Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Don’t cry, little sister,” he said, and Delphine wept harder because he called her by this sweet name, and although she knew it meant his feelings for her were brotherly, not romantic, she was suddenly as happy as she was nauseated.

“I’ll be all right,” she heard herself blurt. She couldn’t help saying it, though she wasn’t all right and wanted to keep soaking up this delicious and unfamiliar male sympathy.

“I know you’ll be okay,” Cyprian said. “But you need help.”

He couldn’t have said a more perfect thing, and yet her experience of him so far was that he couldn’t do jack shit, except balance. If she depended on him, she was bound for disappointment, she thought, and yet the idea of purging the stink herself made her sob harder.

“I do need help,” she wailed.

Cyprian was gratified, and in that sweep of feeling he kissed her tenderly and passionately on her left temple, which throbbed hot red. He had come back lonely from the war and stayed that way, concentrating on his balance. His brothers had all moved far north into Cree country. His parents were drinkers. His grandparents had wandered off in disgust, headed for someplace where they could die in peace. Any uncles and aunts were living their own lives, the sort of lives he didn’t want to know about. He really was alone or had been until now. Things had gone past romance. At this moment things went deeper. He now had Delphine Watzka and Delphine’s father and also the terrible odor.

The smell emanated from the house as a solid presence. It lived there — an entity, an evil genie. For some reason, it did not cling to Roy Watzka. He smelled all right. Delphine and Cyprian loaded him into the car and drove back to town. They got a room at the hotel on the main street and left Roy there, curled happily around a pint of his favorite schnapps. It was no use trying to keep him away from the stuff, Delphine informed Cyprian. He would just go find it, and the search would put him into worse shape, get him into danger from which he was always difficult to rescue. The two of them bought a couple of shovels and a gallon of kerosene and went back to the house. They began to haul out the horrid junk, both swathing their faces in the scented scarves.

“I never liked this perfume,” Cyprian gasped, after he’d carried out the third shovel full of unidentifiable garbage.

“I’ll never wear it again, my love,” said Delphine. She could use these endearments, because now they both knew the grand passion between them was an affectionate joke. They were something else. They were not-quite-but-more-than family. And together, they stank. As though angry to be disturbed, the odor pounced on them. It wrestled with their stomachs. Every so often, one had to gag, which started the other going too. Delphine was an extremely determined person and Cyprian had been through the bowels of hell, but at one point, having penetrated to some sublimely sickening layer, they both rushed outside and had the same idea.

“Could we burn the whole place down?” Cyprian said, eyeing with longing the gallon of kerosene.

“Maybe we could,” said Delphine.

They dragged a couple of beer crates across the yard and had a long smoke. Eventually, they decided that they would persevere. In spite of the woozy atmosphere, Delphine was impressed by Cyprian’s ability to shovel and haul. They made a great heap of crud in the yard and set it immediately ablaze. The stuff gave off an acrid smoke and left a stinking ash, but the fire had a purifying effect on their spirits. They went to the work more cheerfully now, hauling, tossing, burning, without stopping to puke. By nightfall, they’d gone through a challenging strata of urine-soaked catalogues and newspapers. It appeared that Roy Watzka had invited his cronies over, and they’d used the pantry off the kitchen as a pissing parlor. One man could not have done so much, said Cyprian, but he got no agreement from Delphine.

“My father could,” she said, as they rested before the fire. Mercifully, the odor finally seemed to have blasted out their sense of smell. Nothing bothered them. They had no hunger or thirst. Nor aches or pains. They felt invincible. The house was nearly cleared out — step one.

The next step was more complicated. They believed that the source of the stink was burned to flakes of black tar, but the smell would surely linger in the boards and wallpaper, in the furniture. What substance would remove, not commingle, with such a thing? They had to retreat. After the fire went out, they went back to the hotel, sneaked in because they knew they carried with them the loathsome stench. In the room, Roy was already passed out.

With great foresight, extravagantly, they had rented a room with a private bath. Now Cyprian said gallantly, “You go first.”

“I can’t,” said Delphine.

“Shall we share a hot bath?” said Cyprian. They both felt very kindly toward each other. So Delphine ran the bath and dumped in a little bottle of fragrant hair soap. They got in together and soaped each other up and washed their hair. Cyprian leaned, sighing, against the backrest with Delphine between his legs. Together, they soaked. With her big toe, Delphine occasionally let some water out. Added more hot water. It was erotic, but not sexual, a kind of animal acceptance. Both took comfort in the ease they experienced being naked in the other’s presence. Plus, they were very grateful to be clean, though the stink lingered in their memory. They could feel the odor, and were both worried that they’d lost their smell-perspective. Maybe it had somehow entered them. Maybe they’d be kicked out of the breakfast café, where they planned to eat the next morning. Maybe they’d be ostracized in the street. They completely forgot about Roy until they’d dried off, and then Cyprian was startled by the rumbling bray from the next room.

“He snores,” said Delphine.

“That too?”

“Oh,” said Delphine. She looked at him, worried, and Cyprian looked back at her, standing unashamedly naked before him. Her body was compact, graceful, and tough. Her breasts were very beautiful. As if she was part fox, thought Cyprian, like a woman in one of his grandmother’s old stories. Her breasts were perfect golden cones with neat honey-colored nipples. He didn’t want to do anything, though — he just enjoyed looking at her.

“I wish I was an artist,” he said. “I’d draw you.” He began to dry her with a stiff towel. “God, your dad’s loud. Maybe I’ll sleep outside the door.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Delphine said. “You’ll be surprised. Just think of it as something in nature.”

“His snoring?”

“Like a storm, a big lake. Trees.”

The spluttering and thrashing that Cyprian now heard did not seem natural, and he doubted that he could take Delphine’s advice. But once he lay down and curled around her, he fell directly into a fabulous well of sleep in which he dreamed phenomenally. He dreamed of trees with their limbs cracked and creaking in wind, of hopping from ice floe to floe in a roaring torrent, of a sneaky gunpowder booby trap that blew up every time he tried to talk.

In the dream, he spoke freely to Delphine between the blasts of noise.

And what did I say, he wondered, waking slightly before he was sucked again into the black current of unconsciousness. What did I tell her? What does she know? For he hadn’t yet dared raise the subject of what she had seen or not seen back by the river in Manitoba. And it had happened so soon after that night — they’d never talked about that either — when they looked into each other’s eyes and their bodies had moved together in a way beyond anything they could have wished. Were they in love now, or had things drastically changed? Was she really his little sister, and the noisy drunk next bed over his new father? Perhaps, he thought, bobbing to the surface well before dawn, the smell had addled them all. Perhaps they were affected by the smell’s range and power. They would see. They would contend with it come morning.