The Necessary Beggar (32 page)

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Authors: Susan Palwick

BOOK: The Necessary Beggar
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He remembers how convinced he was that everything he saw was real.
People in Gandiffri do not believe in ghosts. Timbor has ignored his dreams because he knows, as everyone in Lémabantunk knows, that the dead cannot converse with the living, that the Great Breaking cannot be mended. But drunks foregoing drink believe their visions, and Macsofo is about to battle crabs and snakes and lizards of his own.
Very well, then. Darroti will give him something else to watch.
That is one thing he must do. There is another. For somehow Zamatryna must be made aware of Jerry's love, the love that is so much like Darroti's for Gallicina. Jerry must convince her to let him in, to think he is important. He must be made to understand more than she thinks he can. He must be made family.
If Darroti can do this, if he can help Jerry's love succeed, his own love will be redeemed. If Jerry can win Zamatryna, then all the pain and waste of
exile will not have been for nothing. If Darroti sees them happy, then it will begin to be all right that he ruined his own chance of happiness. And then perhaps his memories will not torment him so.
Darroti has a plan. Darroti has several plans. Darroti's plans multiply like the slugs in the garden. But to do what he wishes to do, he will need to acquire new skills. Can the dead change, here? He has already learned new things. Can he do new things?
Well, he must try.
In Gandiffri, the spirits of the dead were contained: a spirit in a leaf could only move in the wind that blew the leaf. Darroti has believed that he is tethered to his family; he has believed that he is a discrete entity, a fixed and finite mass. But he no longer has a body, so maybe he is wrong. Perhaps he is not bounded, or bounded only by his own beliefs.
Darroti begins to experiment.
He practices taking different shapes. He spreads himself into a thin mist near the ceiling; he oozes through the cracks under doors; he succeeds, at last, in walking through a wall. He discovers that, indeed, he is not bound by the rules his body followed. He knew this before, in a puzzled kind of way—he sensed that he could creep inside Zamatryna's desk if he chose, just as every night he curls weeping inside the towel—but he did not realize the extent of it. The dead have powers here, however limited.
Darroti shapeshifts all over the house, navigating the storms of crisis. The family is oblivious, as always; if he creates any disturbance, how could they tell, in the midst of all their other troubles? And for now, for just a little while longer, he wishes it that way.
That is the first step, taking different shapes. Now for the second, much more frightening. Can Darroti break the tether to his family, to this house? And if he does, will he be able to return?
If he becomes lost, then all is lost. But if he does not try, then all is already lost.
And so he tries.
Darroti travels through the window, into the garden. It is a cool autumn day, the sunlight brilliant on the river, on the leaves, on the last flowers in the garden, goldenrod and purple aster. Darroti rises far above the house, swimming through the air. He feels the tether tighten; he pulls against it. It will not give.
In pain, he swims back down, through fragrant falling leaves. The tether slackens.
Back up. Pull, pull. Again the tether tightens; again Darroti's fear and caution yank him down again.
He weeps above the garden; his salt tears glisten on the goldenrod like dew. This cannot be. He cannot let it be.
And so he tries again. He remembers his love for Gallicina; he summons his love for his family, his love for Lémabantunk, his love for the boy Jerry, whose love will save Darroti. Darroti rises on a current of love, like the current of love he felt from the boy himself.
And the tether stretches. Warmed by the love, it softens like taffy, becomes endlessly elastic. It will not hold him now, and neither will it break. It will let Darroti go wherever his plans require him to go, and it will lead him home. It will not allow him to be lost.
Exultant, Darroti soars above the house, above it and around it, swooping like the hawks he sees flying above the mountains. Perhaps his plans will work. Perhaps, for once, something he attempts will reach fruition. Perhaps, for once, he will not be a failure.
But there is one more skill to learn, the hardest.
Darroti goes back into the house, back into the bookshelf, back into the towel. This is his safest place. Nothing bad can happen here. He goes into the towel, and there he becomes water. And there he pulls himself from himself, as a single water drop will separate in two.
It is very difficult, at first, very frightening. But at last, now, there: he has succeeded. He is in two pools, one on the right side of the towel, one on the left. Two pools of Darroti, joined by a tether of love. And now he moves the two sides of himself together again, flowing back into one pool.
Apart again. Together again. Apart again.
More confident, this time he tries to break the tether, to cut the bond between the pools, but he finds it will not break. He pulls and tugs, and still it will not break. He begins to believe that it would not break if he wanted it to.
Darroti smiles.
Darroti practices being in two places at once.
Blessings
Zamatryna sat in the Pneumatic Diner on a Friday morning, eating eggs. The Pneumatic Diner boasted neon on the ceiling and amateur psychedelic art on the walls. The décor was guaranteed to induce migraine, but the food was excellent. Zama looked at the eggs so she wouldn't have to look at the walls or at Jerry, who sat across from her. “You do that a lot,” he said.
“I do what?”
“You look at your food, instead of at me.”
She glanced up at him. “Jerry, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I didn't call you to tell you about Betty. I just—things got a little crazy. You know. Betty, my aunt and uncle splitting up, school starting again—”
“I know. It's okay. Your grandfather told me about Betty. Is she doing better now?”
“Well, I guess. Better's relative, isn't it? She got out of the hospital, went back in, and now she's about to get out again. Without that surgery, she doesn't—well, she doesn't have much time. It sucks.”
She hadn't seen Jerry for almost three weeks. She'd dodged his calls, avoided him at school, ignored his messages. Finally, yesterday, she'd found him waiting outside one of her classes, holding a bouquet of flowers. Sarah-Bee had been there too, and had nearly fainted at how romantic Jerry was. “I guess playing hard to get really works, huh?” she'd said with a sigh.
Zamatryna didn't think Jerry was romantic, and she hadn't been playing hard to get. Jerry was a pain in the ass, even though he'd helped Betty—maybe because he'd helped Betty, because he'd seen Zamatryna at her least competent—and Zama had been avoiding him because she didn't have the courage or energy to break up with him directly. She didn't know if
he'd heard about the INS scandal, or if he'd thought to connect it to her. The family was still waiting nervously for an official phone call or a knock on the door, but so far there had been only silence. They kept hoping they'd be overlooked. Lisa said not to count on it. “That clerk was pond scum, frankly, and I'm sure he still is. He'll sing like a bird to reduce his sentence. And he can't have made many single deals much bigger than ours.”
So, basically, they were going to be toast, although they didn't know when. And in the meantime Macsofo had been struggling with do-it-yourself detox: he'd start to dry out, have hideous DTs, go back on the sauce again, and try to dry out again. He was on his third attempt. Lisa kept demanding that they take him to a hospital, but Max simply refused to go. So, Zamatryna thought grimly, they might have another corpse on their hands soon.
They didn't know where Aliniana was. She called the house occasionally to ask for things—clothing, cooking supplies—which she picked up from Harani at work. She wouldn't say where she was staying, or what her phone number was, or whether she was really having an affair. The cousins had arrived en masse one day, ignoring their father and his frantic questions, to pack up their belongings. Zama thought, on the whole, that this was evidence against the affair—the children couldn't afford to stay by themselves, and surely Aliniana wouldn't want them with her if she were in the middle of a grand passion—but there was no way to know for sure.
In short, everything was a mess. And the last thing Zamatryna needed on top of everything else was Jerry and his clueless questions; she couldn't possibly explain to him what was happening. But, holding his bouquet, he'd doggedly insisted on taking her to lunch; when she told him she had to work, he'd insisted on breakfast the next morning. She hadn't been able to think of any good ways to get out of that one, so here she was.
“So,” she said, “how've you been?” Inane. Inane, Zama. You don't care how he is. Stop being nice to him: tell him you don't want to see him again, because shooting him between the eyes is the only message he'll get.
“Well,” he said, “I've been having these really strange dreams.”
“They have psychiatrists for that,” she said coldly. Jerry's dreams were the last thing she needed.
He picked up a piece of toast and examined it thoughtfully before taking a bite. “The dreams are about you.”
Oh, great. “You're obsessing about me? They have psychiatrists for that, too.” She knew she was being bitchy: she didn't care. Maybe he'd get the message and go away.
Jerry shook his head. “They aren't dirty or anything. Not that—well, never mind. Zama, this is going to sound nuts. But are you and your family from, um, like, another dimension or something?”
She stared at him. For a moment she forgot to breathe. “Excuse me?”
“I told you it was going to sound nuts. But look, I know you're not from Afghanistan. At least, I don't think you're from Afghanistan. There's a guy from Afghanistan who works in my mom's office. I told him about you. He's never heard of kids in Afghanistan memorizing epic poems about geometry. He's never heard of kids
anywhere
memorizing epic poems about geometry. And I couldn't find any epic poems about geometry on the Net.”
“Maybe you weren't using the right keywords,” Zamatryna said. Her fingers felt glued to her fork, the same way they'd felt glued to her cell phone the night she and Jerry followed Betty to the ER.
“Maybe I wasn't,” Jerry said. “But then—then that INS story broke, you know, the one about the clerk—”
“Yes. I know.”
“I thought you would,” Jerry said, taking a deep breath. “And I did the math, and the dates seemed right. And then the dreams started. And I've been having them every night. Always pieces of the same story. About how you and your family used to live in Lémabantunk”—he pronounced it correctly, with a Gandiffran accent, and Zama felt a chill begin to travel up her spine—“only it was a city, not a village, and you lived together in a big house with lots of carpets and a courtyard, and there were lizards there, and your uncle killed someone, a woman, and so you had to walk through a shiny blue door, and you wound up here, in the camps, and your uncle killed himself on the fence and then when the bomb went off somebody smuggled you out in her van—”
“I'm leaving now,” Zamatryna said. She was standing next to the table; her plate was in pieces on the floor. She didn't remember standing up. She didn't remember the plate falling. “I'm going. I'm not listening to this. You—you—I have to get out of here. I have to get some air. I—”
“Get all the air you want,” Jerry said, “but I'm coming with you.” He followed her as she stalked out of the second-story restaurant; she noted in a daze that he tossed money at the cashier as he went—honest Jerry!—and as she raced down the stairs and out the door, he stayed stubbornly next to her, talking. “I dreamed about a doll you brought from home, but then it lost its eyes. I dreamed about the INS people trying to figure out where you came from. I dreamed about how you were trapped in the camps because you couldn't tell them. I keep dreaming it, the same story, and it all fits together and—Zama, is it true? Is any of it true?”
“You're insane,” she said, crossing First Street, heading toward the river. “Do you think anyone else will believe you if you say any of this? They'll have you committed. No one will—”
“I'm not going to tell anyone else!” He reached out now to grab her arm; he held her gently, but suddenly she couldn't seem to break away, although she'd fled before. “I wouldn't have told that guy in my mother's office if, if I thought, if I knew it might cause trouble, Zama, that's not what I want, Zama, would you please look at me? I just—these dreams are making me nuts. And maybe I am nuts. Maybe I need to be committed, just like you said. But I want to know, and you seem like the logical one to ask, and if it's true I won't tell a soul, I swear, I wouldn't do anything to get you into trouble. I want you to stay here. I love you. Zamatryna—”
“You
what?
” she said. He'd never used her full name before; she'd never told him what it was. Why did that bother her more than anything else?
“I love you.”
“You do not.”
He smiled. “Well, at least you're looking at me now.”
She looked away. “Jerry, this is—”
“So is it true?”
She swallowed. “Is what true?”
“That your name's really Zamatryna. And that you're from another dimension. And that you walked here through a blue door.”
She swallowed. She was sweating. He hadn't said anything about the beetle. Did that mean that the beetle itself was the only thing Zamatryna wasn't supposed to talk about? She didn't know. She couldn't work it all out. She didn't know how Jerry could be having these dreams. Her head hurt.
“I like Zamatryna,” he said, holding her by both arms now. “It's prettier than Zama. I'd be happy if that were your name. And if everything else is true—if it
is
true, you can talk to me about it. I swear. And I won't tell a soul. I just want to know. If it's true, or if I'm crazy.”
Stall. Buy some time. She looked up at him again, squinting, and said, “What do you think?” Something fell on her forehead. A raindrop. Where had that come from? There wasn't a cloud for miles.
She saw Jerry relax, saw something like wonder cross his face. “I think it's true.”
“You think it's true,” she said, as another impossible raindrop fell on her cheek. “And why do you think that, Jerry?”
“Because I dreamed about this, too. I dreamed that we were standing outside like this, and it started raining when it shouldn't have been. And I brushed the raindrops off your face, just like this, see?”
“Really,” she said. She wanted to back away from his hand, the fingers tenderly smoothing the water off her skin, but she couldn't. Why couldn't she? “And then what happened, in this dream of yours?”
“And then I kissed you,” Jerry said, and kissed her.
And now there was water on her face again, but it was tears, her tears, and she couldn't seem to stop crying, and Jerry guided her to a bench and sat her down and held her, saying “It's okay, it's okay, everything's going to be all right,” and kissing her hair and her hands and her forehead. “It's all right, Zama, Zamatryna—”
“No it's
not!
It's not all right! What are we going to do? They won't let us stay here, and we can't—there's nowhere else to go and—I don't understand how this can be happening! How can you be dreaming about my life? How can you know about my doll and the door and my uncle?”
“I don't know,” Jerry said, “but I do. Your uncle had a funny birthmark on his face, right? A mole like a starfish?”
“Yeah,” she said, shivering. “He did. How can you know that? How can you know any of this?”
“Who knows? But I do know it. And I know something else, at least, I think I do. I know what we can do so you can stay here. We can get married, and then you can sponsor your family—”
“Jerry,” she said, shaking her head, but somehow he was kissing her again and somehow she was kissing him back, enjoying it too much, she had to stop this, right now, before things got any crazier than they already were. She forced herself to pull away from him. “Jerry, no. Getting married wouldn't automatically make me legal, anyway. That's INS fraud all over again.”
“Only if you don't mean it,” he said, stroking her hair. “And it would help with the legal stuff, wouldn't it?”
She closed her eyes. “Jerry, look, I don't know how I feel about anything right now, too much else is happening—I—”
“I know,” he said. “It's one of those things you have to be sure about. Like anchovies.”
“Right,” she said in relief, opening her eyes. “Just like anchovies. Marriage is like anchovies. I like that.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. “I finally said something you think is smart.” And he kissed her again, and again she kissed him back, her body completely oblivious to the rational dictates of her conscious mind.
By the time she managed to extricate herself, she was sitting on his lap, and one of his hands was cradling the back of her head while another was halfway up her thigh, and she realized dimly that there was a series of warm,
moist spots up and down her neck, where Jerry had been kissing her. No. No no no. This wouldn't do at all. She blinked, noting a series of moist spots on Jerry's neck—yes, she'd been kissing him too, fancy that—and said, “I think I'm getting carried away here.”
“I'm heartbroken,” Jerry said. She had to laugh. He grinned and said, “See, I made you laugh. When's the last time you laughed? I have my uses, right?”
“Oh, come on! You saved Betty's life.”
He grimaced. “We both did. And the medics did. For the moment.”
“Yeah.”
“So let's talk about something happier. Tell me about marriage customs in Lémabantunk.”
“Jerry. No. Let's not, okay? Because even if I did mean it, the INS wouldn't think I did. Not with the timing the way it is.”

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