The Bread We Eat in Dreams, Page 22

  Anyway, the outsiders stopped showing up so much after Yelena. It’s less fun, now.

  But it’s the biggest thing that will ever happen to us. It’s a gravitational object you can’t get around or through, you only fall deeper in. And the thing is we want to get deeper in. Closer, further, knocking on the door. That’s why we dress this way; that’s why we tell our stories while the wolves watch us outside the cafe window, our audience and our play all at once.

  “Anna,” Seth says to me, and I warm automatically at the sound of his voice, straightening my shoulders and turning toward him like I always did, like I did in California when I didn’t know what snow looked like yet, and I thought I loved him because I’d never kissed anyone else. “You never say anything. It’s your turn. It’s been your turn for months.”

  I am wearing red. I always wear red. Tiny gold coins on tinier gold ropes ring my waist in criss-crossed patterns, like a Greek goddess of come-hither, and my shoes have those ballet straps that wind all the way up my calves. My hair is down and it is black. They like it, when my hair is down. They follow me with their eyes. I’ve never said so to Ruben but they are always there when I get off the train, always panting a little on the dark platform, always bright-eyed, covered in melting snowflakes.

  I say: “I like listening. They do, too, you know. Sometimes I think that’s all they do: listen. Well. After Daniel—I knew him, I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you guys that. From that summer when I interned downtown. After Daniel I started feeling very strange, like something was stuck in me. It’s not that I wanted revenge or anything. I didn’t know him that well and I just don’t think like that. I don’t think in patterns—if this, then that. The point is, I started following one of them. A male, and I knew him because his nose was almost totally white, like he’d lost the black of it along the way. I started following him, all over the place, wherever he went, which wasn’t really very far from my apartment. It’s like they have territories. Maybe I was his territory. Maybe he was mine—because at some point I started taking my old archery stuff with me. My sister and I had both taken lessons as kids, but she stuck with it and I didn’t. Seth—well, Seth probably remembers. There was awhile there when I went to school with a backpack over one shoulder and a bow over the other. Little Artemis of Central California. I started doing that again. It didn’t seem to bother the wolf. He’d run down the 7th av like he had an appointment and I’d run after him. And one day, while he was waiting for the light to change, I dropped to one knee, nocked an arrow, and shot him. I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t set out to. It doesn’t seem to have happened in a linear way when I think about it. I mean, yes, I followed him, but I wasn’t hunting him. Except I guess I was. Because I’d packed a big kitchen knife and I don’t even remember doing that. You know there’s never any traffic down there anymore, so I just gutted him right there on the median, and his blood steamed in the snowfall, and I guess I brought a cooler, too, because I packed all the meat away that I could, and some organs. It took a long time. I skinned him, too. It’s really hard work, rendering an animal. But there’s an instinct to it. Everyone used to know how to do this. I took it all home and I separated everything out and started curing it, salting it, smoking it.” I twist a big orange glass ring on my finger and don’t look at anyone. “I have wolf sausages, wolf cutlets, wolf bacon, wolf roasts, wolf loin, even wolf soup in plastic containers in my fridge. I eat it every day. It tastes…” I don’t want to talk about how it tastes. It tastes perfect. It tastes new. “They all know me now, I’m pretty sure. Once, a younger one, skinny, with a black tip on her tail, saw me by the co-op and crawled toward me on her belly, whining. I watched her do it, bowing her head, not looking me in the eye. I reached out my hand and petted her. Her fur felt so rough and thick. We were…exchanging dominance. I’ve had dogs before. I know how that works. And I started wearing red.”

  I tell them they can come by. There’s plenty of meat to share. It never seems to run out, in fact. They won’t—most of them. They don’t look at me the same way after that. In a week or so Seth will show up at my door. He’ll just appear, in a white coat with fur on the hood, full of melting snowflakes. And I’ll pour the soup into steel bowls and we’ll sit together, with our knees touching.

  This is what Brooklyn is like now. It’s empty. A few of us stayed, two hundred people in Williamsburg, a hundred in Park Slope, maybe fifty in Brooklyn Heights. Less towards the bay, but you still find people sometimes, in clusters, in pairs. You can just walk down the middle of any street and it’s so silent you forget how to talk. Everyone moved away or just disappeared. Some we know were eaten, some—well, people are hard to keep track of. You have to let go of that kind of thinking—no one is permanent. The Hasidim were the last big group to go. They called the wolves qliphoth—empty, impure shells, left over from the creation of the world. A wolf swallowed a little boy named Ezra whole. He played the piano.

  It snows forever. The wolves own this town. They’re talking about shutting off subway service, and the bridges, too. Just closing up shop. I guess I understand that. I’m not angry about it. I just hope the lights stay on. We still get wifi, but I wonder how long that can really last.

  We go to the cafe every night, shining in our sequins and suits, and it feels like the old days. It feels like church. We go into Manhattan less and less. All those rooftop chickens and beehives and knitters and alleyway gardeners comprise the post-wolf economy. We trade, we huddle, nobody locks the doors anymore. Seth brings eggs for breakfast most mornings, from his bantams, those he has left. Down on Court Street, there’s a general sort of market that turns into dancing and old guitars and drums at night, an accordion yawns out the dusk and there’s a girl with silk ribbons who turns and turns, like she can’t stop. The wolves come to watch and they wait in a circle for us to finish, and sometimes, sometimes they dance, too.

  One has a torn ear. I’ve started following her when I can. I don’t remember picking up my bow again, but it’s there, all the same, hanging from me like a long, thin tail.

  One Breath, One Stroke

  1. In a peach grove the House of Second-Hand Carnelian casts half a shadow. This is because half of the house is in the human world, and half of it is in another place. The other place has no name. It is where unhuman things happen. It is where tricksters go when they are tired. A modest screen divides the world. It is the color of plums. There are silver tigers on it, leaping after plum petals. If you stand in the other place, you can see a hundred eyes peering through the silk.

  2. In the human half of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian lives a mustached gentleman calligrapher named Ko. Ko wears a chartreuse robe embroidered with black thread. When Ko stands on the other side of the house he is not Ko, but a long calligraphy brush with badger bristles and a strong cherrywood shaft. When he is a brush his name is Yuu. When he was a child he spent all day hopping from one side of the house to the other. Brush, man. Man, brush.

  3. Ko lives alone. Yuu lives with Hone-Onna, the skeleton woman, Sazae-Onna, the snail woman, a jar full of lightning, and Namazu, a catfish as big as three strong men. When Namazu slaps his tail on the ground, earthquakes tremble, even in the human world. Yuu copied a holy text of Tengu love poetry onto the bones of Hone-Onna. Her white bones are black now with beautiful writing, for Yuu is a very good calligrapher.

  4. Hone-Onna’s skull reads: The moon sulks. I am enfolded by feathers the color of remembering. The talons I seize, seize me.

  5. Ko is also an excellent calligrapher. But he is retired, for when he stands on one side of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian, he has no brush to paint his characters, and when he stands on the other, he has no breath. “The great calligraphers know all writing begins in the body. One breath, one stroke. One breath, one stroke. That is how a book is made. Long, black breath by long black breath. Yuu will never be a great calligrapher, even though he is technically accomplished. He has no body to begin his poems.”

  6. Ko cannot leave the
House of Second-Hand Carnelian. If he tries, he becomes sick, and vomits squid ink until he returns. He grows radish, melon, and watercress, and of course there are the peaches. A river flows by the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. It is called the Nobody River. When it winds around to the other side of the house, it is called the Nothingness River. There are some fish in it. Ko catches them with a peach branch. Namazu belches and fish jump into his mouth. On Namazu’s lower lip Yuu copied a Tanuki elegy.

  7. Namazu’s whiskers read: In deep snow I regret everything. My testicles are heavy with grief. Because of me, the stripes of her tail will never return.

  8. Sazae-Onna lives in a pond in the floor of the kitchen. Her shell is tiered like a cake or a palace, hard and thorned and colored like the inside of an almond, with seams of mother of pearl swirling in spiral patterns over her gnarled surface. She eats the rice that falls from the table when the others sit down to supper. She drinks the steam from the teakettle. When she dreams she dreams of sailors fishing her out of the sea in a net of roses. On the Emperor’s Birthday Yuu gives her candy made from Hone-Onna’s marrow. Hone-Onna does not mind. She has plenty to spare. Sazae-Onna takes the candy quietly under her shell with one blue-silver hand. She sucks it for a year.

  9. When Yuu celebrates the Emperor’s Birthday, he does not mean the one in Tokyo. He means the Goldfish-Emperor of the Yokai who lives on a tiny island in the sea, surrounded by his wives and their million children. On his birthday he grants a single wish—among all the unhuman world red lottery tickets appear in every teapot. Yuu has never won.

  10. The Jar of Lightning won once, when it was not a jar, but a Field General in the Storm Army of Susano-no-Mikoto. It had won many medals in its youth by striking the cypress-roofs of the royal residences at Kyoto and setting them on fire. The electric breast of the great lightning bolt groaned with lauds. When the red ticket formed in its ice-cloud teapot, with gold characters upon it instead of black, the lightning bolt wished for peace and rest. Susano-no-Mikoto is a harsh master with a harsh and windy whip, and he does not permit honorable retirement. This is how the great lightning bolt became a Jar of Lightning in the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. It took the name of Noble and Serene Electric Master and polishes its jar with static discharge on washing day.

  11. Sazae-Onna rarely shows her body. Under the shell, she is more beautiful than anyone but the moon’s wife. No one is more beautiful than her. Sazae-Onna’s hair is pale, soft pink; her eyes are deep red, her mouth is a lavender blossom. Yuu has only seen her once, when he caught her bathing in the river. All the fish surrounded her in a ring, staring up at her with their fishy eyes. Even the moon looked down at Sazae-Onna that night, though he felt guilt about it afterward and disappeared for three days to purify himself. So profoundly moved was Yuu the calligraphy brush that he begged permission to copy a Kitsune hymn upon the pearl-belly of Sazae-Onna.

  12. The pearl-belly of Sazae-Onna reads: Through nine tails I saw a wintry lake at midnight. Skate-tracks wrote a poem of melancholy on the ice. You stood upon the other shore. For the first time I thought of becoming human.

  13. Ko has no visitors. The human half of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian is well hidden in a deep forest full of black bears just wise enough to resent outsiders and arrange a regular patrol. There is also a Giant Hornet living there, but no one has ever seen it. They only hear the buzz of her wings on cloudy days. The bears, over the years, have developed a primitive but heartfelt Buddhist discipline. Beneath the cinnamon trees they practice the repetition of the Growling Sutra. The religion of the Giant Hornet is unknown.

  14. The bears are unaware of their heritage. Their mother is Hoeru, the Princess of All Bears. She fell in love with a zen monk whose koans buzzed around her head like bees. The Princess of All Bears hid her illegitimate children in the forest around the House of Second-Hand Carnelian, close enough to the plum-colored screen to watch over, but far enough that their souls could never quite wake. It is a sad story. Yuu copied it onto a thousand peach leaves. When the wind blows on his side of the house, you can hear Hoeru weeping.

  15. If Ko were to depart the house, Yuu would vanish forever. If Ko so much as crosses the Nobody River, he receives a pain in his long bones, the bones which are most like the strong birch shaft of a calligraphy brush. If he tries to open the plum-colored screen, he falls at once to sleep and Yuu appears on the other side of the silks having no memory of being Ko. Ko is a lonely man. With his fingernails he writes upon the tatami: Beside the sunlit river I regret that I never married. At tea-time, I am grateful for the bears.

  16. The woven grass swallows his words.

  17. Sometimes the bears come to see him, and watch him catch fish. They think he is very clumsy at it. They try to teach him the Growling Sutra as a cure for loneliness, but Ko cannot understand them. He fills a trough with weak tea and shares his watercress. They take a little, to be polite.

  18. Yuu has many visitors, though Namazu the catfish has more. Hone-Onna receives a gentleman skeleton at the full moon. They hold seances to contact the living, conducted with a wide slate of volcanic glass, yuzu wine, and a transistor radio brought to the House of Second-Hand Carnelian by a Kirin who had recently eaten a G.I. and spat the radio back up. The Kirin wrapped it up very nicely, though, with curls of green silk ribbon. Hone-Onna and her suitor each contribute a shoulder blade, a thumb-bone, and a kneecap. They set the pieces of themselves upon the board in positions according several arcane considerations only skeletons have the patience to learn. They drink the yuzu wine; it trickles in a green waterfall through their ribcages. Then they turn on the radio.

  19. Yuu thanked the Kirin by copying a Dragon koan onto his long horn. The Kirin’s horn reads: What was the form of the Buddha when he came among the Dragons?

  20. Once, Datsue-Ba came to visit the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. She arrived on a palanquin of business suits, for Datsue-Ba takes the clothes of the dead when they come to the shores of the Sanzu River in the underworld. She and her husband Keneo live beneath a persimmon tree on the opposite bank. Datsue-Ba takes the clothes of the lost souls after they have swum across, and Keneo hangs them to dry on the branches of their tree. Datsue-Ba knows everything about a dead person the moment she touches their sleeve.

  21. Datsue-Ba brought guest gifts for everyone, even the Jar of Lightning. These are the gifts she gave:

  A parasol painted with orange blossoms for Sazae-Onna so she will not dry out in the sun.

  A black funeral kimono embroidered with black cicada wings for Hone-Onna so that she can attend the festival of the dead in style.

  A copper ring bearing a ruby frog on it for Yuu to wear around the stalk of his brush-body.

  A cypress-wood comb for the Noble and Serene Electric Master to burn up and remember being young.

  Several silver earrings for Namazu to wear upon his lip and feel mighty.

  22. Datsue-Ba also brought a gift for Ko. This is how he acquired his chartreuse robe embroidered with black thread. It once belonged to an unremarkable courtier who played the koto poorly and envied his brother who held a rank one level higher than his own. Datsue-Ba put the chartreuse robe at the place where the Nothingness River becomes the Nobody River. Datsue-Ba is very good at rivers. When Ko found it, he did not know who to thank, so he turned and bowed to the plum-colored screen.

  23. This begs the question of whether Ko knows what goes on in the other half of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian. Sometimes he wakes up at night and thinks he hears singing, or whispering. Sometimes when he takes his bath the water seems to gurgle as though a great fish is hiding in it. He conceived suspicions when he tried to leave the peach grove which contains the house and suffered in his bones so terribly. For a long time that was all Ko knew.

  24. Namazu runs a club for Guardian Lions every month. They play dice; the stone lions shake them in their mouths and spit them against the peach trees. Namazu roars with laughter and slaps the ground with his tail. Earthquakes rattle the mountains
in Hokkaido. Most of the lions cheat because their lives are boring and they crave excitement. Guarding temples does not hold the same thrill as hunting or biting. Auspicious Snow Lion is the best dice-player. He comes all the way from Taipei to play and drink and hunt rabbits in the forest. He does not speak Japanese, but he pretends to humbly lose when they others snarl at his winning streaks.

  25. Sometimes they play Go. The lions are terrible at it. Fortuitous Brass Lion likes to eat the black pieces. Namazu laughs at him and waggles his whiskers. Typhoons spin up off the coast of Okinawa.

  26. Everyone on the unhuman side of the House of Second-Hand Carnelian is curious about Ko. Has he ever been in love? Fought in a war? What are his thoughts on astrology? Are there any good scandals in his past? How old is he? Does he have any children? Where did he learn calligraphy? Why is he here? How did he find the house and get stuck there? Was part of him always a brush named Yuu? Using the thousand eyes in the screen, they spy on him, but cannot discover the answers to any of these questions.