Teardrop

13 MADAME BLAVATSKY

Madame Blavatsky’s storefront was in the older part of town, not far from St. John’s. Eureka had passed the neon-green hand in the window ten thousand times. Cat parked in the potholed parking lot and they stood in the rain before the nondescript glass-panel door, rapping the antique brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head.

After a few minutes, the door swung open, sending a clatter of bells ringing from the inside handle. A stout woman with wild, frizzy hair stood in the entry, arms akimbo. From behind her came a red glow that obscured her face in shadows.

“Here for a reading?”

Her voice was rough and raspy. Eureka nodded as she pulled Cat into the dark foyer. It looked like a dentist’s waiting room after hours. A single red-bulbed lamp lit two folding chairs and a nearly empty magazine rack.

“I do palms, cards, and leaves,” Madame Blavatsky said, “but you must pay separately for the tea.” She looked about seventy-five, with painted red lips, a constellation of moles on her chin, and thick, muscular arms.

“Thank you, but we have a special request,” Eureka said.

Madame Blavatsky eyed the heavy book tucked under Eureka’s arm. “Requests are not special. Presents are special. A vacation—that would be special.” The old woman sighed. “Step into my atelier.”

Blavatsky’s big black dress wafted the stench of a thousand cigarettes as she led the girls through a second door and into a main room.

Her atelier was drafty, with a low ceiling and black-on-black embossed wallpaper. There was a humidifier in the corner, a vintage hot pot on top of a perilously stuffed bookcase, and a hundred old frowning portraits hanging in slanted frames on the wall. A broad desk held a frozen avalanche of books and papers, an old desktop computer, a vase of rotting purple freesias, and two turtles that were either napping or dead. Elegant gold cages hung in each corner of the room, holding so many birds Eureka stopped counting. They were small birds, the size of an open palm, with slender lime-green bodies and red beaks. They chirped resoundingly, melodically, incessantly.

“Abyssinian lovebirds,” Madame Blavatsky announced. “Exceptionally intelligent.” She slid a finger coated with peanut butter through the bars of one of the cages and giggled like a child as the birds flocked to peck her skin clean. One bird rested on her index finger longer than the others. She leaned close, puckering red lips and making kissing noises at him. He was larger than the others, with a bright red crown and a diamond of gold feathers on his breast. “And the brightest of all, my sweet, sweet Polaris.”

At last Madame Blavatsky sat down and motioned for the girls to join her. They sat quietly on a low black velour couch, rearranging the twenty-odd stained and mismatched pillows to make room. Eureka glanced at Cat.

“Yes, yes?” Madame Blavatsky asked, reaching for a long, hand-rolled cigarette. “I can surmise what you want, but you must ask, children. There is great power in words. The universe flows out of them. Use them now, please. The universe awaits.”

Cat raised one eyebrow at Eureka, tilted her head in the woman’s direction. “Better not piss off the universe.”

“My mother left me this book in her will,” Eureka said. “She died.”

Madame Blavatsky waved her bony hand. “I doubt that very much. There is no death, no life, either. Only congregation and dispersal. But that’s for another conversation. What do you want, child?”

“I want to get her book translated.” Eureka’s palm pressed into the raised circle on the book’s green cover.

“Well, hand it over. I am psychic, but I cannot read a closed book five feet away.”

When Eureka held out the book, Madame Blavatsky jerked it from her hand as if she were reclaiming a stolen purse. She flipped through it, pausing here and there to mutter something to herself, shoving her nose into the pages with the woodcut illustrations, giving no indication of whether she could make sense of it or not. She didn’t look up until she reached the fused section of pages near the back of the book.

Then she put out her cigarette and popped an orange Tic Tac in her mouth. “When did this happen?” She held up the chunk of stuck pages. “You didn’t try to dry it after you spilled—What is this?” She sniffed the book. “Smells like Death in the Afternoon. You’re too young to be drinking wormwood, you know.”

Eureka had no idea what Madame Blavatsky was talking about.

“It’s most unfortunate. I might be able to fix it, but it will require the wood kiln and expensive chemicals.”

“It was like that when I got it,” Eureka said.

Blavatsky slipped on wire-rimmed glasses, slid them down to the end of her nose. She studied the book’s spine, its inside front and back covers. “How long was your mother the proprietor?”

“I don’t know. My dad said she found it at a flea market in France.”

“So many lies.”

“What do you mean?” Cat asked.

Blavatsky looked up over the rims of her glasses. “This is a family tome. Family tomes stay within the family line unless there are tremendously unusual circumstances. Even under such circumstances, it is nearly impossible a book like this would fall into the hands of someone who would sell it at a flea market.” She patted the cover. “This is not the stuff of swap meets.”

Madame Blavatsky closed her eyes and tilted her head toward the birdcage over her left shoulder, almost as if she were listening to the lovebirds’ song. When she opened her eyes, she looked directly into Eureka’s. “You say your mother is dead. But what of your desperate love for her? Is there a faster way to immortality?”

Eureka’s throat burned. “If this book had been in my family, I would have known about it. My grandparents didn’t keep secrets. My mom’s sister and brother were both there when I inherited it.” She thought about Uncle Beau’s story of Diana reading it. “They barely knew anything about it.”

“Perhaps it did not come from your mother’s parents,” Madame Blavatsky said. “Perhaps it found her through a distant cousin, a favorite aunt. Was your mother’s name, by chance, Diana?”

“How did you know that?”

Blavatsky closed her eyes, tilted her head to the right, toward another birdcage. Inside, six lovebirds scampered to the side of the cage nearest Blavatsky. They chirped high, intricate staccatos. She chuckled. “Yes, yes,” she murmured, not to the girls. Then she coughed and looked at the book, pointing to the bottom corner of the inside back cover. Eureka stared at the symbols written in different shades of fade.

“This is a list of names of the book’s previous proprietors. As you can see, there have been many. The most recent one reads Diana.” Madame Blavatsky squinted at the symbols preceding Eureka’s mother’s name. “Your mother inherited this book from someone named Niobe, and Niobe received it from someone named Byblis. Do you know these women?”

While Eureka shook her head, Cat sat up straight. “You can read it.”

Blavatsky ignored Cat. “I can inscribe your name at the end of the list, seeing as the tome is now yours. No extra charge.”

“Yes,” Eureka said softly. “Please. It’s—”

“Eureka.” Madame Blavatsky smiled, picking up a felt-tipped pen and scrawling a few strange symbols onto the page. Eureka stared at her name in the mystifying language. “How did you—”

“This is similar to the old Magdalenian script,” Blavatsky said, “though there are differences. Vowels are absent. The spellings are quite absurd!”

“Magdalenian?” Cat looked at Eureka, who had never heard of it, either.

“Very ancient,” Blavatsky said. “Found in those prehistoric caves in southern France. This is not a sister to Magdalenian, but perhaps it is a second cousin. Languages have complicated family trees, you know—mixed marriages, stepchildren, even bastards. There are countless scandals in the history of languages, many murders, much incest.”

“I’m listening,” Cat said.

“It’s very rare to find such a text.” Madame Blavatsky scratched a thin eyebrow, affecting a weary air. “It will not be easy to translate.”

Heat tingled the back of Eureka’s neck. She didn’t know if she was happy or afraid, only that this woman was the key to something she needed to understand.

“It might be dangerous,” Blavatsky continued. “Knowledge is power; power corrupts. Corruption brings shame and ruin. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is perhaps preferable to a life lived in shame. Do you agree?”

“I’m not sure.” Eureka sensed Diana would have liked Madame Blavatsky. She would have trusted this translator. “I think I’d rather know the truth, regardless of the consequences.”

“So you shall.” Blavatsky offered a mysterious smile.

Cat leaned forward in her chair, clasped the edge of the woman’s desk. “We want your best price. No funny business.”

“I see you’ve brought your business manager.” Blavatsky cackled, then inhaled and contemplated Cat’s request. “For something of this magnitude and intricacy … It’s going to be very taxing for an old woman.”

Cat held up her hand. Eureka hoped she wouldn’t tell Madame Blavatsky to talk to it. “Cut to the chase, lady.”

“Ten dollars a page.”

“We’ll give you five,” Eureka said.

“Eight.” Blavatsky pinched another cigarette between her bright red lips, clearly enjoying this ritual.

“Seven-fifty”—Cat snapped her fingers—“and you throw in the chemicals to fix that water damage.”

“You won’t find anyone else who can do what I can do. I could ask for a hundred dollars a page!” Blavatsky dabbed her eyes with a faded handkerchief, measured Eureka. “But you look so very beaten down, even though you have more help than you know. Know that.” She paused. “Seven-fifty is a fair price. You have a deal.”

“What happens now?” Eureka asked. Her ear was ringing. When she rubbed it, for a moment she thought she heard the chatter of the birds’ song coming clearly through her left ear. Impossible. She shook her head and noticed Madame Blavatsky notice.

The woman nodded at the birds. “They tell me he’s been watching you for a very long time.”

“Who?” Cat looked around the room.

“She knows.” Madame Blavatsky smiled at Eureka.

Eureka whispered, “Ander?”

“Shhh,” Madame Blavatsky cooed. “My lovebirds’ song is brave and auspicious, Eureka. Do not be troubled by the things you cannot yet understand.” Suddenly she swiveled in her chair to face her computer. “I will send the translated pages in batches via email, along with a link to my Square account for payment.”

“Thanks.” Eureka scrawled her email address, slid the paper to Cat to add hers.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Cat handed Madame Blavatsky the paper with their information. “Emailing a translation of something so ancient?”

Madame Blavatsky rolled her watery eyes. “What you think is advanced would embarrass any of the masters of the old. Their capabilities vastly surpassed ours. We are a thousand years behind what they achieved.” Blavatsky opened a drawer and pulled out a sack of baby carrots, breaking one in half to split it between the two turtles awakening from their nap on her desk. “There, Gilda,” she sang. “There, Brunhilda. My darlings.” She leaned toward the girls. “This book will tell of far more exciting innovations than cyberspace.” She slid her glasses back up on her nose and gestured at the door. “Well, good night. Don’t let the turtles bite you on your way out.”

Eureka rose shakily from the couch as Cat gathered their things. Eureka paused, looking at the book on the desk. She thought of what her mother would do. Diana had lived her life trusting her instincts. If Eureka wanted to know what her inheritance meant, she had to trust Madame Blavatsky. She had to leave the book behind. It wasn’t easy.

“Eureka?” Madame Blavatsky raised a pointer finger. “You know what they told Creon, of course?”

Eureka shook her head. “Creon?”

“ ‘Suffering is wisdom’s schoolteacher.’ Think about it.” She drew in her breath. “My, what a path you are on.”

“I’m on a path?” Eureka said.

“We look forward to your translation,” Cat said in a much steadier voice.

“I may start right away; I may not. But don’t hassle me. I work here”—she pointed at her desk—“I live upstairs”—she jerked her thumb toward the ceiling. “And I protect my privacy. Translation requires time and positive vibrations.” She looked out the window. “That would be a good tweet. I should tweet that.”

“Madame Blavatsky,” Eureka said before she stepped through the atelier door. “Does my book have a title?”

Madame Blavatsky seemed far away. Without looking at Eureka, she said very softly, “It is called The Book of Love.”

From:

savvyblavy@gmail.com

To:

reka96runs@gmail.com

Cc:

catatoniaestes@gmail.com

Date:

Sunday, October 6, 2013, 1:31 a.m.

Subject:

first salvo

Dear Eureka,

By dint of many hours of focused concentration, I have translated the following. I have tried not to take liberties with the prose, only to make the content as clear as water for your reading ease. I hope this meets your expectations.…

On the vanished isle where I was born, I was called Selene. This is my book of love

.

Mine is a tale of catastrophic passion. You may wonder whether it is true, but all true things are questioned. Those who allow themselves to imagine—to believe—may find redemption in my story

.

We must start at the beginning, in a place that has long ceased to exist. Where we’ll end … well, who can know the ending until the last word has been written? Everything might change with the last word

.

In the beginning, the island stood beyond the Pillars of Hercules, alone in the Atlantic. I was raised in the mountains, where magic was abided. Daily, I gazed upon a beautiful palace that sat like a diamond in the sun-dappled valley far below. Legends told of a city with an astonishing design, waterfalls ringed with unicorns—and twin princes maturing inside the castle’s ivory walls

.

The elder prince and would-be king’s name was Atlas. He was known to be gallant, to favor hibiscus milk, to never shy away from a wrestling match. The younger prince was an enigma, rarely seen or heard from. He was called Leander, and from an early age he found his passion in voyaging by sea to the king’s many colonies around the world

.

I had listened to other mountain girls recount vivid dreams in which Prince Atlas carried them away on a horse of silver, made them his queen. But the prince slept in the shadows of my consciousness when I was a child. Had I known then what I know now, my imagination might have let me love him before our worlds collided. It would have been easier that way

.

As a girl, I yearned for naught outside the enchanted, wooded fringes of our island. Nothing interested me more than my relatives, who were sorceresses, telepathists, changelings, alchemists. I flitted through their workshops, apprentice to all but the gossipwitches—whose powers rarely transcended petty human jealousies, which they never tired of saying were what really made the world go round. I was filled with the stories of my numinous ancestors. My favorite tale was of an uncle who could project his mind across the ocean and inhabit the bodies of Minoan men and women. His escapades sounded delicious. In those days I relished the taste of scandal

.

I was sixteen when the rumors wafted from the palace to the mountains. Birds sang that the king had fallen ill with a strange sickness. They sang of the rich bounty Prince Atlas promised anyone who could cure his father

.

I had never dreamed of crossing the threshold of the palace, but I had once cured my father’s fever with a powerful local herb. And so, under a waning moon, I traveled the twenty-six miles down to the palace, a poultice of artemisia in a pouch hanging from my belt

.

Would-be healers formed a line three miles long outside the castle. I took my place at the back. One by one, magicians entered; one by one, they left, indignant or ashamed. When I was just ten deep in the line, the palace doors were closed. Black smoke twisted from the chimneys, signaling that the king was dead

.

Wails rose from the city as I made my sad way home. When I was halfway there, alone in a wooded glen, I came across a boy about my age kneeling over a sparkling river. He was knee-deep in a patch of white narcissus, so immersed in his thoughts he seemed in another realm. When I saw that he was crying, I touched his shoulder

.

“Are you hurt, sir?”

When he turned to me, the sorrow in his eyes was overwhelming. I understood it like I knew the language of the birds: he had lost the dearest thing he had

.

I held out the poultice in my hand. “I wish I could have saved your father.”

He fell upon me, weeping. “You can still save me.”

The rest is yet to come, Eureka. Stand by.

SWAK

Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda