S. E. Grant

In the Land Between

The Truth

Yesterday, I confessed to wishing ill on the emperor’s cat. I am fond of cats, though not the emperor. Before, I confessed to dancing in time to the rattle of the wheels on the cobbled road that runs by my tower. Perhaps that was a true confession, but I can’t recall, since time folds back on itself. Thinking on this, I wonder – will I sleep tonight? Did I sleep last night?
Looking out my glassy window into the black, the inside’s reflected on the panes, creating an inverse of my room projected outward. Shadowy versions of my bed and lamp hang out in thin air, suspended over people who look small from the top of my tower. The room that hangs outside over the street and the trees looks far more inviting than the shabby one I stand in. It floats above everything, skims the top of the village I live in. Though I’m at the very top of the Northwest Tower, a position of honor, I feel heavy. My turret is a round wall of glass, with an angled glass spire stretching upward to a point, grounded by a thick column of slate in which others live below me. I have a piano, slightly out of tune, a canopied bed, and various other pieces resembling furniture. I have never thought of it as home. The tower insists on dragging me down to earth. It pulls me toward the ground, and makes me feel the weight of each step I take.
The room on the other side of the window panes sways in the night like a hammock, and I think that if I could but crawl through the window and reach my hand out to it, I might leap across the chasm between the two rooms. I might reef the bed’s sheets on one of the posts as on a clipper ship and sail away on the shadow bed to some other where, somewhere that sleeping and waking are possible. This is the truth I will never confess, not because I would repent it, but because I would have to watch my dream, once articulated, evaporate into the thin air on which it rests.

The Fop

‘I’m passing out in your bed,’ I tell the fop. I announce it as if it’s indisputable. I can’t go home tonight, the wind has blown in a blizzard, and I’m in the far South by Southeast Tower, across the capital city from my own turret. I’m already sitting cross legged on the fop’s bed, and I like the prospect of not having to budge.
The fop adjusts his ascot, which he put on to meet his dealer, and does another line. He uses an exaggerated western accent to say, ‘As you’re far from home, little lady, I won’t stop you.’ He continues cutting another line of white dust for a friend while I reflect on how I object to his use of the word ‘as.’ His is a square tower at the far edge of the city, and his room is topped with a glass dome. He, Liz, Maura, and the friend all live stacked one on top of the other in this turret. I have no acquaintances in my building, merely familiar faces.
I take a swig of my scotch and watch the friend wander in. She slumps into the director’s chair that’s propping the door to the staircase open. She tries to look at us, but her eyes can’t focus on anything. ‘Amy was a prettier version of me and when she died I got her shift.’ The friend gets talkative and emotional when she’s high, and we brace ourselves as for a tsunami. ‘I got her shift, waited her tables, and she was prettier…’ It has been many years since she has waitressed, and we’ve tuned out, the fop and I, we’ve stopped listening. His dilated pupils roll in his head, and I keep swigging the scotch from my low ball. Amy’s story hums in the background as the friend drones on.
The fop leans over to do another line, and I crawl under the covers. Liz and Maura wander in from the other room and sit on the bed. I can feel the impressions they make on the bed, and I think about the ad where the bowling ball drops on one corner and the pins across the mattress stay upright. This is not that bed. Liz and Maura start to slap at each other. It’s their game, and the vibrations work their way down through their bodies and across the mattress to me. At some point the vibrations stop, the laughter fades, and I know they’ve climbed down the stairs to their rooms.
I only vaguely remember the monologue dying down until the wind outside was the only sound in the room. The soft rustling of the ascot as it came untied, the swift slide of his morning coat off his arms, the discreet unzip of the fly of his striped suit pants, and the tug on the sheets as he crawled into bed. I feel his tossings through the mattress as he rolls into a comfortable position.
This is a time before we know what alone means. A few months from now, the fop will move out of the South by Southeast Tower, will return to his father’s orchard in the North, will stop answering my messages. When I call, his father will answer and tell me he’ll call back. He won’t. And eventually, when I try to call his image to mind, all I will remember is his burgundy ascot and the lines of white powder on his desk.

The Snow Globe

The snow globe’s turned inside out, and I watch the flurries slide down the glass. They touch first above us, sliding downward. They pause at fattest part of the bulb until enough flakes have gathered to force a great chunk to curl inward where the glass recedes into its maple base. Some loving hand has wound the key that coyly protrudes from the base, and the metallic harp beneath us softly plucks at the theme from Swan Lake.
The steady rising and falling of your chest betrays your deep sleep, and all the muscles in your face are relaxed; you are your sleeping self. Your hands are folded neatly atop the covers, but underneath, your shoulder rubs mine, your knee pushes into the flesh of my thigh. These contacts, our pressure points.
I cannot remember if it is hours or days that we have been frozen together like this. It seems the snow has been falling for years in slow, decided strokes. We have been here so long, that I begin to worry we were born here, or we’re trapped inside a glass womb. I can remember a moment ago when you caught your breath and yawned in your sleep, but I can’t remember before. Time rolls backward out of my sight, and we may always have been molded in this position.
I wonder what would happen if I fiercely pressed my mouth on yours, summoning you from your slumber. I could claw through the sheets, pull you on top of me. If I interrupted your even breathing with my open mouth on yours, you would let me. I could lift your fingers from your rising, falling chest, and place them under my neck, press the length of your body along mine. These, the acts we think about but have never spoken and never done.
But any movement is disturbance in principal, whether you wake to it or not. I worry that if I rupture the calm, if I make the slightest sound, I’ll shatter the glass house we share. Any change is a sudden blow that would break this moment forever. If I even grasped your hand with mine, tangled your fingers between my own, Troy fallen, Agamemnon dead, and Gemini painted flat in the sky.
Love without love is the only real love. Wherever you are in your sleep, it is somewhere without me. I am offended by how unnecessary I am to you, right now. And if I so much as touched this moment, I would ruin it. We would lie together like this another time, and though we would be touching at shoulder and knee again, we would be far from this, this small space of ours. Fallen: the ocean, the desert, the range of mountains between us too vast and too treacherous to cross. The glass bulb shattered, and the knowledge of what we lost laying among the shards.
Perhaps that same loving hand will wind the song again, will invert the dome and right it slowly, letting nothing settle, forbidding the song to fall quiet. I confess, I want that hand to shake the dome so violently I can’t tell up from up. Shake, and shake hard. Wind the key so tightly it threatens to burst the spring in its dainty mechanical workings. Let our inside churn, but never mix with the cold on the other side of the glass.
My hair is tangled with yours on the pillow, and when you awake, we’ll tangle thoughts. Wherever you are in your sleep right now, think of me, and when the key winds down and the song runs out, we’ll be left with silence and the still falling snow.

The Trees

Yesterday I killed the man who’s selling Christmas trees on the corner. He and his wife, whom he treats more like a sister, are living out of their van, and I pulled his long blond hair to one side until his neck snapped. In the icy land to the north, where the fir trees grow, it is more fashionable for men to have shoulder length hair than it is here. He has eyebrows like caterpillars, a nose like a duck bill, and an irrevocably broken neck.
It was three in the morning, and he was standing vigil over his trees, which he and his wife or his sister cut down on their farm in the North. Or perhaps they bought them from a farm in the North where they live and drove them down, or perhaps the van with the Northern license plate isn’t theirs at all, and maybe they’re living out of a different van parked in the vicinity.
‘The tree farms where I live in the North,’ so he said, ‘are part of a reforestation project.’ I said the North doesn’t have problems with deforestation. He said it did too, that I’m not Northern, and that makes all the difference.
There is no difference. That’s when the man who was nestled in the bottom boughs of the trees climbed out and pulled the tree vendor’s Rapunzel hair, which is only meant for dangling down a tower, to one side in such an abrupt motion that his neck snapped.
Today, when I said hello to Laurence, or Laurent, or Laure, or whatever he calls himself in the North. Or in this city. It is possible he calls himself something else in the North. Today when I said hello, I noticed he had gotten a hair cut. Sheared short and close to his skull. ‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I felt a little out of place. Like no one wanted to buy a Christmas tree from a shaggy country mouse from the far reaches of the North.’
‘Looks good,’ I say.
That is when the person who was crouched behind the pile of trees jumped out with a knife, and slashed at Laurent’s throat. He was there and then he wasn’t, I tell the authorities. ‘Five foot nine, medium build,’ I say. ‘Strange scar on his upper lip.’
Is she Laurent’s wife or his sister? He doesn’t wear a wedding ring, but few do nowadays. If she is his wife, I imagine there would be times when neither of them is watching the trees, and they’re both in their van, and the windows steam up. But there’s always one of them around, so I suppose she’s his sister or an acquaintance. She wears flannel shirts that I believe I have seen him wearing before.
It’s today, then, that I’ve killed the man who vends Christmas trees. Laurent is saying something about hoping I’ve had a good day, and I’m saying something along the lines of yes, and you? And then I grab his long, flaxen hair in my fists, and he thinks it’s me coming onto him, and he starts to say ‘it might not be a good idea.’ I tug harder, and before he can say stop, I’ve snapped his neck once again, and it’s too late for anyone to be out, and no one has seen. I go upstairs and take a long, hot bath at the top of my tower.
After the bath I sleep and I wake. On my way to work I see his sister, and say hello. ‘How’s business?’ I ask. ‘Where’s your friend’ I ask.
‘Oh, Laurent’s in the van, getting some sleep before it’s his turn to watch the trees.’
‘Watch them do what?’ I ask. ‘They’re trees, they don’t do anything.’ She laughs, and I say goodbye. I always say goodbye.

Climbing

The trees I look down on from my turret are, I think, elms. Big spreading branches of shade in the summer, but ice-clad now that it is full winter. At the base of one of these elms, I look up the trunk and wonder if I am a person who climbs trees.
Mid-trunk, halfway to where its branches begin to point out in other directions, I pause, and wonder how I got here. I look down and up, but I can’t remember starting any ascent. Frozen against the elm, I do not know if I should go up or down.
‘Hey, little lady,’ I hear, ‘why don’t you come down for a spell. Those branches might not be sturdy.’ They’re crusted in ice, and by now, so I am, so I heed the man’s warning.
The man looks vaguely familiar; he feels something like a dream. Or, rather, what I imagine a dream would feel like. His pocket watch chain catches the gaslight coming from the streetlamp, stretching across his pinstriped vest. He notices me looking at it, fingers it, and then pulls his greatcoat closer about him, tightening the scarf wrapped around his neck. There is a certain care to his dress I have not seen in some time among those outside of court.
‘You used to have longer hair,’ I say, ‘curls that touched your shoulders.’
‘Yes,’ he says, reaching for my hand, his black hair now sheared short and close to his scull. His locks only begin to curl at the very ends.
‘I think I cared for you, but I’ve forgotten,’ I say.
‘Yes, and it hurt,’ he offers.
‘Pain,’ I say, ‘is a luxury I do not want.’ I’m not sure, in my head, what this means, but once I’ve said it, it feels true.
‘Your hands – they’re bleeding.’ He runs his mittens over my palms and I notice they’re scratched and ruddy. My hands tingle – I cannot feel them in the cold.
‘I suppose everyone bleeds,’ I say, as some sort of excuse.
‘Everyone bleeds on the inside.’
He opened his mouth, as if about to answer, and then closed it, thinking again.
Later, curled in my canopy bed with hands bandaged in gauze, I see him bending over my off-key piano, an out of tune Chopin nocturne floating up from the soundboard. He keeps the top shut tight on the grand, so as not to disturb the people downstairs while he fingers the melody in a minor key. His face is careworn with an expression I have seen on many other faces – the expression of one who has aged faster than he should. His shoulders slope forward, toward the keyboard, and the weight of the world perches on his shoulders like a bird on a limb.
I wonder: will I sleep tonight? If I do, I’ll wake up, and he’ll be gone. All I’ll have left is the Chopin nocturne resting in the palms of my hands, on the tips of my fingers.

The Book

At half past seven, the emperor’s messenger has taken me by surprise. I’ve just finished dressing, and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, its curtains drawn back, even though it is still early. ‘It’s time,’ the messenger says.
‘I’m not ready, and you’re early,’ I say, ‘I haven’t finished dressing, but I’m decent.’ I have the messenger’s expert hands tighten the laces of my dress as I hold onto the post of my bed. He has come recommended from a governor in the North, where he is from. It’s a white dress with a fitted bodice and a full skirt, the same I always wear to court, since color is not welcome there. He leads me down the stairs, and I clutch the book the emperor will want to see.
When the messenger enters at seven, I’m naked to the waist. He has taken me by surprise, and I him – his porcelain skin blushes scarlet to see me. The messenger is a young man with long, curling hair, and perhaps he has never seen a naked woman before. He is easily embarrassed, having only been in the city for a short while. ‘Wait at the door and look the other way,’ I say, dressing hastily. After a moment, I invite him in, and he tugs at the laces on the back of my dress with hands unaccustomed to the task. I have convinced him that this is an honor, and is in keeping with propriety. Perhaps this is a lie. As he pulls at the strings, yanking me into my dress, I say, ‘You should cut your hair. Shear it close to your scalp.’ He ignores this and leads me down the stairs, clutching the book for the emperor.
The emperor and his diadem hold court in a black and white room, the tiles laid in alternating colors, checkered. The empress sits beside him, and her poorly applied lipstick makes her mouth look like a bloody gash. I do not take my eyes off of her mouth while I hand the book to the emperor. He thumbs through it without looking down at the pages.
‘Have you recorded everything?’ he asks.
‘Of course,’ I say. This, perhaps, is another lie. ‘If you turn to the end, you can read this as it happens.’ He does not; he hands it to a guard and asks that it be taken down into the vault; this is why I do not do my job meticulously. We stare at one another for a while, and, bored by the silence, I wind up and punch the empress in the mouth. Her mouth looks much the same now as it did before. I cannot tell if the rouge on my knuckles is lipstick or blood.
‘The book?’ the king requests.
‘It’s already in the vault,’ I say, but notice that, no, it’s clutched by my left hand.
‘How kind of you to be so punctual,’ the queen says, her gash contorting to the sound of her words. ‘It’s always a pleasure to see you.’ It is then that, staring at her writing mouth, I wind up and punch the king in the face. The pair now has the same mouth. Later that night, sitting in my bathtub, when I think about the punch I threw, I am proud.
After the messenger has fetched me, and I enter the court, the messenger proffers the book in which I have recorded the week for the emperor. My messenger is from the North, and is not yet used to the ceremony at this court. The emperor takes it gingerly, and tosses it to a guard for the vault. The empress, her mouth dripping with blood says, ‘How kind of you to come. I don’t suppose you have any confessions for the emperor?’ but everything she says is a condescension.
‘Yes,’ I say. And I open my mouth for a moment. ‘No, no confessions.’ I turn and run in the direction from which I came. Only after I’ve caught my breath in the vestibule do I realize that my messenger has been waiting for me here the entire time so he may escort me back.
‘I’d prefer to go alone,’ I say, and he appears crushed. I wander out into the whirling snow, forgetting which direction is mine. I’m looking for something in the snow that I know I can’t find, and my tears are indistinguishable from the snowflakes that melt in the corners of my eyes. I fall on my knees in the snow, one white drift among many. Perhaps, if the emperor has not yet sent the book away, he will read this as it happens.

The Messenger

Even though I have thawed, I am still numb. The messenger has carried my frozen body up the spiral staircase, dropped me in a hot bath, and attended to me until my fever died. Now we sit cross-legged in my bed wrapped in blankets with the curtains pulled. He says he is the same age as me, though he admits he feels younger. I, he tells me, am his only task. He has not earned greater responsibility yet.
‘You had to undress me,’ I say, and he blushes.
‘You are my task,’ he explains. Taking my hands between his, he flinches. ‘They’re cold,’ he says, and begins to rub heat into them.
‘Tell me about the North,’ I say.
He tells me there are orchards and tree farms and people with different worries than here. Their worries: large animals with antlers, the growth of trees. Mine: That I’m unimpressed with reality. Thinking on this, I realize that my own homeland has become foreign to me. The North he describes sounds as absurd to me as the capital where we are right now.
‘Did you ever,’ I ask, ‘see a man much like you, but older, in the North? One with dark hair, who lives on an orchard. One with an ascot.’ When he asks what the man’s name is, I cannot remember words, only white lines and the color burgundy.
‘There are many such men in the North,’ he says, ‘Who was he?’
‘Someone like you, but someone who left without saying goodbye.’
His stockings have begun to droop below his knee breeches, exposing his calves. I tug at them, playfully, and let one snap back against his leg. Then my hands start moving with a will of their own. His stockings come off, his cravat untied, the buttons of his shirtwaist slipped through their buttonholes. Then the waistband of his knee breeches undone, and once we are naked, I remember fragments of what I’ve forgotten.
Later, when we’ve begun to drift off, I tell him, ‘When I wake up tomorrow, you won’t be here.’
‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else,’ he says. ‘Sleep,’ he says.

The North

When I try to record this week in the book, I find myself looking toward the North. People on orchards, tree farms. People with worries. When I wake up in the morning, he is still there. But I realize that, to me, he is the North more than he is a person.
Long stretches of time pass in which I don’t sleep, or, if I do, I cannot distinguish between sleeping and waking. I have stopped leaving my turret, and seldom budge from the leather wingback chair I have positioned so that I can look northward. I rely on the messenger for any news of court, of outside.
‘You are unwell,’ he says, but I shake my head.
When the sun has set, I see my reflection in the window’s glass superimposed over the North. This is the closest I have come to visiting it. I have spent my life in this capital city.
Once the messenger has gone to report to the emperor, I know he will not return for some time. I pull myself into clothes and, leaving my shoes, hurry barefoot down the spiral staircase of my turret. Outside, I step into the snow, first gingerly, leading with bared toes, and then decidedly, planting my weight solidly on my heels.
Up the cobbled streets, uphill to the north wall of the city, I know that once I have passed through the guards’ station there is a path that winds like a ribbon to the mountains on the horizon. It tapers in the distance, until it is an indistinguishable point.
Snow has begun to fall, and I will not be missed by many. The messenger will come back to the tower and find me gone. In time, the empress will realize I have abandoned my punctuality. Guards will search my room for evidence of my flight. In time, someone else will take my place, the guards will stop searching, and the messenger will find someone who reminds him of me.
I intend to chase this blizzard, blown in from the North, back to its origin. Some point in the past, a draft gathered flakes of snow, pushed them downward until other drafts joined it. What started as a breeze became a white squall of flurries, and it spun itself into a full-blown blizzard that steered south from its birthplace to the capital. Now the flakes, driven by strong gusts, are blown sideways, flitting in white lines in front of me. In the distance, the mountains have blurred into solid white lines, too. The snow and the mountains rest in white lines like rungs before me, and I take off due north.