The Way Back Page 7

  “You must forgive me, Yehuda Leib,” said the Dark Messenger. “I am not best suited for comforting.” He said the word roughly, oddly, as if it were in a language he did not understand.

  But Yehuda Leib was confused. His flight from Avimelekh had been frightening, but it was over now; he couldn’t see that he needed comforting.

  “What?”

  The Messenger cocked his head to the side. “Ah,” he said, “I see,” and then, “Oh dear.”

  “What?” said Yehuda Leib again. “What is it?”

  The Dark One sighed. “Have you never seen this man before today, Yehuda Leib?”

  Yehuda Leib shook his head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Yehuda Leib nodded. “Of course I’m sure.”

  But the truth was that, as yet, he had not taken a careful look at him.

  Softly, wearily, the Dark Messenger beckoned Yehuda Leib to move closer.

  Now that he looked, Yehuda Leib thought perhaps he had seen the man before. There was something—something familiar.

  “I don’t…,” he said. “I’m not…”

  The blood had spread wide, a huge red halo beneath the horseman’s head, extending halfway down his rib cage by now, and Yehuda Leib was careful not to let it touch him as he came nearer.

  That face.

  Whose was that face?

  “Who is he?” said Yehuda Leib.

  The Dark One spoke softly. “Unknit the silver from his beard; smooth down the wrinkles of his face. Do you not know him?”

  Yehuda Leib shook his head in frustration.

  He didn’t.

  But he thought he almost might.

  There were two large patches of gray in the man’s beard. Despite his best efforts, Yehuda Leib couldn’t quite manage to ignore them, and so he reached up his hands to block them out.

  And just like that, he knew.

  His hands.

  His little hands in the beard.

  The ghost of a smell: wax and wood and sweat and wool.

  Yom Kippur.

  His little hands at the edges of his father’s beard.

  His father’s beard.

  His father.

  This was his father.

  “Oh,” said the Messenger of Death. “Oh dear.”

  * * *

  —

  Nothing.

  There was nothing else in the world.

  His father—his father—the vacant face of his father, staring up at the scattered stars.

  Oh, it hurt.

  He had been waiting, every day, every day, every empty, boring minute of his stupid little life, to see this face split into a smile again.

  And he had missed his chance.

  He had run away.

  Why had he run away?

  It hurt.

  Oh, it hurt.

  The world began to bleed out now into a streaky wash of tears.

  He had asked for help. He had called out aloud.

  He—he—had asked for this. It was his fault.

  His fault.

  There was something in his chest, something hard and heavy that felt as if it would crack his ribs, and it reached up into his throat and took hold of him and squeezed, and it hurt, and he hurt, and he could hear a sound nearby, a wounded sound, an animal sound, and only when he began to feel a ragged ache in his throat did he realize that the sound was his own.

  He didn’t care about the blood anymore.

  He didn’t want to be careful.

  He buried his face in his father’s chest, and he sobbed.

  It hurt.

  Oh, how it hurt.

  * * *

  —

  But there are protocols in these moments; there are necessities to think of.

  “Yehuda Leib,” said the Dark Messenger. “I must ask you to move aside.”

  “What?” said Yehuda Leib. Something deep inside him felt suddenly broken, and he almost feared to move lest the pieces be irretrievably scattered.

  “It is time.”

  The Dark Messenger stepped forward, and, instinctively, Yehuda Leib scuttled back. The Messenger reached deep into his black coat and brought forth—

  Brought forth nothing.

  “Ah,” he said, patting at his pockets. “Forgive me. Forgive me, I—I seem to have mislaid…”

  Yehuda Leib gazed silently up at him past red, tear-streaked cheeks.

  “I’m afraid I cannot…without my…” The Messenger sighed hard. “No. No matter,” he said, pushing up his sleeves. “We shall simply have to improvise.”

  Carefully, Yehuda Leib inched forward, craning to see what would happen.

  Taking firm hold of his right pinky between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, the Dark Messenger grimaced and pulled.

  The nail grew longer.

  Twice more the Messenger grasped and pulled, grasped and pulled, until he had made, protruding about an inch from his little finger, a sharp, rounded trough of his smallest nail.

  “Stand back,” he said, and moved forward to plant a foot on either side of the dead man’s chest. Bending low, the Messenger dipped his nail deep into the eyes of Yehuda Leib’s father—first the right and then the left—and, delicately, he scooped out a small point of light from each and tipped it into the palm of his left hand.

  And, just like that, the body in the snow was vacant—nothing more than cooling meat.

  His father, however, was still there: a pair of faint, glimmering lights in the left hand of Death.

  If only he could reach them…

  Slowly, Yehuda Leib began to creep forward.

  “Stay back,” said the Messenger with a voice of ice.

  Carefully, the Messenger rolled the two points of light into one between his palms, and he began to look about on all sides as if searching for a convenient place to put it down.

  “But how?” he muttered to himself. “How to safely contain…”

  “What is that?” said Yehuda Leib.

  The Messenger seemed annoyed. “Oh, nothing. If I had my…” And here he sighed. “This is truly…” And, looking deep into the trees, he called out sharply: “You there!”

  There was a skittering in the darkness, and a honking caw.

  “Yes, you. Come forth.” It was a long moment before he repeated, “Come forth, I say!”

  Finally, what seemed to be an ordinary if startlingly large crow came flitting out of the darkness.

  But there was something odd behind its eyes—something dark.

  Something intelligent.

  The crow bowed its head toward the snowy path and spoke in a crackling voice. “Most Reverend Regent.”

  Yehuda Leib recoiled at the sound. Were crows meant to speak? He thought not. But then nothing seemed more impossible than what had just happened: his father given and taken away in a single moment.

  The Messenger did not bother to look at the crow. “Whom do you serve, demon?”

  The crow hopped forward and blinked. “I am the Right Deplorable Carrion of the Cracked and Blasted Wastes of Tehom, Master of Ragged Flesh, Bringer of—”

  But the Messenger held up his empty palm. “Spare me.”

  The crow preened lightly.

  “I asked whom you serve.”

  “I am counted, Most Reverend Regent,” said the crow, “among the legions of Lord Pazuzu.”

  “Good,” said the Messenger. “Then I charge you, Crow of Pazuzu, in the name of your master, to carry this cargo into the Far Country, to the very gates of my house, and there to wait for me until such time as I shall return to collect it. You shall not tarry in your errand, nor shall you turn to the left or the right. Do you understand?”

  The crow nodded. “Yes, Most Reverend Regent.” />
  “Good,” said the Messenger. “Then approach and take your charge.”

  With a flitting hop, the crow rose to perch on the Messenger’s wrist.

  And what it did there appalled Yehuda Leib.

  With a sharp peck and a toss of its head, it swallowed the bright point of light in the Messenger’s palm.

  “No!” cried Yehuda Leib.

  The Dark One flinched, as if he had forgotten Yehuda Leib was even there.

  “No!” called Yehuda Leib again, and, darting forward, he reached out for the crow, which, with an angry croak, rose from the Messenger’s wrist.

  “Come back!” cried Yehuda Leib, but the crow beat the air with its wide wings, rising high up into the sky.

  Yehuda Leib could still see the glimmering light, just barely, lodged in the crow’s throat, racing away into the night.

  He could not bear to let it disappear.

  “Wait,” said the Dark Messenger feebly, but Yehuda Leib leapt off in pursuit. “Wait!”

  But it was too late.

  The sound of the boy’s thumping feet was swallowed quickly by the thick, skulking trees.

  * * *

  —

  Silence fell on the path.

  The Dark One turned and let go a heavy sigh. He was tired—so terribly, terribly tired.

  He had meant to be in Zubinsk by now. One sweet day of anonymity, one day to walk among others, to join in their celebration and not be reviled for simply existing—was that so much to ask?

  And now, on top of it all, he had lost his instrument.

  Trusting Avimelekh to a common demon was dangerous—perhaps even foolish—but his light had to make its way into the Far Country, all the way to the House of Death, and without his instrument, he simply could not contain it safely.

  He could’ve borne it back himself, it was true. But it was always such a long journey. And he was so tired already.

  Besides, he would not have risked missing the wedding in Zubinsk for any price.

  All the same, though, he was afraid there was one more stop that he could not possibly avoid. He thought he knew where he might’ve left his instrument.

  But it meant going in the wrong direction.

  It meant going back to Tupik.

  * * *

  —

  What took Bluma by surprise was how wearying the sadness was.

  When the crowd of guests and neighbors began to leak back out the front door, all the energy in the house seemed to go with them.

  The food was left where it sat, laid out in half-eaten array on the front-room workbenches. The candles were allowed to gutter and smoke.

  Slowly, her parents mounted the staircase.

  Slowly, sighing, they climbed upstairs.

  There was no chatting, no baking, no activity of any kind. It seemed as if the order of the day was just to sit and wait for the aroma of death to pass from their nostrils.

  And it took its time in going.

  But it wasn’t just the fatigue that weighed so heavily—it was the boredom, too.

  No one had energy to do anything.

  For a little while, Bluma thought she might pass the time in reading, and she flopped down atop her bedclothes in the late-afternoon twilight to do so, but her mind was slow and thick.

  So instead, she just lay.

  From time to time, someone would move. Around suppertime, her mother went downstairs to pick at the leftovers in the front room. Now and then her father would cry softly.

  Before long, Bluma’s eyelids began to drift.

  Sleep, it turned out, was the only thing that made any sense.

  Bluma opened her eyes. Time had passed. One short, smoldering wick burned in a wide puddle of wax, and outside, darkness had fallen. In the next room, her mother and father were snoring softly.

  And above, in the attic, there was nothing.

  Her bubbe was gone.

  Her bubbe was dead.

  Nothing would ever be the same.

  She had never meant to come to bed—she was still dressed there, atop the bedclothes, all the way down to her boots. And now it seemed as if she’d never escape the bed again. She couldn’t even muster the inclination to rise and change into her nightgown.

  Grief and boredom pecked at her brain like a pair of starving birds.

  She longed to sleep, but she had squandered her fatigue on the boredom of the afternoon.

  The time scraped.

  The time scraped slowly.

  The time scraped slowly by.

  And she had just finally begun to doze again when a familiar sound groaned out through the house.

  The front door was opening.

  Before she had time to remember why her heart was so heavy, Bluma was on her feet.

  Bubbe has come home.

  This, of course, was not true. If there is one thing that unites the multifarious dead, it is the fact that none of them ever come back.

  But someone had returned. Someone in a dress blacker than the night, blacker than the darkness hidden inside your eyes.

  And where, ordinarily, the face of the Dark One remains hidden—inside the folds of her mantle, beneath the brim of his hat—Bluma happened to reach the top of the stairs just as the ascending Messenger passed through a falling beam of moonlight.

  She saw the face.

  She saw it very clearly.

  Her insides squirmed into a twist of panic. It could’ve been no other face in the universe.

  “You,” said the Messenger of Death.

  And Bluma fled.

  * * *

  —

  Tired as she was on that night, still the reach of Death was long.

  It began with the water barrel in the corner, stolid and immovable in its spot for years, never once to wobble.

  Until Bluma began to run.

  And suddenly, the barrel tipped and fell. Water covered the floor, and if Bluma had not neglected to take off her boots before lying down on her bed that afternoon, then her feet would surely have slipped and slid; she would’ve broken her neck.

  But Bluma splashed away, the water lapping at her ankles, and she fled in the only direction she could go as the Dark One’s slow, aching feet followed behind:

  Up.

  Up toward Bubbe’s bedroom.

  And as she pounded up the stairs, her breath short and shallow, the sole of Bluma’s boot fell hard in the center of a step—a step that had never before shown any sign of weakness—and it splintered and cracked and gave way as if the rot had been eating at it for a century.

  If Bluma had been just a moment slower, then she would have fallen; she would’ve cracked her head open on the workbench below.

  Behind her, Bluma could hear the Dark One leaning against the wall to cross over the splintered gap where the stair had been, and Bluma pushed through the door of her bubbe’s room and slammed it so hard that several of the chimney stones shifted and fell in a sooty avalanche that strained the beams and rafters of the house below.

  Surely, surely, her parents would wake at this racket, would come and save her, chase the Dark Lady away, make her safe.

  But the sleep of the grieving is a heavy thing, and Death has a way of passing lightly where she wishes not to be seen.

  Bluma pushed open the bedroom window.

  Everything outside was terribly still.

  The cold wind turned over in its sleep.

  It was a long way down.

  The fallen stones were blocking the bedroom door, and she could hear it shaking rhythmically at the shove-shove-shove of the Dark One.

  There was no time.

  Quickly, Bluma lifted herself up to sit on the windowsill and reached her foot out onto the ledge below. If she was careful, she might just be able to climb down�
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  But her heel slipped on a patch of ice, and with a lurch, she slid and began to fall, her heart plummeting before her.

  Surely Death had caught her at last.

  Bluma landed hard in her neighbor’s haystack, shattering the wooden undergirding below. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t catch her breath, and her head ached terribly.

  But only the wood had broken. She seemed—yes, she seemed to be intact.

  Far above, the Messenger of Death leaned out of her bubbe’s window, searching the ground.

  Bluma had to go.

  Now.

  But no sooner had Bluma climbed to her feet and made her way out of her neighbor’s goat stall than there she was: the Dark Lady, pushing her way out Bluma’s front door.

  Without sparing a thought for her route, Bluma turned on her heel and fled, running directly into the cemetery.

  And this was a terrible mistake.

  * * *

  —

  If the world of the living were a suit of clothes and the world of the dead the bony flesh beneath, then at each elbow there would be a cemetery gate.

  Here the dead rub up against the living world.

  Here the living world wears thin.

  Bluma had spent her entire life within a stone’s throw of this graveyard, but she was immediately disoriented upon entering it that night. The graveyard no longer seemed centered on the path that ran down its middle: suddenly it revolved around the tidy black blanket of fresh-turned earth beneath which they had buried Bluma’s bubbe.

  The young grave drank up all her attention. And for this reason, Bluma was twisted back to look over her shoulder as she ran into the cemetery.

  By the time she came to a halt, she had already strayed from the path.

  And you must never stray from the path in a cemetery once darkness has fallen.

  But where was her pursuer?

  Bluma’s slowing footsteps in the crunching snow seemed as loud as rumbling thunder. The night was cold and still. Snow had begun idly to fall, as if it had nothing better to do.

  Had she outrun the Dark Lady?

  But she had not.

  There are certain ancient protocols that restrict the behavior of the Messenger of Death in the world of the living. But once cemetery borders have been crossed, an entirely different set of rules applies.