Sleeping in Flame (25 page)

"You really made her hand into a frog?"

"I really did."

"Could I do that, Papa?"

"You can do anything I do. I taught you how."

"Just think your name and then think what I want."

"Right. Eat your apple."

"Can I do it to you?"

"If you want."

I closed my eyes and thought his name and thought I wanted _both_ of his hands to turn into frogs. When I looked, there they were -- two big frogs! But something was wrong with them because they didn't move.

"What'd I do wrong?"

He smiled and looked at them. "You didn't think clearly what you wanted.

You didn't think if you wanted them alive, so you only got dead frogs. And look at their color --

that's not a frog's color, because you weren't thinking a special color when you made your wish.

You only made dead dream frogs."

I started crying, but he didn't say anything. I cried till I got tired of it and felt stupid.

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"Now wish them away, Walter, or else I'll have to live with frogs for hands for the rest of my life!"

That made me laugh and I did what he said. They went away. It was easy to wish something away.

Much easier than wishing _for_ something.

He reached over and touched my cheek.

"Quit it, Papa. I'm not a little baby anymore."

"Sometimes I forget that. Eat your apple and cheese. They're good."

"I don't want anymore. What happened after you made her hand into a frog?"

"If you eat your apple I'll tell you. That's it, big bites. And please bite the cheese or else it'll get fleas."

"Papa, tell!"

"Okay. While she was looking at her croaking hand, I took you out of your bed and wrapped you in the fur blanket I'd brought. It was the middle of winter and the snow roared like lions outside. The whole city was covered and

I knew we'd have a hard time running through it when we got outside."

"Why did we have to run? You could have kept anyone away."

"Probably, but it was midnight, and our powers are much less then.

Always remember that, son. Our magic works best in the day. At night most of it goes back to the moon and sleeps there until first light. Animals have their magic at night. That's why it's not safe to travel after the sun goes down where there are animals.

"Now tell me again what I just said."

"Animals are magic at night and we should stay away from them."

"Good." He sat there awhile, sometimes biting his apple or his cheese.

There were birds singing, and somewhere far away I heard someone chopping wood.

"How did you get me out of the castle?"

"I turned to your mother and said 'You're too proud and greedy to care what child you have, so long as no one knows the difference. So I'll give you a child to show others. You can pretend it's yours and, that you defeated me.

But _never_ come after us, or I'll kill you. Do you understand?' She understood. All the hatred in her eyes told me she understood very well but could do nothing about it.

"I took the frog off her hand and changed it into a baby. 'There's your child, Queen. The one you deserve.'"

"What happened then?"

"I put you in my rucksack, down deep where no one would be able to see you. Then I ran out of the castle. I'll remember that night as long as I live.

The snow was as deep as the sadness after death, but the only thing I could do was run until we were safely away. There was a festival going on in the city, and there were bonfires burning everywhere. People were drunk and singing, and men were racing their horses back and forth across the snowy streets."

"The horses. Yes, I remember that, Papa. I remember hearing all the horses."

He lay down on his back and closed his eyes. "I have no sense of direction at night, but I knew the southern gate of the city because that's where the potato market was. I ran through that gate and into a night with a knife between its teeth. Horrible and cold, white and black.

"But we made it, and here we are about to start our new life in Vienna."

"Why Vienna, Papa?"

"It's a good city for us to start in. Right now it's full of plague, so people like us can live there undisturbed because there's so much other madness around. No one will notice a little man and his son selling potatoes

by the side of the road."

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"Will we live there forever?"

"On and off. It's where I come from and I like it. You will, too. People there leave you alone. I want to do a lot of traveling with you, Walter, but sooner or later I think we'll always go back there."

"What happened to my mother?"

He laughed again. "Just what I expected would happen. On the road, I've already heard the story three times how that good queen saved her only child from the evil dwarf Rumpelstiltskin by guessing his name.

"Come on, it's time to go."

2.

The dream must have lasted no more than twenty minutes. I looked at the clock beside the bed in sleepy wonder. Maris wasn't there because she'd decided to stay at her place and work on my birthday present.

I had to talk to her about this. I decided to wait awhile and let my head clear before calling.

Luckily she didn't mind late night calls, unlike me, who strongly believed they meant bad news was about to arrive.

What a dream! I could still smell the damp pine forest and see the sun reflect yellow off the red apples. My "father" wore old leather boots that came to points at the toe. He had a beard, but it was trimmed close and was a deep, tree-bark brown. He was handsome and about thirty years old. The only thing that made him different was his size. He was a midget. He walked with a kind of strutting lurch that was both comic and distressing. To judge from the way these small people walk, one would think the world is a boat on a stormy sea: The only way to keep one's balance is to walk like a swinging pendulum.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember or see other things from the dream, but it was no use. It had all slipped back into the mind's dark a few minutes ago.

Orlando was asleep on my arm, but suddenly lifted his head and looked around; his inevitable sign that the phone was going to ring. I even started getting up before it happened because his alarm was so dependable. I was a foot away when it did ring. I

"Hello?"

"You _finally_ had that dream. Now we can begin."

"Excuse me? Who is this?"

"What was my name in your dream?"

"Who is this?"

"Okay, we'll do it slowly. What was my name when we got to Vienna that time? Not my real name, but the one I took. Come on, Walter, I'm giving you a big hint. In Russia I was Melchior, right? Last time I was Kaspar, so what's left? What was my name when we came into Vienna the first time? It wasn't

Rumpelstiltskin!"

He laughed, and I knew that sound so well.

"Where are you?"

"In Vienna!" He laughed again. "Watching you and your new girlfriend.

You're still such a horny little boy, aren't you? I told you not to do that.

You get into trouble every time, but you insist on doing it. What am I going to do with you?

_Magic and the mundane don't mix!_ Listen to your father. You want to have magical powers?

Fine, but you can't have them _and_ fuck the girls too. That isn't allowed.

"Look at what that mixing has done to your friends. Nick Sylvian and Venasque are dead. Your other pals in California just lost everything in an earthquake . . . You even disturb the dead! How about that poor fellow in the coffin that broke open when you flew back here.

"Venasque didn't tell you, but you know why he had that stroke? Because
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of you. That last dream in the motel room? Blew right out of your head and burned his brain!

Remember the doctor asking if he'd touched some live wire or electrical source? It was you, Walter; _you're_ the live wire.

"How many lives are you going to go through before you realize you can't mix with them anymore? Once you turn my corner, you can't go back. You could have been an _ocean_, but now you're not enough spit to fill a mouth.

"It was so good in Russia. I thought maybe if we stayed there you'd learn something -- see that our way together is so much better than yours with any woman. But no, you've got to touch them, don't you? Worse, you gotta touch them and then fall in love with them.

"Stubborn. I've got to say that for you. I drive you mad in one life, then push you out the window in another, but still you don't learn.

"So I bring you back and bring you back . . . But you go out and make the same mistakes!"

"What magic? I have no magic."

"That's right, it's going away fast. But that's your own doing. Still, you could talk our language with the old girls in the cemetery. Then you saw that woman fall down the escalator before it happened. Hey, you even brought up a sea serpent!

"All that magic I gave you _is_ a lot for a normal little boy to handle, but I believed in you, Walter! I wanted to give you everything your mother never would have.

"That's one thing I didn't tell you. Maybe it's time I did.

"You know why I took you away from her? I loved you, there's no question about that, and I'd do it again anytime. The years we spent together were the happiest I ever had. I admit it. My own boy." He started crying -- long, hoarse weeping, cut with big drags for air in between. It went on for some time. I was holding the receiver so tightly that my hand began to cramp. I switched hands. "Do you remember the time you brought me the stone? The first time you used the magic? You brought that big piece of granite and turned it into a diamond right in front of me. You said that was how big your love was for me. My God, I love you. I would have loved you for the rest of time if you hadn't been so _fucking human!_

"Everything I taught you, everything I gave you would have made any intelligent person fall down on his knees and kiss my feet. But not you.

You're just like your mother, you little shit! Selfish and weak. So pleased with yourself. Mr.

Movie Star.

"I'll tell you why I took you. Because she promised to love me if I gave her what she wanted.

'Make me queen and I'll love you for the rest of my life.' That's what she said -- not fuck, _love_.

Why do you think I helped in the first place? Why do you think I gave her all the magic I had?

She was so convincing. 'I don't care if you can't do it. Who needs _that_? It only makes people sad. Love isn't touch -- it's the mind.' She made me believe her eyes and not think about what was really going on in that rat-filled head of hers.

"My mistake. She couldn't love people -- only things. You think she loved your father? He was king, that was the only thing she loved about him.

"When you were born I saw a glimmer of something in her, maybe love, maybe not. But I knew that was how I'd win. Even if she didn't love her child, just the object that had come out of _her_ body had value. And I took that object. I made you love me more than you ever would have loved her.

"The best part was sometimes I'd go back to her in her dreams, sometimes with you next to me.

You were such a lovely child. We'd show her what she was missing."

I hung up. The phone rang again immediately, but something told me it wasn't him this time. It absolutely was not him. I picked it up.

"Walker, please come over right now. I started bleeding a few minutes ago and it's not stopping.

Please come now. I'm scared."

I drove down the _Gürtel_ at eighty miles an hour, running red lights
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the whole way. It was two in the morning and the streets were empty, but there were several near-misses that sent my heart into the back seat. I fishtailed left on Jörgerstrasse and flew up that narrow winding street, hoping no one would get in my way. At Wattgasse a patrol car appeared and we raced along for several blocks before I realized they might do something professional like shoot me. I pulled over, jumped out, and ran back to tell them what was going on.

Viennese police are notoriously unpleasant and fascistic, but the look on my face and the words that came zooming out must have convinced them I

wasn't bullshitting. They said to follow them.

On Döblinger Hauptstrasse we were doing ninety, one right after the other. When we raced past a bunch of men repairing the tram tracks, one of them got so scared he ran across the street. I laughed because there was only that and praying left.

When we pulled up to the house an ambulance was already in front of the open gate. We all got out and ran, as if there was something more we could do.

Her white bed was full of blood. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed while one of the ambulance men worked between her spread legs. Her pajama bottoms were tossed to one side, red splashes over their green. She was such a modest woman, yet here were five men, four of them unknown to her, all staring at her most secret self.

I went over and touched one of her hands holding so tightly on to the headboard behind her.

"Maris, it's me. I'm here."

She kept her eyes closed. "I know. I know. Oh! Just stay here. I know you're here."

I looked at one of the ambulance men and caught his eye. He shook his head. "I don't know."

One of the policemen came up behind me and talked quietly into my ear.

"I was with the UN forces in Lebanon. I saw something like this happen over there. It might not be anything. Sometimes they just start bleeding. It's dangerous, but it doesn't mean she's going to lose the baby. Just wait." He squeezed my shoulder and went back to his partner.

The man working on her spoke for the first time. "Okay. I've done all I can here. We're going to take you to the hospital now." He looked at me. "I thought she was bleeding through, but she isn't, so we can move her."

Her eyes opened wide and she looked around crazily. "Walker? Walker, where are you?"

"Right here, Maris. I'm here."

"They're going to take me to the hospital."

"Yes. I'll go with you."

"Okay. Okay. Let's go to the hospital." She looked at the man bending over her. "It hurts, but I think I can go with you. I think I can go to the hospital because I think I have to go --"