What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours(33)

—

TYCHE, ROWAN, and I were the only ones who stayed where we were. That probably made us look guilty of something, but moving closer to the stage would have broken our concentration. Myrna said something to Radha that caused her to release Gustav and turn her attention to the maimed puppets, gathering the bodies one by one, running her fingers through Hamlet’s hair, knocking on Petrushka’s helmet, closing eyes pair by pair. As she did so Myrna clasped Gustav to her (“Did you know she liked him that much?” I heard one boy ask another), all of her body against all of his body. He moved his head, seemed to return to himself, and pushed her away, his hand seeking only Radha’s. Myrna stepped back into the crowd with a look of shock. What caused it; that the dose she’d given was enough for him? Or the way Radha bent over him looking into those sad eyes that had grown even sadder from the day he’d chosen her? My guess: The biggest surprise was that by looking at each other in this way they were hurting Myrna. A little pain—just enough to quicken her breathing. Tyche was half out of her seat trying to decide whether to go to Myrna or not, and Rowan tried to give me a high five, which I ignored. “As expected,” he said, and looked about him with an air of fulfillment that made it plain he was referring to more than just my snub.





drownings



This happened and it didn’t happen:

A man threw a key into a fire. Yes, there are people who do such things. This one was trying to cure a fever. He probably wouldn’t have done it if he’d had his head on straight, but it’s not easy to think clearly when rent is due and there isn’t enough money to pay it, and one who relies on you falls ill for want of nourishment but you have to leave him to walk around looking for work to do. Then even when you find some there still isn’t enough money for both food and shelter, and the worry never stops for a moment. Somehow it would be easier to go home to the one who relies on you if they greeted you with anger, or even disappointment. But returning to someone who has made their own feeble but noticeable attempts to make the place a little nicer while you were gone, someone who only says “Oh, never mind” and speaks of tomorrow as they turn their trusting gaze upon you . . . it was really too much, as if tomorrow was up to him, or any of us . . .

—

THERE’S THAT difficulty with delirium too: You see it raging in another person’s eyes and then it flickers out. That’s the most dangerous moment; it’s impossible to see something that’s so swiftly and suddenly swallowed you whole. Arkady’s debts were so numerous that when he found himself being beaten up by strangers he no longer bothered to ask who they were or why they were hitting him—he just assumed it was something to do with his repayments. Instead of putting up much of a fight he concentrated on limiting damage to his internal organs. A friend of a friend of his knew a woman who bought people’s organs in advance of their death. This woman bought your organs and then made your death relatively nice for you, an accident when you least expected it, a surprise release from life. Once that was taken care of she paid the agreed sum in full, cash in the hands of a person of your choice. Arkady felt his heart and lungs throughout the day—they felt hardy enough, so he had a Plan Z. Why go straight to Z, though?

—

THROWING THE KEY into the fire was the first step of this man’s fever-born plan. The second step involved the kidnapping of a girl he had seen around. He felt no ill will toward this girl, and this was in itself unusual, since his desperation had begun to direct him to linger on the street wishing misfortune upon everyone he saw. That lady’s maid hurrying out of the jeweler’s shop—he wished she would lose some item of great value to her mistress, so that he might find it and sell it. Yes, let the lady’s maid face every punishment for her carelessness, he wouldn’t spare a single thought for her. As he passed the grand café on his city’s main boulevard he wished a dapper waiter carrying a breakfast tray would slip and fall so that he could retrieve the trampled bread rolls. And how would it be if this time the waiter had slipped and fallen one time too many and was dismissed? Even better—then I can replace him.

—

THE GIRL he planned to kidnap happened to be a tyrant’s daughter. Hardly anybody disliked her; she was tall and vague . . . exceedingly vague. Her tendency toward the impersonal led to conversations that ended with both parties walking away thinking: “Well, that didn’t go very well.” If you mentioned that you weren’t having the best day she might tell you about certain trees that drank from clouds when they couldn’t find enough moisture in the ground beneath them. She was known as Eirini the Second or Eirini the Fair, since she had a flair for the judicious distribution of cake, praise, blame, and other sources of strife. In terms of facial features she didn’t really look like anybody else in her family. In fact she resembled a man her mother had secretly loved for years, a man her mother had never so much as spoken to until the day the tyrant decided to have his wife Eirini the First stoned for adultery. He did give her a chance, one chance. He asked her to explain why his eyesight kept telling him that his daughter was in fact the child of another man, but the woman only answered that there was no explanation.

—

THE MAN EIRINI the First loved heard about the resemblance between himself and the child and came down to the palace to try to stop the execution. He swore to the tyrant that he and Eirini the First were as good as strangers, but the tyrant waved him away and signaled his executioners to prepare themselves, at which point the man Eirini the Fair resembled ran into the center of the amphitheatre where Eirini the First stood alone with her arms forming a meager shield for her face and chest. The man Eirini the Fair resembled stood before her with his back to the executioners and the tyrant and told her to look at him, just to keep looking only at him, and that it would be all right. It seemed he intended to protect her from the stones until he couldn’t anymore. This was intolerable to the tyrant; he could not allow these two to exit together. There was also a sense of having just witnessed the first words they’d ever said to each other. The tyrant feared a man who had no qualms about involving himself in a matter such as this, so instead of going ahead with the execution he had his wife returned to the palace.