10. Deaths

That day like other days, she usually did not bother to imagine fire, rushing to get ready; although imaginary fire turned out delightful, so good she could pause and contemplate it almost adoringly and with anticipation, linger at some sweet bit, repeat it, and watch that contorted tubby body swaying, singing, and turning into a gleaming gem shining with heavenly light, a vision of a chanting siren; but she could not neglect the necessary precise thought, the obligation to leave nothing ill-conceived in the deepest depths, no little detail contingent on what would come next, a falling puzzle piece guided by the force of gravity and the power of miracle into place so everything could be a different life and not this error-filled one, as if what could happen might actually happen; so she could see and hear her on fire and attempting to flee, the world filled with the sound and smell of burning flesh; she would be the only spectator to the dark and shrunken figure emitting puffs of air and black fluids, soul and bile, sound and blood, until her skin was empty. How fine were fires, how very fine, how comforting, but how much work they were, how much organization, and she had to pay attention on that day like other days; she refused to feel ashamed, to become a rodent, a patient larva that dug a perfect tunnel in order to live.

Madame Sophie wanted to know why that girl had not come with the tea, so she answered her for the fourth or fifth time or hundredth, for the thousandth time, for her entire life, that it was not time yet, be patient, while she decided against fire and reconsidered the gallows: to hang her was also a soothing thought although not at all easy to accomplish, not something for today or tomorrow since she was unaccustomed to having a bowline or towline placed over her head, but wit overcomes hurdles and it was not as bothersome as imagining flames; find a way to tilt her head down, drop like a nervous bird that searches and rummages in the dung for a worm and rises up unready, suddenly in the wrong direction with a knot placed on her neck where those chubby arms could not reach since they hardly moved, could not reach the back of her neck at all, which is why she combed her hair and combed and combed it again because she never liked it the first time, and hand mirrors were useless to assure her that she was tidy and no hair, no sparse dry dyed and re-dyed hair held in place by wigs and hats and diadems was loose or out of place. Her bun; she had to spend a lot of time arranging her bun. The house could not be said to have a library and much less their own rooms, although they overflowed with musical scores and albums and magazines about theater and fashion that were of no use to her; but downstairs everything was so precise that if she were to make a little hole in the upper floor and pull up the floorboards and break the framework and kick through the plaster, she would fall into Madame Helena’s office, and there was a bookcase whose folding glass doors had beveled edges, bronze pommels, and a plaque on the side for Thompson & Co. London-Paris: travelogues, an encyclopedia, a Household Administration, a First Aid Manual for Accidents, Injuries and Acute Illnesses, a Vie des Saints, and a few other books she never remembered, not even the titles, and in the sixth volume of the encyclopedia between knoll and knowledge, a foldout sheet, not in color like the one for flags or insects but in black and white, displaying knots, each with an explanation of how to tie it and untie it, square knot, overhand knot, slipknot, figure-eight knot, diamond hitch, sheet bend, eye splice, midshipman’s hitch, noose, fisherman’s knot, surgeon’s knot, bowline, all the knots of the world, and the rivers with their islands and the seas with their ports and the cities, all so easy to learn, all slipknots. Once Desdemona finally had the noose around her neck, she could savor the moment. She held her breath and waited for the Moor to enter; or better yet, no, how many times had error or accident struck, no, not the Moor who only pretended to strangle her with his hands, no, not at all, because the public intervened, the hated and beloved public applauded and shouted bravo, and dead Desdemona smiled—and it all collapsed, shattered, rubble, dry, rusty, dusty—no, not Desdemona or Carmen or Violeta or Gilda or Aïda or Floria Tosca or Salome despite his head on a platter; what if she brought her head on a platter instead of the prophet’s, if Katja were to come upstairs very serious and composed bringing her gape-mouthed head displaying its false teeth, neck edged with dried blood, eyes open? Yes, oh yes, wide open looking at her with fear, incredulously surprised, if Katja were to leave the platter on the table and leave, discretely, without slamming the door as she left, she would laugh, she would laugh so much and so hard that everyone would come to ask her what had happened, the idiot in the room across the hall and the dead little fly-woman at the end of the hall and even the General and the old man with the toys would come running upstairs and she would tell them that nothing had happened, that she was happy, that was all, and she would close the door and keep laughing with that head of hers on a platter on the table. Perhaps the new guest would come upstairs, the foreigner who had just arrived, but she would not even look at her: foreign women were fine on stage yet awful in real life for a decent person like herself. But when she was in a hurry or when Madame Sophie got too troublesome that day like other days, amid pillows and pictures, tea by the drop or sips and different shoes and shawls, fast as lightning she could always take refuge in a medical error: help, please, a heart attack, my mother is dying, call a doctor, commotion, those useless women who knew nothing except how to make trouble, and finally someone went to look for a doctor and returned with a young one with hardly any experience or an old one whose hands shook or perhaps that stupid boy in the room across the hall who studied medicine, no, not medicine? no, something else, what was he studying? and the pallid doctor would say it’s an emergency and pull out a syringe, a needle, break a glass ampule, alcohol, quickly shake the syringe, is about to inject, injects, a little drop of blood and then a tremble, a groan, a shiver, and it is over. She was not interested in what happened to the imbecile or the doctor but she would gaze long at the cadaver, white, mountainlike, finally quiet, forever, eternal, heavy, a wineskin, a block, a cup of iniquity, a spider nest, a bag of garbage, and she would keep looking at it there. How many prayers the dead little fly-woman would say and Katja would bring her coffee and that Helena woman would push her off to the side and take charge of everything, and she herself would leave. She would go to live in Berlin or Paris or Saint Petersburg. She would go to America where a rich heiress like herself could marry a rich ranch-owner right away and go to live in a white palace in the middle of the pampas, served by Indian slaves and visited by other ranchers. He would be named Leonides because he would be like a lion and she would sleep until midday rocked by the wind in the palm trees and the sweet song of the macaws and the far-off roar of the rapids. Her husband would go out to the fields to oversee the farm laborers and one day one of them, crazed by the broiling sun and liquor, seeing him so handsome and fine in his white linen suit and pith helmet and gold spurs, would leap at him to slit his throat with a machete but as fast as a lightning bolt he would pull out his revolver and in midair as he jumped put a bullet between his eyes. She would know nothing of this, would continue sleeping until the servant girls entered, brown, barefoot, with wide lace-edged skirts, necklaces of jaguar teeth, and braids wrapped around their heads, who told her the bath was ready, and she would sink into the water and drink sweet colorful fruit juices from golden bunches of grapes or dark figs or sap from twisted trees gray in the shadow of the forest. At night Leonides, with bright eyes and long copper-colored untidy hair, would play the guitar while grease from mutton sizzled in the fires and guests drank red wine and danced on the lawn: she would sit on the lower terrace beneath a waxed paper parasol that would protect her from the dew and greet arrivals and ask for a song, that pretty one, the one about insupportable absence.

Out of curiosity to see the new guest, Madame Sophie had said that on that day for certain, like other days, they would go down to the dining room at night, and on one of those other nights that Helena woman had assured them that in an instant, in less than an instant, a drowning man sees his entire life, all of it, everything he lived, complete, eloquently recalled, clean and brilliant, what had happened day after day hour after hour in less than an instant, less, even less, far from time, confusing it with death; and that night, that very night, she had started imagining a stumble, a fall, and even a shipwreck, depending on the time available in her room between one whim and another and going to bed, provided she fell from a trans-Atlantic vessel or the boat overturned or she fell off a cliff, so she sank and returned to the surface, breathing a little air, a little, and water, and swallowing and waving her hands, sinking again and coming back up and sinking and coming up again, hardly floating and sinking and seeing her life and never coming up again, sinking to the farthest depths. What she liked about the sea was the green silence, solitude, but not the impossibility that someone, something might come to save her. And she would go to Berlin, to the Americas, all around the world, the deserts, wild plains, lagoons, summits, and jungles.

Of all the deaths, including murder by icepick or meat grinder but never a bullet which was fast although the first-aid manual detailed the ravages of a bullet in the stomach, including a crazed ax murderer or being crushed by a landslide, perhaps the most perfect was asphyxia, although this depended on her state of mind, not just because it was slow and acceptably tragic but because until the end there was hope: someone would come, someone would open the room, someone would have a second thought and remember that she was there; except that no one ever came or did come but too late. In the Americas there were assassins with icepicks and hundred-story buildings you could fall from or from which someone could fall on you, and in the Americas rich people had giant safes that could hold one or two or even three people, with hermetically sealed doors that could not be opened with blowtorches, chainsaws, or cannons, and the sounds of voices or shouts or noise could not pass through the door either. She counted her money only in that room, and the door silently closed behind her because it had a hydraulic mechanism that worked if someone forgot and left the door open, and she did not even notice and kept counting and counting, so much money to count, and only when the air began to run out did she turn around and realize that she was locked in and was going to die there, a prisoner with her money, the bills, the gold coins that suddenly fell from her hands for the last time, and rather than look at them she pounded, she shouted, she sweated, she rolled on the floor crying out, sure that someone would come but no one heard her, she tore at her throat, she pulled out her hair, she ripped off her clothes, she wept, and she died, no, not yet, she was about to die, just about but she opened her mouth seeking air air and everything was hot and opaque around her: there was no more air. One more try, another, and another weak try, and she died.

The idea just occurred to Madame Sophie that perhaps Katja had forgotten or had become ill. Ill? At night in her tiny room with the tiny round window, in her bed pushed against the wall to make space for a chair where she could put the clothes she took off, Nehala had seen the irony of another dream in which she was sick, soothed, and rocked: cool hands, a balcony, broths and creams, cologne on her temples, sunshine. Madame Sophie asked if she thought about doing anything when Katja’s footsteps sounded in the hall.