Turning his face from his offspring, Vladislov looked down at me. “You’re frightening her.”
I did not return the glance. How could I? How could I look away from what might be standing before me? How could I reconcile an immediate and unintentional overflow of love and resentment? “Jesus?”
Brown eyes soft, voice like cool water on burnt skin, Vladislov’s son said, “My father will work to convince you that there is no God. It will drive his every move to draw your love from Grace so he might drink it down himself. Do not listen to him. God is in all of us, even in him. God is the love we feel for one another and the forgiveness we strive to extend. Compassion, patience, acceptance, that is the face of God.”
Lips came to my ear, but not those of the man speaking to me. They were the same lips that had been all over my body for days on end. “Do you see the flaw in his argument, my soul?” Vladislov stood taller, arm around me as he mocked his offspring. “Boy, it is true a priest was delivered every day to satisfy my bride’s indoctrinated need to confess her sins and ask for repentance. You see as clearly as I that she is as innocent as any might be. What sins might she carry? Yet she weeps. Did you hear her prayers? Did the Father you prefer to me deliver her? No, son, that figment of your imagination did not. I did. Just as I delivered you.”
The old man did not rise to the bait. Instead, he smiled at me, gracious and calm. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Pearl. I hope, in time, we might get to know one another.”
Groaning as if this conversation taxed him down to his bones, Vladislov said, “You may stay. But change out of those rags and wear the face I gave you.”
It seemed a lighthearted exchange. “I will, Father, if you wear the face God gave you.”
The nightmare at my side smiled, his bone-cracking hold on me easing. “And this is where I reply that every face is my face. To which you will say ‘Exactly, and they all came from God.’ And we will go back and forth for eternity yet get nowhere. How many rocks must I roll away after you’ve been mauled by the very cattle you seek to enlighten before you come to see the world for what it is?”
“I see it clearly, and I worry for those who live in your earthly kingdom.” The old man’s attention turned to where I clung to Vladislov’s arm. “Though, if she really is your soul, there may be hope for all of us yet.”
Though he turned to leave, the old man was interrupted by a monster thoroughly up to no good. “One more thing, son. There has been some debate between sweet Pearl and I. Your accidental religion with its myriad rituals has sparked some confusion. So you are best to end the debate. Is she or is she not my wife?”
Everything in the old man’s expression seemed to say he had strong thoughts on the matter. “In the Jewish faith to which I was born and to which I adhere, the Zohar claims that a husband and wife are one soul, separated only through their descent to this world. When they are married, they are reunited again. You claim to be reunited. It would follow that she is your wife. No one who has seen my father and still became of one flesh with such a beast could be anything but wife.”
I might have had wine spilt on my dress. My hair might have been embarrassingly mussed. I might have been uneducated and naive. But at no time in my years had I not recognized an insult. “Excuse me?”
Vladislov’s fingers on my belly fluttered one by one, as if delighted. “She’s offended, but she doesn’t know why. How charming.”
I was offended. I was baffled. And I was being discussed as if I were a sheep and they were wolf and shepherd. All because I could not find the words to ask what my brain clamored to know. Was this real? Was this some trick? Was I speaking with Jesus? How did he only know me from the thing called email? Why must I perpetually be the butt of some joke? Why had God forsaken me? Why had Darius been allowed to toy with me? Of all the saviors that might have come to save the sinner, why had it been Vladislov who carried me out of the dark?
As if he could see straight down to my soul, as if he could pick through the mess of my thoughts, the old man said, “God makes us what we are, tempers the great by terrible trials. Had your life been anything other than it was, I could not hope that you are indeed my father’s soul. Which is why I fear that if you will not take him as your husband, this world will be doomed before all those living in it have a chance to find the peace of God.”
First, there was a vicious chuckle. Then, Vladislov smacked his lips. He smacked his lips and then bent me back over his arm, thrusting his tongue into my mouth in a salacious kiss that stole my air. He even dared tear into my bodice to clutch a breast as if he intended to fuck me right there in the middle of the crowd. It wasn’t until I
