“Whoops!” A yellow braid loomed above me, the rest of her hair covered up with a knit cap. “Must’ve hit a patch of ice. Want a hand?”
My knees were skinned, a hole scraped into the left leg of my pants. Most likely they would’ve worn through soon anyway, with me on my hands and knees at all hours checking heaters and watering hard-to-reach plants. But it wasn’t as though I could easily replace them; a book was one thing, but proper clothes were another. Knowing I’d probably have to make a visit to the charity shop, I batted Kay aside with stinging palms.
“Get away from me.”
“Temper, temper. And here I was just trying to help.”
I pushed myself up, grabbing the book from where it had skittered across the paved path and shoving it back into the bag. “You help like a hole in the head, Kay.” Spending time with John O’Brien had improved my idiomatic language immensely.
“Such a bitter leftover,” she told me. “Someone should really put you out with the trash.”
“Well, someone should really teach you some manners.”
“What did you say?” Kay smiled, her eyes cool. I almost never parried her attacks. “Say it again.”
She was in my way. I was so close—my bed, unslept-in for days, was half a minute’s walk from where we stood. In my hands I crumpled the Orlov bag, its paper already colored with a streak of blood. I stepped towards Kay and took a breath.
“I said you were a little bitch.”
The silence that followed was a beautiful thing. I suppose I can savor, here in this lonesome cottage, the similarity between that moment and this one. For once, Kay was at a loss for words—indeed, in her surprise, she seemed unable to move at all. It wouldn’t last long, I knew, and taking advantage of the momentary calm, I walked around her into the dorm, locking the door to my room behind me.
I can still recite by memory the description on the back of the book:
Rothschild: a new novel from the critically acclaimed foreign writer Leo Orlov. PICTURE yourself on a world far away, but not so different from our own. IMAGINE a terrible illness overtaking every woman and girl, be she Missy or Mrs., Ooh-la-la or Oh-no-thanks. First, a green line winds up her leg—yikes! Is it a varicose vein, or something more sinister? Ladies don’t take any chances, slicing the new arrivals off with razors and nail scissors, burning them off with cigarette lighters. But no matter what they do, the illness continues, the growths return, and women become slaves to it—until one brave girl decides to take an unlikely stand.
It was rare for me to read the jacket copy of an Orlov book—I preferred to let the story wash over me, in all its twists and thrills. Plus, whoever wrote the jacket descriptions was a dunce. Not once, until after the success of Felice, did the description come close to reflecting what the novel contained. The basic details of the plot were there, but none of the depth, almost as if the publishing house didn’t want people to realize what they had until it was too late.
But in the case of Rothschild, for some reason, I skimmed the summary and then set the book down with shaking hands. There was a sink in my room—a luxury the rest of the dorms did not contain, because my room was really intended for floor monitors and other adult visitors. I turned the water on, hot, and cleaned the gravel out of my palms, snipping away bits of dead skin and wrapping my wounds in clean white bandages. After inspecting my pants, I decided they might still be mended, and set them aside in a laundry basket before dabbing my knee with iodine. Then, with a shuddering sigh, I sat down on my bed wearing nothing but my camisole and underwear.
I began to read. The night was predicted to be another cold one, and eventually I’d have to go out to the greenhouse to take up my watch. I could bring a flashlight and continue on with the book from there, but the beam would draw more girls to the glass, and I was worried an icy snowball might eventually smash through a window. Just an hour or so, I told myself. If I didn’t eat dinner, the time wouldn’t matter much. Just a few more pages. Just a chapter. Or two.
A world full of invaded women opened up before me, with gentle passengers that clung to their legs. Not just green veins, but green vines, giving way to rich green pods and eventually small creatures with warm, sticky fingers. When the first afflicted woman saw her passenger emerge she was horrified, until the creature opened its eyes. They were—how to describe it? Very dear. A woman alone was just a woman, but now she was chemistry, a valence of heart and hope, Orlov wrote. The beings triggered bonds so elemental that they seemed like natural law. Most of the time they kept their eyes pinched shut to conserve energy, but occasionally they blinked at their women so tenderly that none could bear to do them harm. Some even took on the illness intentionally, fostering their passengers with pride. Legislation was written to protect the creatures, making it illegal to try and snip them free, as many had done in the early days. Because how did they survive? They sucked the energy from their women like milk through a straw.
One girl tried to fight this, arguing that children, at least, should be allowed to get the creatures removed and try to live their lives unencumbered. But she was shouted down over and over again, until at last she died of a gunshot wound on the floor of the senate, her purple blood leaking out across the white tile. When I closed the book after reading the last page, the whole world was winking out—once the women all succumbed, life became impossible. Babies couldn’t be born. Men died out, lonely. And at last the only sentient beings left were the passengers. They’d never intended to do harm, but now they were starving to death on an empty planet, tugging at one another’s arms and wailing as they realized there was no one left to love.
Lights winked out across campus, too. In my room, I hugged the book to my chest and tucked up my knees, turning my whole body into a knot and closing my eyes, just for a moment. I remembered my old life, its sweetness and annihilation. A pan of piroshky baking in the next room, the mist of yeast and meat and broth filling up our whole apartment. My father waving to me across a field in the summer, the light burning out my view until all I could see was his silhouette. My mother, brushing aside a strand of hair before leaning down to kiss my forehead. And then, too, my face, crushed against the pavement, a cacophony of ordnance exploding above me.
My blood was warm and thick, my eyes heavy. I fell asleep still clutching the novel, and eventually it migrated between my thighs. When I woke with a start in the middle of the night it was still there, hot where my skin pressed into it. Outside the wind made a sound like an animal. I threw on some clothes and rushed to the greenhouse, bringing the book with me. Not to read, just for company. So I could remember for a little while longer the feeling of opening it for the first time.
Lev
26 June 1931
Airmail via [Redacted]
There isn’t much time today, Vera. The days seem to be shorter, here, where the west meets the east. And I’m not talking about loss of light, I’m talking about actual hours. The practical tock of the clock, tick-less. Sudden jumps. I pick up a cup of wretched coffee in the morning, and before I set it down the day’s gone, and I’ve accomplished nothing. Time is always different without you, but this feels new. Were you previously winding something in my heart that I wasn’t aware of? Is there a wifely duty you never bothered to outline? Please reply and help your liminal Lev.