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.
SIX
Figures of the Captive Graces
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
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.
SIX
Figures of the Captive Graces
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
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