If I Told You Once

No, she said, it’s Baba’s doing, she rubs a horrible green paste into my scalp every night, and then it grows like weeds.

I said: Those men, why do they come here at night?

She laughed shrilly and said: They like to look. All they do is stand around and stare, with their mouths hanging open and their hands in their pockets. They stink, and they say the stupidest things.

Do they touch you?

Baba won’t let them, she has told them I am some kind of ridiculous fairy creature, and if they touch me I’ll shrivel up and turn to dust.

And they believe that?

Men are foolish, she said, they believe what they want to believe.

They only look?

Yes, Baba tells them that what they feel is an illness that requires a cure. Whether they believe that or not, they keep coming back. And bringing friends.

Do you like it? I whispered.

She said scornfully: Men are like cattle, easily led.

I fingered her hair. She let me. I wondered if Baba did the same thing.

When you leave Baba, will you take me with you? she said suddenly. I’ll go mad if I stay here much longer.

Her eyes traveled over my face. I felt myself flushing. I was conscious as never before of the sallowness of my skin, the narrowness of my face, the pink birthmark at the corner of my lips like a dribble of wine.

She said her name was Anya.

During the following days I visited her room often.

How I hated her whining voice.

But her body was a white smooth thing that I wanted to swallow whole. Even the blunt stubs of her legs were beautiful to me, there was something so naked and helpless about them. I split wood into smaller and smaller pieces and let the sweat run down my face to burn my eyes.

Baba watched us both and smiled.

The men continued their secret visits. As the winter dragged on they came more and more often, red eyed, distracted; they could not really see me, or Baba. They saw only the milky smooth skin, the red-gold hair that grew over the floor and climbed the walls like ivy. They looked and wiped their mouths.

Anya said scornful things to them, yet she seemed to luxuriate beneath their gazes like a cat being stroked. She kept her legs discreetly covered.

The men began coming every night. There were more than two dozen of them now. They shuffled into Anya’s room in shifts for their precious minutes. They began to come earlier in the night, some even came at dusk and lurked among the trees waiting for Baba to admit them. These men were burly with bushy beards like my father. But there was a desperation about them that made them slack mouthed and helpless. They seemed not to understand it themselves; I saw them shaking their heads over nothing, clucking their tongues.

Now when I went down to the village I heard muttering among the women. They had noticed the change in their husbands. They knew their men were visiting Baba’s house late at night, but none of them knew about the footless girl hidden there. Some women suspected Baba was offering herself to the men. That old hag? Impossible. How could they? the women asked each other. No man would touch her, they reassured themselves. But there were a few who said: She has bewitched them all.

Night after night they came.

On a night when the men were more frantic than ever, one of them refused to leave Anya’s room when his allotted time was up. Baba spoke sharply; he ignored her. She tugged his arm, but he brushed her away and swiftly knelt by the bedside, reaching out to touch Anya’s face as she recoiled in disgust.

Baba cried out angrily; the other men reluctantly dragged their friend from the room. Baba herded the men onto the doorstep, told them never to return, and turned the lock after them.

She watched from the window as they wandered back to the village, hanging their heads, sullen in the moonlight. Go to sleep, she told me. She went into Anya’s room and locked the door behind her. I lay awake thinking of her brown spotted hands touching Anya’s white ones.

The days that followed were queer silent ones.

One evening I heard the wail of a rising wind. The trees moaned and scraped against each other. A storm was brewing. I heard footsteps, glimpsed a dark figure darting among the trunks. I whirled about.

A branch snapped and I saw one of the village men approaching, his eyes cold and thoughtless. I ran to the house and he lurched behind me. Men were emerging from the wood on all sides, swaying and staggering up to the doorstep.

I slipped into the house from behind and barred the back door. I saw Baba standing in the front doorway, facing the men gathered there. Their bodies were dark and indistinct, their eyes glowing, like wandering spirits. They were demanding entrance, bellowing and snorting.

I saw Baba refusing, saw her hands brushing them away. The men’s faces fell. Like spiteful schoolboys they kicked each other, spat, began hurling small stones that flew past Baba and tocked on the floor.

Then a stone the size of a fist struck her on the temple and she fell back. I caught her under the arms and pulled her into the house. Her heavy head lay against my shoulder. The men looked shocked, suddenly ashamed, and they backed away, melting into the trees. I barred the door behind them.

I dragged Baba to the bed. There was no blood, but her breathing was shallow and a greenish bruise was rapidly forming over her temple.

In a matter of hours the bruise had deepened and spread over her entire face, as if her head were a rotten melon. In the dark hour before dawn her breathing stopped.

I wiped her mouth, pressed her lids shut. I held her head, touched the dense loaf of hair. I realized with a shock that it was not a mass of braids, or a knotted bun. Her gray hair was only the outer covering of a hard bony knob—an outgrowth of the skull itself. It was some sort of malignancy, some evil tumor, and most likely the blow had broken some membrane, freed the evil juices to seep through her head. Already her face was unrecognizable.

I watched the body settle and shrink, the skin drawing more tightly over the bones. Her body became a dry, light, tidy thing, almost childlike. She looked quite peaceful. Except for the violently discolored face.

I took the key from her pocket and went to Anya’s room. I told her Baba was gone and we made plans to leave.

But the men were back, circling the house like wild dogs.

Night fell. We heard them, they were running, circling, howling at the moon. We saw their eyes glowing green as they raised their heads, flaring their nostrils, scenting the wind.

They can smell you, I told Anya.

Don’t let them in, she said.

They circled, scratching at the walls, pounding at the door, wailing and chewing their lips.

Maybe if they could just come in and see you, they’d go home satisfied, I said.

No they wouldn’t, she said.

They waited all through the next day. They pressed their faces against the window, their eyes red and wild, their beards matted and sticky. They licked the glass.

Soon they would begin tearing the walls down.

I thought of my mother, felt my eyes darting and jumping like hers.

I went to Anya and said: I have a plan.

I helped her dress. Then I put my arms around her and tried to lift her from the bed. She was not much taller than me. But her body was impossibly heavy and limp. Her flesh was so soft in my arms, like a down mattress; I thought that if I slit her white skin, she’d spill out feathers. My knees buckled; I saw sparks, and I collapsed on the floor with her warm, flaccid, bedridden body on top of me.

Your hair, I panted.

Her abundant hair accounted for at least part of the weight. It was many meters long, and tangled and twined around the sheets, the bed frame, the oceans of lace that surrounded her like a cocoon.

I tried to free her hair, to gather it up like an armful of wheat. She lay uselessly on the floor as I tried to bind it up. Massy and bright, it slid from my fingers. I tripped over it, it was caught in my teeth.

It has to go, I said.

She screamed in protest as I went looking for scissors. She thrashed on the floor like a beached mermaid. Her hair resisted me; soon the scissors were blunted. The cries of the men outside made me frantic.

It has to be done, I said.

I fetched the ax from the shed and stood above her, her hair pinned beneath my feet; I raised the ax above my head, and as she cursed and her sideways face contorted in anger I let it fall. Again and again I chopped through the lush growth, severing it from its roots.

I caught my breath and smiled. Anya continued to heap her curses on me, even as she ran her fingers through her cropped hair savoring the new weightless freedom of her head and neck.

I lifted Anya, propped her outside the back door. Then I went to Baba’s bed, wrapped her brittle body in a sheet, and carried it into Anya’s room. I covered it in lace, arranged the armfuls of Anya’s red-gold hair around the head as if it grew there.

I blew out the candles. Moonlight from the one narrow window fell across Baba’s face.

The men had gathered again at the front door; they smashed their fists against it. The whole house shook. Their voices rose in unison.

I opened the door. The faces, thirty or more, filled the doorway, a single creature with many heads and countless hands. They reeked of musk and sweat and foul saliva held too long in the mouth.

Do you want to see her? I said.

They closed their mouths and nodded; I held the door open and they tramped past me. Heedlessly they stumbled into Anya’s room, pressing around the bed, all of them packing in at once.

I locked the bedroom door behind them.

Then I went outside, hoisted Anya across my back, and staggered out into the snow.

Soon we heard the screams, the blows, the breaking of glass, the splintering of wood. I tried to hasten my steps.

I had nearly reached the trees when I heard the crash of the door being broken down. Men were pouring from the house. Anya gripped my ear. I longed to fling her down in the snow and run, but she was so heavy I was rooted to the spot.

But the men did not come after us, though my tracks were clearly visible in the snow.

They were brawling with each other, hurling accusations, trampling the snow, staining the clearing with blood, beating each other with their fists. Each was accusing the other of touching the fairy-girl, as they had been warned not to do. Each blamed the others for turning their dream-woman into a rotting bag of bones and dust.

All of them held skeins of red-gold hair wrapped around their fists, or balled in their mouths.

I set out again, with Anya bouncing on my back like a sack of grain. Far away, down in the village, I saw a line of lights steadily approaching. It was the women of the village, who had finally decided to take matters into their own hands. They came carrying torches and kitchen knives, some with babies bound to their breasts. They were coming to burn out the witch, break her enchantments and end her filthy practices, and bring their husbands home.

I could hear them singing.

I walked for hours in the dark.

Near dawn I let Anya slide from my shoulder. Her skin was blotchy from the cold, her lips blue, her patchy hair disheveled. Looking at her flabby face, her piggish black nostrils, I remembered the strange desire I had once felt for her and wondered when exactly I had left it behind.

She rubbed her hands, glared at me.

I cleared a space in the snow, gathered dry sticks, lit a match. We huddled together, our breaths making clouds.

I heard a footstep and my heart froze.

A huge shape darted from among the trees, paused in the early-morning light, and squatted before our fire.

Anya gasped.

I smiled.

Ari picked at his teeth and watched us warily, crouching on his heels. He had grown a great deal in the months since I had seen him. He was broad shouldered, bulky, shaggy as a bear. His beard had begun, though he was still a child. Some clumsy past attempts at shaving had left scabs on his face. But his eyes were the same, and the curve of his spine graceful as a horse’s neck.

Oh Ari, I said. I went to him and cradled his head in my arms, stroking the stiff hair. He looked up at me, sighed, and curled his lip in the grimace that was as close as he came to a smile.

My brother, I told Anya. He can carry you, I said.

Ari’s lips were chapped and bleeding, and he licked at them hungrily. Did you escape? I asked him. Although it was obvious, from the coarse uniform he wore. The cheap army-issue boots were falling to pieces.

I tried to hold his hands. He shook me away as he always did. Then I noticed the leg iron, rusted with dried blood, on his left ankle.

Anya was watching us, fascination and disgust on her face.

I knew the soldiers would be looking for him. I had to bring him to a safe place. I knew we should have started walking right then. Ari could have taken Anya off my back. We might have gone a good distance before night.

But I fell asleep, my head pillowed on my arms.

Sometime later I struggled out of sleep to see Ari and Anya staring at each other across the fire. Ari looked at her with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, the way he looked at a new animal he had never seen before. His mouth worked; his fingers plucked at each other nervously. He ducked his head, then looked back at her and laughed. His laugh was a harsh sound, like choking.

Anya was pleased by his attention, I could tell. I could see the familiar, languid, lazy expression creep over her face. Ari held her eyes and eased slowly, fluidly closer.

Anya smiled. And then she ever so slightly loosened her coat, showed him a patch of white skin at her throat.

Ari reached out slowly to touch a stray bit of hair. She laughed nervously. And then Ari grunted, leaped, pounced. Suddenly she was splayed out in the snow. Ari had his mouth at her throat and was tearing insistently at her clothes, twisting her head this way and that, pressing and tugging at her limbs, sniffing in her ears and eyes.

He was just a child. He was only trying to see how she worked.

Anya screamed.

She screamed and screamed and would not stop screaming, not when I pulled Ari away from her, not when I slapped her face, not when the company of soldiers in their ugly brown uniforms came running stiffly through the trees, barking orders to each other and surrounding my brother with their guns.

They had been tracking my brother for two days; they had recently lost his trail but Anya’s voice led them back.

I stood and watched as my brother was taken away. The officer of the company stood beside me and barked orders. He wore tall shiny boots and carried a riding crop which he flicked impatiently against his leg. Between orders he ground his teeth; I could hear the rasp and squeak.

He sent one of his subordinates to fetch a horse and bring Anya back to the army camp. The other officers will be very glad to make her acquaintance, he said. I told him about her feet; he shrugged and said she would not need them.

I could not look at her as she was taken away. Her screams still echoed in my head. That gaping mouth.

Now I stood alone with the officer. I was not afraid of him. I could see his viciousness, it was something I understood. I had seen it before.

You should give up on my brother, I told him. He will never learn.

I’m not yet convinced of that, he said.

He’s too old, I said, he has been the way he is for too long for you to change him.

There are ways, he said.

What if there were others just like him? I said. Other ones, as big as him, and as strong, but young enough to teach the way you want.

What are you saying?

We have younger brothers, I told him. Take one of them, take all three of them, train them, and give up on Ari.

The officer chewed over the idea. I heard his teeth clicking.

What is the name of your village? he asked finally.

My village was too small to have a name.

So he said I would have to show him. He hoisted me up behind him on his horse, and we rode, to the jangling of bit and spurs, over hills and through forests, and I clung to his belt and felt immense hatred for the layer of red, bristly flesh that bulged over the collar of his uniform.

I did not know what would happen next. My younger brothers were not at all like Ari; they were ordinary, big headed, knobby kneed little boys with runny noses. I did not want to give them up to this officer. In my desperation I had been thinking only of my mother. I thought somehow that if I brought this man back to my mother, she would find a way to make everything all right. This man’s viciousness was no match for my mother’s.

As we jolted and galloped over hard-packed snow, I thought of her and wanted to crawl into her lap. She had managed to bring me home after all.

I knew she would smell us coming, with her nose for soldiers. I thought of her eyes snapping, skirts whirling as she formulated plans.

My mother.

We rode until we came to a place that I knew so well, I knew the shape of the hills and the bend in the river. I felt a pang as I thought of home.

We crossed the last rise, emerged from the trees.

The village was gone.

It was a black scar in the snow.

We rode slowly down the only street. The houses were blackened skeletons, still smoking. A bloated cow lay in the road, legs in the air. Dogs, cats, goats lay in frozen twisted shapes in the gutters, daubed with red.

The smoke made black smudges in the sky.

I saw blotches and blooms of blood flowering on walls. I saw a boy’s cap in the road, cupping something dark and gelatinous.

I saw a familiar skirt. I saw a fork, a spoon. I saw a pair of severed feet, lined up as neatly as shoes beside a doorway.

I thought of Anya and how she could use them, and I heard myself laughing.

I pressed my face against the officer’s sour back so I would not see any more.

We are too late, the officer said musingly. He was riding slowly, looking about.

Such a pity, he said, such a waste.

I thought I heard a softness in his voice.

To think—three more just like your brother, he said. That would have been amazing. Our company would have been the best in the division.

He clucked his tongue at the horse as it shied at a child’s dress blowing on the wind.

I held myself stiffly away from him all the way back to the army camp.

I told myself that my mother had escaped, of course she had, she must have scented the impending disaster, certainly at this very moment she and my father were hiding in the woods with my brothers and sisters gathered around, roasting potatoes over a fire, my mother a whirlwind of activity and foresight.

I still felt hope, I did, I held my chin like my mother always did. I told myself I would be brave like her, and resourceful, and I would do what I had to do to save them all.

I ought to skip the next part of the story, you are too young to hear it.

But I won’t.

When we returned to the soldiers’ camp, the officer offered me another bargain, a trade. Your brother’s release in exchange for the pleasure of your company, he said.

Just a little while, he said. It won’t take long.

We stood in the mud, among tents and milling horses and the jangle of harnesses and spurs. A subordinate came to take the officer’s horse; as it was led away I saw that its legs were still flecked with the soot and debris that had once been my village.

I looked at the officer whose eyes were set too close together, pinching his nose. Hair in his nostrils. I thought of my mother, her power over men, men meaning my father, the way my father jumped to do her bidding and cowered from her though she was half his size. And I thought of Anya, who could make men act like fools or grunting animals simply by rolling her eyes at them.

I knew I was stronger than Anya. I had carried her on my back, I had dragged her through the snow. She was weak, I thought, and stupid, and not even whole, and yet she had driven a townful of men to madness.

If she had that sort of power, I reasoned, then surely I did too. I looked at the officer, who was tapping his riding crop against his boots, flicking away flecks of mud, admiring them.

I thought: surely I can get the better of him.

I thought: I will drive him mad, he will do whatever I say. Because that is what women do to men.

I thought: that is what Anya did, and I am far better than her, look at my two perfect feet. Cold but lovely.

That was my reasoning. I thought it sound at the time.

I nodded and the officer took me by the arm, not companionably, he grasped me near the armpit and jerked me toward the inn where the officers had their rooms.

And in that room, which was low ceilinged and too warm, I saw how his body drooped without the stiff uniform, saw the flabby ring of flesh at his waist that matched the one on his neck. And he laid his hands on me, hands that looked like disease, with their knobby joints and yellow nails. He began pulling off my clothes and I wanted to change my mind but the door was locked and it was already too late, I was backed into a corner behind the bed, a high bed with an iron frame made of bars like a prison cell.

He pulled off my clothes, layer after layer, and it took a long time, and I was aware suddenly of how my clothes reeked of goat and ash and the tart sweat of panic, and I was momentarily ashamed. But he kept pulling and tugging and did not notice, hardly seemed to see me at all, I was a service, less to him than his horse or the subordinate who had taken it away.

It was all happening too fast; I was not having the expected effect on him but it was too late, he snapped a cord and the last of my clothing fell and pooled at my feet. I felt as if he had gone too far, as if he had gone beyond my clothes and stripped off a layer of skin, my body felt raw and sensitive all over like a fresh cut, a hangnail.

This was the moment when he was supposed to grovel at my feet, look up at me with worshipful eyes like the men in Anya’s room. Instead he muttered something about chicken bones and boosted me onto the bed.

He threw himself upon me, and I undid my hair and let it fall all around so at least he would not see my face as he did what he did. He puffed and groaned and breathed his sour breath into me, and dug out the deep places in my body and scraped and chafed against them so long I thought I would develop calluses before he was done, and as he did this I looked up at the ceiling at a crack in the plaster that seemed to be branching and spreading even as I watched it, like the crack in an egg as the chick begins to peck its way out into a harsh new world.

When he was finished he lost no time in getting back into his trousers. He put on his tunic, polished his boots with a cloth and then put them on, gazing down at them fondly. He was brisk, efficient, on his way to a fine dinner, no doubt.

I asked him when I would see my brother.

He laughed into the mirror. He was smoothing his mustache with oil.

You’ll never see your brother again, he said.

You promised, I said.

If you want a promise kept you should get it in writing, he said.

Your brother’s no better than a horse, he added, if they can’t train him they’ll take him out back and shoot him.

I leaped from the bed, landed on his back, sank my teeth into his neck. I could not inflict much, his flesh was leathery tough meat, my teeth could not pierce it.

He smashed the handle of his pistol down on my fingers and I fell from him. He raised his foot to kick, but the polished perfection of the boot made him reconsider. He did not want to soil it, after all.

He stepped around me, put on his coat, paused at the door. I expect you to leave here before nightfall, he said. And he added: Rinse the sheets before you leave. There’s water in the basin.