"Taj Mahal," she said.
She repeated the words, let them sink through the air and settle on top of her head. She said them again and again. She was tired. She was cold. A steel cube surrounded her from the base of her neck down. The cube was filled with chilly water and she'd decided that the water had salt in it because her body floated in the liquid like a cork. Her legs and arms moved without her help, buoyed up by the salt, and she could sleep, so her body wasn't tired. Her brain was tired and she was cold. She recited the names of all the warm places that she knew so that she could be warm too.
"I'm floating inside a piece of the great salt lake! Someone sliced it and brought it here for me!" She laughed at the blank wall in front of her - a plain wall that looked more sinister with every hour that passed. Her laugh bounced off the wall and thrummed back hitting the steel and making her chilled muscles vibrate.
"Salt Lake City!" she yelled. There wasn't anything in the room except the cube and her. A strand of black hair fell across her forehead and down prodding a tickle to life beside her nose. Her husband, the Green-Feather King, had put her in the cube. He'd gone off on a hunting trip the day before taking five loaded pack horses with him. She was to stay in the cube - inside the blank and boring room - until he returned. He had been overseer at her initial imprisonment, his damp pink face betraying his satisfaction with a furtive smile. Lifting a solemn finger and shaking it at her face, he'd announced that this punishment was for her own good. She ought to use this time alone to think about her life and improve herself.
In our country there lives a type of carp that grows to be the size of a pig if it's left alone even for a few days with nothing but water and food. Not only does it grow, but its fins become rudimentary legs, it develops the ability to breath air, it grows teeth and it tries to kill anything that moves. Illegal betting games using the carp have become popular and these games are proving impossible for the authorities to control.
If Marrissa was learning anything, it was that she hated her husband more than she had ever thought was possible. She was the second youngest of the Green-Feather King's seven wives. The youngest was a nine year old child who would stay in her parents house until she was fourteen and old enough to come to the court. Marrissa in the box felt sorry for the distant little girl.
What is said is this: "All riches to the king. All dirt to the crops. All air to the people. The king takes our daughters; the wars and the mines take our sons."
"Taj Mahal!" Marrissa cried again. "Rio De Janeiro!" She alone of all the wives refused to have her ears docked. This operation, similar to that performed on puppies, involved a consecrated specialist notching the ears at the top and removing the entire lobe. This was done with a sharp knife.
Shelmet, the moon, has a husband, Rangpel, who is jealous of her light. Through the month, he slices away bits of her...raging at her while she sleeps. He slices away her regal nose, her beautiful breasts and charming feet. She allows him this and then begins to grow herself anew - creating her body all over again out of the joy that she feeds from and the light from the grateful stars.
Marrissa's people thought that the ear created this way provided a more attractive backdrop for jewelry. Marrissa had pointed out, loudly and often, that men never had their ears docked.
The Green-Feather King had fumed and sweated like a roasting beet while Marrissa lectured and the five oldest wives had stood, pretending to be mortified pillars - each of them trying to show how horribly aware she was that all of their careful lessons had rendered no effect on this ungrateful girl. Men did not have their ears docked, Marrissa argued and she would never submit to anything so degrading and furthermore, no one could make her. This was true. There was nothing in the law that said that a woman had to do this (although the Green-Feather King, the slug brain! had actually exerted himself for a few days trying to find someone who would tell him otherwise) it was the custom and, if Marrissa chose, she was certainly free to ignore it and remain a loud-mouthed hellion with the ears of an elephant.
Mountain came to the Four Sisters and said that he would give each of them a present. Tiger, Cobra and Eagle immediately wanted new dresses and Mountain gave these to them. Tiger's new dress was orange and black stripes, luxurious and brilliant and with it on she was able to disappear completely into thickets and groves as she stalked her prey. Cobra's new dress was iridescent scales, intricate and sleek and with it on she was able to fascinate her prey, stilling them in the moments before she struck her deadly blow. Eagle's new dress was perfectly layered feathers, glossy and strong and with it on she soared high above the earth, swooping unerringly down to carry her prey up and away from any possible escape. Elephant went away for awhile to think of what her gift should be and when she returned she asked Mountain to give her ears that would hear and understand all the languages of the world. And so this was done. Elephant was amazed because at once she knew the speech of every animal and plant, all rocks and water, and the air itself. As she learned to understand, her heart grew and opened out like a huge rose. Elephant knew perfect happiness for the first time, and in fact, this was the first time that perfect happiness was ever known. Elephant had brought it into the world. Soon though, Elephant saw that her sisters and Mountain were laughing and when she knelt at a stream to better hear its silky whisper her reflection showed her the reason why. Her once delicate ears had grown to fifty times their size!
"What arrogance!" cried Mountain. "You have made yourself ridiculous for the sake of an enlightenment which you might better have left to others. How, pray tell, will you make your way in the world with all the precious knowledge that you gain?"
So Elephant, with all her open heart and wisdom remains ever after the servant of men for her folly. To call someone a Tiger-Beauty is to say that she is sensuous. To call, someone a Cobra-Beauty is to say that she is elegant. To call someone an Eagle Beauty is to say that she is passionate. To call someone an Elephant-Beauty is the most severe of insults.
"Baton Rouge," said Marrissa. The water was drying her skin to ribbons, she was sure. She had not pleased the Green-Feather King except with the beauty that she did possess in spite of her large ears and this she took care to spoil with scowls and tantrums. The King was not allowed to divorce a displeasing wife, a common freedom granted to all other men, and so his only other choices were killing, punishing, or ignoring. Up until now the Green-Feather King had done nothing but threaten her with little more imagination than saying, as though it were a promise, "One day you'll go too far, you bitch!"
Wife-killing is publicly condoned, in certain special circumstances, by all of our neighbors except for the christ-worshippers to the north. These three nations
not only border our country completely at that point
but are crucial to our mining interests in that region. Their missionaries live among us already, spying
perhaps, certainly keeping a watchful eye. Our position cannot be compromised by whim or even tradition.
We cannot, at this point, afford to offend them. It is
necessary for us to modify our practices or, at least,
to demand discretion from official and common man
alike.
"Alamo!" said Marrissa. She remembered her father's vineyards, walking through the arbors of heavy purple fruit shining like jewelry. She remembered the heat from the glass-blowers' fires and her father saying, "They're breathing gold, my girl, pure gold there." She remembered the famous tissue cloth that seemed to flow like water from the looms of the estate women and return in coin to her father's accounts. Marrissa remembered returning home from school for a visit seven months ago. It was her fifteenth birthday and she burst into the house eager for her party and her gifts. She found her father drooping on an old stool, his eyes red-rimmed and his hand limp with the weight of the letter he held out to her. It was the letter summoning her to court, telling them all that she would soon become the Green-Feather King's newest bride. It was not a surprise to her. Marrissa's knowledge that she was the only child of the wealthiest man in the countryside had always shaped the air as she breathed it. But her father had been crying so she willed herself to become overseer of her own terror, disgust and grief.
"Well, you know," she said shrugging her shoulders still draped in the convent school's drab gray-blue. "All riches to the king."
Her father had been very angry then, thinking that she was mocking the king and her own father's sorrow, but Marrissa had only meant to show her father that she could be as brave as he needed her to be. They held love between them in a net and it grew heavy and light, following a current that neither of them could ever anticipate. He had sent her to the nun's school when she had been very young, only eight years old. Her mother had died and she had gone to the nuns. The church that the nuns served was very new in the country and all but the poorest ignored it, except for her father.
"They are the only women I've ever heard talking and making sense at the same time," he would say. "Maybe they can keep my girl from going as silly as all the rest." So he gave the nuns money and he gave them his daughter. She was the only rich girl at the convent. The other girls were there because their families needed to store extra daughters somewhere until they could be safely married, or else they wanted their daughters to have an education. No girls were allowed to go to public schools - rich ones had tutors. Why wasn't she at home with a tutor?... the other girls wanted to know. Why was she mucking around down here with the rest of them, swaying the sisters to her side? Her father's side? The side of the wealthy? She would marry a wealthy man, there could be no doubt of that so why did she have to live with them and remind them of all that they would never have? The other girls spit on her as they walked in procession. They stuck pins in her mattress. Marrissa didn't care. She welcomed their contempt because it strengthened her in her ambition. She had decided to become the most pious girl in the convent. She had even spoken of becoming a nun herself. The nuns discouraged this.
A troop of geese heard the news that The Lord was in
the neighboring town and they determined to make a pilgrimage there to speak with him and learn the secrets of happiness. They started off encountering many obstacles and nearly half of the gaggle became discouraged and turned back home. Finally, the diminished flock reached the town and found Jesus at
a house to which many had come. Their troubles were not over,as the geese quickly discovered, for a dog belonging to the master of the house chased them cruelly for an hour and then, when they had finally won the inside, the cook tried to grab one of them and wring its neck thinking that it would make an excellent dinner for that evening. The geese, at last, stood before The Lord and honked for an audience. The Lord, interrupted in the middle of telling a story, looked up - mild eyed - at the line of geese and asked how he could help them.
"Please Lord," said the goose that the other geese had elected to speak. "Tell us how we might gain these riches of heaven that you have spoken of."
Jesus looked at them, smiled and said, "You have the wealth of your feathers and these keep you warm. What other riches do you need?"
In her tiny room at the convent, Marrissa knelt on the cold stone floor and prayed for hours. She went for five nights without sleeping until the abbess discovered her and told her that she'd be sent back to her father if she didn't stop at once. Abbess Clothtild was a little surprised when Marrissa begged for another chance. Most of the girls hated the strict discipline, at least at first. Clothtild allowed Marrissa to stay, warning her not to allow such temptations to her pride in the future, warning her that the Devil waited for souls weakened by austerity and swooped down upon them like a bird of prey. The next morning, Marrissa found two pebbles in the garden and slipped them inside her sturdy convent shoes.
"Tunis, Abu Dabi, New Dehli." Marrissa floated in her cage, her head drooping, trying not to sleep. What she remembered most vividly about her wedding night was the huge quantity of sweat that sprang from the pores of the Green- Feather King, sliming her own skin, its smell permeating the room - her own luxurious bedroom furnished in the latest and most expensive style for her, the newest queen. As soon as the king had left in the morning, she flung open the windows and had the maids bring new sheets and then changed her mind and demanded that the entire bed be replaced. This, of course, was done but for many days that followed she was certain each time she picked up a music box or a piece of embroidered silk - some object meant to delight her - that she could smell the heavy salted meat smell of her husband's wet body. Marrissa even took her pet monkey, a wedding gift from her father, a sad-eyed affectionate little thing that she'd christened Hippolytus, and bathed him herself while the frightened creature screeched and bit. The older wives observed this incomprehensible scene, ten eyebrows hoisted to the pinnacles of five foreheads. Ten astonished ears heard Marrissa saying to poor Hippolytus, "Hold still! Suffering makes you stronger in the trials of this earth!" and the wives decided together to try and protect the big-eared, loud, strange girl with the scandalous set of beliefs.
"Doesn't it bother you," asked Septima, the oldest wife. "That your Jesus says, 'Believe in me and you will be saved.' ? Doesn't that mean we can do what we like in this world? Are you not substituting the promise of heaven for just and moral behavior?"
"Well, I don't think it's substituting at all, but no...I'm not bothered."
The wives were sitting by a pool in the courtyard watching the goldfish swim and drinking sour wine out of tiny glasses as they talked.
"But that just turns the whole world upside down!" cried Odile, the third wife. "You can't just do whatever you like!"
"No, you can't just do whatever you like...but yes, it does turn the world upside down."
A fish jumped up, flashing briefly in the sunlight before it disappeared again beneath the clean blue water.
"Look," said Marrissa. "The difference is that what guides you comes from inside - not from outside."
"How?" asked Mali, the next youngest wife to Marrissa. "Is it something you eat?"
"Well, yes." Marrissa thought about all the communions that she'd missed. "Yes, you do eat him, actually."
"Him!" Septima gripped Marrissa's left wrist. "You eat your god?"
"Ouch! Let go, Septima! Yes. That is, what you eat and drink has God in it. In the ceremony we do, that is. But really, God is in you all the time and outside of you too."
"Ugh!" said Odile, and all the wives shuddered at Marrissa's casual description of cannibalism and at the horrible thought that their own bodies could be so easily invaded by a god.
"Be careful, Marrissa," said Septima. "You talk about these things too freely. It doesn't matter with us." The other wives all nodded. "We love you, but there are some in court who want to harm you, even some close to the King."
"You know he only married me because he thinks that my father has friends among the Christians in the north. You'd think he'd want me to talk about what I believe so he could show off how clever he is."
Septima swallowed an entire glass of wine and glared at the horizon.
"You act as though this is just a contest between you and him. You don't believe that he thinks by himself, do you? The christians have an influence right now, that's true, but if you paid more attention you would know that it doesn't count for much. Do you remember the slave that was found in the city fountain three days ago? I thought not. Some say he was a christian convert who'd angered someone by acting as a free man. Others say that the murderers were christians baptizing another one of their own...in the usual way."
"What do you think?"
"I don't know. What I think is that our compromises with the North are like the stripes on a tiger. I think that you need to stop thinking that your pride is the only thing at stake here. Listen to me!" Septima shook Marrissa's arm. "Our priests are still powerful, Marrissa, and they opposed the king's marriage to you all along."
"Well, so did I, but it isn't my fault is it? I believe what I believe and it's true and I have an obligation, an obligation, Septima to tell it when I can."
"Oh, my dear. You mystify me." Septima deflated back against her chair's cushioned back. Two gilded wooden lions topped the chair at either side of her head and opened mouths pointed down at her throat.
Marrissa didn't know which of the King's advisors had invented her punishment, though she was certain that it wasn't the King himself, the idiot! She had offended all of them, the King, advisors and priests when she had demanded that the palace slaves be given a free day on Sundays in order to meditate and pray. She'd been taken from her room that night and she was sure that the slaves who had sealed her into the box and filled it had since been killed to insure their silence. Marrissa thought that the box was a clever idea. She was completely isolated in the room which she was certain wasn't anywhere in the palace. The other wives wouldn't know where she was. Her father would assume, for a long time, that she was too busy to write or visit. Abbess Clothtild expected never to see her again. Whoever had thought to put her here, well, that person's life would be an uncut misery...if she ever got out.
"Somalia," she said. "Marineland." She missed Hippolytus. She missed Septima, Odile, Pancha, Celia and Mali. She missed the convent and her father. She missed her books. The Green-Feather King seemed to believe that books were a sort of prank invented specifically for his discomfort. He allowed his wives books - if they wanted to bother with such things - but he selected them and they were only to have three at any time. Marrissa was tired of reading about the dye trade, grammatical equivalencies and a patient and beautiful housewife and mother named Candielia Lunacaccio. Marrissa had grown to hate her life and one of the few things that made it bearable was that she hated her husband more.
A man came to Jesus and said, "Lord, I hate my neighbor. What should I do?"
And Jesus said, "Hatred is the poison inside a tooth. It oppresses you. You must pull it out."
So the man went home and killed his neighbor.
Marrissa was certain now that the liquid she floated in was the sweat of the Green-Feather King. A belief floated in her mind, rolling over and over like a marble, a belief that she had nursed ever since she had married him. She was convinced that the huge green feather growing from the top of his bald head, the one thing that made his claim to the title secure, was leeching vital matter from his brain in order to enrich itself. He was certainly more of an idiot now than when they had married. And to be floating in his own cold sweat!
"Honalulu, Bali, Port-au-Prince." She tried to feel God inside her. She felt the sweat seeping into her. She realized that she might die there.
She looked at the glass that opened out in the blank wall - growing there as though her eyes were opening. Outside the window was a forest filled with dark, crooked trees. The trees were covered with snowy white blooms and each flower had four tear-shaped petals tipped at the rounded end with a brown-lipped indentation - as if a tiny flame had bit each petal there. The trees grew right up to the window in two rows leaving a path between. As she watched, an eagle flew up the path becoming more clear to her, black and white, as it came closer. It banged against the glass, its fierce frightening eyes driving her further back into her skin. The eagle hit the glass over and over, the sound it made was like a war club. She sank into a chair and watched the eagle melt quite suddenly through the glass, and then, a swan was in her lap, a large white swan digging its scalloped feet into the skin of her thighs. Poking its sharp beak into her mouth.
"I love you," said the swan.
"I love you," said the eagle.
The room wasn't a room anymore but a part of the forest. White brown-lipped petals floated down from the crooked trees. The petals surrounded her, covering her and whispering, "We love you too."
"Miami Beach." Marrissa was very cold. "Gulf Shores, Alabama; Singapore; Memphis, Tennessee," she prayed. "Cairo; Martinique; Oxford, Mississippi; Manila; Los Angeles; Cyprus."
martin/warm/