Татьяна Толстая - Aetherial Worlds

“Do you want to have it engraved, perhaps?” asked the saleswoman. “Usually these things get engraved with a name. Or a word. You know, like an incantation.”

I looked out the window at the swirling flakes and the snowdrifts. Pure and endless. I’ll leave and they’ll stay. They’ll melt into water, and then it’ll snow again.

“Okay, engrave it with vo. V-o. ”

“Good choice!” exclaimed the saleswoman, with not a clue what I was talking about. An excellent professional reaction.

I started wearing the amulet under my clothes. I kept it on at night. Emma panicked and twitched, but she was powerless against it.

Love is a strange thing; it has a thousand faces. You can love anything and anyone. I once loved a bracelet from a shop window, but it was too expensive and I couldn’t afford it: I had a family, I had children. I worked hard, burning out my brain, so I could pay for our apartment and the kids’ college tuition, so I had something to set aside for illness, for old age, for my mother’s hospital bills, for unexpected emergencies. I couldn’t buy that bracelet, and I didn’t, but I did love it. I thought about it while falling asleep, I pined for it and shed tears for it.

Then the spell passed. It unclasped its jaws from my heart and mercifully let me go. What difference does it make who or what it was? It could have been a person, an animal, a thing, a cloud in the sky, a book, a strophe in somebody else’s poem, the southern wind tearing at grass on the steppe, an episode from my own dream, an unexplored street making a turn in the honey glow of a setting sun, a smile from a stranger, a ship’s sail upon a blue wave, a springtime evening, a pear tree, a few notes of music from an incidental window.

I, for one, have never been in love with waterfalls, or high-heeled shoes, or a woman, or dancing, or inscriptions, or coins, but I know those who have been and were blinded by their love, and I understand them. Maybe one day I’ll fall in love with something from that list—who’s to know? It happens suddenly, without warning, and it envelops you immediately and completely.

In this way, Eric was the object of my obsessive and inexplicable love. I had to rid myself of it somehow. Overcome it, somehow.

I’m sitting in a bagel shop (the one that feels like Paris), looking out at the blue night, the snowy scene like a stage set. We’ll take Route 50, just follow me, then we’ll make a turn at the fork, Eric telepathically communicates. I drop my magazine, steal a bunch of napkins to wrap up my cranberry scone, bus my table, bundle myself up in my scarf—I’m warm, my blood is red-hot, my palms and my heels are like boiling water; I don’t know about you, but I could burn holes in the ice; yes, I’m the only one like this in your gingerbread town—and walk out onto the street, which is spruced up with swaying garlands of sparkling lights. I drive down Route 50, make a turn at the fork, and pull over. Cars are whizzing past me in a hurry to get home. Or away from home. Who’s to say?

Eric stops his car, gets into mine.

“I have an idea,” he says. “We should go to Lake George.”

“What’s there?”

“A motel. It’s beautiful there. We can go this weekend. She’ll be visiting her mother in Boston.”

“And what’s happening in Boston?”

“Uh… her mother has some sort of anniversary coming up. She can’t miss it.”

“Why aren’t you going?”

“I have an urgent deadline and an inflammation of the gallbladder.”

“I wouldn’t buy that.”

“Neither will she. It’s just an excuse.”

I look into his sad, gray, sincere eyes.

“In our culture,” he says, “the most important thing about an excuse is that it be plausible.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

“So any kind of a lie is okay? Even an outrageous one?”

“Yes. As long as there is plausible deniability.”

“You know, we’re big on lying, too. I doubt you’re the world leaders there.”

“We respect other people; we try to lie credibly.”

“Okay. Good thing I’m leaving soon and never coming back.”

“You can’t leave!”

“Sure I can.”

“What if I killed her?”

“What for? She didn’t do anything.”

“No, I think I’ll kill her. It’ll make things easier for me.”

“But not for me.”

We both just sit there, sulking. Then Eric asks, “Did you know that buckwheat, sorrel, and rhubarb are related?”

“I didn’t. What stunning news.”

“There are two types of buckwheat: bitter and sweet.”

“There is also a Polish type, a special varietal called ‘Crappy.’”

“You’ll leave and fall out of love with me.”

“Yes. I’ll leave, fall out of love, and forget you.”

Eric’s feelings are hurt. “Women shouldn’t say such things! They should say: ‘I’ll never, ever forget you! I’ll never, ever stop loving you!’”

“That’s women lying plausibly out of respect for other people. Of course they’ll forget. Everything is forgettable. In that lies salvation.”

“I’d like to break your heart,” says Eric vengefully.

“Only solid things break. I am water. I’ll run off and seep through somewhere else.”

“Yes!” he says, with sudden anger. “Women are water! That’s why they cry all the time!”

We sit in silence for a long time, as our car is swept by a fine, dry, rustling snowstorm.

“It’s coming down like rice,” says Eric, “like tsa. ”

It’s as if he’s reading my mind. It’s hard to stop loving Eric. I have to pull myself together. I have to turn my heart into ice.

But then wouldn’t that mean it could break?

It’s the second half of December, only a week till Christmas. The central street of our town, that ubiquitous “Main Street,” is ablaze with gold, green, and crimson shop windows, strings of lights stretched from pole to shining pole. There are so many Christmas lights that the snow, as it blows through the street, appears multicolored: multicolored sparkling vo that sounds like tsa. “Jingle Bells” creeps and seeps ad nauseam from under every door, drilling holes in your brain and turning it into a sieve; by the umpteenth store you want to run up swinging a baseball bat, and— whack! whack! whack! —smash the crap out of the mirrored glass. But, of course, one has to contain oneself.

I’m picking out some gifts for myself: an embroidered tablecloth, scented candles, and striped pillowcases. I don’t need any of it, but that’s no reason not to buy it. Back in the day, the Magi also brought strange gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It’s unclear what they meant by it, what they were hinting at, and where those gifts wound up, although all kinds of beautiful explanations were later proposed: gold for kingship on earth, myrrh for mortality, frankincense for burning, believing, and praying. Legend has it that the gold was stolen by two thieves, and that thirty-three years later those two very thieves were crucified, one to the left and one to the right of our Savior. Jesus promised that if they would believe in Him, they would be with Him in heaven that day. Since they all went back to nursery days, as it were. Here, truly, was a case of someone benefitting both from Christ’s birth and His death.

I also really like this beautiful, soft purse with silver inserts, but something about it perturbs me. Who is the artisan? What if it’s Emma? The saleswoman doesn’t know, and the owner of the shop isn’t here. An inner voice, perhaps it’s the amulet, tells me: Don’t buy it. Don’t buy anything; put back the tablecloth, and return the candles to where you found them. Nothing here is yours; it’s all Emma’s. All of it.