were almost touching mine, she whispered a word. “Engelthal.”
No doubt, reader, you have at some point in your life been face-to-face with an insane person. You can sense the madness immediately, usually even before the person says anything at all, but this nonsensical word clinched it for me. Meeting lunatics is not really that notable, as the world abounds with them; what interested me more was my reaction. Usually upon such a meeting, you only want to get away. If you’re walking on the street you avert your eyes and quicken your step, but in the burn ward the only recourse I had was to ring the nurse’s call button. But I did not do this. My only response to this possibly dangerous situation was nonresponse. So who was less rational, the wild-haired woman or me?
She took a step back. “You don’t remember.”
“No.” Whatever she thought I should be remembering, clearly I was not.
“That will make it more interesting,” she said. “Are you aware that they’re trying to poison my hearts?”
“No,” I answered again, but I was interested in where such a comment might lead. “Are they?”
“Yes. I can’t let them, because I have my penance to complete.” She looked around, as if she were worried about being overheard. “How were you burned this time?”
I could form a number of short sentences in a row, as long as I remembered to pause and breathe, so I told her a few quick details about my accident-when, where, how long ago. Then I asked her name.
“You know my name.” She kept reaching to her chest as if she were expecting to find something there, which was obviously missing. Her movements reminded me of the way I had always stroked my birth-scar.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“They took away my necklace. They said it could be used to harm someone,” she answered. “A young girl died here recently.”
I thought about Thйrиse. “How did you know?”
“Oh, I know some things about the dead”-she laughed-“but I suppose we’re lucky.”
“How so?”
“We’ve outlived a seven-year-old. We’ve outlived her a hundredfold.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I have a dog named Bougatsa.” Her fingers, now hanging at her sides, were twitching. “He’ll like you.”
“I don’t like dogs.”
“You will.”
“They don’t like me.”
“Oh. Because you’re so tough and mean, right?”
“What does the name mean?” I asked. “Bougatsa?”
“It’s filling in Greek pastry, and my dog’s exactly that color. Maybe I could bring him for a visit.”
“Dogs aren’t allowed here.” Breath. “Even flowers can kill me.”
“Ha! Don’t try to sell me for dumb. You know you’ve worse things to fear than a dog.” She placed her hand lightly upon my chest, with gentleness. I shivered, not only at the touch but also at the gleam in her eye. “You’re sorely tempted to kill yourself and I can’t say that I blame you. But there is a time and a place for such things, and this is not it.”
Why would she say such a thing? I needed to change the subject. “You look good for seven hundred years old.”
“You don’t,” she said, looking down the length of my body. It was the first time that anyone had made a joke about my burns. “So, what do you think I should do with my hearts?”
“I think…” I paused momentarily, to make her think I was carefully considering the issue, when really I was preparing for the length of the next sentence. “I think you should give them to their rightful owners.”
Her eyes opened wide, as if I had inserted a key into a secret lock, and it made me wonder whether I had just pushed the wrong button on the insanity panel. But, just as quickly, her elated look was replaced by one of suspicion. She moved to one corner of my bed, where she intoned something in another language.
“My Three Masters confirmed that it really is you. It is for you that I’ve been perfecting my final heart.”
The very act of saying this clearly caused great emotion to well up inside of her. She looked on the verge of tears as she said, “I’ve been waiting such a long time.”
Just then Beth drew open the curtains. She seemed shocked to find that I had a visitor after so many weeks without, but her surprise quickly turned to concern when she noted the gleam of insane happiness in the woman’s eyes. Then Beth registered that while my visitor was clad in a gown, it wasn’t the visitor’s shade of green but the lighter shade of a patient, and that she had the color-coded bracelet that indicated a psychiatric patient. Beth, professional as always, did not engage my visitor directly but refused to leave me alone with her. She called an orderly immediately to “escort” the woman back to the psych ward.
I felt that I had nothing to fear and, in fact, that it was nice to have a little wildness injected into an atmosphere so oppressively sterile. In the few minutes before the orderly arrived, the woman and I continued talking, calmly, while Beth stood in a far corner with a watchful eye. My visitor whispered so that she would not be overheard. “We have a common acquaintance.”
“I doubt that.”
“You only saw her once, in a crowd. She can’t speak,” she said, leaning in closer, “but she gave you a clue.”
“A clue?”
“‘Haven’t you ever wondered where your scar really came from?’” My visitor reached up to her chest and I thought that she was going to point to the spot where my scar was on my body, but she was only reaching in vain for her missing necklace.
