Isabel Burning

~ a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi ~-2

So often these gifts are wasted on the stubborn, the skeptics, and the ignorant, and I am no exception. To this day I still don’t know what the fire meant to tell me as I made my decision, but it raged for a moment so fervently that I thought I might combust and take that beautiful house and her beautiful owner with me. But the embers have long settled and cooled now. I moved in the next morning.

*

There is a large tapestry in Dr Grace’s bedroom, directly above his bed. It is filled with ancient threads of red and coppery orange. A horned god smeared with the blood of his sacrifice dances through a fire, displaying an embarrassingly large erect phallus. Above him, three figures in white and blue hover like pornographic angels. A barely pubescent girl, nude and aloof extends her hand downward to the god. Beside her a pregnant woman glowing like the moon lounges, nearly penetrated by the antlers below and to her left a mature and indignant woman holds a child in one arm and a spear in the other, in a startling display of strength. All three women sit, legs apart, the first with crimson thread sewn between her thighs, the last two with blue, exposed genitalia. If you press your face to the fabric, you can still smell the old London market wherein the wool and saffron and silks were purchased a very long time ago. Dr Grace lies beneath this each night and releases his dream to weave itself into the pagan scene. He dreams of terrible things.

*

Our trial period ended without incident. I spent my free time slinking through the house carefully studying his collections. There was an abundance of silence throughout the days so that when the doctor would finally speak, his smooth and sedate voice shattered through the quiet like a car crash. He would always offer his apologies for this. There were other moments when I would talk to myself just to make sure I remembered the sound of my voice. At night I read aloud in my room, much like a child. I was grateful that Dr Grace’s bedroom was too far away for him to hear me.

In many other awkward moments, he would enter the room, hesitate for a minute and then leave, as though he had meant to speak but couldn’t find the words. I wanted to find my own words in those moments, but my mouth was always empty and dry, so I just smiled meekly and he would smile meekly and that would be the end of it.

Timing is everything to a man like Dr Grace and throughout the first few months the time to get to know each other was never right. In the beginning it seemed like just having another heartbeat in the house was enough for him.

*

(December)

Christmas came, as it always does, and he asked if I’d planned to take a holiday. Having no one to make plans with, I let him know that I would stay, if he so desired. He stated, much to my delight, that he would enjoy my company, as there was no family gathering for him to attend either.

He looked so small for a moment, a bit malnourished and tired. He rarely ate or slept and I grew concerned that he was suffering from a winter depression. Already I fussed over him, surprising myself with such an immediate attachment.

It was just after Christmas that we began our tradition of talking over his extensive collection of wine and spirits. In the beginning this made me a bit nervous. His presence often caused me to feel like I was drowning in a most pleasant way, but drowning nonetheless. I was not at my best anyway; New Years had always been an unpleasant time for me and despite the exhilaration brought on by the doctor’s casual banter and attentions, that year was no exception.

I told him about my life in fifteen minutes, trying to leave out the boring details and trite revelations of my twenty-five years. I didn’t tell him about the dreams or flags. I didn’t tell him then about any of the red things that had been haunting me since I could remember. I kept it light, unemotional. He asked why I had chosen to be a domestic, and I could have told him the truth—that I, just like the employers I’d ridiculed for the very same reason, had no real abilities or useful skills—but instead I came up with the less painful, yet still self-effacing reason that if I spent all my time cleaning up other people’s lives I wouldn’t have time to clean up my own. He suggested I go into psychology and make ten times the money I made now.

He listened so well, resting his mouth on the fleshy part of his palm, raising an eyebrow here and there at the appropriate moments. When I managed to make him laugh or smile, I considered it a tiny victory. More than once I caught myself becoming entranced by his face, barely remembering to finish my sentences. I never felt comfortable looking people in the eyes, but that night I had to force myself to focus on the heavily lacquered oak tabletop to keep from staring at him. I watched his dark reflection, and pretended that I would turn to stone if I looked upon him in the flesh.

In talking about myself I suddenly became very aware of my own voice, honing in on the cracks and imperfections. This was unexpected, as talking about myself had always been such an easy task. Abruptly I asked him to take his turn. The burning inside of me was becoming too painful to bear.

Dr Edward Grace was not the kind of man you could simply learn about. He was, and is, the sort of creature that must be studied, even dissected. Of course, you can gather bits of information and fact, as I did, though really it was nothing more than a general timeline, and an incomplete one at that.

He said that he was born in 1953. His late parents had no other children. He mentioned flatly that he’d never married nor raised any children of his own. His mother and grandparents, all of whom lived rather solitary lives, raised him in this house, which had been built by his great-grandfather. He said he would forever be amazed at how quiet the house could be at times.

At the height of his medical career he’d been a prominent obstetrician, though he’d begun as a scientist, becoming a leading researcher at a very young age in prenatal pharmaceuticals. Before settling down with a practice of his own, he’d spent five years during the 1980’s acting as head physician at a Red Cross sponsored prenatal and women’s health clinic in the country known then as Zaire.

He spoke of his love of ancient cultures and religious artefacts, and how it eventually led him to pursue a second degree, this time in Theology, thus sparking such a fascination with African mysticism. I marvelled at the dedication and discipline it must have taken to accomplish so much so quickly. He responded humbly, saying that he’d had nothing better to do.

“People are quick to assume, foolishly, that if you come from money, life is automatically more exciting and fulfilling,” he said. “But money is boring. It means nothing unless you do something purposeful with it. So I bought an education.”

As quickly as I learned that knowing this basic information and truly knowing Dr Grace were two very different animals, it would still not be quick enough. Had I been listening to the distant crackling of flames in the hollow space between my stomach and my spine, I would have known it that very night. Of course, his voice was far more appealing than the very unmelodic sound of suffocating intuition.

I asked him to tell me about Africa.

His eyes glimmered at the very thought. “My time in Zaire...”

He spoke of the people he encountered, the creatures of the Congo and those far to the south on the Botswana plains, the children he delivered, the unending sky above the clinic that he would stare into after a birth. Never had he witnessed such quiet sunrises or seen such dark night skies. “Even the stillborn are blessed in Zaire, to be released into such a magnificent space. Their path to the heavens completely unobstructed,” he mused.

The land had bestowed upon him a gift, so he said, an understanding not to be found anywhere else. In Zaire he learned where the body ends and the spirit begins. I didn’t pretend to understand what he meant that night, but I knew whatever his secret was, it brought him more joy than most people ever find. Or at the very least, it had the potential to.

*

Dr Grace spends many nights staring into the cold black sky outside the large window of his bedroom, scrutinizing it as though it was an inferior replica of the one that covers Africa. The stars are not the same to him here. They are flawed, maybe dimmer. While he understands he cannot transport the stars of his beloved third world, he is consoled by the secret he has been able to bring home. It would be some time before that secret would be revealed to me. In the meantime, the three of us lived in quiet anticipation, Dr Grace, his dreaming, and myself.

*

(February)

In the midst of all the papers and research and secrecy my life slipped into a comfortable routine. I had menial tasks to keep me occupied throughout the days; dusting the bookshelves and the half million sculptures and valuable trinkets alone could devour most of my waking hours. The cautious method necessary for handling them slowed me down even more, but in this weekly ritual I found myself becoming very familiar with every piece, learning which deity was which and from where and so on. I began to memorize the names of authors and the books they penned, although for the most part I couldn’t tell you a thing about the book itself. Regardless, this wealth of useless knowledge fostered my ever-growing delusion that I was extremely intelligent and well read.

Weekly, I would venture away from the doctor’s timeless world and back into the realm of the waking dead—the market. I suppose it wasn’t so terrible, really. Going out on errands made me appreciate my new home that much more, and I’d get to take the car, which I enjoyed. I noticed that the doctor began to make fewer requests for my trips to Chapel, the local market, but insisted that I purchase only the healthiest foods and ample supplies of vitamins for myself. He had a vested interest in my health habits, drawing frequent examples from his days at the Zaire clinic. The women were often so malnourished and he was amazed, he said, at the toll a simple vitamin deficiency could take on a woman’s body.

When he felt I was not heeding his advice to the fullest he would resort to graphic scare tactics, telling me in a most ominous voice of the ravaged conditions in which the local women had come to him. The distended stomachs as a result of starvation, the lesions on the legs and bellies of victims of scurvy, the hair loss and rotted teeth, infestation, worms “of the ring and tape variety,” he teased, following it with a sinister laugh and scowling face, the way a grandfather might end any decent tale of terror passed down from the generations.

I would finally relent with amusement and disgust when tales of parasite-ridden colons and intestinal tracts were recounted and Dr Grace would revel in his victory with smug satisfaction. However, this did not negate the fact that I became healthier with each passing day, feeling better than I could ever recall, while he seemed to care less about his own eating and sleeping habits.