Part One: Illusion

1. Nothing Will Be As It Was

On the day Madame Nashiru arrived at the boarding house on Scheller Street, a brief tremor passed through the house, unnoticed by everyone except Katja. The foundations of the world did not shudder, plagues did not break out, first-born did not die, there were no catastrophes, the waters of the Genil River did not inundate a dozen towns, black death did not arrive at Addis Ababa, the sorcerers of Yauyuos did not dream about dogs with human heads, the walls of Nerja Cave did not crack, ships did not sink in the inlets of Baffin, volcanoes did not erupt, islands did not disappear, orchards did not suffer drought, the lintels of old cathedrals did not become besooted, cemetery guards did not worry needlessly, nor did police officers or transportation inspectors or sergeants or jailors or tax collectors or judges or executioners; but the house shook, and Katja, who was in the courtyard bending over a tin-plate pan, looked at the water and told herself that there are beings with wings and yet they hide them. She did not know what she meant by that, but she was used to those sudden obscure thoughts, so she was not frightened and did not stop what she was doing to stand still and think about what it might be, what it might mean, why she had thought it, if it was a memory, something she had heard in passing, whatever it was. She already knew how, silently and unsurprised, to tell herself things that seemed meant for someone else and perhaps they were, whose meaning escaped her like a fairy, like a fearful little animal that might also have wings, hidden or not, with hardened forewings that enclosed tender, weak hindwings that the wind, even the wind could rip. She let them escape, it’s okay, you can go, I won’t stop you, the afternoon is too beautiful, close your eyes at night and may nothing foul from mirrors or from far away trouble your mind, and don’t think about it in the morning. There are beings who have wings and yet they hide them. In the pan, the water rippled as if from a puff of wind, and Katja waited; waited, rag in hand to clean the windowpanes, until they calmed. I’m not going to put a rag there—she had created and understood that thought. I’m not going to put a rag there into the winged beings between the drops in the water. She waited while Madame Helena welcomed Madame Nashiru, and the house felt suspicious, but only Katja noticed.

The wood, the soft skeleton that persists, that can burn and rise up against a backlight when only a well and a stairway into emptiness remain, the wood was what felt it the most since it had never stopped living, or fossils, coal or ashes, never: in the beams and the doorframes, in the lintels and the parapets and the banisters, in the baseboards and the parquet, in the floors and the windowsills, in the framework, in the cheap pine of the attic, the imperfect lignin fibers twisted, created a tiny space between themselves, then stretched and returned sadly to their places, searching for each other, fitting a convex curve into another’s hollow, obedient. The trees the world over, they say, it has been said and affirmed again and again in towns and long ago, touch each other, every single one, with a single root that starts in a lake called Yize, runs seven miles and divides into seven roots that each divide into seventy roots and each divide into seven hundred roots and so on beneath the whole world including the seas, and they feed the trees. Katja was convinced, how could it be otherwise? And looking at the rough trunks in the park, she would try to see the network like veins, would look at her wrists and the crook of her elbow and then at the ground where she was walking. She had tried to tell Wulda what she knew; of course Wulda was stupid and understood nothing, her fingers were wool and her brain a stone, looking at her the way a dog would look at her while she was talking. Wulda’s head did not quiver, but the stones in the foundations of the house did in raspy voices that became a chorus in the marble in bathrooms, kitchen, thresholds, and steps at the entrance, and in white grains of years-dry mortar that slipped from moldings. The fretwork and grilles, peaks, gutters, window catches, hinges, lightning rods and faucets, wrought iron, ceiling rosettes, chimney grates, railings, door plates and fences whined as if rust were eating them. The gables and fascia, soffits, mullions, corbels, cornices, and toothing stones moved slightly. Nothing returned to the way it had been before, nothing held the same place as it had, but Madame Helena, satisfied, asked the new guest to follow her and told her no, oh no, please, don’t bother even with the hatbox, the maid will take it all to your rooms right away. The stones, wood, and metal became quiet; smooth water showed Katja’s face leaning over it, the rag to clean the windowpanes in her hand; the house breathed, walls straightened, windows cleared, doorjambs shined, and panels gleamed. Where were they, Katja asked herself, and she answered herself with something she also could not understand: in childhood. Perhaps winged beings went there. Or perhaps not: she had heard the words, but from whom? From Luduv, of course, in her ear.