A Dirge for the Temporal (11 page)

A Dirge for the Temporal

W
hen the ramshackle caravan rolled past, Yvette thought little of it. Faces stared out of the side windows of the campers, wild black hair surrounding various expressions. She had never encountered Gypsies, living as she did in the mountains, but she knew they wandered southern France. She found the experience mildly interesting, as she did the experience of people in general.

  The last was a trailer, an ancient affair swaying past the narrow area where she had pulled off. As her gaze followed its sluggish progress up the grade, the curtains in the rear of its rounded silver body suddenly came open and a man’s face appeared. His eyes found her, and as a result so did a momentary shudder, for they very closely resembled the round transfixing orbs of one of her instructors. Of course he could not be one of her instructors; they never appeared in human form.

  His eyes remained on her until the trailer disappeared around a
bend, then she was alone again, the face already forgotten. She returned to the edge of the shoulder, looking down into the gorge. It wasn’t the same picture it had been when she’d gotten here. She stood for some minutes
peering down at the strange tableau before returning to her car. She clicked on the radio, poised not for the music that was so hard to get in the Alpine pass, but for the whispered praises of her instructors.

  Basking in them, she started back up the slope in the direction of home.

~

  Another mild surprise awaited her when she arrived, a half-hour later, at her beloved village of St. Luc. The caravan had stopped at the campground across the road from her house, and several of its members stood around, drinking wine and waiting. As she pulled into her drive, one of the men crossed the road. She stepped out of her car to find herself looking at the set of eyes from the trailer.

  The effect was different now, making him just another face. Darkly handsome, granted, but just another face. He seemed to think considerably more of hers, but that merely bored her. Once, it would have mattered. Once, a dark, exotic stranger would have made her blush.

  “Yes?” she asked, knowing what was coming.

  Eyes never leaving her, he gestured back at the campground. “The
office is open, yet no one is there. We have knocked at the doors of nearby
houses, but no one answers.”

  She shrugged. “They must be away.”

   “Everyone? And without locking the office? A bell chimes as you walk in. The sign says open.”

 
Details
, she thought.
Who knew you were coming, after all?

  She voiced, “I don’t know how I can help you. If you will excuse me, please.” She started to shut the door, but he caught her arm. She said coldly, “If you please, monsieur.”

  “There is a scent about you. Your clothes, your car,” he said. He appeared to be taking it in as he spoke.

  She removed his hand from her arm, slammed the car door, and strode to the entrance of her two-story stucco abode, not deigning to cast a glance back.

  “What is your name?” he said after her.

  At the door, key in her hand, she turned to look at him. His hair danced around his smile as he gave it his most dashing.

  “My name is Yvette,” she said. “What you smell is blood, because I buried my dog today. Is there anything more you would like to know?”

  “Buried…over a cliff?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not fond of dogs,” he said, eyes for an instant reclaiming that familiar quality.

  “You don’t even find them mildly interesting?” she asked.

  He waved nonchalantly, dismissing the topic. “I have a very long name. I go by Jan.”

  “Good day, Jan.” And she went in, shutting the door against dark, exotic strangers.

~

  Evening called. Over the sink in the kitchen, she watched the Gypsies make fires without permission. She watched the smoke from those fires rove away in search of the June night, scattered already with
stars. As she put away the soup pot, she noticed Jan’s face over the nearest
of the fires, watching.

  Beyond, the twenty-some people who made up the caravan moved around in the night as if it belonged to them—an easy attitude to admire. Beyond their phantom shapes, the tops of the campground’s cork trees were silhouetted against snow-capped peaks, which in turn radiantly contrasted the night. The snow whispered, even from such distances. It was in snow’s whispering embrace that she had first come into contact with them. And to think, so much accomplished already, with spring only just departing, by one pupil about the work of catching eternity’s sails as they swept by.

 
As the whispers of separation from the ephemeral seasons, from tem
poral existence, fluttered in her head, she realized the caravan was a sign—a sign of transience. The instructors hissed in the Gypsy fires, in Gypsy eyes.

  A knock at the door. She looked to the fire again to find he wasn’t there, prince of travelers, face hovering over the hissing flames.

  She opened it to him, and he spoke her name.
Yvette, my fingers to caress your fading skin
. She could see it in him; she had seen it in every man in her village, followed by the strange jealousy in the eyes of their partners, the fascination in the children, who beheld the unfolding petals of the already rotten, already lost, already dead. It was as if the children knew that the transitory lives of men begot such desires, and such consequences.

  “You want to see the dog,” she said to the wildly dark figure standing there.

  “I do. And more,” Jan replied.

  “How much more? Do you want to see the dirt slip from between the fingers of your clenched fist? The stars retreat?” She touched his vagabond hair with her fingers. “Do you want to forget what the mouth of oblivion looks like as it closes around you?”

  His smile was worldly. “You would like to get to know me then?”

  “Oh, I know you. I know you for the rascal that you are. I know you for the lustful, lascivious bastard that you are.”

  “Then you don’t know me,” he said. He offered his hand.

  “We’ll see,” she smiled, accepting it.

~

  They parked at the same spot where she had watched the caravan pass. He followed her to the shoulder’s edge, and as they looked down into the gorge, he had never touched her. The canyon was so deep, no glove box torch would have penetrated. It didn’t matter. The night was filled with stars. The tableau differed in its shadows, in the depths of those shadows, but it remained the same otherwise.

  It was clearly a man sprawled on the rock, yet strangely Jan cared not for how he had gotten down there, only what his name was.

  “His name?” she said. “Here is his name: the one who didn’t make it over that last lip of rock and into the deeper ravine, where he would have been concealed from view, perhaps for years.”

  Jan stood at the very brink with her, hand now lightly touching her unflinching back as he asked, “Do you think you will be caught now?”

  “Caught?” She turned to him. “I am beyond the reaches of mortal tendrils.”

  “Yes.” His eyes grew round, transfixing, vessels out of her dreams. Beneath them his lips formed a part through which only whispers could escape. “
Yes Yvette you have done well, you have rid yourself of the most
poisonous of transitory things, the infection that you have been surrounded
by all your life. People.
”

  Wonder bloomed. “It is you.”

  “In theory,” he returned, winking. Then he turned and, drawing the sign he had described to her, the sign of the circle, lay back on the air, and dropped, never landing.

~

  The caravan was gone when she arrived home. Unbothered, she
walked across the road to study the vestiges of their human manifestation.
The fires smoldered, necks of wine bottles protruding from the coals. In one of the trees was a twenty-centimeter gap where a knife had cut away a wedge of cork. A cigarette hung in the glum mouth.

  She stepped into the office, lit up nicely in the night. It was she who smelled blood now, remembering it with no real interest as she glanced down at the floor, where the cleansing of St. Luc had begun. A reddish arc teased the eye, prompting her to drop to one knee, touching with delicate fingers the dried blood forming a circle around her. Ah yes, the handiwork of the moment. As if she’d really needed to remind herself.

  Laying her head back, she began whispering from lips that had tasted
the temporal and far preferred eternity.

The Call of Morzine

W
hen the figure appeared in the mouth of the hillside cave, silhouetted darkly against the white sky, Philippe and his friends nearly jumped out of their skins. The visitor quickly issued a greeting, which eased their alarm somewhat, but there was more to answer for than his unexpected appearance. Crouching on his left shoulder was what appeared to be a monkey, though who could tell with only outlines visible.

  In a man’s voice to match his man-sized body, the visitor asked if he might enter. The boys, who were camping in the cave for the weekend, saw no harm in it. Secretly, their curiosity demanded it, particularly now that they observed some movement out of the man’s companion. Philippe, oldest and pack leader, told the man he had their permission, and the man stepped inside, features emerging out of the dark mask of his face.

  The face of the creature upon his shoulder remained in shadow as the man halted by the fire ring, but its naked body was visible now and it was definitely no monkey. Not only wasn’t it covered in hair, it also wasn’t built quite the same way, didn’t crouch quite the same, didn’t fidget or chatter. Its feet, while stained dirty, clearly bore human characteristics. The answer revealed itself as the man squatted, picking up a stick to poke at last night’s embers.

  The boys had seen many strange things in these hills—from wolves whose coats and eyes shone moonsilver in the night to hairy, unbathed wild folk who shunned villages and people—but they had never beheld the likes of this oddity. It resembled a man, and yet it was the size and shape of a monkey and had a long narrow tail curving up behind it. Its face was squat, with large ears, and a mushed nose. Its mouth was big, but not enough to contain its teeth, which separated the thick lips to reveal a dull yellow gleam. The creature’s eyes were a bright, gemstone green as they gazed steadily with more than a simian’s intelligence.

  “What
is
it?” said young Rémy, himself barely bigger than the anthropoid on its shoulder perch.

  The features of the man whose shoulder it was on were rugged,
carved liked the surrounding bluffs, this cave. His voice possessed a con
trarily gentle quality:

  “
Who
would be the more appropriate word, I think. His name is Morzine.”

  The creature blinked its bright eyes, as if to say,
That is I.

   “Have you heard of Morzine?” the man said.

  The boys shook their heads.

  “Morzine is a village that lies down along the Swiss border, in the Savoy. It was the site of strange and inexplicable events in the 1850s. People became possessed of some unknown malady that enabled them to climb buildings like squirrels, to speak in foreign tongues, Latin and German and even Arabic, and to reveal knowledge that they should not have known. They ran up and down the streets howling hysterically, shouting blasphemies, exhibiting every sign of insanity. My companion is named for that village.”

  The boys stared at Morzine, unsure what to say. Philippe spoke for them. “As I think about it, yes, I may have heard such tales. But what do they have to do with him?”

  The man was about to reply when Morzine abandoned his shoulder,
leaping onto a nearby stone then scurrying up the cave wall and perching
inside a nook near the ceiling. While shadows concealed the creature’s other features, twin green fires shone down.

 
“Don’t settle in, Morzine,” said the man. “We have business in the vil
lage below.” He turned to Philippe. “The village in the valley, what is its name?”

  “Merl,” said Philippe.

  “Can you show me the best route down to it?”

  “Of course. Merl is our home.”

  The man smiled. Morzine leapt from his roost, following them to the entrance. As Philippe pointed out the trail winding down the hill, he felt the creature’s cold hand on his knee.

~

  In the pre-dawn hours, domain of the wolf and whisper, Philippe was awakened by eerie, distant sounds. At first he wasn’t sure whether he was awake or in a dream, but the acrid smell of the fire’s remnants and the slight hint of chill in the air counterbalanced the strange noises, breaking through membranes.

  The others were asleep as he stumbled past in the dark, wrapped in his covers. Just as well, he thought as he stood in the mouth of the cave bending his ear towards the valley, because the disturbance would have scared them. These strains did not belong to wolves, who spoke in fluid and harmonious voices, in song. This discordant symphony belonged to the moon’s other children…

  Lunatics.

  The Morzine story swelled to the surface, along with the face of the stranger, weathered lips speaking of business in the village. Beneath the light of the stars, Philippe made his way to the nearest outcrop, taking care not to let his bare feet lose the narrow path. As he stepped out onto the top of the bluff, he could see the lamps of Merl burning. They weren’t stationary. Even from his lofty spot above the intricate patchwork of roofs, he could tell that the village had come under some fever.

  He returned to the cave, calling to his brothers. “Adrien, Rémy, Pascal, up,
up
!”

  Pascal moaned as he came awake first. “What is it, Philippe?”

  “Something’s happened in the village. We must go down.”

  “Tonight?”

  “It is almost morning, Pascal. But that’s just it. The village has risen before the sun. Can you not hear the commotion?”

  The others sat up now as well, Philippe able to just make out their shapes. Little Rémy moved closer to Pascal, whose bedroll was beside his. In a voice as strange as the voices carrying up from Merl, Pascal said, “What’s happened?”

  “It’s the monkey,” whispered Rémy.

  “Quiet with that,” said Adrien.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” Philippe said, “but we best go down. Rémy, get your boots—”

  Rémy was otherwise engaged. His arm shook as he brought it up, pointing. For a moment Philippe thought the gesture was aimed at him, but then he turned to look over his shoulder, and there, in the niche near the ceiling, were twin gemstone fires staring down at them.

  Philippe choked on his cry. In place of failed exclamations—for the others were deprived of their voices as well—came the sound of the dawn bell in Merl. The cave froze as the bell delivered the traditional three strokes of first light, but the tolling didn’t end there. Not today.

  “
Go away
!” Philippe screamed at the eyes. Their owner obeyed, leaping
down and scampering out of the cave.

  Philippe told the boys to put on their boots, and quickly. But as he minded his own words, jerking a knot in the laces, he realized that haste, like priests and remedies, wouldn’t change a thing. He knew this with a certainty as cold as the impression left by Morzine’s hand on his knee.

  The gang forsook the cave for the trail that led down into the valley

~

  Philippe looked back a last time as they broke out of the forest into pasture. He’d thought he saw movement once, farther up the hill, but it
might have been his imagination. No matter now as the edge of the village
lay up ahead. The closer they drew, the more definable the noises. The
clanging of the bell, which had gone on an obscenely long time, had finally
quit, making way for the darker clamor: the spontaneous howls of laughter,
the outbursts of emotional or foul language, the baying of alarmed dogs. In the village of Merl the fever was in full sweat.

  All four boys were focused on their homes. Pascal and Rémy split off before they reached the village. Their houses rested on the northern skirts of Merl, while Philippe and Adrien lived on the east side, which was across town as they approached. Adrien mused aloud about going around the whole village, but Philippe told him that he would being going alone if he did. As they reached the cul-de-sac that was Montpellier, they could already see the symptoms.

  Observers were out in their yards, or safe behind their balconies and windows, pointing at a woman chasing a cat up and down the street. In the crook of a tree and rambling unintelligibly was what proved to be the baker, in full array, flour swirling like a halo around his wildly expressive face and hands. Philippe called up to him by name, but the words that returned were like burs in the ears.

  The next disturbance was somewhat more unsettling.

  Merl’s priest was a wizened fellow, in his late seventies and generally
imperturbable. That virtue wasn’t in evidence this morning as he knelt in the street, pushing his bible towards the roof of one of the village’s chateaus, of which Rue Montpellier was full. A girl whom Philippe knew from school perched on a high cornice, exposing her naked breasts to the priest and accusing him of lusting her, and of wanting to lick the Holy Sacrament off her body. While her brazenness was the priest’s chagrin, the priest’s chagrin was another party’s amusement. That other party turned out to be the man upon whose shoulder the creature called Morzine had squatted.

  The man’s face expanded at the sight of the boys, reflecting their own expressions. The words that came out of him had a mocking flavor: “Aha! There you are!”

  “What have you done?” Philippe demanded.

  “What have
I
done?” the man said. “What have
you
done?”

  The boys continued moving, keeping their distance from the man as he went to the priest, kneeling beside him and whispering in his ear.

  “W-what can he be
doing
?” Adrien said, the pitch of his voice too high.

  Looking up from his secret sharing, the man cast his head back and laughed through the morning and beyond.

~

  Philippe’s parents were safe, and full of relief at the sight of him. Locking the door behind him, his father stood there for several seconds, key in hand, as if assuring himself he had done as much as he could against the world beyond. A strange, uncomfortable silence surrounded the family as they sat around the dining table, Philippe’s father with a brandy in his hand while the madness continued in the streets. Morning blazed like some kind of anticlimactic joke.

  Some time passed, during which Philippe senior indulged his son in not one, but two strokes of the brandy. Philippe’s mother sometimes rattled dishes in the kitchen, other times tried to sleep. At last Philippe brought forth the question.

  “What do you know about Morzine in the Savoy?”

  His parents met each other’s eyes. They didn’t ask what had prompted
the question. Nor did they comment on any potential similarities between Morzine and Merl—perhaps out of superstition, as if to do so might bring the worst upon their village.

  It had happened before Philippe was born. A single case of what appeared to be demonic possession had grown into several cases, and then an epidemic. As the contagion spread, so did the news of it, until it became an international incident. One writer had used the term “The Devils of Morzine,” alluding to symptoms which included speaking in tongues, bodily contortions, levitation, and foretelling future events. When medicine, science, even troops proved unable to solve the problem, the archbishop of Paris had dispatched a team of exorcists. That too had failed. Eventually many of the two thousand or so afflicted were sent away to asylums. Soon after, the sickness died out.

  The word sickness dissolved slowly. Silence returned, accentuated by cries from out in the streets. Philippe excused himself to his room, which, gratefully, overlooked fields rather than streets. Elbows on the windowsill, chin in his hands, he immersed himself in impressions, not least the cold one still lingering on his knee.

  The sound of the front door extracted him from his reverie. Philippe senior called up, announcing the priest. Philippe junior thought he heard an undertone, even an underlying message in his father’s voice, but he couldn’t understand what it might mean. He stepped out of his room onto the interior balcony, looking down at the visitor.

  The priest pointed at Philippe as he addressed Philippe’s parents. “Your son was seen cavorting with a demon. It has been reported, by his own friends, that he has allowed a devil to sit upon his shoulder and whisper in his ear.”

  Philippe was appalled. “The stranger, he is the one!”

  “Stranger?” said the priest. “What stranger?”

  “Haven’t you spoken to him, Father? Didn’t you let
him
whisper in
your
ear?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Philippe. But I do know that you have been seen with this monster in your company.”

  “So I am responsible for what is happening in the village?” His thigh became inflamed, with ice.

  “Those who cavort with demons…”

  Thank God Philippe’s father saw the priest for his lunacy and threw him out into the street.

  The next time the door sounded, a chaos of voices followed. But by the time they converged on Phillipe’s room, he was out his window and down the side of the house.

~

  Pasture spread before him, and the cold in his leg, though keen, wouldn’t hinder him from getting there. The bluffs stood white against the hill, while the music of Merl fragmented to cries and murmurs; the voices of condemned sailors on the plank; wishes in the well of blood and madness. Philippe let it fall behind.

  He recognized the man who had mocked him, standing exactly where Philippe himself had stood, on the outcrop, at the lip of dawn. He did an inventory of what he had to offer the man, what would make the man depart the village of Merl forever. It was a terribly short list. The icy mark on his knee emphasized that knowledge. As he made his way up the path, he had only his own flesh and blood, and sanity.

  The man stood outside the cave. He gestured into the darkness in the
hillside as he said, “When you fled, you left your scents behind. Particularly fear.”

  Muzzles and forequarters appeared. Coats diminished from luminous to merely silver as the wolves spotted Philippe and bolted into the trees. Philippe looked at the darkness from which they had emerged and imagined what might be perching among the lingering scents inside. He begged the man to take his creature and go. They’d done what they came to do, now leave Merl for the next village, plague that they were.

  The man smiled at him then offered himself to the cave. The dark
ness
seemed to reach out and pull him in, leaving Philippe alone on the hillside.
Philippe waited, but the man didn’t appear again. The sounds from Merl slithered up the hill like snakes. The sun fell behind the ridge, leaving a sea of blue shadow behind.