Джанет Фитч - Chimes of a Lost Cathedral

Finally, the old woman opened the door, making violent crosses with handfuls of herbs, as the daughters walked me as far as the threshold, where I gulped fresh air like cold, sweet spring water, as much as I could get until the witch slammed the door again. “Satisfied? There are dangers you can’t begin to understand. Spirits who would love to kill you and your child.” Pointing at me with her bony finger like a prosecutor. “You have to trust me. I’ve been through this a few times. I have six daughters, all born in this very bathhouse. All living.”

“I have a daughter too,” said the blue sister.

“And I have two,” said the red one.

The witch had daughters who had daughters who had daughters… all the daughters in the world, stretching before us like the mirrored hall at Versailles. It was nauseating. I sank to my knees in the herbs and straw, rocking my hard belly back and forth like a bell. We shall not hear those bells… No, we would not. Not those saintly chimes, only mournful gongs and the blatting of car horns. Or worse. The screams and cries of the damned.

The midwife stood, her hands on her broad knees. Oh no, was she giving up on me? I was really going to die. I clutched at her leg. “Don’t go! I’ll be good. I’ll walk. Please.”

“You’ll be fine. Give her the rest of that milk,” she told the red one. “And you drink it.” Pointing at my nose. She left me sobbing there on the dirt floor, in the straw. Like a beast in a stall.

“I have to go too,” said the blue one, patting my shoulder. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“No! You can’t…” They were abandoning me!

“Send Sonya,” the red one called over my collapsed form.

I lay curled in the straw, weeping and mumbling childhood prayers. O Holy Theotokos, save us for we have no other help than you. So this was what it was like to die. You begged for it. I went from sweating to shivering as the angels goggled overhead. I swore at them while the red sister helped me onto the bench, covered me with the sheepskin. I lay trembling so violently I had to hold on to the rough wood not to fall. I faded into sleep. And dreamed of the bathhouse spirit, Bannik, a disagreeable dwarf with a huge nose and chin, sniffing the air. Where is that baby… But it wasn’t here yet. He would have to wait.

I dozed between contractions, lay on the broad bench watching beads of light through the chinks in the door—a constellation of glowing, elongated ovals projected onto the straw, where they took on a life of their own. I knew they were visitors from other dimensions. If only I could speak to them. Their presence reminded me of Ionia, and all the training I’d had there. I remembered Natalya— breathe in chaos, breathe out light . I breathed and thought of her, attacked by soldiers… Did anyone escape this curse of the body? The body, the body… I counted the small lozenges of light like a rosary.

Sometime later—hours, days?—the door opened again. Not the midwife, but another daughter, younger still, her hair braided, wearing a rose sarafan with a white apron, carrying a pail. I was shaking so violently I thought my teeth would break. The woman in red spoke to the girl, took her braids down, untied what knots she could find on her, then left us alone, gone before I could gather the breath to beg her to stay. The rose girl could not have been more than sixteen. Oh God. She sponged my forehead nervously. I pushed her away, her clumsy touch. I wanted the midwife and her great-armed dolls, blue and red.

Time refused to move. Another wave—an enormous hand, crushing me, cracking my spine. The angels came closer but I snarled at them and cursed. “Stop looking at me!”

“Who?”

I kicked off the sheepskin. Who was this, lying in someone’s shift on the bare bones of a bench, in a stink of sweat, her skin on fire? “Is it night yet?” I asked. “Just tell me that much.”

“It’s July,” the girl said. “It won’t be night for hours.”

Night. Such a beautiful word. A big darkness, not this musty closed-in armpit, everything cool and quiet under the indifferent stars. The richness of night’s satin robes, not this straw-filled abattoir. Between the pains, I breathed and whispered the names of the stars in the Moving Group, Alioth, Mizar, Merak, Phad, Megrez, Alcor, as the girl stared at me and crossed herself. Did she think it was a spell? The stars, born together, moving together through great time and space. The birth of stars was something to hang on to as my tenders came and left. I could smell food on them, smoke… A world was taking place out there as I was dying. This was life’s bitter secret. While someone was being torn apart, dying of fever, flayed alive, the world continued. Icarus fell from the sky and the peasant went on plowing. Not even his ox looked up.

They always left one behind to watch me. One skeined wool, another tooled a bit of leather. The red one came back from dinner, stinking of garlic. Sometimes there were two and they marched me around, gossiping about village happenings. In between pains they asked me where I came from, how I’d gotten so far from home. I couldn’t remember. My saviors, my tormentors. While overhead, the angels gawked and rustled their leather wings.

My labor was becoming permanent. I had stopped trying, stopped crying. Every few minutes the pain woke me, pain going nowhere, doing nothing but killing me. Then I fell back into feverish sleep. I dreamed of horrible, pointless things, like pulling hair from the ground, hand over hand. Finding a rusted metal doll left behind in a fire. This was no child, it was a monster. It wasn’t even a birth, it was a sentence, like being tied to four horses and pulled to pieces. The angels rustled overhead, like theater patrons with their programs.

At last, the red woman opened the door and I saw darkness. Cool air. She said a prayer to the evening star. It was my last night on earth. This is how death came. Your child wouldn’t be born, you were too weak, it was the wrong time, the wrong place. If only I hadn’t caught this fever. If only I’d gone back to Petrograd where I belonged. She sponged me with water, poured the milk into me a thimbleful at a time.

No more light beads to count now, only the flicker of the candle. Pain spread out like a stain. I collected it in my mind, forced it back small. Not a country but a pool, not a pool but a puddle, not a puddle but a bowl, a teacup. But just when I’d gotten it small, it flooded out again, a stain, a tide, and my city drowned. The pain erased all that was not me. And then it erased me as well, so only Pain itself was left. And Time. Time my rope, my line across the flood. But these women had no clocks. And the sun once up would never set. I would not outlive this contest. Death was coming.

Kolya, think of me! Could he feel the end of what he’d started? If we were as connected as he’d always professed, could he feel this? Oh, he’d think he’d overeaten, tossing in his bed.

As my minder dozed, I sensed something in the corner opposite the red one. Not the angels. This was a new figure, a somber woman dressed in a black cloak, with sorrowful Byzantine eyes like the Vladimirskaya Theotokos. So gentle, so dear. No Child at her cheek, and her skin was made of gold. Have you come for me, sorrowful Mother? Have you come to take me, wrap me in your arms? Is it time? Pity me, for I am so tired. You, who birthed a child knowing it would die, you who labored, help me now.

She didn’t speak, but we stared for centuries. There was no time in hell.

I don’t ask for life, I prayed to the dark Virgin. Only for an end to this pointless ordeal. Gentle Virgin of Death, come. Give birth to my end, stop this unholy siege. I surrender. She was coming near, the gold of her hands and of her face. At long and dear last, the Virgin of Death approached to gather up her weak daughter, with eyes of sorrow, preparing to deliver her final blessing. Take me, Holy Mother, and give me rest…