Babayaga: A Novel (43 page)

The guard walked her down the hall and around the corner, where they came across three men standing around a desk. Her guard interrupted the conversation.

“I have Elga Sossoka here,” the guard said to the man Elga guessed was his superior, a police captain perhaps. “Which room do you want her in?”

“Put her in two,” said the captain. Elga noticed that when the guard had said her name, one of the other men in the group, a tall fellow with a bruised cheek who was wearing a rumpled gray suit, reacted almost as if he had been lightly slapped. It was a small and slightly suppressed expression, no one else seemed to notice it. But he eyed her now with a curious interest that Elga did not like. She looked down at her feet and tried to look stupid.

The guard took her arm and they continued down the hall. The exchange had bristled her nerves. She wondered if she was merely being paranoid, but as they came to the door marked “Room 2,” she looked over her shoulder and saw that the tall man was ignoring his companions and focusing all his attention on her. She knew this wasn’t good; she would have to work fast.

Room 2 was empty except for two chairs and a metal desk. A notebook and a pair of pencils lay on the desk. The guard seated her in the chair by the wall and then departed, locking the door behind him. Sitting alone, she collected her thoughts. She guessed that the man’s having noticed her had set off the old impatient celestial clock’s ticking, and she knew she would have to act fast to escape the fate it was running toward. She took a deep breath; even pondering the effort ahead wearied her. She had seen too much excitement in the past few days. She remembered back to when she lived by herself in the forest: countless seasons would pass without the need for a major spell; small ones, yes, to lure in squirrels, moles, and tasty field mice, or to catch pheasants and quail, but other than that she had enjoyed the long silence of those years. Of course, that could not have lasted, once the steady industry of man found its fuel and it began burning and digging and wrenching everything in its omnivorous fashion; it was only a matter of time before it burned down her door. Now the world had no silence, it was full of tin radio sounds and fat Victrola tunes and constantly ringing telephones, the voices on the other end of the line always busily killing and clearing for what was to come next. Even the village church bells that once taunted her hourly with their misguided faith were now drowned out by bleating horns and sputtering engines, and she was sure that densely tangled tranquility of forest she had lived in had long ago been cleared for corrugated wheat fields and the hungry harvest threshers that went with them. One had to move fast now to dodge the massive crush of the machinery, the gears gnashing with their atonal screech and grind, as if a thousand grand pianos were constantly falling from the sky and crashing down on the pavement all around her. It was no wonder that she had a hard time concentrating. Alone in the room, she spat on the floor.

A moment later, the door opened and the captain they had met in the hall entered the room with a second officer. She looked at the keys looped on their belts and held herself back from simply grabbing at them. That man back in the hallway had her jumpy, she could feel the clock ticking away, counting down. She always hated that clock. With a condescending tone, the captain explained that they had some questions regarding how she had wound up with Detective Vidot’s patrol car. “I already told the other one, why bother me?” she grumbled.

The captain smiled politely. “Your explanation, madame, was slightly less than plausible. But maybe once you’ve given us more details we will be more ready to believe you. I will leave you here with Officer Aubert so you two can talk.”

Elga nodded. She had been through variations of this at many border crossings and city gates and in the camps of captured artillery, and it was always the same mix of formality and stupidity from men who earnestly believed that they were being crafty. Some she confused, while many she killed, and Officer Aubert, who sat down across from her and opened his notebook with a patient smile on his face, would soon belong to the latter category. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“Do what you want,” she said.

He lit his cigarette without offering her one. She knew this was part of the game: when he had first asked her permission to smoke, he was really saying “We are together,” while this subsequent failure of courtesy said “But I am superior.” She did not know if this was a trained nuance; she doubted it. All over the world, these interrogators acted out the same rote habits, like woodpeckers working their way down a tall pine thinking they are very clever in their search for bugs. But all the years of dodging questions and dealing with these pesky, prying interlocutors had left her with little patience. Besides, there was that man in the hallway and the clock was running. It was time to play her part. She leaned toward the man. “Now, my friend, do you want me to tell you the real truth about what happened that night? Is that what you’re looking for?”

Aubert’s eyes lit up. “Why, yes, of course, that is why we’re here.” He dutifully readied his pencil at the top of the notebook page, prepared to commence.

“Fine, but do not write this down yet. It is important you follow me with your complete attention. You can take notes later, now you should listen and watch,” she said, holding her finger up in front of his eyes. “Remember, the path of this story is very critical.” She started tracing out a map, an imaginary one that followed the imaginary steps she described from that night. He kept his eye on her finger. He did not know she was tracing out a maze that would enthrall his thoughts. Within two minutes his eyes would dim and he would be utterly spellbound, his mind would be soft, wet, and ready clay. Idiot, I should pity you, she thought, this is too simple. There is no observer looking in from a window, no one is sitting beside you. You are all alone here at this moment that will be your last, your end. The world has utterly abandoned you, leaving you at my mercy, vulnerable to the tricks of an old woman because they think I am so weak, so perfectly harmless. To them I am already dust.

The policeman’s eyes grew wide. Elga felt like the mighty spider leaning forward, feeling that tug of the web as the fresh fly arrived.

She knew the path that followed. When the spell caught, Aubert would open the door to the interrogation room and lead her out of the station. If anyone tried to stop them, Aubert would attack them. He would be her blind slave, fighting for her freedom, and once they reached the street he would take his pencil and shove it deep into his own throat. This would start a commotion and amid the confusion she would complete her escape. She looked from his pencil to his neck, eyeing that soft target, thinking of how men walk blindly through their lives, their Adam’s apples thrust out before them, unconsciously taunting every weapon. She was only seconds away from escaping this trap.

But then, the door opened and the captain returned, this time with the tall man in the rumpled suit. Aubert snapped to and rubbed himself alert. Elga sat back, dejected. The clock had stopped, the path was blocked. She would have to find another way.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” said the captain politely. “I am afraid, madame, that you will have to leave now with this gentleman.”

She looked around, trying to act confused. Even Aubert began to protest: “But I was making progress—”

“Ah”—the captain held up his hand, cutting his subordinate off—“these are things we cannot control. Mr. Brandon’s superiors believe she is a person of interest, so we must release her.” With that, he folded his arms. Elga could sense his frustration with this turn of events.

Ten minutes later she was sitting next to the man called Brandon as they were driven in a black Cadillac across town. He had not yet said a word to her, though hearing him speak at the police station she had gathered he was American. She also could tell that the French captain, a man they called Maroc, had a great distaste for him while at the same time being extremely deferential, even going so far as to give Brandon his handcuffs, which Elga now wore on her wrists. Throughout it all, and even now, she kept her mouth shut. She had learned long ago to be careful around men the police feared.

All in all, though, she did not think much of Brandon. She had always found Americans to be a strange collection, almost as uniquely exotic as the fruits and flora that had come to her from that faraway land. She could remember the day—back how long now?—when a lone passing hunter, trading some venison with her, had told her of the uncharted lands newly found. She recalled chopping the deer meat up and cooking it into a greasy stew, listening as the hunter described this discovery between greedy, wet mouthfuls. She remembered him repeating the words “gold, gold, gold” as she tried to wrap her mind around all the other opportunities this unexplored country might hold, not in metal, but in richer, more powerful treasures. She recalled the end of that visit, watching as the hunter scraped the bowl clean with his thin, stained fingers. “I won’t be back,” the hunter had said, “I plan to work my way aboard one of those ships to go find my fortune. I am not too old yet for the New World.”

“Bah!” Elga had shaken her head. She offered him a cup of mushroom tea before he left. He thanked her again, sipped the tea down quickly and was reaching for his kit sack when the poison hit. It had been an act close to mercy. She had seen the rash on his neck and his brown mottled eyes and, recognizing his illness, knew too that he would not be able to endure the coming pains of the season. So, she pushed this bearer of one New World off into the next. She had emptied his pockets of every kopeck, smoked and packed the deer meat, and left his corpse for the crows.

She was not sure if he’d been babbling fable or fact, but curiosity was enough to pull her out of her woods. Wrapped in the hunter’s old coat, she journeyed alone across the countryside, catching rides on serfs’ barrel carts and bartering mules until she finally reached the booming port city. As she arrived and her nose sniffed excitedly at the heavily scented harbor air, her heart beat hard, it was nothing like she had ever experienced. Amid the brine, fish, and sewage stench, fresh new fragrances filled her nose, raw and potent aromas she had never encountered before, pungent with possibility. Eyeing the tall-masted carracks parked between their herring buss and dogger sisters—all laden low against the waterline—Elga nodded to herself and set to her business.

Stevedores, merchant runners, shipping clerks, and wharf rats swarmed about the busy docks as the ships’ heavy cargoes were unloaded. Shaded in the darkness of their barnacled bows, Elga went to work, bargaining charms to the superstitious in exchange for samples of untested seedpods, wild grains, and dried root, whatever the sailors could bring her, all the while noting other sharp-eyed harridans working their own trades at the edges of the market. She sensed these ladies weren’t whoring, peddling, or working the scrimshander trade, these were her own sisters, all answering the same call, sniffing the curious wind back to the source, and it was not long before she fell in with their lot. They each earned their keep by hustling in the taverns, pickpocketing crew, and tricking coins from mates first and second with their lush harlot lures, then regrouping later down the dark dead ends of broken oyster-paved lanes to swap their cribbed kitchen notes and pool their collected bundles of new mystery. Bunches of weeds and clumps of chopped stalks went into their dark variations of stewing slumgullion and red goulash as they rubbed their hands bug-eyed and busy with a simmering excitement. Buckbean, swallowwort, thimbleweed, and sweet gum proved powerful, while hobblebush, coolwort, and black tupelo offered more subtle possibilities. Elga remembered being especially proud of the secrets she coaxed and pried, over weeks, from the sly black persimmon. She stayed there by the sea for more than threescore years, working with her hoyden sisters as they labored over their exotic cargoes like bees in a honey hive: moving from candlelit garret rooms to low-ceilinged brick cellars, slaving over clay ovens, mixing, sizzling, blanching, stirring, reducing, then boiling and basting some more, all the while shouting, whispering, coaxing, chanting, and hissing out roughly hewn phrases and untried incantations, marrying the brews to their tongues, finding the consonants that harmonized and the vowels that stuck wet to the tumescent seeds, stalks, and spoils from the new land.

Finally, Elga left the others and returned to her forest, loading three fresh and healthy mules with the bundles of her hard-wrought bounty. Now that she was done, she gave little more thought to the New World, she had what she needed. Over the years she would hear tales of European exiles fleeing persecution, vanishing beyond the sea’s horizon to build their newborn cities of God. Eventually, some returned to the Old World brandishing wordy manifestos proclaiming their right to liberty, along with the finespun white cotton and cane sugar to trade, all handpicked by their land’s ebony slaves. To her, this New World seemed like a rough stew of notions that even now, centuries later, seemed unmixed and unblended, too many of the ingredients far too strong in their righteousness and certainty while also much too bitter with contradiction. Elga doubted if she would ever like the taste.

Sitting in the car with the American, she felt it was maybe time for someone to go find another New World, for having built their great cities all the way out to the Pacific, these Americans now seemed to stay busy by constantly running about, bumping into one another like a passel of fattened hogs who had long outgrown their shit-laden sty.

The car pulled up in front of a building that had two men standing out in front. As the car stopped, one of the men knocked on the building’s front door and a little bald man with round glasses came out. To Elga, the bald man did not look quite human, he looked more like a white shrewmouse.

As the little man came over to the car, Brandon rolled down the window. “What happened?”

The little man did not answer at first, but looked over at her instead. “Well hello, Elga Sossoka.” She stayed silent. He nodded. “It is an honor to finally meet you. You must have great good fortune to have lived for so long and come so far across so many lands. Perhaps we can borrow some of your luck to change our own poor fortunes. That would be a welcome turn of events.” Then he returned his attention to Brandon. “You see, we had a serious setback. I’m afraid your friend Jake has died. I don’t know precisely how it happened. It was a simple clinical exercise, purely academic. I for one certainly did not foresee any obstacles. This Will fellow did not appear to have that much fight left in him.”