ultimately met pains that came in larger dimensions than even their base and brutal imaginations could conjure. Some had cuticle nicks that festered until the arms withered off as minds went feeble, others went into lavatories and never returned, as bowels fell out with bowel movements and whole men disappeared, sucked down into their foul latrines. The ones she despised most she killed best, as in a nightmare, bare naked, rocking astride their sweating bodies, until that ultimate moment came when their bodies tensed, poised for satisfaction. That was when she put her finger to their Adam’s apple and deftly pushed the windpipe shut. Their eyes went wide as she watched with grim pleasure, their one final victory eternally denied. Thusly, every exit was tailored to suit a nature: some came tinged with regret, others felt better.
There was one she had almost spared. He was a military engineer, an officer and hero from the lost war for Crimea. All she cared for was his kindness, the thoughtfulness he showed by bringing bowls of fruit to their bedside in the morning, the way his green eyes gazed at her with so much affection, and how his hand resting on her hip made her cheeks blush as red as a cut thumb. “Don’t make me put this one down. I’ll walk away, but let’s let him live,” she said to Elga. The old woman said nothing, simply undertook the job herself. Passing as a chambermaid, Elga slipped some echoing curses into the folds of his uniform. The spell seeped into his chest at a steady rate until the delirium overtook him. Zoya received the news as she returned one morning to their grand hotel. He had hanged himself, tying sheets to the bannister and tossing himself down the wide open stairwell. As he choked to death, a fumbling, terrified guest tried to cut him loose with a dull dinner knife. Elga later admitted to the spell, said it had to be done, and after that day Zoya had never tried to save another.
Wherever they traveled, Zoya always found a way into the bright chandeliered wings and the warm officers’ quarters where the toasts came from crystal glasses and they cut their meat with silver, but Elga could always be found close-by, down in the scullery, or off in the servants’ wing, or, after the long day’s battles, out among the fields of the dead and dying, digging through the entrails of the infantry corpses, cutting out gall bladders, bile sacs, testes, and spleen for later utility. When doubts arose in Zoya’s heart, and over the years they intermittently did, Elga seemed to have a knack for showing up by her side, consoling Zoya with blunt woodland wisdom, explaining how it was all righteous, even merciful. “It is only fair and only just,” Elga would say. “Men have dragged us by our hair through the ages, and whether they give us crumbs or bright, shiny rocks, they truly give us nothing at all. If you have not opened your legs for them so that they could crawl out as babies or crawl in as men, then they will leave you to starve like a dog on the street. So now we are done playing the way they want us to play. Now we are moving to music they cannot hear, to a rhythm they cannot understand. They call it madness and we call it truth and find me the magistrate you can trust to judge between the two? Bah. So we dance on, we dance on.” At this, Elga would start stamping her foot hard to an offbeat rhythm and flash Zoya a mischievous smile.
So they danced on. Still, lingering regrets and resentments of all those hard decisions stayed with Zoya, like gristle trapped in her teeth or wax in her ears, and now, when the feelings were rising again and she needed some reassurance, the old woman had sent her off to be alone. It frustrated Zoya. Fine, she thought, I don’t need her, I certainly don’t miss her; after all, I have stayed away these past few years for good reason.
She recalled how they would once scuttle from camp to camp, city to city, plucking bright gold from the bloodstained hands of doomed officers and shining silver from the soiled fingers of ill-fated miners who all soon after died, cut down by saber or buried beneath whole falling mountains. Back then, the world was its own boiling cauldron of constant violence, the wars and battles never ceased, one Balkan war rolled into another that spawned a world war and then one more. Industry and iron erupted from the earth, soldiers and cannon clogged the roads and crowded the stations, ore filled the hulls of ships, and crates of raw supplies stuffed the boxcars. Whole cities rose up from the earth, swallowing up the countryside and spoiling the landscape, in many places beyond recognition, and the birds’ evening songs were now forever warped by the constant, shrill scream of the ubiquitous engines.
Now, though, things seemed to be settling down. The great threat of atomic annihilation had made all the European soldiers finally hang up their guns and go home, like chastened children worried that their overbearing brute of a father might slap them around. Perhaps, thought Zoya, this is why Elga is so angry, because she misses the busyness and scheming that came with the great din of battle, for now there’s nothing to distract and drown out her own rattling mind; perhaps it is the silence that is driving her mad. But no matter the reason, thought Zoya, I do need to stay away from her, for good, if I can. She has used me and haunted me and taken too much. I do not need her around. The anger flared in Zoya’s mind. Why, if that rat showed up now, she thought, I might bite him right in half.
She smoked the owl pellets and sat with her mixture of visions. Afterward, she felt better. Applying her makeup before the small vanity mirror, she prepared for the evening’s errands. She was a little concerned about moving around the city so openly during the time when the streets were most crowded; she preferred to go out later at night, or even in those mid-afternoon hours when people had finished with lunch and were trapped at work or napping at home. She knew she had already been out too much this past week, exposing herself almost recklessly, but Zoya also knew she had to keep moving and stay on her toes, for now she had her prey marked. She needed to bring Will in soon, before he grew confused, or some other woman got in the way. She had a small window to build a strong and simple bond with her busy rabbit, which she planned to do by mixing the two ingredients men enjoy most, lust and conquest.
Her concerns for caution turned out to be valid. As she walked down St. Germain, a little old man sitting at Cafe de Flore, who was trying to dim the racket of his busy week with a few strong glasses of Fernet-Branca, happened to see her pass by. She did not notice him, although, with his eyes bulging and his mouth agape, he would have made for an amusing sight. “My God,” he said after she had passed, “I swear I have seen a ghost.” The sleepy mule sitting beside him looked down at the old man’s empty drink and said, “My friend, keep putting that poison down your throat and you will be the ghost.”
XII
“Is this really a police car? Can your rat understand what I’m saying? Where did this bone come from? Where are we going to sleep tonight?” The young girl had Elga’s small satchel open in her lap and was going through it randomly. Her hands were everywhere, waving items around, fiddling with the dials on the dash, asking so many questions that Elga was tempted to pull the car over, strangle her, and leave her body on the side of the road. “What’s this little book for? Is this pink vial makeup? What does this knob do? Is this some sort of perfume?”
“No, that is a concoction for my gas.”
“Does it work?”
“I do not think so,” Elga said, releasing a tremendous fart. “Do you?” That quieted Noelle for a little while. They were heading back into the city. Elga wanted to act fast, before Zoya got suspicious and fled town. It would not be enough merely for Zoya to leave; Elga knew she had to see her die. She knew she was not being rash; it was time for Zoya to go. Why, look at the harm she had already done, putting the man’s head on a spike? Leading the police to her with that stupid clock? Zoya had always been spoiled, always aimed too high, too fond of the chocolates, the rubies, the furs, and the smoked salmon with the caper cream sauce, especially that. But her latest actions were surprising even for her, and even if they weren’t malicious, they were certainly dumb. That woman was bounding around like some wild doe with an arrow stuck in her ass. Taking her down would be an act of mercy, for clearly Zoya was losing her mind. Or, Elga thought, maybe I am losing mine. She shook that idea out of her head with the quickness of a burned finger lifted off a hot pan and looked over at the young girl riding beside her. Noelle now had the rat in her lap and was stroking Max’s head as he lay curled up, sleeping. Yes, thought Elga, it is time for Zoya to go, this new girl will be so much better. “Go ahead, little one, ask me another question.”
“How old are you?”
“Ah, that is a good one. I do not know.”
“Before cars?”
“Before trains, before guns. Before people stole the curves from the high clouds and the angles from the flying flocks to build all their little alphabets.”
