Sarah Hall - The Electric Michelangelo

Her own troubles travelled down a long way into her, became mature in her voice like something that has churned and changed to a different substance after much motion and time. She slipped between identities, slipped the nets of conversations which would eventually trap her and pin her down. Her heritage was American, it was all she would ever say, slipping the country on like a large overcoat to cover her native dress. She knew the Polish butcher to affectionately call him Tatusiu, she knew her local synagogue Rabbi, the Italians, the Ukrainians, she bought bulk-sized bags of oats and rusk from the Jewish bakery at trade price. She knew the recipe for the pogácsa which the Hungarian mothers baked in ashes for their departing sons. She would send the men and women and children of southern Brooklyn to Euginio, Oceanic Walk’s resident dentist, saying that he was her uncle, she washed her dresses and headscarves alongside the black women that were domestic servants and the Japanese women and the poorer Jewish daughters at the great concrete and iron sinks of the washhouse because amongst the steam and suds gossip and songs translated into community. In the meat-packing district of the city she exchanged money with middle business men. Most people presumed her to be their own, emancipated but choosing to remain associated, and their presumptions simply made it so. It turned out she had the bad temper of every nation, showing it sporadically and viciously, and she could curse profoundly at anyone of any offending nationality as she could also console and toast and bless. She may have known the songs of the Saracens and the secrets of Cleopatra’s maidservants with their cosmetic confidentialities, the great kings of the Middle East, and every carnival cousin in Russia for all anyone knew about her. Her soul might have been loaned by one of several supreme or subordinate beings. She may have owned the petrified heart of Icarus and the charred harness of his blackened wings. She took to Coney like an otter to the shining, reedy river, had worked there for several years before Cy came to meet her. Those who knew her were not surprised by her choices, though this did little to undermine the irrevocable misfortune of her story.

They were neighbours. It was four in the morning and Cy was suddenly in possession of some new information regarding one of the tenants of his building — the one from 104, with the doorway smelling of the countryside. Her name was Grace. Her eyes were dark and productive, there were traces of auburn in her dark locks lit by the streetlamp and a piece of straw was sticking up from a roll of hair by her ear like a fashion accessory. She was a remarkable woman, he would soon find out, having a mind that went out like a rider on horseback to meet an enemy, both courageous and negotiating, but ultimately loyal to her own side. Both parties had been on their way home, walking away from the still riotous, still inebriated Island. Cy liked to walk at night when he was tipsy, it gave journeys a mythical feel.

As he passed by the small park several homeless drunks were sleeping on benches, or shuffling about in the undergrowth. The atmosphere was gestational and insect, creatures in the trees and bushes had woken up after winter from their larvae pods and were making music on their wings and hind legs. The bats above were intent on their business, flailing through the sky towards the presence of water or blood. Unrecognized species were stirring in black corners of the park, cruttering, scuttling, ratching. It was a night of city wildlife, it had something living and restless about it. As if it was ready for her entrance.

He did not meet her first. He met her horse, drinking furiously from the fountain at the entrance of the park itself, drinking as if it would drink the source dry. It was not startled when he came upon it. It turned its head in the water so that one profoundly placid eye could watch his approach. He had not seen a horse this close since leaving England, not even in the circus at Coney — the tiny, pig-like horses that the midget police department rode. This was a horse of quite larger proportions and in the dim light he could see that it was black, black-brown, or at least dark enough to look like a horse-shaped hole in the slightly lighter street. In fact, as he got closer, he found it was enormous, and it wore no bridlery or tackle. Warm with alcohol and enchanted by the irregular urban vision he moved towards the animal, which then stopped drinking from the old mossy font and raised its head. It snorted gently. It had obviously been positioned in his path for the sole purpose of improving upon his misty, bard-like composition. What better than a horse, the oldest and most trusted other half of ancient human-creature partnerships to petition his imagination? While dogs ran wild on the plains and in forests, horses were carrying warriors into battle, they were tilling the land and guiding pathfinders across perilous sand.

— Hello, boy, what are you doing out so late at night alone? Where did you come from then? Did you break out of somewhere, clever boy? Did you jump over a ten-foot hedge?

He put a hand up to its muzzle, rubbed where it was softest, where it felt like a piece of brushed muslin. The horse nosed his ear, snorted again and tugged on his long hair with its dripping, bearded mouth.

— Oh. He likes you.

A woman stepped out from behind or underneath the beast, it was not immediately clear, as if from a doorway in the massive creature, and she ran a hand along its lower flanks with familiarity. The gesture stated that this was her horse. She was obviously the owner. Like a lightning conductor she grounded the current of the dream and it brought him round a little from his reverie. She was in any case the antidote to his flight of fancy, her attire was much too plain and modern for one thing. She should have had on a cloak or shawl, something ethereal and medieval, and more fitting with the black horse at night, but she did not. Rather than being elfin or sprite-like she was dressed in a knee-length skirt and leather laced shoes, a plain blouse. There was a coat folded neatly over her arm. Her hair, but for the straw, was tidy, combed and pinned quite fashionably. It was as if she had of late finished typing documents in an office. Mostly it was her manner that evicted the gentle flocking thoughts in Cy’s mind. She had definition. Her hand on her hip and the cock of her head described a psyche impartial to flowing robes and the lore of women in inoffensive or precarious situations. She seemed to change position every once in a while and then hold very still. Her eyes, even in the inadequate light, were each a litany of struggle, strategy, and survival. Cy spent a good few moments reading her life’s history in them and then he pulled his hair free from the horse’s mouth.

— He’s yours?

The woman nodded, her eyes narrowing.

— Mine. I have a horse, but it’s a secret past this street here. I thought perhaps you suspected, living so close by. Perhaps we can be quite noisy, coming in and out as we do? And the building is … indiscreet. Señora Ubago is blind but it is amazing what her sources tell her.

Her eyes again shifted inwards a fraction while she waited for her answer, as if in assessment, and they reflected a sickle-shape of streetlight. For a moment she had the look of a lawyer laying down a verbal trap for a witness. Or a fox up against a loose board of the chicken shed. Cy stared at her for a moment, not comprehending what she had said and distracted by all that was unrestful and then focused about her. A small gong sounded in his head, neither alarm nor warning nor accompanied by a voice calling an all clear, but heraldic of something, something. She made him want to shake off the haze around his brain and in his present condition, a half bottle of hooch the happier, it was not an easy thing. Evidently his vexation and slowness were easily interpreted.