Time Dancers (8 page)

“We have not yet discussed the Wait, the Itxaron,” I said.

“Yes, my love, I know.” She put her hand on my chest and placed my hand on her chest, pushing aside the Stone she wore on a simple necklace. “Do you feel this pounding in our hearts?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“This is the essence, Zianno. This is the true meaning and dream of the Itxaron—not longing or waiting or wondering, but
knowing.
We are knowing our own destiny, my love. You, Zianno Zezen, are my destiny, flesh and blood, and I am yours. All else is unknown, unknowable, no longer…
garrantzitsu.
All else is no longer of importance, not to us and not to this pounding in our hearts. The Wait is not our enemy. The Wait is a gift from the stars.” She paused and kissed my lips. “Do you know what my name means in Basque?” she asked, then answered before I could respond. “It means ‘gift.’ I have a gift that others before me, others who wore the Stone of Blood, also possessed. Tonight I give this gift to you, my beloved. Just as you have let me into your dreams from half a world away, I will take you into mine. Tomorrow, when you leave me, you will know this gift and you will take it with you in your mind and heart. It will sustain you on your journey and bring you back to me. Not all Meq know of this gift, but tomorrow, you will, Zianno.”

“What is the gift?”

She pressed her finger to my lips and smiled. “Tonight, my love.”

Carolina decided against using her formal dining area for Ciela’s feast. Instead, shortly after sunset, we were all called into the kitchen and, one by one, took our seats around the long table. Wonderful Caribbean scents and aromas filled the room—grilled meat, roasted peppers, toasted marjoram, and more, wafting from a half-dozen side dishes laid out on counters and atop the stove. Inside the oven, Ciela said, was a suckling pig, cooked from a recipe as old as her village, and served with a “mojo” prepared with lard, cloves of garlic, and sour orange rind. At both ends of the table several bottles of champagne were chilling on ice. Owen said each bottle was a 1911 Perrier-Jouet, one of the finest vintages of any champagne since 1874.

Ray took one look at the array of delicious, steaming dishes and fresh-baked bread that covered the table, then summed up everyone’s reaction. “Damn!” he said, looking over at Ciela with a broad grin across his face.

Carolina rose from her seat before we began eating and gave a toast and short speech that was neither somber nor joyous. She mentioned Unai and Usoa, though she had never really known them, and she thanked God, Ray, and me for bringing Star and Caine to safety. She ignored the obvious danger that could still exist and said we should be grateful for the moment, the food, and the unique family we had become. Following with a toast of his own, Owen Bramley began by recounting his and Ray’s adventures and difficulties while trying to crate and haul Baju’s sundial to St. Louis all those years ago. He segued into comparing our odd family with the formation of Woodrow Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations and the upcoming conference in Versailles. It was typical Owen logic and rhetoric and as he rambled on, my mind drifted to thoughts of Opari. She was sitting across the table, looking at me, smiling. I no longer heard Owen’s voice. I only heard the echo of her voice, her simple words, “Tonight, my love.” I smiled back and lifted a silent toast to her, and the feast began.

Here vigor failed the towering fantasy.

But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel

In even motion. By the Love impelled,

That moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.

—DANTE ALIGHIERI,
Paradise,
Canto XXXIII

It was well after midnight. Holding the inside of the frame with my hand, I leaned out one of our bedroom windows, over the sill, out far enough to look up and catch a glimpse of the great Milky Way overhead. I wanted to see if the stars were still burning. I wanted to see if they still wheeled through the sky or if they had stopped in place, because I was certain I now knew what made them move.

“Be careful, Z,” Opari whispered out at me. “It is some distance to the ground.”

“I couldn’t fall tonight. Not now, it would be impossible.”

She smiled and kissed the knuckles of my hand holding the frame. “What do you see?”

“I see what I never have before.”

She laughed and turned, walking back toward the bed while removing the old barrettes from her hair. I watched her every move. She was as graceful and silent as Geaxi, with an added mystery in her step, as if she walked surrounded by a field of excited particles. I now knew one of her most intimate secrets. It is the reason kings, sultans, priests, and princes, even jealous empresses, have for centuries sought her presence and given her the same protection as their royal treasuries. It is not just the Stone of Blood, nor the gems that adorn it, nothing like that. It is something much more sublime and yet overwhelming, a knowledge every Giza and Meq has within them, but very few ever experience. Opari is a vessel of this knowledge, this experience. This is her “gift.” It is the most refined of all her “abilities” and in this world, in this form, her most powerful ally.

The experience lasts a little over an hour for Giza and can last two or more hours for the Meq. Beginning at approximately 10:00 P.M. and in various stages until about 12:30 A.M., through Opari’s touch and guidance, I had been shown this “gift,” this dance, this fugue, this impossible balance of control and surrender, and led to a sublime perimeter of possibilities and particles. I returned with a feeling of renewal I had never felt before. I felt connected to everything, to the…“Love impelled, that moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.”

“Opari,” I said, ducking my head back in the room, “does it have a name?”

She was just turning out the last of the lights and about to climb into bed. “Yes,” she said through the sudden dark. “But the name is nonverbal. Do you…need a name, my love?”

“No, no,” I said, stumbling into the room.

“Come to bed, Z. I want you next to me.”

I bumped into the bed and crawled between the sheets where I found her skin.

“In the morning you leave,” she said. “Tonight, come dream with me.”

Not long after first light, I awoke to the voices of Owen Bramley and Mitch in the hallway. Owen seemed to be giving instructions and Mitch was saying, “I got it, I got it.” Then he was bounding down the stairs and I heard the sound of a door opening and closing. I sat up and glanced out the window. The sky was blue and clear and the sun was shining. If the time had come to leave St. Louis, I thought, at least it would be on a beautiful spring day.

As I dressed, Opari sang a song in Old French, a gentle Provençal poem she had learned from a troubadour a thousand years earlier. It was called an
aubade,
she said, and told the story of lovers parting at dawn.

We said good-bye at the bedroom door. It was much easier than I anticipated and lasted only a few moments. Opari simply reminded me that I must return; otherwise she would have to come and find me. I laughed and kissed her lips, which were moist and soft against mine. To this day, partings from the ones you hold most dear are a great mystery to me. They always seem to break your heart and fill it with warmth at the same time, a nearly impossible balance of feelings and emotion. Before she closed the door, Opari touched my cheek once more, then traced every feature on my face with her fingertips. Her last words were, “Au revoir, my love, and find a good place for Unai and Usoa to rest in peace.”

Owen met me at the end of the hall and handed over a packet of letters and instructions for various contacts along the train route and in New York. He had special letters written for a man in U.S. Customs and the captain of the ship on which we would be sailing, the
Iona.
He assured me that enough money to keep from worrying would be transferred to Barcelona and available to me upon arrival. He also said he had procured a private railcar for our journey, equipped with sleeping berths and a separate storage compartment for the coffins.

I looked across the hall to the room Ray had been using. The door was wide open but the room was empty.

“Where’s Ray?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Owen said. “He knocked on my door a good twenty minutes before sunrise and informed me he wanted me to find Mitch and tell him to meet him down at Union Station early. Never gave a reason. Just told me to tell Mitch. He was packed and on his way by dawn.” Owen adjusted his glasses and the two of us stood in silence for a few moments.

“Where’s Carolina?” I asked.

“She’s in the kitchen. She said to remind you if you didn’t say good-bye this time, you couldn’t come back.” He picked up a fedora that lay on a side table, then pointed with it downstairs. “I’ll wait outside for you.”

I had said my farewells to Star and Willie and Jack the night before. I wanted to see Carolina last. “Give me five minutes, Owen.”

“Take your time, Z.”

Carolina was standing alone in the kitchen, caught in a beam of early light streaming in from the east. She was facing the window, kneading a loaf of bread on the counter. Her hands were covered with flour and a small cloud of flour dust surrounded her, floating in the beam of sunlight. Her freckles stood out in bright brown patches across her nose and cheeks. A strand of hair came loose and she stopped to brush it away from her face.

I stood just inside the door and spoke before she saw me. “I was told I had better come see you or else suffer the consequences.”

“Z!” she cried, then relaxed. “Well, yes, that’s true. There would have been consequences.” She smiled once and returned to kneading the bread. “Z, I want you to come back swiftly this time. There is no requirement for you to remain after you have done what you must do. And it is not because I live in fear of that evil one, the Fleur-du-Mal. I don’t give him a second thought and I don’t want you to give a second thought to worrying about us. We will be fine, I promise.” She stopped and turned to look at me directly. “Come back, Z, come back soon.” She paused and smiled again. “And I will make sure Jack keeps your mama’s glove oiled.”

“That’s all I could ask,” I said, and started to leave, then turned back. “Don’t forget, Carolina, Opari carries one of these.” I held the Stone out in front of me.

“I won’t forget, Z. Now go. And what did you say to me once at Union Station when you were leaving? What was the phrase…
egi…egibiz…
?”

“Egibizirik bilatu,”
I finished. She was remarkable and she was my oldest friend. “I’ll be back soon, Carolina. I promise.”

Things went smoothly and quickly at Union Station. Owen Bramley introduced me to Caleb, a black porter who was a friend of Owen’s and the first of several porters along our route who made sure we had everything we needed. Ray and Mitch were already on board and the train left exactly on time. Within minutes we were crossing the Mississippi and heading straight for the morning sun. By late afternoon we were approaching Champaign, Illinois, where we would be recoupled to another line and another train.

Mitch and Ray had become friends the first moment they met in St. Louis. They spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon exploring what they had in common, sharing stories and anecdotes about places and characters they had known in the life on the riverfront and the streets of downtown St. Louis. Mitch was fascinated with the criminal past that Ray knew personally, and Ray wanted to know all about running a nightclub. I wasn’t really included or excluded, just ignored. Ray never mentioned why he left Carolina’s early and Mitch never brought it up. However, I didn’t mind the time alone, I welcomed it. I was still getting used to the idea of leaving St. Louis so soon and so suddenly. I watched the flat farmland pass by, corn and soybeans, one farm after another. I fell into a reverie of reliving the events from the day before, including Ciela’s feast. While I was smiling to myself, recalling the way Opari looked across the table, I remembered a single moment that I didn’t quite understand at the time. She was facing Ray and they were both excited, smiling, talking about something, when Ray suddenly dropped his smile and glanced at me. I think I turned to listen to Owen for a few seconds, then turned back and Ray was gone. He was absent the rest of the evening and I didn’t see him again until I boarded the train. Whatever had happened in that moment with Opari had affected all his actions since. Ray’s friendship meant too much to me to wait and guess. I had to find out what was wrong. Champaign, Illinois, was the place to do it.

On a sidetrack several hundred yards from the station itself, our railcar was uncoupled. While we waited for the other train, I suggested Ray and I get some fried egg sandwiches from the café inside. Mitch agreed, saying he had business with the porter, Caleb, and to make sure we brought him three sandwiches instead of one, with fried potatoes, if possible.

As Ray and I started down the long platform toward the station, we didn’t speak. Ray saw a bottle cap on the platform and picked it up, then tossed it down the tracks so hard and so well, I lost sight of it completely. But it wasn’t only skill that threw the bottle cap so far, it was anger. I saw it in his eyes.

I stopped walking and held back. “What happened last night, Ray? What did Opari tell you?”

Ray continued walking for another three paces, then stopped and turned slowly. There was a look on his face I will never forget and hope I never see again—a look of intense rage, anger, and profound disappointment. He slumped forward slightly, shaking his head back and forth. Quietly, he said, “Opari told me I had the same eyes as my sister.” He stopped talking and laughed to himself. It was his bitter laugh. “What the hell were you thinkin’, Z?” he asked. “How come you didn’t tell me you had seen Zuriaa? As far back as China, goddamnit! How come you didn’t tell me my sister was alive, Z?” He put his bowler back on and knelt down in a crouch, as if he couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up any longer. He felt betrayed and cut to the bone. And I was the only one to blame. I had no defense or excuse. Opari was not aware that I had never told Ray about his sister. At the time, I thought it was better that he not know she had changed and was not the sister he remembered; however, true friends do not keep the truth from each other. No matter what my reasons were, they were wrong.