Caro in Carno
“That is not dead which can eternal lie . . .”
My name is Caroline Eve Arkwright and I am thirteen years old. I prefer to be called Caro over Caroline and I don’t like the name Eve at all. I’ve insisted to Nan that I be called Caro because I’ve recently begun to learn my Latin declensions: caro, carnis, which means flesh, the body, and low passions. I don’t know much about low passions but I’m much more knowledgeable when it comes to flesh and the body. The body is the house in which the soul lives; and so I myself am like a house and I’m also the person living inside the house. This presents a conundrum, which I like very much. How can I be both a house and the occupant? Nan will not answer me. Nan has never enjoyed conundrums as much as I do.
Nan and I have always lived in the house and Nan tells me this is how it must always be. Our house isn’t like the houses in the village, Nan has told me, for it is caro, carnis as well. It is a big house. How shall I describe it? The walls are white, like the chalk cliff, but even more beautiful than that for they shine different colors in the light and are perfectly smooth. The floor is curved as well. From the outside the house appears as a giant hole opened in the cliff, but on the inside it has a series of chambers or cubicula, which spiral inward, each smaller than the last and curved as well. The house then is an orbis, which means ring, disk, coil — but most of all — world. I’ve spent many hours exploring the house but I’ve never gone beyond the eleventh chamber.
The village sits atop the cliff, not so close by, for the villagers are afraid of the ground giving way as it did once before. Their houses, which I’ve seen for myself, are neither orbes nor carnes but rather saxa, which is stones, and quadrata, which is squares. They have wooden roofs. They have windows in the attics with lights that come on and go off when I pass them. The people inside are caro or rather caro in saxo, but I am Caro in carno.
The way to the village is dangerous. The cliff is sheer and there are all sorts of other seashells and such visible there. None are as large as my house. The view of the ocean from the steps is very beautiful but if I’m not careful I could fall. Nan says this is what happened to Mother and Father, that they were not careful enough and so they fell. I don’t know if this is true but I’ve chosen to believe it. We must all choose to believe something, mustn’t we, even if it’s bad? Nan is too old to make the journey now and so I must make it alone. I try not to look down. Below me is mors, mortis which does not mean fall but death.
It’s my job to collect supplies from the village. Mostly this means onions and potatoes and flour and sometimes a pound of sugar and two pounds of coffee but these last are only for special occasions. I’ve been instructed to touch neither fish nor fowl, nothing that has lived and nothing that has died. I find these instructions somewhat confusing. Both the onions and the potatoes have lived, as I understand it, but Nan is firm that it’s not the same sort of living. She says this is an issue of vocabulary but I confess I’ve not pressed it further. Without onions and potatoes our cellar would be very bare! But it does seem to me that there ought to be a word that says more than mors, mortis to denote the different kinds of death such as death by falling or death by disease. This could be done of course with the addition of further words but it would be much more elegant if one word encompassed all these meanings. Perhaps there’s such a word in Greek or Egyptian or one of the many other languages I shall learn but I’ve not come across it yet.
In the village is a grocer who weighs the sugar and the coffee. In return I must give him a small pouch filled with salt that we scrape from the walls of the house. I’ve been told to watch him very carefully. Sometimes, Nan says, he likes to put his thumb on the scale. If he puts his thumb on the scale, then either I must make a second trip to the village before the appointed time or else we must make do without sugar or coffee. The grocer has a boy who counts out the onions and the potatoes but Nan says I must not look on him lest I fall into caro, carnis, that is low passions. Which is quite hard for he’s very handsome.
“Good morning, Caroline Eve Arkwright,” he’s accustomed to say to me. I think he likes that I have three names, for no one else in the village seems to have more than one. He’s called Tom, which, I think, is an excellent name. “How are you today?”
“I’m doing very well, thank you.”
“And how many potatoes will that be? The usual number?”
“Yes, please.”
“Not one more? Aren’t you a growing girl? It seems to me that you’re growing day by day!” Tom’s always saying something like this. I can’t tell if he’s mocking me. Although I think Tom is handsome, I keep close to my heart what Nan has said about the people from the village.
“The usual number, please, just as we have agreed. No more and no less!”
“Not an apple for the way back?” This is tempting. I’ve always thought that apples look very beautiful. They come in all sorts of different colors. But I know that I must refuse.
But I don’t refuse, not yet. “Do the different colors have different tastes?”
Tom looks at me for longer than I’m used to and I find that I’m blushing. Sometimes I feel so ignorant around him and this is one of those times.
“This one,” he says at last, “tastes green. And this one? Red. Red is the best taste, don’t you think?”
“I’ve never tasted red.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Would you like to?”
Tom polishes the apple very carefully on his sleeve. Now the skin is red and gleaming. But he has a look in his eyes like perhaps he’s mocking me. Perhaps he’ll take the apple away if I ask him for it.
I can’t help myself. I take the apple from him. It feels very smooth. It is a beautiful feeling to hold that apple. I think, I can hold this but I must not eat it. Tom smiles as he watches me holding the apple and I smile at Tom. The skin of the apple reflects both of our smiles, like two crescent moons. But then Tom stops smiling and I’m left to wonder if I’ve done something wrong, if I should not have taken the apple, if he’ll take this as a sign that the contract is voided.
“My mother’ll be coming to you,” Tom says after a little while. “Will you take care of her properly? Do you promise?”
I’ve seen Tom’s mother before. Her hair is light and yellow and it drapes like silk all the way down her back. Sometimes she measures out the coffee and the sugar for me and she has never, not once, put her thumb on the scales. It makes me sad that his mother will be coming to me soon. I can see that it makes Tom sad as well. I touch his hand, very gently, in case he pulls it away but he doesn’t and so we stand like that together for some minutes.