The Beasts: A Winter Tale, continuing the story begun in The Old

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER NINE OF THE BEASTS

BEASTS
CONCLUDED

Her phone rang, and she looked at the number. She didn’t kow it, and usually that menat she didn’t answer, but today Marabeth Strauss picked up.
“Hello?”
“Marabeth?’
“Yes.”
But before he spoke, she knew. Sje knew his voice.
“This is Jason.”
Shit.
She had planned to be the bigger woman. She had planned to be the person who called him, who got his number.and behaved like an adult.
“Hello,” she forced, not brightness, but lack of embarassment, into her voice. “How are you?’
“I’m good. I’m real good. I was thinking about you? How’ve you been/”
“I’ve just been reading the journal and everything. And we’re waiting to hear back from the funeral home. About Dad’s funeral.”
“Right. Right.”
“As soon as it happens we’re going to go travel and learn some more. About Dad, I guess.”
“Yes. Right.”
And then Marabeth thought, well, here is the chance to behave like a grown up..
“Would you like to go out for coffee?”
“I don’t really like coffee,” Jason said.
“Oh,”
“I like dinner though.”
“I need to get out of this house.”
“How about I come by at… well, what time is good for you?”
“How about,” Marabeth said, “I go back to my own place, and you can pick me up there. I ‘m not lying. I really do have my own place.’
“See, I just thought you were like a Bronte sister, and you’d never married so you stayed in that room upstairs.”
“I’ll have you know, one, that Charlottle Bronte was married, and two, so was I.”
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Clearly nothing.”
Jason laughed.
“You’re a funny woman, Marabeth. You’ll send me directions?”
“I’ll send them now. 1916 Birmingham.”
“Downtown. Alright then. What time?”
“Six seems too early. Eight seems too late.”
“That does leave seven.”
“Yeah, I think seven with a touch of the fashionably late.”
“See you then,”
Her mind retreated from what had gone on between them the night before. Apparently his did too. They were speaking so socially, in a joking manner like Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant out of a nineteen thirties movie. But there had been sex back then too. It simply wasn’t talked about. That was what subtext was for.
An hour ago she’d heard Kristian come up the front stairs. He knew when people would be up and where and always came up the stairway furthest from where anyone was. He wasn’t hiding that he’d been out all night, he had simply not wanted to publicize it, and the family respected him.
He’ll take me home. I need him to. Joyce is busy humping my cousin, I guess.
But for now the book.
Now, as she read it, she read with longing, and rather than reading the story of a long dead ancestor she had hardly known, and whom she did not know why had fixated on her as her heir, became the story of a woman who, in some ways, was herself.




IN THE DAYS FATHER went out with Ada’s husband. He was an American. His parents had come from Bavaria, but his whole life was here. He was, as they say, close to the earth, a woodsman and a hunter. You must not imagine the city as it is now. Germantown was the edge of downtown, and east of it there were woods and wildness. Among the rivers and streams there were animals to trap, and Friederich worked by day alongside Albert. At night, he did his own wook, soon making Albert very rich. I had thought I would work as a maid, but Ada soon said, “I only want to you studying. You have a quick mind, and you could be a teacher in one of the schools.”
She showed me to a great room filled with books, high ceilinged, like the library I would possess one day. There was an old globe in it, and Ada said, “My husband’s father was from Bavaria, but his mother was a Schiller. They were one of the great families here. They held this house for three generations. Old man Schiller owned two beer factories. Their fumes built this house. Enjoy their wealth.”
There was always a great blazing fireplace, and in the library was a massive bearskin rug. The bear stared at me fiercely, and firelight shone on its teeth, and here Ada would make me lock myself away with tea and cakes and read.
One evening she said to me, “My Pamela, this is for you.”
They were red, leatherbound books, and I asked, “What are they?”
“Stories of us.”
There was Kant, and Goethe. There was Nietzsche even, and scores of Wagner and thick old records for their phonography. There was Parzifal and Siegfried, and Ada took three slim books down for me and said, “Begin here.”
And so I looked on their simple spines and read one word.


VOLSUNGASAGA



There was a wrap on the door that jolted Marabeth out of the room where Pamela sat, absorbed in the story of the Volsungs. She looked up and saw Joyce standing there, her hair disheveled.

“I debated telling you this,” Joyce said, sitting on the bed, “not because there’s anything I ever don’t want to tell you, but because… Peter.. I mean, I’ve been with him. It’s wrong, I really think it’s wrong to tell about things that happen with a person you’ve been with… well, a couple of timEs by now. And I like him, Mara, I really do like him. I more than like him, and that’s foolish, but…”
“Joyce,” Marabeth held up a hand, “is there something you plan on telling me?”
“He knows,” Joyce said. “He’s knows everything. Well, some things.”
“I thought he did,” Marabeth said. “We determined that last night, me and Kristian, that he knew.”
“He changes, Marabeth.’
“What?” Marabeth looked at her.
“Those pills, the medication, it really is to prevent the Change. All the men in your family take it around puberty, after it’s seen if they are going to change or not. Except for Myron, I think thye started him early. But Peter doesn’t always take them. He Changes when he can. He has a part of the basement in his house where he secures himself to… make the Change. I couldn’t keep it from you, and I told him I couldn’t so you have to see him. He knows I’m telling you. I told him I couldn’t keep anything like this from you.”
“Well… Well, shit,” Marabeth said. “Well, is he home now?”
“He’s at his office.”
“Fuck, I hate that. He’s so official looking at his office. But, I need to see him.”
She stood up.
“Will you take me there? And then can you finally take me back to my house? Is that too much?”
“This whole thing is too much,” Joyce said, standing up. “How soon do you need me to be ready?’
“Five minutes,” Marabeth decided. “That’s what I need.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

A very well done start to the chapter. I don't have much to say other then I am enjoying where this story is going. I like Marabeth and Jason. I hope it works out whatever it is between them. The wolf stuff is still fascinating. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you had a nice night.

 

[ChrisGibson]

What I chose not to do is put up the parts of the Volsungasaga that are originally written in the story and read by Pamela. It is the story of a Germanic family that is and its hero, Sigmung, who by killing a wolf and taking up its pelt learns to become a were wolf. In the end the cloak must be destroyed because it nearly drives his son crazy. It can be read here https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1152/1152-h/1152-h.htm It was a lot going on tonight, but a lot of scattered things, and hopefully tomorrow night we return to something more cohesive. Oh... tomorrow night there will be no Rossford, just The Beasts.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thanks for that link, I will keep it to read when I have time!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I would just get a synopsis. I mean, I'm just saying.

 

[ChrisGibson]

T E N

T H E
F A M I L Y







There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

-Friedrich Nietzsche


Peter Keller looked, frankly, annoyed when Marabeth entered his office. He had known she was coming, He had to. His offices were downtown six blocks away from her apartment in the white tower by the courthouse, the old building with the marble façade on the first floor and the old elevator with its brass doors that rolled up sedately to the seventh floor. There was a secretary to warn him, the bitch who asked her if she had an appointment and seemed wary when Marabeth had said she was his cousin. And of course, Joyce had told him that she would have to know. He couldn’t have been surprise-ed. And yet, he was, and here it all was, this old thing between them.
“Hello, Marabeth.”
Peter loved her brother. He adored Kristian. He loved Jim when Jim had no one. He was the oldest cousin. She the second oldest, but he was the head of the boys of that generation. He was relaxed and easy around them, always watching out for them, always chiding Cyrus for being stupid, and then chiding the others for calling Cyrus stupid. He was the responsibility of the family and she respected him.
“Peter,” Marabeth began, “I need to talk to you.”
She had been about to say, “We need to talk,” but this sounded much too confrontational.
She respected Peter, but she could never get past the idea that he did not like her, that he did not, quite, approve of her, that she was an annoyance to him, and she was getting that from him right now.
“Yes,” he said in a clipped tone. “I thought we might.”
Must he sit on the other side of the desk like that, in that suit, staring at her, looking annoyed as he scribbled over papers. And, seriously, Joy was screwing him? Out of all her cousins? But then, out of all her cousins it made sense, Marabeth realized.
“Well?” Peter looked up at her, folding his hands together, looking, even in his patience, annoyed. Or was that just her imagination?
And then she realized she didn’t really know what she had to say. That was it, all the way over here in the car, and Joyce was waiting downstairs for her, she had told herself Peter was her cousin, and so she didn’t need to prepare anything to say, but right now he was like the principal and she found herself more uncertain than she wanted to admit. She actually didn’t know what she wanted to say to him. She had planned to confront him, and now, in this moment, it seemed like what she should do is make an offering.
“Would you like to read the book? Pamela’s journal?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because… I thought you’d like to know.”
“What’s there to know?” He tilted his head looking, frankly, like an asshole.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe my best friend is fucking you.”
“What?” Peter snapped, and rounded the desk, “Shut up.”
“I can’t fucking believe it.”
“This is my office, Marabeth,” Peter hissed, making shushing sounds. “My assistant’s out there,” he whispered.
“Why does your secretary give a shit who you’re fucking? She doesn’t even know who I am. Let alone who Joyce is. Joyce must see an entirely different side of you, the side that isn’t arrogant and disapproving and looks at me like he’s smelling something funny.”
“Not that’s it’s your business, Mara, but maybe she just sees me?” Peter said.
“Maybe unlike you, who does everything she can to chase her own independence and not give a fuck about this family—congratulations for being able to get away—she actually bothers to look at me enough and see what’s there.”
“Well,” Marabeth said.
“Well, what?”
“Tell me how you really feel.”
Peter said nothing and Marabeth said, “I know you’ve always resented the fuck out of me, and I thought that was why, but at least you said it. It only took forty years.”
“I don’t think I entirely meant it.”
“I think you did,” Marabeth said, “which is awkward because the next set of werewolf babies you make will be my godchildren. I mean, no way Joyce isn’t gonna want that. But—”
“You need to not talk about that again.”
“But the only thing I want to know is why you change and I don’t. That’s the thing I haven’t figured out yet. I could have gone my whole life never knowing, and from what you’re saying, Aunt Maris and Aunt Claire didn’t change either. And I have to understand what was going on.”
“What do you mean?” Peter said. “All the men in our family…” he walked to the door, put his ear to it almost comically and then came back.
“All of us are… that way.”
“Werewolves,” Marabeth said.
“I’m going to ask you to stop saying that.”
“And the pills you take, that Kris thinks are his crazy pills and his alone, you all take. Like you and Jim and Cyrus, and eventually your kids. Only you don’t take them all the time because you like to lock yourself in the basement and turn into a wolf to get away from your generally anal retentive nature.”
“Yes,” Peter said. “I am, your brother is. Your father was, your grandfather Uncle Jimmy was, and Friederich was. The men, for the most part.”
“Not all, though.”
“No,” Peter said. “I haven’t figured it out, but some of us don’t.”
“Jim,” Marabeth guessed.
Peter nodded. “Jim never has. And Kate’s boys. But the men in our family are, for the most part…. Men make the Change. Women? No.”
There was a look on Marabeth’s face, and now Peter stopped.
“What?” he said.
“You don’t know.”
Was it surprise? Was it, Peter wondered, triumph even.
“You really don’t know,” Marabeth said.
“What… don’t I know?’
“Pamela—”
“Was some type of witch.”
“Was a wolf.”
Peter blinked at her.
“Um, the wolf got your tongue there. Bad joke,” Marabeth shook her head. “Pamela changed at will. At any time. Friederich changed at will as well, but only at the time of the full moon, or so it seems. He wasn’t like you at all. Something happened when we came to America. The Change does not skip over the women. It is in us as well. It is in me. Only I don’t know how to unlock it, and you don’t know how to control it. Pamela and Friederich were wolves who maintained their minds and knew how to control what they did and when they changed.”
Peter continued staring at her, and Marabeth said, “Now, do you want us to start working together, or do you still want to pretend you know everything, and I’m just the worthless cousin you can’t stand?”


“Are you sure you want me here?” Joyce said.
“Yes,” Peter and Marabeth almost shouted from where they sat at Marabeth’s dining room table.
Then Peter said, “But you don’t have to stay.”
“It’s just that you don’t have to go, Marabeth said.
Peter turned around and said, “I fully acknowledge that you have a life with other things to do than sit here and watch us is what I’m saying.”
“Well, then I need to acknowledge that too,” Joyce said, getting off the couch. “I’m going to make a run to the store and then I need to lay in my own bed.”
She said to Marabeth, “Do you need me to pick you up anything?’
Before Marabeth could answer, Peter said, “That’s the very definition of not acknowledging you have other things to do than be around us.”
“He is right,” Marabeth admitted reluctactly.
“Well, okay.”
Joyce stood up, put her purse over her shoulder and kissed Marabeth, hugging her. She looked at Peter and he said, “Is it awkward if I get a kiss too?”
“Considering the fact that the two of you have been sleeping together it would be awkard if she didn’t,” Marabeth said.
Their hug and kiss was awkward though, and Marabeth said, “I guess that’s my fault for being in the room.”
“I got the kids tonight,” Peter said.
“And you don’t want to shock them with this new floosy.”
“That’s not it at all,” Peter said. “It’s more like I don’t want to try to make you think I’m looking for a step mom. So, I understand if you don’t want to—”
“If you’d like me to come over, I will.”
“I would, actually,” Peter said. “But I’d never dream of—”
“Why don’t you call me when the two of you are done,” Joyce said, tapped him on the shoulder, and walked out of the apartment.
“Wow,” Peter said.
“Yeah,” Marabeth said.
“I haven’t met anyone like her.”
“”That’s what I say all the time.”
But Marabeth was used to Joyce and now she said, “So you’ve got the whole family right down here.”
“I’ve got to,” Peter said. “All of our cousins, all of the descendants of Friederich Strauss. Like, Mary only had a daughter, and she’s a Keller like me, but now her last name is Anderson. If she has a boy he’ll be an Anderson, but I need to know if and when he makes the Change. We can’t lose sight of our family, of the Gene, or whatever it is, no matter how many generations pass or what the last name is. Great Aunt Claire only had two kids because her husband died so young, and she never married again. Just twins, Fred and Katherine. Katherine only had daughters, so all of her descendants have different last names, but when a boy pops up, we have to know.”
“Dan and Andy,” Marabeth murmured.
“Tina’s kids.”
“I don’t really know them that well,” Marabeth said, “but they’re teenagers. I mean, Andy’s going to college, right?”
“Right.”
“And they’ve both got a little star on their names.”
“They never went through the Change,” Peter said.
“Oh?”
Then Marabeth said, “Uh!”
“What?”
“Derek didn’t either. Their first cousin. None of the men in Claire’s… No, that’s not true, none of the men in Claire’s daughter, went through the Change. Let me see something.”
Peter waited, watching Marabeth look over their family tree, the tip of her tongue darting from between her lips.
“Either there’s something very special about Claire,” Marabeth said, “Or very special about cousin Katherine, or….”
“Yeah?”
“The Change or the the Gene or… whatever you want to call it, doesn’t pass through two successive female generations.’
“That’s what I thought,” Peter said. I mean, that’s what it looks like. That branch of the family is the only one descended from Friederich’s daughter, and through a granddaughter.”
“Either it passes out,” Marabeth said. “Or it becomes what it was. Something that has to be awakened, something more controllable.”
“Right,” peter said. “Which, if I didn’t have boys would be a bit of a relief. At least, it seems, we can drop our guard on that branch of the family.”
“But none of this is science,” Marabeth said. “It’s all guesswork. The idea that if I had a daughter, then my grandson would be… not normal, but…”
“Latent,” Peter said. “I call it latent.”
“That’s a good word.”
Peter grinned, “And it’s still all speculation.”
“Yeah,” Marabeth half agreed, “but not that much speculation. And after all, if this thing was that uncontrollable, if there were that many werewolves walking around, then what about Friederich’s brothers and sisters, or his cousins. You realize we don’t know anything about other Strausses, anything about where he came from?”
“You’ve got a point. Say, if it’s not too much trouble, could you bring the journal by and I could copy some of it?”
“You can take it,” Marabeth pushed it toward him. “I mean, I want it back, but print what you need.”
“You’d trust me with it?”
“Yeah,” Marabeth shrugged. “But you have to go. I need to get in the shower and find something to wear, not necessarily in that order.”
“You got a hot date tonight?”
“As a matter of fact,” Marabeth answered, “Yes.”

OUR SECOND SEGMENT OF THE BEASTS WILL BE FROM THE JOURNAL OF PAMELA STRAUSS

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE BOOK OF PAMELA STRAUSS


IN THE DAY I am reading, and in the night I am reading, though through the day I go with Ada, to help her with childbirths. Then we see only horse carts and the men to shovel their shit from the street. We take a carriage up the cobbles of Kaiser Wilhelm Street, and then around the corner to Dimlerstrasse. There, the beer factories a backdrop to them, are a line of proud houses. Rounding the corner we pass a sizable plot of land with a little church and a small school on it.
“That is where the Negroes are building their church,” Ada said. “They are going to put a school up as well. I have heard some say it will rival Saint Ursula. I cannot say.”
All the way down Dimler, dwarving the houses is the steeple of a great church, white stone, with high steps going up the porch. This is the German Catholic church, Saint Ursula, and down the road is the German Lutheran Church, Saint Paul the Apostle. But right now we stop in front of one of the tall elegant townhouses. We come up the flight of steps and Ava knocks on the door. It is a fine house, and the door has a cut glass border all around it. A maid in black white white lace apron opens the door. She is Irish I am told later, and she says, “Mistress has been waiting for you.”
I take in the high ceilings, the high stair that goes up to the next level where the lady of the house, Mrs. Dashbach, far too old to have a child, is struggling in labor.
“I told her,” Ada said, “when she first came to me, that I could make it as if the child never were. God forgives all, I said.”
In the great bedroom that overlooks the street, in a great canopied bed, Mrs. Dashbach struggles in labor. Only her daughter is present, for it is not fit for men to be present in labor.
“You do not have to be here, Child,” Ada says.
“I will not leave my mother,” Katherine says.
She is tall, but very slender, blond, pale. Her accent is utterly American. Ada nods and says, “Good girl. Go fetch water then, would you?”
It is a bloody labor, a labor of hands rolled up and arms covered in blood. In the end, a baby is delivered, small and weak, and given to his weak mother.
“Pamela, you go downstairs and take tea with Miss Dashbach,” she says, nodding to Katherine, and we both depart. Downtairs, in the kitchen, the servants make tea and we drink it in the parlor with Katherine’s father. We are not through half the cup when Ada comes into the parlor, her face drawn, and she says to Mr. Dashbach, “Victor, you must see your wife. You son has died.”
Katherine goes up with her father, and Ada says to me, “I knew when I saw it that the baby would not live.”
“What do we do?’
“I can call on the Steiglers, but I will do it after we leave. We must…” Ada is choosing her words carefully, “stay here a while longer. I am going up. If you would, ask the servants to bring cold water.”
We stay until Mrs. Dashbach is flush, until she hallucinates, and her face goes from pale to white to green, until her heart seizing, and she dies in the bed. As Ada closes her eyes and sings to the dead mother, I understand that this is what she was waiting for. I stay with Katherine while Ada cleans up. On the old telephone, Katherine rings her relations and as it darkens, we climb into the handsome cab and ride down the road, first to Steigler and Steiglers to tell them of the mother and child they must pick up, and then to Saint Ursula’s to light candles. I am filled with sorrow for the death of the woman and her baby, but, and a little ashamed of this, filled with wonder at the beauty of their house and the entirely different beauty of this church. In the early evening, with it’s marble floors and high pillars and stain glass windows. How are those black people, those colored people with their little school house of a church ever to surpass this wonder? I light candles at the exquisite feet of the Mother of God, her eyes lifted up, her hands outspread. Up until now I have barely been in churches. Now the Mother is something cosmic, ancient, and infinitely, sad. Sad she seems, sad enough and wonderful enough for all that I have experienced this night.

But there is more sorrow to follow, much more than that private grief of the Dashbachs. No sooner are they buried, then, as the summer comes to an end, rumors that have shaken Germantown come true, and Germany goes to war with Britain. For a time things with us are mildly safe, but it is when America enters the war that people who have, until now, been respectful and apparently envious of us, come through our streets, throw rocks through windows, dare to come up to houses and deface them. Some of us do not want to antagonize. Others, proud as ever, come out with their guns. The life we knew becomes impossible. The Morning Star, our German newspaper, is fast going out of business. Parents pull their children out of the schools, even out of Saint Ursula’s. The Schlaudeckers German Shepherd is shot and someone kicks the Freidbach’s dachshun to death. Ah, but I knew people were evil. This has never been far from my mind, and suddenly, where there was violence on our street, the Americans, the Anglos, the whoever is after Germans, are leaving us as alone.
Those who antagonized us are being found dead, with their throats ripped out by wolves. I go on the patrol as well. Suddenly, money, either for gratitude or in hopes of protection, comes into the pockets of Freiderich and it no longer makes since for us to live in the Keller house. We get a little house on Decker Strausse which is now called Decker Street. Kaiser Wilhelm is now Williams Street and Suddenly Dimlerstrasse, Dimler Avenue. A part of me is enraged at how quickly we gave up ourselves to prove to these lesser men that were are just as American as they. And I am not the only one who did not wish for Kaiser Wilhelm ot be victorious. But by now, the war Frau Inga had predicted was full blown, and in the middle of 1917. a letter came from Wurzburg with the familiar script of Hans, Frau Inga’s caretaker. It said that Frau Inga, at a good age, had died in her sleep, and Ada counted back the days to when Hans wrote it had happened and said, “All that night I was troubled for Mama, All that night.”
She did not speak for three weeks.

Though I was far from being a little girl, I needed some comfort in those days. The papers told us that the world was falling apart, and the papers that I loved, our German papers were no longer in business. We could scarcely leave Germantown for the hatred thrown on us, and we were not entirely safe in our own houses. This was when I learned that hate was the way of the world, and people would hate whatever they could for whatever reason.
In that time, oddly enough, the people who faired well enough were the Blacks. Ada told me how, long ago, even before the Germans and alongside them, the Blacks had settled along the river in land that touched in what was Germantown now, and land that was on the otherside of Buren Boulevard. She had not beleived they would be able to build a splendid church. I had seen in New York, lovely Black churches, but they were Protestant ones. The number of Black Catholics usually did not warrant or afford a large church, but suddenly, in the midst of the war, on the barren plot they’d bought, the foundation was dug, and up from it, a church began to grow. The foundation was dug not only by the Blacks, but by the Irish who lived in Rockport, and the plans were done by the infamous Hans Bueller, infamous for the tower house he lived in, and his Black mistress, a Creole woman called Etienne. He did not work on it alone, but with Alphonse Lacreaux. We all knew the name, for he lived in a brick house near downtown where few colored people lived, and in those days of the war the colored Catholics were—entertaining was not the word, but—mystifying.
We talked of them over dinner and left them in peace, but took them in curiosity and awe Once, one of the Schlaudecker boys had walked past the emerging church, shouting something about niggers, but, and this is a surprising time given the age we lived in, when even white people did not like each other, it simply would not be borne. It was as if the residents of Germantown had seen enough hatred in their direction and would not see in in another. And, no matter what tales of meek blackness have come down through the years, the residents of Saint Agatha parish did not take such insults lying down.
Most of them had come from Louisiana, New Orleans and thereabouts. Later I would learn that some had come from that mysterious Carribbean island, Haiti. First there had been the Blacks, and then had come the Sisters of Providence to teach them. The little church had been theirs, the little house their convent. The school had gone up next, and once taught, children were baptized. Then had come the folks from new Orleans, and once or twice the bishop had sent a priest to the parish, but the nuns and congregation had politely sent him back, requesting a Black one. They did this again and again until they got one and now they had five.
When I had first come to Germantown, only the small school, the convent, and the little church were taking up a sizeable plot of land. Now the new church rose in lovely pink brick and white concrete arches, now, jewel like, came the stain glass windows, the delicate dragonly patters of the rafters, the spire rising high. The nuns, in their black, rosaries at their sides, were an unreadable and silent flock of sober caramel faces. One would have had to be sober to undertake the life of a Negro nun.
And then, in the midst of the worst of things, when our houses were being defaced with by the people who called themselves true Americans, there appeared the members of Saint Agatha’s, with guns, walking the streets.
“What in the world are they doing?” Ada’s daughter, who was pregnant with her first child wondered. “Do you think they will attack?”
“You do not understand the lay of things,” Ada said, shaking her head. “It is only the other white people who have bothered us. They are not attacking. The Negroes are protecting.”
“They are staking their claim,” Friederich understood. “By protecting German town they are saying that no one can attack us, their neighbors. But they are wolves like us. By protecting Germantown, they are letting every white man, including ourselves, know that it is theirs. All,” Friederich marveled, “without saying a word.”
There was the wonder of the Blacks as the war went toward is end, which did not mean our troubles were at an end, and in our little house, there was the wonder of the Volsungasaga, which took me to another place, a different if not entirely better place. While I read the tales of he Volsungasaga, sitting in my chair, I hear a voice, almost in my ear. It is not strange to me except at first I take it for a sprite, or for a spirit.
“Pamela,” it calls to me in that husky accent of Bavaria, “Pam-EEla,”
It sings to me again and again until I know his voice, feel his hands, feel the regions between my thighs going moist as they have not for some time. My nipples rise as the voice sings, “Pamela, my love, come to me,”
The covers of the bed, which have been smooth, rise up to indicate the form of a long tall man underneath, and I hear him singing, “You deserve to be fucked, my child. You deserve it. Come to me.”
I see no form, but blow out the lantern and come, almost hypnotically to the bed, lifting off my gown, climbing under the cover, the heat of his breath, the downy warmth of his skin, his muscles, the hair up and down his body is real enough, his wet, eager kisses on my throat and breasts, between my thighs, are real enough, and Hagano is making love to me. All night he loves me to the point of exhaustion. I had felt, for some time, dry as a virgin, and not seen him, even forgotten about him. But when I wake in the morning, I am virgin no more.



ADA SAYS, “THE DASHBACHS, they have a fine house, do they not?”
“They do.”
“And money. Adler Dashbach is getting old, and Katherine is not yet married. Do you not think your father deserves a fine house? Would you not like to live in something fine and lovely?”
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I think I have said it.”
And so things are put in the works. Friederich, with quite a bit of money from protection, from the woodmill, who in early middle age is still very handsome, still quite strong, is a good match for Katherine who is getting no younger. He never speaks to her, but to her father, and lastly he speaks to me.
“Do you mind it?” Friederich asks me.
And there are so many feelings in me. I am twenty now, and unmarried, and not planning on marriage, and Friederich is, after all my father. I had insisted on this. He was the one who said we could come to a new country as new people. But this girl, this Katherine who is, after all, really my same age, I cannot bear to think of her believing she is my mother, or my superior, especially as we will live in the same house, for I do plan to live in that house, and to rule it.
And so I go to my knees. I unbutton Friederich’s trousers and take him into my mouth while he groans and claws the walls. I suck him to the back of my throat until he explodes in my mouth. I swallow his seed and then, while this great big man, my first lover, still lies gasping against the wall, I rise and I say, “Do what you wish, but always understand that the mistress of that house and this family will always be me.”
It is May of 1918, and the marriage is an austere one in Saint Ursula’s. Friederich is not young and Katherine is not merry. The families are there, and from the church, in the boxy little automobiles that are replacing the carriages, rumbling down the cobble streets, first them, and then Mr. Dashbach, and lastly myself enter into the Dashbach House, that which, today, you know as Strauss House, your home.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thanks for posting two portions they were great! I don't entirely understand why Peter doesn't like Marabeth but hopefully they have come to some sort of understanding. It is an interesting dynamic between them. The Book of Pamela Strauss is interesting to as always. I don't know where this story is going but I am definitely along for the ride and enjoying it. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

You're welcome. Now, about Peter and Marabeth: Peter might explain it if he hasn't already, and I think he sort of has and Marabeth has as well. If you don't understand the resentment between them by tomorrow night, I'll give you some hints.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Tonight there will be some stumbling through Yorkshire accents for which I truly apologize...


E L E V E N

P E N U L T I M A



One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

-Friedrich Nietzsche



“Christophah! Christophah!”
When he was eighteen, Christopher Ashby wondered about the blue edge of sea that joined the blue edge of sky. It was half a day’s march across the fields to the sea, and he didn’t think he would get that far, certainly not to the water or over it.
“Christophah!” his sister called again.
He put down the hoe and turned around, taking his cap off to wipe his brow.
“Mothah says, you’d bettah git t' grandmothah ’s ouse o' thee want t' see ah afore it’s too lairt.”
Chris stared at his sister, almost as if staring at her would change things, and Evangeline cried out, “What are thee still starin a' us fah, thee fool? there’s no time! Come !”
They left the cart horse in the field, On the way back they would tell Old Bart to mind it, and after they had, they went from the long, low, thatched house, out into the wide dirt street, and past the small shops to the house at the edge of the trees. That’s where Gran had gone when she said the old house was too crowded and she wanted to be left on her own. On her own, under the trees, on the edge of the woods, she sang to herself and dried her herbs. She made her healing ointments, and wrapping her shawl about her, she would go out with Evangeline to birth the babies or, in some cases, to make sure the babies never came.

“Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn.
Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs
All of a Midsummer's morn!
Surely we sing of no little thing,
In Oak and Ash and Thorn!”

“What are you…?” Evangeline began. Then, “Gran’s song.”
The house was dark compared to the wide open outside, and it was filled with the smell of smoke from the hearth. Christopher squeezed through the door, and though he and Evangeline stood in the small house, trying to make themselves smaller, Gran raised her head from the bed, blinked and murmured, “There he is. There he is, and there she.
“Well,” the old woman turned to a woman almost as old looking, “Go now, lass, and let me see the children.”
“I’ll will send th’others,” Mrs. Ashby said as she rose.
“No. No, daughter. None o’ that. These be enough.”
As their mother left, she merely nodded to them. Emotional display and other gestures were scarce in the North Country. Seeing her in his mind’s eye, Chris thinks how quickly people aged then, how a woman in this present world who looked like her would easily be close to seventy though his mother was not then forty. But the Christopher Ashby on his knees, on one side of the bed across from his sister who laid his face to his grandmother’s breast while Evangeline lay hers on the other knew only the old days.
“Reach undah tha' tabul 'n git 'um beads fah me,”she said with a small smile.
Chris did. He longed to hold onto the heavy beads at the same time he wished to hide them.
“Ah quicklih they forget,” the old woman said, taking the black beads and the silver chain and wrapping them around her hand. “Ah verih quicklih! When ar wur a girl they talked about t' auld religion, t' orned one, t' ladih , t' oak, t' ash 'n t' thorn. these wur spoken o' in ushed turns. 'and then kin enrih gets inta a fit o pique 'n suddenlih t' Virgin be t' Auld Religion, 'n t' beads 'n t' Mass 'n t' Latin. ar thurrt, fah so long, we wur so far awair frum it, t' new religion would not touch us. boot even ere people forget about it 'n turn frum t' Auld Ways, arl t' auld ways, t' Saints 'n t' Orned One. boot ar remembered. so thee names, Christophah , fah t' Auld saint ooh bore up t' bairn Jesus, 'n Evangeline. Evangeline. nah , receive t' blessin which none o' thee lads 'n lasss uhl get.”
She placed her bony hands on Chris’s head and on Evangeline’s, and suddenly the bony hand was heavy, was like a vice, was throbbing through his blond hair into his head, weighing him down as the old woman pronounced, “All o' our powah, we place upon thee, 'n upon thee.”
Chris rested under her lightening touch, her touch becoming ever lighter until there was a lightness, and emptiness in the room, and Chris lifted his aching head, blinking and looked to the old woman.
Evangeline, in her brown smock, her pale, dirty hair falling out of her bonnet, reached down and closed her grandmother’s eyes with two fingers.
“She’s gone, Chris.”

Christopher Ashby woke up, blinking at the yellow white sunlight ceiling that had been his midnight for three centuries. It was so vivid, and for a moment he did not know where he was. He turned on his side to see the brown nude form of Lewis, curled up like a child. He had already woken him, and Lewis said, patiently, “Yes, Love?”
“I don’t knah . Ar wur just…” Chris began, “in t' past.”
“What did you say?” Lewis turned to him almost frowning.
“I say,” Chris began.
“Oh, never mind,” Lewis had sat up. “You really were far back.”
Chris shook his head and cleared his throat, taking a moment to speak before his voice altered, raising an octave, into his usual American accent, though touched by something older now.
“I was dreamin’ of my home. Of… being a lad…. I need to stop talking like that. A kid. When I was a boy. When my Gran died. My grandmother.”
“I know what a Gran is,” Lewis said, pulling Chris close to him, “I also know that you’re over three hundred years old and from Yorkshire. Though, I tend to forget it until you wake up sounding like something out of Wuthering Heights.”
They lay together, Chris in Lewis’s arms, and Lewis said, “And how was it? To be back there?”
“A lot less sanitary.”
Lewis flicked Chris on the head.
“Evangeline. She was just a girl. But then I was just a boy. We had no idea what was going to happen to us. Before she died my grandmother blessed us. She said she placed all of her power on us, and then she died doing it.”
Lewis said nothing, and Chris turned around, his arms wrapped about Lewis.
“She was a witch. I sort of knew that then. I know it now. She was a witch. And a Catholic. She held to it. She gave me her rosary. She called them her beads. I wonder now if the reason Evangeline and I are still live, are what we are, is because of what she did.”
“I wonder if the reason Kruinh chose you is because you are witch blooded,” Lewis said.
“And if that’s why we chose each other?”
“Yes,” Lewis said. “That and, of course, I love you.”

They do not hold the wake in that little house. They bring her into the larger house, the long house with the heavy dirty thatch that must be replaced in a month’s time, where the more lanterns there are, the darker it seems to get, and the old woman’s body, on a table, is lit in dim red and gold. She would have been called a witch if there was no one to love her, no daughter with seventeen children, no two sons, no house to sing for her. But now she is a conjure woman, and a conjure woman gone.

“THIS ae nighte, this ae nighte,
— Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
—And Christe receive thy saule.”

They pass the jug of spirits which had replaced the real beer which came after the small beer, singing.

“When thou from hence away art past
To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last
If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon.
Sit thee down and put them on;
If hosen and shoon thou ne'er gav'st nane
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane.
From Whinny-muir when thou may'st pass,
And Christe receive thy saule.”

And outside the wind blows off of the high moors and makes a lonely howling which seems to join with the mourners at the same time it seems indifferent to things like death, and up on the hill by the forest, where the old hovel lies empty, another woman moves into the home that belonged to Old Woman Saxby, and a new witch takes her place.

When thou from hence away art past
To Whinny-muir thou com'st at last

In this present world, while they are eating breakfast, what has happened several times before happens now. What he missed the first time, he hears now. He does not know if this is something that happens only to Drinkers, but for him the memory remains, all of it, to be played back again watched and played back like—well, until he saw a film for a the first time, he had no adequate description for it, but—like a film. Only he can loop back, look at it, make what was quiet louder, lower the volume on what no longer seems important. He watches from winter in the present, a harvest time funeral three hundred years ago, an as they keen over his grandmother, Chris hears:

“The crop is failing, and there are too many mouths to feed.”
“What about the boy, the tall lad?”
“What of him?”

If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Sit thee down and put them on;
If hosen and shoon thou ne'er gav'st nane
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane.
From Whinny-muir when thou may'st pass,
To Brig o' Dread thou com'st at last;
From Brig o' Dread when thou may'st pass,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last;


“Wasn’t he to be apprenticed this summer?”
“But that cost money,” his father says. “and the farm can only go to Kevin. I can barely get the girls married off, but oh…”
“There’s a ship, come near Liverpool. Pay good money for workers.”
“What kind o’ workers?”
“Field, like whatchu do here. But you’d get paid handsomely. They say they let em go in a few years. They say they give em land and everything.”

If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
If meat or drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
—Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
—And Christe receive thy saule.

“Is that a true thing?”
“Aye! The lad could make his fortunes and make your future too….”

Chris drops his cup off coffee and he catches it in time not to break it, but not in time to prevent a mess. As the brown lquid goes across the table. Lewis stands up, goes to the sink, takes the dish cloth cloth and rinses it, coming back to clean up the table, and taking the cup from him.
“Get yourself another cup.”
Chris nods absently and murmurs, “Sorry. Sorry about that.”
As Lewis watches him, Christopher wonders, “Did they really believe he would have a good life? Did they really believe he was going to be an indentured servant, or is it simply what theye told themselves to make their treachery bearable.
No, but if they had believed it they would not have hidden it from me, not sold me like Joseph’s brothers sold him. And anyway, what they believed did not matter, what they told themselves did not matter, they had sold him, for money, and they were dead these three hundred years.
“We should go,” Chris said, while stirring creamer into his coffee.
Lewis looked to him. Chris was standing naked, his penis dangling, hair sticking up, and holding the coffee in his hands
“Go?’ Lewis said. “Go where?”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very interesting portion indeed! It was nice to read some of Chris's past. I wonder where they are going to go? Hopefully I have not missed that detail in my reading of this story. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Reading back I understand now that they are going to possibly find Joseph? I could still be wrong but hopefully not.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was so tired I fell asleep and just woke up and am looking at what time it is. Were you referring to Marabeth and Peter and thier struggle for... well, everything?

 

[CharmedFan28]

Pretty much.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE BEASTS CONTINUED

“The piano,” Rebecca said, “Use the piano. Songs like that need the piano, and he loved that song.”
Natalie had said something, and Rebecca didn’t really care. She loved her, but sometimes the old woman was infuriating, and it was because of her that she had seen what she had seen, that she had seen her beloved Nathan in a way she never wished to see him. But in those last days before he left, there had been a lot of seeing him the way she didn’t want to see him.
This is a part of marriage I suppose.
Till death do us part, for richer or poor, but what if the poorer, the lower, the tragedy occured after the death, past, how long we both shall live. So many ended a marriage well before the end of life, What no one told you is how married you were long past the death of your loved one.
He was still there. She wanted to imagine him in that rayon Hawaiian shirt, with the palm trees that might have been silly looking, but fit on him so snug. She remembered his dark thick hair and the sharpness of his handsome face, the eyes you could fall into, eyes Marabeth had inherited.
She remembered how little she cared about church or God or anything like that, and she remembered coming into that church, Saint Agatha’s, not Saint Ursula, and the singing:

Glory and praise to our God
Who alone gives light to our days
Many are the blessings he sends
To those who trust in his ways!

She had met him in Miami, and so, despite everything, she associated Nathan Strauss with the sun. She had been running away from home in the way that young adults can, and at the time she was Rebecca Cunningham. She was high on Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and Nathan reminded her of them, with a touch of Hunter S. Thompson. They got high a lot and almost the first time they had met they went to bed together. Wouldn’t the kids be surprised by that! Though who knows what the hell Marabeth would be surprised by?
But then she had come to know him, because he wanted her to. And she didn’t really mind telling him everything. About her Irish father and her Jewish mother and a family that was done in by fear and depression and too much drinking, nad how she couldn’t wait to be away from them, and it was hard to say what all had done it for her, but they were married soon after, and when Nathan had asked her if she wanted to come and live in Lassador, she said, well, hell, why not?
But if the children did not think of them that way, did not think of her that way, whose fault was that? The Rebecca Cunningham Strauss who had shown up in the late seventies in short skirts and long red hair that fell all the way to her ass was a wilder, crazier person who instantly felt cowed by the dark haired, pale Kellers. And they were all Kellers by then, except for Byron, who wasn’t long for this world, and the old and indomitable Pamela.
“You mean that your mother and her brothers married your father and his sisters,” Rebecca said one night in bed when she was still trying to think the whole arrangement was funny.
“Yeah, how do you like that?”
“I don’t,” she said.
But that’s what memory does. Memory makes you forget, and there was that business. The business of the Change. Of course he had told her. They were not married yet. They’d just been having their affair, and sitting in bed, in Florida, where warm air came through the window of their shitty motel room, one which she still remembered fondly forty years later. She had been telling him all sorts of things about herself. All about that time when she was fourteen and she had taken an entire bottle of pills because she didn’t think she belonged in this world anymore.
“Something happened to me too,” Nathan began, “when I was fourteen.”
And when Rebecca looks back she realizes this is why she married him. Not out of pity, nad certainly not out of any sense that she needed to be married to a werewolf, but because no man had ever been this honest with her and she knew no other man would again. So she knew, sort of, what she was getting into when she came to live on the house on Dimler Street, when she met the ancient Pamela, and her mother-in-law, Natalie, who at first seemed so severe. Byron was as young and handsome as Jim was now, but more frail, and in those days, red headed like Rebecca, Delia was alive.
“Delia,” Rebecca murmured.
She saw so many movies of women and women’s friendship, but in her real life ,the only woman friend she’d had was Delia, and if she was honest about it, the only friend, really, she’d had was Delia. Delia Strauss and Rebecca Strauss. The Strauss sisters they called them, or the New Strauss sisters because Maris and Claire and Pamela were the old ones. Some called them the twins, laughing, hair flying in the wind they could conquer anything, and in those days it seemed there was so much to conquer.
“There is a weight on this family,” Nathan said. “in this house.”
Part of Rebecca had wanted to say, “Well, then why the hell not leave it?” But then, of course, the weight was in the blood. And also the best cure for it only seemed to be here.
“We can overcome it together.”
She often said that when it was her, Nathan and Delia. “We can do anything together.”
None of them would be terribly old now. She was not very old, certainly not young, but not ancient, and yet, out of the four of them, the four musketeers, she was the only one remaining, and all of her shine was gone, she had to admit that. There was no more fighting, merely accepting, and she often felt as if there was nothing left to be done. She had fought something like the good fight and she had waited faithfully for her husband ot return. Nathan had returned, and now what was there for her to do? Start a new life? Walk away from this? How? How, when one had spent over forty years being a Strauss did she walk away from it and become something else?
She reached into her pocket and began to untangle the old blue glass bead rosary. Rose had given this to her. It’s beads were light and small, and it wrapped easily around her hands, the little silver cross with its blue enamel shone like a small gem. When Nathan had wanted to go back to church, he had chosen Saint Agatha’s which was prettier anyway. There was an organ, but they didn’t use it. These were still the days of the folk guitar Mass. Old Rose, dark as mahoghany, had been born into that parish, and on the Easter vigil when Rebecca had come up from the baptismal waters, this had been her gift.
I never learned to love saying the rosary, but I did love to have one.
Now someone might mistake her for one of those old pious women, and in the last few years she had occasionally gone to Saint Ursula’s with her husband’s large family, but she wished that the funeral was at Saint Agatha’s, with the people they had known and the pastor who had helped her all the previous times it seemed like Nathan would never reappear.
“It’s your call,” Marabeth said. “I’ll stand right by you and see it’s your call.”
Yes, Marabeth was good like that, and really, Rebecca reflected, she hadn’t been a very supportive mother, not supportive enough to deserve that. But there were some things Marabeth still did not understand, like that it was not her call, that Nathan belonged to the family more than to her, and that Natalie, who had been the first to go to Saint Agatha’s, would have still not approved of a Strauss being buried out of any church but Saint Ursula’s.


Kristian strauss was getting dressed and he had turned around and looked at Jenean twice before he said, “You’ve got something on your mind. You really ought to say it.”
“No, Jenean sat on the bed and she took up all of that ash blond hair he was coming to love, even when he found strands of it in his mouth. “It’s too soon. It’s silly.”
Kris turned around and suddenly cupped her chin, kissing her.
“Tell me.”
“I wished that I could come with you, come to the funeral. Be by your side, for your dad. Let people know you had someone. And that….” She shook her head, “is a little too clingy, and a little too soon.”
Kris smiled at her.
“I wish more of the women in my life had been more clingy.”
“And I realize that right now is not the time,” Jenean said. “This time is for your family, and we’re not there yet.”
Kris pulled on his jacket.
“Would you like to be?”
“Huh?”
“Would you like to be?” Kris said. “Because, I think you’re good for me, and I hope I could be good for you, and maybe we can move on to more than we are right now. If you’d like.”
“I haven’t even seen your place.”
“I don’t actually have a place.”
“Cause you haven’t had to get one. But.. do you think you might?”
“Is it important?”
Then Kris said. “It’s important. Yes. I haven’t had to keep my own place for a while.”
“You’ve been in your university office and then banging chicks when it suited you. You’ve been a damn bachelor.”
“I could make a nest.” Kris was tucking in his shirt. “I’ll start to make a nest.”
He leaned into the bed and kissed her before he left. This was her late day, and she was going into a long shift at work. She needed to rest, but falling into her arms he was ready to make love again, to climb into that bed and begin again what they had started, but there was no time for it, and he had to get out of these clothes and into the shower and into his good clothes for this day.
He would tell her, he decided as he drove home,. heading down Ashton. He had to to tell her the truth if they were going to stay together, and he believed they would. Or could. He’d stopped believing in things like that. There hadn’t been any woman where he’d known her long enough to even consider telling the truth. With Jenena he felt so at home and with Jenean he also felt that there were things she needed to share, and that she could not share them with him until he could share himself with her..
I ought to feel worse. I ought to feel so terrible today!
And he does. His dad is gone. But Dad has been gone a long time. Now something is ended. The long waiting is over. He crosses the Main Street Bridge into downtown and thinks about going to visit his sister. She’ll be at the house soon enough, though. The old shops are giving way to the larger buildings and the tall downtown riverfront buildings are ahead of him when he stops at the red light and calls his sister.
“You need a ride to the house? I’m in the area.”
“Kristopher!” Marabeth sounds incredibly happy, and then he can tell next that she’s trying to take that happiness down, knows what today is. “No, no, don’t worry about it. I’ll be there. I’m hardly even up yet. You have a good night?”
“I… the light is green.”
“I’ll see you at the house. We’ll have a good talk before we go to Saint Ursula’s.”
“Love you, Sis,” Kris said.
He hangs up before Marabeth can say anything and heads into downtown. A block later he crosses Birmingham knowing that four blocks west on it is Marabeth’s place, and traveling south, coming out of downtown, he knows Germantown is to the east and Little Hungary to the West. Traditionally Blacks lived on either side and now live everywhere, and he turns into Germantown when he sees Saint Agatha’s, the old pink bricks and the wide rose window, light and beautiful on a winter day as it is in the summer. There, there is, the church he loved. Dad should have been buried there. And why the fuck is Marabeth in such a great mood, as he turns south on Dimler and sees the Schiller beer factory behind the houses, he thinks, wonder if she’s getting any. I bet that’s what it is. But Marabeth is four miles north now, and he’s coming down the long row of stately townhouses toward the large old one he has spent most of his life in.
He turns and the car rumbles through the alley, over snow and pebbles, and he parks in the garage and comes out of it, passing the coach house. What if that became his place? But would Jenean like that? But doesn’t matter that much. What if he liked it, What it he had his own separate space? He was so used to having that third floor and calling it his own separate space, moving around the fact that he had to walk through the kitchcn and be seen by his family, wondering what they were thinking. What if he were to have this space which was, after all, entirely his own?
The kitchen is strangely quiet because it is not empty. His grandmother and mother are there and Cyrus has come early. He remembers the other night, when Peter and Marabeth came to the hosue together. when he and Jim and Grandma and Mom were together and Peter had simply said, “We have to talk.”
And there it was, and there he was looking at Jim, looking at Peter, of all of them knowing and knowing that what each of them had thought was a very private struggle was of the family. He remembers Jim looking at him, Jim the golden cousin, the blue eyed wonder. And now, today, Jim enters the kitvchen. He is already dressed, but of course he is, and he looks good, but of course he does. What is more, Jim has been through the same grief, and Jim only says, “You want some coffee?”
“Yeah,” Kris says. “That’d be great.”
Jim nods.
“I’ll bring it up to you.”
“You don’t—” Kris begins, and then he says, “Bring yourself a cup up too. I’ve got cigarettes, or are you too healthy for them now?”
“Not today,” Jim gives him a brief smile. “I’ll be up when the coffee’s ready.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very interesting portion! It was nice to read more about Marabeth's parents. Funeral's are a tough time for anyone and I hope they all get through it ok. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you have a nice Sunday and week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, as you probably know by now, 1.) the Beasts is almost over and 2.) the story is not. On the other side of the Beasts we'll learn a lot more about Marabeth's parents as well as her and Kris's grandfather, James and Natalie when she was young. And there will be all sorts of surprises about Pamela. Glad you could read tonight. I'll see you tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER TWELVE
REQUIEM


Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.

-Friedrich Nietzsche





James B Strauss the Second did not particularly remember his father, Byron. In many ways, he did not remember family history the way others said they did. To him it seems as if the Strausses had taken his grandfather Statler in, though it turned out they had a very long history with the Freys, and that Pamela, whom so many had said they feared, had only had a kindness and a certain warmth for his grandfather. This was how old she was. She had known Jim’s old grandfather since he was a boy, and Jim remembered the year she died, coming into her little living room in the coach house, He remembered the white lace curtains and the old rugs and the strange statues, the warmth of the fire, and her soft accent that carried the remnants of Bavaria. By then she was bone and skin as thin as onion paper, and she told stories all the time. She loved the German stories, the Volsungasaga, the Niebelungied, that’s what others said. But he was so young she told him the tales from Grimm, and he remembered once she told the story of the seven kids.

There was once upon a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called all seven to her and said, "Dear children, I have to go into the forest, be on your guard against the wolf, if he comes in, he will devour you all - skin, hair, and everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet."
The kids said, "Dear mother, we will take good care of ourselves, you may go away without any anxiety." Then the old one bleated, and went on her way with an easy mind.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house-door and called, "Open the door, dear children, your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the little kids knew that it was the wolf, by the rough voice.
We will not open the door," cried they, "you are not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but your voice is rough, you are the wolf."
Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and made his voice soft with it. The he came back, knocked at the door of the house, and called, "Open the door, dear children, your mother is here and has brought something back with her for each of you."
But the wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and the children saw them and cried, "We will not open the door, our mother has not black feet like you, you are the wolf."
Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, "I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me. And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said,
Strew some white meal over my feet for me." The miller thought to himself, the wolf wants to deceive someone, and refused, but the wolf said, "If you will not do it, I will devour you."
Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house-door, knocked at it and said,
Open the door for me, children, your dear little mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back from the forest with her."
The little kids cried, "First show us your paws that we may know if you are our dear little mother."
Then he put his paws in through the window, and when the kids saw that they were white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who should come in but the wolf. The kids were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh into the clock-case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great ceremony, one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest, who was in the clock-case, was the only one he did not find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself down under a tree in the green meadow outside, and began to sleep.
Soon afterwards the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah, what a sight she saw there. The house-door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and benches were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them one after another by name, but no one answered.
At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice cried, "Dear Mother, I am in the clock-case." She took the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how she wept over her poor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree and snored so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged belly. Ah, heavens, she thought, is it possible that my poor children whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?
Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread and the goat cut open the monster's stomach, and hardly had she make one cut, than one little kid thrust its head out, and when she cut farther, all six sprang out one after another, and were all still alive, and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed them down whole.
What rejoicing there was! They embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a sailor at his wedding. The mother, however, said, "Now go and look for some big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast's stomach with them while he is still asleep." Then the seven kids dragged the stones thither with all speed, and put as many of them into his stomach as they could get in, and the mother sewed him up again in the greatest haste, so that he was not aware of anything and never once stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his fill of sleep, he got on his legs, and as the stones in his stomach made him very thirsty, he wanted to go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and move about, the stones in his stomach knocked against each other and rattled. Then cried he,

"What rumbles and tumbles
Against my poor bones?
I thought 'twas six kids,
But it feels like big stones."

And when he got to the well and stooped over the water to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in, and he had to drown miserably.
When the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud, "The wolf is dead, the wolf is dead," and danced for joy round about the well with their mother.

“So they got the bad wolf,” Jim had said.
“They got the wolf because the wolf was part of them,” the old woman had said.
Jim had not understood this and the confusion must have been on his face.
“There is another story, of a god, a great Titan who ate all of his children or most of them, but who was given a great potion and threw them up, and so they did something like that to him. When you eat a real meal, then you chew it up, gobble gobble gobble. But the Titan and the wolf were simply swallowing up something that was part of them. Sometimes a thing that is part of you can take all of you, and you can lose control of it. That is when the mother goat comes and rescues you, brings you back to yourself. When the wolf comes to swallow you, remember that, Jimmy, and set yourself free.”
Allt these years later, Jim wondered, had she called him Jimmy because, in her old age, she had confused him momentarily with her brother, his grandfather? But one thing he knew now, as he sat in Kris’s room drinking coffee beside his estranged cousin, she had known what she was talking about. Pamela had been warning him.

“This is….”
“The worst coffee you’ve ever tasted?” Jim said.
“Actually, it’s a pretty good cup,” Kris said, looking out of the window of the kitchenette that looked down on Dimler Street.
“I was going to say that this is the damnedest day.”
Jim only nodded.
“I’m,” Kris started. “I’m happy. You know. I feel sort of at peace, even with those leafless trees and that grey sky. And then I think, but Dad is dead. We’re on our way to his funeral. You know? And I have to remember to be torn up again. Only, I feel weird. But not torn up.”
“I don’t really know how I feel,” Jim said, half into his cup, while he looked out onto the street.”
“We have to stop this,” Kris said. And then he said, “I mean, I have to stop. Being an ass. I want to stop. The way I, the stuff I said to you. The way I’ve acted toward you.”
“It’s okay,” Jim put down his coffee cup and took one of Kris’s cigarettes.
“No,” Kris said, “It’s not.’
“You were going through some stuff.”
“We were all going through the stuff, and anyway, I haven’t been going through it for thirty years. It’s just,” Kris shook his head. “Fuck, you make it look so easy. You make it look easy to…lose your parents and everything, and I seem to not be able to get happy. And so I just…” Kris shook his head. “I ended up being a real dick to you, and I don’t know if I can stop. No,” Kris corrected himself, looking at Jim, his cigarette hanging from his hand. “I don’t know myself another way. I… want to be the fun person. I want to be the guy with the jokes. I want to be that person. Even Peter can be that person, the one who throws his arm over someone’s shoulder. Or Cyrus. Cyrus makes an ass of himself on a daily basis and doesn’t even seem to realize it.”
Jim laughed,” Remember when he led the liturgical dance team at Saint Ursula’s?”
Kris snorted and muttered, “Oh, shit.”
“You remember that. Him and six other boys in leotards, and the girls in the white robes, and they were just doing kicks and pirouettes and shit, up to the altar during commuion.”
“Yeah, and then Aunt Maris leans into Grandma and whispers about one of the dancers, “I can see that girl’s panties.”
They are both laughing now and Jim says, “Maybe it’s not so bad to be the grey cloud at the party. I just thought you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you, Jim!” Kris said quickly. “I could never hate you. You’re my brother. And you are my brother,” Kris insisted, “No matter what I said after Christmas. “I’m just not good with my emotions.”
“You’re very German.”
“Yeah, well, maybe. But so is Cyrus, and he’s still a wackjob.”
“You’re more like, Nietchze German.’
Kris, who had been looking mildly regretfully suddenly burst into a laugh again.
“Well, if you see me crying over any dead horses, check me into a sanitarium before I hurt myself.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@



“You’re so cold,” she told him. “You’re so cold and I thought you weren’t. I thought I saw something in you, but,” she shook her head, “I was just fooling myself and Beth was right. They all were.”
Peter is sitting in his first car, his hair in his face, but he doesn’t want to push it away.
“I offered to go with you. I WANTED to go with you.”
“And I didn’t want you there,” Terry says. “I’m so glad you weren’t there.”
“Do you want me to come over tonight?”
They are outside of her house on the far south side, near Rosary High school where she goes.
“Did you not hear me?” she says. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Terry gets out of the car and walks up the steps to the little shingled bungalow that is like all of the shingled bungalows on Monroe Street, and Peter sits in the car looking up at her until the door slams.
He figures its time to drive away. He doesn’t want any music. He drives up Martin until he reaches Main, and then heads north for home. The house on Williams is crowded, and Peter doesn’t expect it not to be. Marabeth is sitting on the steps with Amy and she looks up.
“What’s got you?”
But he doesn’t want ot be bothered by his cousin, and he feels so heavy, he just walks past them and the girls know to make way. Why does Dad always have to have them over here? Aren’t they supposed to be at Nate’s house? Isn’t that the thing. Peter decides if this house is ever his it will be just that, his, and every damn cousin won’t be dropping by, sitting on the steps, zooming in and out of the kitchen. He goes into his room and shuts the door. Suddenly it’s too much, and he buries his hands in his face and begins to sob. He hopes the door is closed, but he doesn’t have the strength to get up and see. It hurts so bad right now ,and no one can know, how could Terry know? And he couldn’t tell her why, or why he was so firm about it. He couldn’t tell her that he didn’t want to do it, didn’t want that at all.
I wish I could die. I wish I could die.
And he has never wished that before. He hates himself.
The door opens and he makes himself stop crying, He hopes that Jim can’t see that, but this is ridiculous. His face is red, his eyes are red, his face wet. Jim closes the door behind him. He’s only twelve. His mom didn’t just wish she could die. Delia really did kill herself about this time last year. Did she feel like this, this bottomless grief? At seventeen, Peter never thought he would feel this way. Jim closes the door and has the sense to lock it. Wordlessly, he sits on the floor with his cousin, and even though Peter is five years older and almost a foot taller, when Jim hugs him and holds him, Peter falls into his arms and begins bawling.
“Oh, Jim, Jim. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to, but I had to.”
And he just continues to cry.



“I was in college,” Joyce said. “When it happened to me. When I did it, I guess it didn’t happen to me. But I felt like it did. It wasn’t even for a very good reason.”
“I was afraid,” Peter said, almost shyly. “I was afraid of what would be born. I was just learning about what we were, and I promised myself I’d never have children, and so when Terry told me she was pregnant, I just said she couldn’t have it. It couldn’t be born. And then, years later, I had three kids, and now there really isn’t a time I don’t think about that first one.”
“At least you had a reason,” Joyce said, lying on her back.
“Do you know the only reason I told Marabeth is because she was there. It’s not something you tell people, not really. Well, I know someone who does, but she’s sort of morally bankrupt, and then I’m like, if I feel that judgmental, what the fuck am I? I hear that one in every three women does it, and then I’m sort of like, fuck, that’s a lot. And then I’m like, I hope it’s true, because then I don’t feel the way I do. And I’m not exactly sure how I feel.”
“Well,” Peter lay on his side and cocked his head, “Let’s play lawyer. Why did you do it?”
“I,” and then Joyce started to laugh almost at the seriousness of his expression and touched the bridge of his nose, “I had broken up with someone and I didn’t want him in my life. He had broken up with me, really. And then I found out I was pregnant, and I just didn’t want to be tied to him. In any way. I wanted to kind of just go on with my life.”
Joyce was pulling her hair into a braid and she said, “Do you know, I’ve had years ot think about every other scenario, and I think about the selfless one where I should have had a child and put up with having Ronald in my life, and being a single mom. I think about what this woman said at church. When I still went. How, if you’re going to have sex you have to pay the price. But, kids aren’t really supposed to be a penalty, and that baby would have been paying the price for my lack of parental skills.
“And then I think, well, I could have been pregnant for the majority of the year and given up the baby, but the only thing that makes that believable is that it’s almost twenty years in the past. I mean, it’s easy to tell a girl she can do that, but to actually do it…”
Joyce shook her head.
“You did what you had to do.”
“That’s the thing Peter, I don’t know if that’s true, and you don’t either, do you?”
“Can we switch the subject,” Peter says, “to something more cheerful than ambiguous abortions we can’t do anything about?”
“I would love to switch the subject, “Joyce said. Then she said, “I’d love to be one of those bitches who is unambiguous.”
“Let’s talk about more cheerful stuff,” Peter caressed her hand. “Like…. The funeral.”
Joyce turned her head and laughed.
They are laying together naked, face to face and Joy says, “you better start getting dressed.”
And then she says, “Actually, you better get home.”
“You’re coming with me. Aren’t you?”
“I.. thought I might be going,” Joy said. “I just didn’t know if you wanted me to, or who I would be with. I mean, I couldn’t sit next to Marabeth in the fonrt, and…”
“You’ll sit with me,” Peter said, sitting up.
“What will people think?”
“People you don’t know? Do you care? I know I don’t.’
And then Peter said, “Unless you think it’s too public. We’re still new. Very new. Newer than new. I wasn’t thinking… If you don’t want to—”
“Peter, I want to.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a very well done start to the chapter! It was nice to hear more about Pamela from other people. I like that the family have started to get along better. As I said before funerals are always hard but this one seems to have helped the family be more honest with each other which is good. I had hoped Kris would make it up to Jim and he did so that was nice. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It does seem like everyone is coming clean and lots of things are coming clear. Who do you feel for the most?