“She looked at Saul’s face, which was stern and serious, heavy with concentration. As though he’d never danced before but had been studying the art of it all his life, from afar. His fingertips put just a bit of pressure on her back, telling her which way to turn, which way to move. Greta let him lead her around and around the floor. She closed her eyes.
“And she felt the music. The fiddle yawning. The starchiness of the clarinet. And the piano running lightly, very lightly, over its notes, as a brook runs over pebbles.
“Her heart pounded. Like a knock at the door. Klapać, klapać, klapać.”
Ada ran her fingernails down my arm. I shivered.
“Do you know what it feels like,” my baba asked me, “to be someone’s darling?”
She knew the answer: yes and no. I was her darling, but that wasn’t what she meant.
“It’s like sinking into a bed. Sinking into a bath. Knowing there is no better place for you on earth. Greta and Saul’s feet made light scuffs on the floor, which were swept away by the scuffs of the other dancers. The band played on, and the dancers twirled.
“A drop of sweat trickled down Greta’s face, over her forehead from the hairline, between her eyes and nose, to the lips. The heat in the room was once again rising. And now Greta was a part of it, part of a pair.
“This should have made her happy, yes?” I nodded in response to Baba Ada’s raised eyebrow. “But for some reason it made her nervous. As she and Saul moved in time with the other young men and women, couples scattered slightly, avoiding them. They seemed to remember, somewhere deep down, the feeling of being as still as stones. Cold to the very center of their bones.
“Greta wanted to dance forever, here in the center of a happy crowd. But you cannot change your nature. If you are a lonely creature, this cannot be undone. Something will always crop up to remind you.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“It might be simple. Just a noise across the room. A cry.”
“What kind of cry?”
Ada laughed.
“Like you, lalka. Like you when you don’t get your way. Wah wah. When you scrape your knee. There was a cry like this coming from the other side of the factory floor, and it cut through the music and went straight for Greta’s ears.
“No one else seemed to hear a thing. Or anyhow, they heard the band playing and that was all. Greta shook her head, stuck a pinky in one ear, but the noise wouldn’t go away. Saul looked at her strangely. With a question. But he didn’t notice that cry, that wail, any more than the other dancers.
“Greta began to feel frantic. Her heart threw itself against her rib cage as she craned her neck and scanned the room for the source of the sound. But she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. How could it be? An invisible mouth? An invisible throat? An invisible misery? She was desperate to hear the music, to feel again the simple pleasure of dancing. But she couldn’t ignore the weeping, the sobbing, that called to her and her alone from somewhere close by.
“So what else could she do? In the middle of the song, in the middle of the dance, Greta broke away from Saul’s arms and ran into the crowd. Saul made a sound of surprise, but Greta didn’t turn around. She didn’t dare until she could find the cry that was tugging at her heart and still it.
“She pushed her way through the swarm of bodies, knocking girls and boys out of place as she went. And do you know what she found?”
I held my breath. Shook my head.
“There was a man. He was wearing a suit as gray as ashes. And he was holding a baby as small as a cat. It was shrieking with all its tiny might, its face red and blotchy with despair.
“Greta stopped. The man saw her and he smiled. As if he knew she would come, as if he expected her. Then he held a finger to his lips and handed her the child.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Who?” Ada shrugged. “A little girl.”
This wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I meant, who was the man? The man as gray as ash? But Baba Ada had a hard look in her eyes that didn’t invite further questioning.
“Greta held the little girl, and the child’s face started to clear. Her mouth nestled on Greta’s shoulder, her sack of a body on Greta’s breast. And the gray man, standing nearby, smiled.
“His smile was like a lock. As it widened, the child quieted down, and Greta held her more firmly, feeling a sudden need for her slight weight. Where she might have come from didn’t matter; this was where she belonged. The rest of the room seemed to disappear around them as Greta pressed the girl to her chest, tighter and tighter. The room was silent. The room wasn’t there.”
Ada brushed a lock of hair away from my eyes. She sighed through her nose.
“It was a moment of enchantment, lalka. But such things don’t last forever. There came a tap on Greta’s shoulder, and she turned to find Saul standing there, his brow all wrinkled up in concern. After all, she’d run away from him as if he were on fire. It was normal that he might worry about such a thing as that.
“Greta tried to hold the child out to Saul, as an explanation. But she found her hands were empty. The child was gone. And when Greta looked, the gray man was gone too, with not so much as a footprint remaining where he’d stood.
“Saul scratched his head and touched his lip. Greta just stood there. What could she say? But Saul knew better than to ask a woman like Greta to justify herself. He nodded at her. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter, he seemed to say. He would be her husband anyway.”
I considered silently the meaning of this understanding.
Baba Ada sat with me for some time and at last took my silence for a slide towards sleep. She stood up and crept towards the hall. As she flicked off the switch by the door, though, and set one foot outside, I called her back.
“Baba?”
“Yes, darling?”
“So did Greta and Saul live happily ever after?”
“Oh.” Ada frowned, leaving me with a feeling I couldn’t place. “In a way,” she said finally. “You could say they were happy. But every so often Greta turned Saul once again into ice.”
“Why?”
Ada slid out the door, so only her head was still visible to me.
“To try and get back what she lost the first time. To make the world bring back that child.”
3
Let me suggest that all events begin much earlier than they seem to. The real reason, the first cause, is rarely what you think.
For instance: when you drop a plate, it’s only superficially the fault of the floor when that plate shatters. And I’d argue, too, that it’s hardly better to blame your hand, hardly better to blame your exhaustion, or the late night spent soothing a child that brought you to that wearied state.
So what about Ada? Did her death really begin in her heart, as the medical report suggests? A muscle choking, a ventricle blocked by debris? Too easy, I think. And yes, one can look a little ways further, to the way she ate or the days she chose to take the bus instead of walking to the store. Or to the cells that made her, the air she breathed, the way the earth turned years before. But as long as I’m speaking for her, I know she would never allow something so mundane to undo her. And in her honor, I can say: her death began in the Sonoran desert.