Four Souls (6 page)

The boy healed with only the faintest ripple of scars, but from that time on, Under the Ground’s hands were striped by wrinkled gray tissue, bent like a frog’s. Yet she never hid her hands away in her apron. She was proud.

During the next winter, though, Anaquot stumbled on the path from school and fell asleep in snow. Her mother found her when the light was almost blue, and carried her home slung across her back, still dreaming in sleep that grew deeper and yet more restless as the night went on. By morning, Under the Ground’s eyes burnt and her own limbs loosened and she slept curled around her daughter in terror.

You heal by taking on the pain of others, by going down to argue with death itself, by swallowing the sharp bone and vomiting the sickness out in your own blood. That old woman’s daughter lay next to her, close, curled the way she used to lie within her mother’s body. The healer ached for her child’s return. There was nothing—no act, no murder, no betrayal, no agony—that she was not prepared to accomplish in order to save her girl.

Under the Ground woke to hear unusual noises.

The shadow of a person wanders as though sorry to leave. Touching old possessions—a kettle, a favorite knife. Sometimes a shadow takes a water pail, a dipper, a handful of flour or rice, but it cannot use these things, must drop them, demands attention in that way.

So that is how Under the Ground knew she had some assistance in her work—things dropped, murmurs, low steps all through the night that she lay with her daughter in the blankets.

By morning, worse. Both woke spotted with the girl’s blood from coughing. Deep in her chest she heard the slow whine of air escaping. Under the Ground built up the fire and cleaned her daughter. Brought out an old robe, ancient and still smelling of the greenwood smoke. Put Anaquot on it and covered her with blankets.

“Mother, Mother,” she said, “N’gah, why have you left me?”

“I’m here,” Under the Ground assured, and set about preparing her things.

“Mother, Mother, are you gone yet? Why don’t you stay with me?”

“I’m here,” wept Under the Ground.

“I’m cold,” said her girl.

Under the Ground built the fire higher and hotter. Down the path came an old man who had been thinking about her, who had pots fall in the night too and wondered who might need him. He took along a young nephew, a helper, yawning and annoyed to be awake.

“Sit over there, sit by the western wall,” insisted the healer, my uncle. “Death is curious and determined. Death comes from that direction. My boy, be strong and do not let anything get by you.”

The door of Under the Ground’s house opened to the east, as all our houses did then. Under the Ground brought the water into it and gave some to the old man but not to the helper. To that boy she said, “Go fetch us some more. Make yourself useful.” She didn’t say it in a rough way, just in a direct way, but still the boy’s heart went resentful. He wanted to run off and set snares in the woods, and he would have done that had he not pitied the girl in the blankets. So small, so bleak, so still, like and unlike his own slim sister. He went out, fetched the water, and in the old way his uncle had taught him, chopping away the ice and sinking the bucket in the stream just a little bit against the flow.

I ignored sticks to carve, rabbit paths perfect for snares, tracks of a deer on the path to the house. I tried to concentrate, even to think the way my uncle might, for the daughter of Under the Ground was laboring to breathe.

The old man drummed.

He picked up and drummed. He used a stick carved of sumac, the beater filled with cattail down. His drum was painted with a long yellow stripe.

Into my mind came the smell of fish and new rice, and then the ash smell of new leaves burning and the touch of my mother’s hands on my face. I could not stay awake. Sometimes I dozed off but my uncle did not—he drummed all day, but the girl continued to go down.

Under the Ground made a paste of leaves, a paste of nettles, a paste of roots she chewed up and spat, a paste of dead bees. She turned her daughter over with gentle care and she bone-doctored, spat out three fat white ants. They crawled into the fire and burst, lighting thick shadows on our faces. Around halfway through the night, my uncle’s voice broke. I took over and sang when Under the Ground bent her head to feel Anaquot’s breath on her cheek, its low, strained rasp.

We went on through the next day in a confused haze, and on through the night. By now there was no time and no meaning. Everything had stopped but my uncle’s drumming. A terrible odor of burning hair, then a strange fugitive sweetness. Food a relative brought, a pot of meat soup, and still the work. Under the Ground’s hair was wild with grease, sweat, and stuck off her shoulders in rigid tails. Her face was harrowed and her eyes sunk and red, tiny with smoke and tears. She’d shrunk and withered on her bones. Her face was bearlike, her snout wide, her eyes deep and dull as nails.

By the third day and night my uncle took me aside, drew me close to him, and whispered, “When you see the old woman go out, open that girl’s eyelids and see if she’s living yet.”

So when Under the Ground went out, drawn by my uncle’s call, I went to her daughter. Her cheek was rock cold and her hand stiff as a bundle of sticks. I thumbed her eyelid up. It stayed up and the iris stared into darkness, chilled and fixed. I pressed down the eyelid and crept back into the corner, put my head down when Under the Ground returned. I poked up the fire and the old woman kept praying, now telling her medicine mean things. Threatening her medicine.

“I’ll throw you away,” she warned. “You’re no good to me if you can’t help my girl.”

She rattled the bag. “Get out of here.” She screamed. “I don’t want you.” She scolded, she grew hard, “I don’t want you unless you help me now.” She threw down her medicine. Dried plants and small objects went rolling across the dirt and hide piled on the packed earth. I was fully awake now, paralyzed with fright. My uncle’s drumming stopped. Even the fire did not dare crackle or shift. In its waiting glow Under the Ground bent to her child and called her in a fearful, soft voice:

“Daughter, daughter…”

Under the Ground stropped her knife on her belt. Singing a wild song I never want to hear again, singing hard and low, then high as a crazy loon, she slashed her arms deeply, four cuts on each arm. The cuts were deep, I saw them. To the bone. The girl moved.

Anaquot sat straight up in the blankets, her hooded eyes still shut. I watched as a smile slowly came across her face, sweet at first, as though she was dreaming, then broader and deeper until it was terrible, a skull’s grin. Her eyes flew open and a staring blackness as of the cold place gripped the room.

That is when I saw Under the Ground throw out one of her daughter’s souls. Throw it out of her. I saw her grab an animal struggling in the girl’s blankets and then she threw it hard at the western wall—through the wall—it was gone—when I looked, and then looked back, the girl had crumpled backward and was peacefully resting.

T
HAT SOUL
stumbled around and got into the body of a white raccoon and for a time it was seen about the edge of the town and on the farms curious and hungry, its eyes full of cunning light. Seemed to us it went around just watching and figuring. Night, the trill it made was a stranger’s laugh. Days, we tried to let it go, tried to forget.

And then an old man trapped the white raccoon, found it in his leg-hold trap, dead. He came to my uncle, shaking. He sat at our table. After a time he spoke, told us he had opened it up and the animal was hollow inside. Nothing there. No heart. No lungs. No guts. Just empty.

Some souls keep stumbling the rough paths. Some try to get into their old beds and rooms. Some you see traveling bad, balls of white light, some you pass in the woods with no notice but the prickle on the back of your neck. Some souls return. Some come back to people. After a time they return with more knowledge than they went out with.

Hers came back with all our secrets. Hers came back with a taste for charred bones. Hers came back with the sensitive paws and bright eyes of a healer. Hers came back masked, laughing, with a mouth full of delicate white teeth. Her soul came back knowing too much, saying no word. Hers came back and that daughter’s name, although nobody dared to use it, was Four Souls from then on.

She was the making of Red Cradle, the making of her son, she was the bad wife of Shaawano, the woman who ran off with a Pillager. She was the mother of Fleur.

E
ACH OF US
has an original, you see, living somewhere underneath the shadow of our daily life. That life we live in the moving world is the dream life of the copy. She runs, she breathes, she cares for others, she mends their clothes. You gaze into the water of your day and there your face floats back, serene, unguarded. See! See! Beneath that thin smile you are smiling somewhere else. Your hand moves and the hand moves below you. Perhaps in another country more real than you are, in another life.

Just so, the other Four Souls lived beneath the life of Fleur Pillager. Her name influenced Fleur’s actions and told her what to do. How can I tell you this? How can I make you see? Sometimes it is too difficult for even an old man, one who loves to sling words. Sometimes I have trouble with this thought—how this surface of life that tosses and shatters is not the real surface. How we are dreams, blasts, shadows, insubstantial gusts of motion. That this stub of a grain dealer’s pencil that moves across the page of paper is not real, either, and that the truth lies on the other side of even these words.

Polly Elizabeth

I
T WAS HARD
to believe that a man who had so wonderfully stripped and profited from his holdings here on earth could so easily become that woman’s dupe. False heaven, I thought when I understood the locked door to his room, the indiscreet sounds from within, the dazed look of foolish contentment on his face. False man, I cried aloud when not more than a year after she had come to do the laundry the woman was in possession of it and the entire house. In short order, sister and myself were served legally with papers. To my surprise, we were offered a settlement so handsome that we thought it wise to accept, particularly since Placide admitted to me that she had practiced Karezza with her painting instructor for the whole past year and cared little what Mauser did. Within weeks, to the astonishment of all who lived up and down the avenue, we had secured a proper house in Saint Paul and were preparing to move. And may I now say, here, that the word “Karezza” shall nevermore pass my lips? For upon the description of that discipline, innocently outlined to the doctor by my sister, Mauser was able not only to divorce Placide but to annul their marriage in the Holy Roman Church.

To the grand sobs of Mrs. Testor (who chose nonetheless to stay) and the ill-disguised happiness of Fantan, we left. Once sister and I took up life in Saint Paul, our view of the situation gained a measure of perspective and we were able to enjoy (perhaps spitefully, I admit) as well as report on the spectacle that John James soon made with his squaw.

Certainly, she had to know that people called her squaw behind her back, but never face-to-face beyond the one time Mr. Virgil Hill described. It was his sense, he thoughtfully remarked, that having addressed her as a squaw he stood in sudden danger of evisceration. It happened (he said he was quite innocent of ill intentions) as they stood by the buffet table where a huge rare roast stood pink and lucious with the carving knife temporarily abandoned by the server. He was suddenly aware how close the handle of that knife lay to the hand of the wife of John James Mauser. It was nothing he could quantify. She did not pick up the knife or even make one gesture toward it with her fingers. Yet the air between them itched.

So I shan’t call Fleur “squaw” again at the safety of this remove, for I would not dare say it to her face. I do not believe in saying such things at a distance that one hasn’t the boldness of nerve to say in person. I am not interested in risking
evisceration
, you can be sure. After all, my sister so completely depends upon me that I think were I to die and leave her to her own devices, she wouldn’t survive the rigors of her art.

Enough to say that with me to run Placide’s life she did survive. The two of us did well enough. Our portion from Mauser was such a generous maintenance that we had no complaints as far as that went. And, too, the figure that John Mauser soon presented was so pathetic, so ludicrous, that we did not feel the sting of his abandonment. People sympathized quite openly with us, though there were some men cut of a questionable fabric who professed that they understood his attraction to the Indian woman. Once she began to appear at certain functions in dramatic, daring, and yet somehow decently reserved exquisite gowns, she attracted a low sort of admiration. And then she vanished, for shame we hoped. But it turned out the reason was quite different.

Mrs. Testor became my confidante. After Fleur had ceased to appear in public, I went to visit Testor once a week, bearing a small and appropriate gift—a set of candles, a sack of licorice, a bag of scented salts—at the hour when John James Mauser and his wife were accustomed to motor out to Minnetonka to take the air or to lunch in grand style at one of the most exclusive downtown clubs. Testor fixed me a cup of tea on most days and we had a cozy little chat. On the day I learned the reason for Mrs. Mauser’s concealment, I also understood that she was not at lunch but upstairs, in bed.

“She is
unwell
,” said Testor, with a meaningful emphasis. I understood at once. A thick bolt of envy pierced me.

“This means an heir,” I said in a neutral tone.

“So it does.”

I was quiet. I tried to sip my tea, but its sweetness choked me. Having never been one to bemoan my lot, I made no expression of acknowledgment one way or the other. I don’t think Mrs. Testor was of sufficient sensitivity to observe how I paled and trembled. I don’t think she understood at all that sadness ran me through like a sword. I don’t think she or anyone knew then, or ever will know, with what desperate eagerness I wanted a child. I took my leave, went out to the motorcar where my little dog, Diablo, sat curled on the passenger’s seat. He had long since stopped begging me for anything, the little tyrant. He gazed straight ahead as though anxious to get back and eat the food in his silver bowl. So I got in, behind the wheel, and drove him home.

T
HE NEXT WORLD
, of what shall consist its poisons and delights? Love in this world avoided me. And love’s issue, beyond all measure. Immersed in the saltless broth of my existence, I tried on moods. Here was Polly Elizabeth, coy in felt slippers and hair net. Here she was parading proud in a gown of Greek influence. Now a silly
Fräulein
holding her skirts above her head. As my sister made new friends in the more advanced artistic circles of our city, she also gained a plethora of models from which to choose. And so I was left posing in cobbled-together costumes with no one to paint me. Here was Judith holding the severed head of Holofernes. Now Saint Theresa of Avila undergoing her torment by the devil. At last I could only see Polly Elizabeth, in chains of foolishness. What was I, who was I, but one considered dangerous to others from the tedium of my company?

I found myself returning with ever more frequency to the house of my former brother-in-law. I was drawn there by the prospect of a baby, as though by a force that overpowered my will. I came to the door with a pound cake and a visiting card.

“Please bring it up to her,” I said to Mrs. Testor, who regarded me with the raw shock of someone who had seen the risen dead on the day of judgment.

“Oh, shut your mouth, Nettie,” I said, and stood my ground. “Can’t I make it up with his new wife if I want to?”

Mrs. Testor shrugged, her eyes still round, and placed the cake and my card right next to it on the silver tray I used to carry up to Placide’s studio. She brought the offering up the stairs. Came straight back down. The pound cake sat untouched. My card was turned over next to it. An eloquent rejection.

“I won’t give up, Testor,” I said. “I shall return. Is she craving anything? Can you give me a hint?”

Nettie Testor paused and bit her lip, struggling with some information. Where in the past I would have ordered her to tell it to me, now I mustered the patience to wait. I knew only humility on my part would unseal her lips. As I knew she would, Testor relented. She boiled a kettle of water, poured it into the brown teapot with the chipped spout, and while it steeped she told me that Fleur was having some difficulty carrying the child and there was concern she’d lose it. As Testor filled my cup, I was surprised to feel a sinking hollow in the pit of my stomach, and then a pang that made me shiver. I was suddenly anxious to return to my preciously assembled household library and consult the sections of my eugenic hygiene books that dealt with delicate pregnancies. I quickly drained my cup, thanked Testor, and told her I was going home to research the matter and find a cure.

There was more, much more to keeping a baby from falling out of the body before its term. I noted down every word.

Once again, the next day, I stood at the door and waited for Testor to answer and let me in. She appeared, her broad face pallid and serious. Just as she opened the door, a cry arrested her attention. Her hands flew up around her face. She whirled. I stepped in after her and when she trundled rapidly upstairs, puffing like an engine, I sprang along close behind her. She was too distracted by the cry to really notice me. She fairly charged down the corridor.

It was Fleur, of course. She had just experienced a short epoch of flooding, accompanied by sudden pains. Mauser was gone and Fantan with him, so there I was in a sudden position to take charge. I made the most of it.

“Whiskey, fetch whiskey,” I ordered Testor, “and get the doctor, too.”

In her panic, she obeyed by force of habit as I proceeded to gently coax Fleur to elevate her hips, the child’s cradle, on some pillows. I gave her the remedy my books had recommended for the stoppage of an early derangement of the womb. Perhaps she’d never drunk the stuff before. She took a huge gulp and choked on the fire.

Slowly, slowly, I coached her, just a sip at a time and it will go down smoother.

She was furious and frightened. Her face, against the starched pillowcase that I myself had embroidered, was the color of ashes. Her eyes were black with a desperate and anthracitic heat. She gripped the pillow, as though to squeeze it dead, her hands twisting. Her voice was hoarse as she knocked back the second glass of whiskey.

“Help me!” she cried out.

And straightaway, she caught my heart.

To be needed by someone as strong as Fleur, as bold, as conscious, even though at first glance I had despised her. To be begged in a voice that God heard as well as I. To suddenly realize that if I could lay aside my small contempt, I might cherish her. I might be able to help her grow the child, the babe whom I wanted to live with a longing quite beyond my own selfish habits. By the time the whiskey had taken hold and her body quit attempting to expel the child, she had changed in my mind, but I didn’t yet know how.

“C
RUDE
, but effective,” said the doctor when he saw the whiskey. “Continue the treatment as required. Don’t let her out of the bed.” He called me near again as he washed his hands.

“I do not treat servants,” he said, flicking water from his hands, “or Indians.”

I suppose that before this moment I might have agreed with him. I might have washed his hands for him with an obsequious little smile, and handed him a clean towel to pat them dry. But at the tone of his voice, some nerve in me was strangely yanked.

“Oh? Oh? I will be certain to make her husband,
John James Mauser
, aware of your sentiments,” I told the doctor, in an unmistakable rage. My voice rose. “In turn, I am sure that he will make his known to all who serve with him on the hospital board—”

But the man cut me off quite rudely by walking straight from the room without the pretense of a leave-taking. I went back into Fleur’s room right away and helped her to another sip of the spirits, then sat with her, reading aloud from a book of the poems of Lord Byron, until she slept.

S
O IT IS
I who know as much of the truth of things as one can know. I who was privileged, who was driven to the side of a woman I’d once ordered to wash my clothes. I suppose it could be said that I was humbled, or enlarged. Some truer form of human regard had triumphed in me. The prospect of the child brought me to that. As her pregnancy continued precarious, I visited as often as I could. I worried about my distraction from Placide, but my sister barely noticed my absence and never asked my whereabouts, even when my visits grew so frequent that I spent more time in Fleur’s presence than I did in my own house.

Now, to my surprise, I found it easy to be with Fleur. The room she had shared with Mauser, but now slept in alone, was very calm with its wallpaper of an eggshell brocade. The bed coverlet was made of old lace, folded down around her feet, and from that bed she watched the fire wink on the ebony mantelpiece in which were emblazoned cockleshells, the carved faces of sea nymphs, and dancing goddesses. I found it brought me peace to sit with Fleur hour upon hour. She spoke little at first and never smiled, though I think she enjoyed the music of verse. Most often, she passed her hours in a blank weariness that had in it no hint of either hostility or resentment. When my voice grew hoarse from reading aloud, I crocheted blankets for the baby or sewed pieces of a tiny layette. When my eyes failed or my fingers cramped, I simply sat and watched the afternoon light pass across the walls.

The shadows of the ash leaves as the sun moved behind them were very graceful, their movements hypnotic and sad. The radiance of late afternoon struck the fireplace and picked out the figures of the captive Graces. In that quiet, I reflected often on the house in which I’d passed my days. I had seen it raised from the beginning. I knew its natural provenance, as well as its present existence. I had watched John James Mauser build it for my sister, after all, and had been moved and impressed by the making of it.

At the time, though I had sympathized in and even acted in protest at the treatment of the horses that dragged its great blocks of stone uphill, it had not occurred to me that humans were ill treated in the matter too. All of the materials, the fabric, all the raw stuff of our opulent shelter were taken from Fleur’s people. She described her natal lands and informed me of their rapine treatment at the hands of white men, at the hands of Mauser himself. As I sat in the room with the woman talking or dreaming in the bed, many thoughts came. It occurred to me to imagine her as a person—as a woman with family and feelings for them such as my own. I began to wonder who they were, and where she was from in actual truth and not the land of my misperceptions. And then, one day when she was half caught in sleep or in the whiskey the doctor prescribed and I spooned out by the hour, Fleur spoke. In a raving melancholy, she poured out language by the tub, all the time gazing straight into my eyes. Of course, I couldn’t understand a single word of her vagabond tongue, but I did know she was asking for my help. That was unmistakable. She began to weep. I put my hand on her forehead and stroked her brow until she grew calmer. Piece by piece, over the weeks and months, there then grew from such moments between us a connection. And from that connection, I am not ashamed to say it, there grew love.