17. The Fabulous Animals of the Moon

Imagine an animal, ten, eleven animals, one hundred, too many, all the animals of all possible worlds, too many animals to count galloping across the plains of the moon: all the children in the houses on Scheller Street had heard about Count von Zeppelin and Co.’s dirigible, about trips around the world, but had not been able to learn anything more and essential, just what they wanted to hear, except by asking nursemaids or servants who could tell them nothing, since at dinner or practicing piano or during visits they could not ask and those who did not know it was forbidden got a freezing stare that promised punishment, the worst of all not being allowed to go out and play; little thoughts kept tight in pockets with the other children in the other houses on Scheller Street. All the children in the houses on Scheller Street imagined dirigibles as vast machines covered with sharp iron hair standing up like goosebumps, precise telescopes, toothed wheels, lances, and cords, jumping from star to star to take them to the moon where, like furious heroes, they would fight beings that came out of the night, as blurry and unthinkable as bodies that became restless only during fever; where, as triumphant spectators, they would watch parades of troops of lunary turtlets, schools of lunamatic shrewers, droves of lunacule buffalodonts, flocks of lunacious black vulturery, fighting with hoofs, horns, and claws, tongues covered with giant needles, leathery trunks and tails, killing and dying, winning and losing in simple and perfidious games like bouncing a little silver ball on the closed balconies of the houses on Scheller Street. All children, or perhaps not all, perhaps only the most bold or solitary or zealous or anxious had or sought a corner of the house somewhat like a cul-de-sac, like an eggshell where no one went, a noiseless corner where they could hide to try to put words together with balls of string, a hidden clearing in a jungle of curtsies, grown-up foolishness, contradictions, and shadows made with interlaced hands on a white wall, keys to enter the dark cave where all the tribe’s secrets were guarded, all of them, not a single one lost or deteriorated with the years, and this, although it was not one of the games they dreamed about at night or played during the day, depended precisely on those games in a more direct way impossible.

Madame Helena took a black velvet skirt from the closet and hesitated a moment, telling herself that soon, if not already, velvet was not right for the season, and perhaps a cameo, too, but then even more rightly soft flannel instead of velvet, a blouse with a plain neckline that would accommodate a necklace and ring set, the green enamel one with the silver drop and chain. She knew she could never buy pearls like the ones that Madame Nashiru had brought from Montijo Bay or Kiushu, ship by ship, from the lips of meleagrina clams to exhibitors standing on parquet flooring or to smooth white silk trays, pink pearls that seemed hardly touched in the glass display cases where careful hands had placed them. It was easier to imagine a thousand, a hundred thousand animals than one animal; hair, feathers, claws, spots, stripes, horns, udders, and muzzles had no need to be in place when there were a hundred thousand million animals dashing in a race to the bottom of the craters of the moon. A cloud of silvery dust, as moondust must be, was enough with thunder, clattering hoofs, chomping mouths, and who could crush whom and who flee from whom in the icy desolation, ashy as frost. From the end of the street, from the ravines of the moon the victorious bray of turtlets arose like a hurricane and stole into Madame Helena’s ears, who left the skirt on the back of a chair and forgot the pearls to her regret, diminutive pearls, perfect spheres of albescent irritation. Shouts that split the cold air like glass thorns, impertinent running around, the sheer stupidity of mothers and nursemaids who let little boys play in the street, and even, she had once seen and hardly believed, girls out so late. Meanwhile, behind Madame Helena’s back and with some haste because the afternoon was getting dangerously late and at any moment front doors would open and formidable figures would order them to put an end to that and come inside immediately, the turtlets insisted on another race fleeing from colossal feet and waving trunks, and then they had an idea for salvation, and not from the other side of the moon: no more battles, instead they could play Trapsnare so their shouts would not be heard inside the houses. Some children were against it, cautious souls already well versed in prudence: there was little light and for Trapsnare someone would have to go in to get chalk and would not be let back outside so one of the teams would be a player short and they would also need seeds as counters, or buttons or little stones, and the cooks and servants would raise a fuss if they tried to get them. Madame Helena put away the velvet skirt and, on the marble-topped table, put the rings and the cameo with the clover-shaped cross and the profile of a woman whose hair was swept up and held in place with an ivory ribbon for a headdress with three malachite birds and golden threads. She did not like children; she was grateful to fate for not having them, although at times this thanks was not only vain but unjust; perhaps her body had refused, wisely closed, renegade and resistant to the threat that it could have inexplicably and proudly become swollen by the Linz doctor. It seemed to her that her life was not a bright ribbon like the one that united the three birds on the ivory-crowned woman whose cameo profile matched the rings, not a series of events arranged on another ribbon that was time; instead it was an attempt, a test in thin air, a resolve so consistent, so certain that only by being quiet and hushed, unconnected and unheroic, without anger or haste, could she manage to discern its opaque whole. In another way, she could never know her part of the anxiety, meanness, exaltation, or vague ambition of other people, never relate to the hidden letters in the odor of the Linz tobacco factories, the poems by Asa Lundgren that her mother recited, the trip north, the objects that she had kept in her parents’ home and those she had gotten rid of, the walls she had marked to be removed to create another space, the ones she had erected to enclose another room, her selection of the guests for the house, the empty room, that strange girl, Madame Nashiru’s pearls and Madame Nashiru herself, the mysterious selection of the enemy and of black as the denial of all color for her clothing although permitting herself the whim of a bit of green or autumn yellow, rigorous limits otherwise acceptable within the rights she deserved.

Sometimes, but not on this uncertain afternoon on Scheller Street, they played Take the Fort, War Between Nations, Prisoner’s Base, and Jump the Fire. For the animals on the moon, an ability to detect allies on one hand, and speed, strength, and slyness on the other, meant triumph for those lunar animals, letting them swagger on the way to school the next day. Children? Tender innocent creatures? Incomplete men, miniature adults filled with laughter and adorable traits? There were games more secret and suffocating but not in the street, arms held behind backs, breath held from fear and shame, other hands lowering pants, or wet mouths declaring the tests they would have to pass to become men. Men? Such fear, seriousness, distrust, silence, hidden trembling, cold indifference, and control of eyes and hands? In Madame Helena’s rooms there were two mirrors and she passed before the two each night after dressing as she walked toward the door. She entered the corridor, and as she neared the stairs, she looked out the window down at the street, now almost dark.