The Strangers of Kindness (16 page)

The evening would end, and Pasha would transform its morph into the Anna-twin, and slip across the street to take her place. The house seemed empty without its master, but these hours made Jared’s life worth living. Just sitting on the couch with Anna, hand in hand, seldom speaking, was enough for him. Once he started to put an arm around her shoulders, but she went rigid and he withdrew it instantly.

Her face bespoke remorse. “I’m sorry, Jared.”

“No, don’t be. I know better. You didn’t invite it . . .”

“That’s not it. You don’t know . . .” A small sob escaped her. “I can’t stand to be touched! Kalda—at night—”
 

Jared’s stomach slithered inside him. “Stop, you don’t need to say any more. I’m sorry. We can’t get in any deeper than we are anyway. It’s only heartbreak. I’m content just to be here with you, however long it lasts.”

A few nights later Pasha made another gift
nalsha
. The next morning Kriessa was holding court under her awning with two of her gossipy friends in attendance, and Kalda was on their porch, beaming his smarmy grin at passers-by and supervising Anna as she carried a keg of spice to a customer’s cart. Pasha took the bowl across and placed it on Kriessa’s table.

It leaned boyishly on an empty chair and plastered a fatuous smile on its morphed face. “Good lady Kriessa, please accept my trifling gift.”

Kriessa’s pig-like eyes lit up. “Pasha Sands! But how beautiful! Look, Kalda—look what Pasha Sands has brought us!” Her husband practically jumped at the table, wiping his hands on his shopkeeper’s apron. He grinned at Pasha, said, “Oh, my, what a lovely thing!”

But Pasha’s gaze was upon Anna and it might not have heard.

“Pasha?”

“Hm—yes? Oh, no, it’s really nothing. Not compared to . . .” It let the sentence die, and its eyes went back to the girl. Kalda and Kriessa exchanged glances and suppressed their smiles. Their visitor hung about and chatted, in a distracted way, for half an hour. Jared emerging from Pasha’s front door, sweating, to take brief refuge from the workshop’s inferno, provided a plausible excuse for his master to go back to its side of the street.

Pasha kept its back to the spice store murmuring, “What are they doing now?”

Jared shifted his weight to steal a peek over Pasha’s shoulder, then shifted back to conceal his face. Smiling, he whispered, “She’s already taken it into the house. Kalda went inside, too. There—Anna just gave me a quick look. She’s smart, Pasha, so smart. Not a gleam of a smile, but I know, she’ d laugh if she could . . .”

“Good! How did I do? Did you see? If it weren’t for the danger, I would so much enjoy this play-acting!”

“I wasn’t outside for most of it, Master. What I saw was very convincing.”

“Was I very much the foolish old man?”

Jared couldn’t stifle a snicker. “What I did see of you, yes, sir. Kalda thought so, too. I caught him rolling his eyes at his wife.”

“Excellent!”

Jared gradually realized that making the special
nalshas
extracted more from his master than making plain bowls did. He wondered, at first, why they weren’t just cranking them out as fast as they could, in order for Pasha to get on its way home faster. But the alien was always noticeably quieter after making one of the special ones, and moved slower for half a day or so. Then three or four more days would pass before it made another one. They stored them in the third bed-room in neat stacks. Several weeks progressed in that fashion. Pasha’s fortune grew as word of its unique wares spread by word of mouth. Its bemusement at the burgeoning sack of coins amused Jared. The metal disks obviously meant little to Pasha except allowing it to buy Jared’s food, or materials for the workshop.

But the children, now there was something Pasha treasured. “There’s a little one who drags around a tiny replica human,” Pasha told Jared as they toiled before the kiln. “Viladi, it calls itself.”

“Sure, the little girl. Isn’t she cute?”

“Yes, that’s the word. Her hairs are like the grape-vines, aren’t they?”

It took Jared a moment to realize Pasha meant she had curly hair. He laughed. “Yes, indeed,” and laughed again as Pasha made circling, bouncy motions with its fingers mimicking Viladi’s frolicsome curls.

“What is the replica for?”

“It’s a doll, Pasha!”

“What’s that?”

“Um. It’s a toy. Little girls like to play with them as though they were their own babies.”

Pasha stared at him for a few moments, clearly trying to imagine one of its species carrying around such a thing. Jared watched it, thinking that it would be a great deal like himself hauling around a Kalda-doll. He shook his head; what a disagreeable thought.

“She’s full of questions! ‘ Why is the sky blue? Why won’t the river hold still? Where does your breath go?’ What is one to say to her? She doesn’t leave time to answer one question before she’s off to the next!”

“That’s a child for you. They’ re all like that. She’s just the one who’s grabbed your heart.”

“My what?”

“Um . . . I guess you call it
frombur
.”

Pasha smiled in delight, “Listen to you! You’ re learning my language!”

The next time Jared came up to cool off outside, he grinned to see Viladi leaning against Pasha’s knees, listening raptly to some nonsense poem it was making up on the spot. The other children crowded around, egging Pasha on, supplying silly rhymes. Jared’s gaze turned by habit to the store across the street, and met Anna’s. She stood with the straw broom, suspending for a moment her sweeping as she, too, watched Pasha and the children. Jared saw her blink rapidly and turn away to continue cleaning, but he thought he’ d seen a tear slide down her cheek. He looked at the children again. Suddenly he hated them, symbols of the life he and Anna could never have together.

He went back to the workshop. Soon his resentment dissolved in the effort and satisfaction of glass-blowing.

Two more weeks passed. Anna visited them three times during the period, and Pasha decided it was time to make another gift bowl for her owners. While Jared slept that night, Pasha crafted the gift. This time it wanted Jared to be outside to observe its performance so it waited indoors until Jared woke just after dawn, as he usually did. It waited while Jared made himself a bowl of hot corn-meal and ate it.

“No, don’t rush yourself, eat all you want,” it said, all the while hopping from one foot to the other with impatience. Jared knew from experience how corn-meal could turn to mortar in the stomach if eaten too fast, but he tried to hurry anyway. By the time they got outdoors, the sun had climbed almost to the tops of the trees lining the river near the end of the street. Pasha stopped Jared with a hand on his arm. They looked up and down the street, then at each other.

“Where is everybody?” Pasha said.

“I don’t know,” Jared said, sudden dread pulling at his heart. “This is strange . . .”

Kriessa appeared in her doorway and saw them. She gestured for them to approach.

“What is it?” Pasha asked. “Has something happened?” She nodded with her face ostentatiously grave. She pulled Pasha into the house.

“One of the children,” she began.

“Oh no!” Jared cried involuntarily, and she glared at him. He fell back lowering his gaze but wished she’ d quit making melodrama and tell them what had happened.

“They were playing by the river this morning. Pasha, I know you love the children. I’m so sorry . . .”

Pasha was completely lost. “Madame Kriessa, I don’t understand.”

“Little Viladi has drowned.”

Jared wheezed like he’ d been punched in the stomach, and Pasha immediately did the same. Watching his master through tear-blurred eyes Jared realized that Pasha was only copying the reaction, still ignorant of what had happened. He took Pasha’s arm to make the alien look at him, to continue aping human emotions. He could explain it when they were home alone. Pasha saw Jared’s distressed expression, and did a passable job of imitating what it saw. It handed the bowl to Kriessa without a word, and groped for the entrance. Jared, still holding Pasha’s arm, glanced over his shoulder. The woman had forgotten all about the tragedy, she was inspecting the new bowl.

Once safely home Pasha seized Jared’s arms. “Jared, I don’t understand! What’s happened? Where’s Viladi?”
 

Having to explain this wrung Jared’s heart. “She’s dead, Pasha.”

Blank incomprehension.

Jared tried again. “Dead. No longer living?”

Pasha shook its head.

“Pasha, the end of life! She’s gone! Forever!”

Horror stretched Pasha’s features. “No. How can this be? There was no
emppakka
—Jared, this cannot be. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Who took her?”

Shock and sorrow made it even harder to think. “Pasha, surely you understand dying. We all live the life that God gives us, then we’ re done. God takes us. That’s where Viladi is, God took her. Oh,” he sobbed, “it’s unfair to take such a little one! But sooner or later it happens to all of us.”

Pasha patted his shoulder absently. “There, Jared. I’m sorry you’ re so upset. But she’ll be back eventually. You know that.”

Jared stared at his master, aghast. “No, Pasha. She won’t. She’s gone, forever. There will be a funeral, tomorrow probably, and her body will be buried, and no one will ever see her again on this earth.”

“But she hasn’t reproduced! She hasn’t made any little Viladis! She didn’t choose
emppakka
, did she?”
 

Jared’s shock and confusion had abated. He took Pasha’s hand and moved to sit next to the confused alien on the couch. “I really wish I didn’t have to explain this to you, Master, at least not for this reason. Poor little Viladi. But it’s plain that you don’t understand what our lives are here, where you’ve come so accidentally.”

As gently and clearly as he could, Jared told his master about earthly mortality. He knew it understood when his master said, gazing deep into his eyes, “Then you, too, will end some day?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And little Anna? Kriessa? All of you?”

“Each of us will have our own ending.”

Pasha pondered it all afternoon, sitting with its hand over its eyes on the upstairs couch while Jared went back down to the workshop and made more bowls, not knowing what else to do. He worked automatically, lost in sad thought, never thinking to go outside to cool off. He was near heat exhaustion when Pasha climbed down the ladder and spoke.

“Jared,” Pasha began, and the young man twitched, startled from his reverie. Then he swayed, suddenly dizzy. Pasha noticed. “You must come upstairs,” it said. “You’ve been down here too long.”

They stood in the water-room and Pasha bathed him, clucking worriedly.
 

“It’s my fault. I wasn’t paying attention.” Jared assured it, “I’m better already. It’s nothing, Master. You wanted something when you came down?” A tenderness he’ d never seen before softened Pasha’s features.
 

“I’ve been thinking about you people. My stay here has been mostly an adventure to me, a wonderful new source of curiosity and even entertainment. I didn’t realize you lived with this knowledge, that you would someday end. Die, as you say. Did you understand, Jared, when I told you about our little ones, that we have no death? I am, quite truly, part of my parent, and it is part of the previous parent. We all go on, though. We have our, our parents’ memories, our flesh is made from their flesh. Oh, each life has its own experiences, so there is some—some newness added with each generation. But essentially, we are all the same, immortal being.” It peered at Jared. “Do you understand?”

“I do now.” Jared felt slightly ill. He couldn’t tell if it was the heat or the fact that he did, indeed, understand what Pasha was telling him. This was far more alien and frightening than Pasha’s true physical appearance had ever been. He clung to his experience of the alien’s kindness. “That’s all that matters,” he told himself desperately.

“This dying,” Pasha went on, “I can hardly comprehend. You people love one another! How can you do it! When you know that those you love will someday cease to be? Such courage makes me ashamed.”

“Why should you feel ashamed?”

“I have underestimated your species. Even those two
morgumps
across the street, they are more courageous than I could ever be.”

Jared kept his opinion of that to himself. “We don’t have much choice, Pasha. That’s just the way it is for us.”

They got word that Viladi’s funeral would take place the next morning. Their evening meal was somber. Pasha hardly touched his sand; Jared merely picked at his plate of bulgur and peppers.

The entire village turned out for the funeral. This was to be expected, for Viladi’s father was the village mayor. His wife, bulging in late pregnancy, had to be supported by two female relatives on the long walk up the hill to the village burial plot. The procession, led by the priest resplendent in blue robes and crowned with a terrifying coronet of copper needles, appropriate to the tragic occasion, raised a cloud of incense and dust that choked the air.

Pasha and Jared followed after Kalda and Kriessa. Anna trailed behind her master and mistress just ahead of her two benefactors. Jared hoped in his secret heart that she would look back at him but was just as pleased that she didn’t. It wasn’t a time for social or romantic indulgence. Her sensitivity made him proud.