If I Told You Once

I held myself stiffly away from him all the way back to the army camp.

I told myself that my mother had escaped, of course she had, she must have scented the impending disaster, certainly at this very moment she and my father were hiding in the woods with my brothers and sisters gathered around, roasting potatoes over a fire, my mother a whirlwind of activity and foresight.

I still felt hope, I did, I held my chin like my mother always did. I told myself I would be brave like her, and resourceful, and I would do what I had to do to save them all.

I ought to skip the next part of the story, you are too young to hear it.

But I won’t.

When we returned to the soldiers’ camp, the officer offered me another bargain, a trade. Your brother’s release in exchange for the pleasure of your company, he said.

Just a little while, he said. It won’t take long.

We stood in the mud, among tents and milling horses and the jangle of harnesses and spurs. A subordinate came to take the officer’s horse; as it was led away I saw that its legs were still flecked with the soot and debris that had once been my village.

I looked at the officer whose eyes were set too close together, pinching his nose. Hair in his nostrils. I thought of my mother, her power over men, men meaning my father, the way my father jumped to do her bidding and cowered from her though she was half his size. And I thought of Anya, who could make men act like fools or grunting animals simply by rolling her eyes at them.

I knew I was stronger than Anya. I had carried her on my back, I had dragged her through the snow. She was weak, I thought, and stupid, and not even whole, and yet she had driven a townful of men to madness.

If she had that sort of power, I reasoned, then surely I did too. I looked at the officer, who was tapping his riding crop against his boots, flicking away flecks of mud, admiring them.

I thought: surely I can get the better of him.

I thought: I will drive him mad, he will do whatever I say. Because that is what women do to men.

I thought: that is what Anya did, and I am far better than her, look at my two perfect feet. Cold but lovely.

That was my reasoning. I thought it sound at the time.

I nodded and the officer took me by the arm, not companionably, he grasped me near the armpit and jerked me toward the inn where the officers had their rooms.

And in that room, which was low ceilinged and too warm, I saw how his body drooped without the stiff uniform, saw the flabby ring of flesh at his waist that matched the one on his neck. And he laid his hands on me, hands that looked like disease, with their knobby joints and yellow nails. He began pulling off my clothes and I wanted to change my mind but the door was locked and it was already too late, I was backed into a corner behind the bed, a high bed with an iron frame made of bars like a prison cell.

He pulled off my clothes, layer after layer, and it took a long time, and I was aware suddenly of how my clothes reeked of goat and ash and the tart sweat of panic, and I was momentarily ashamed. But he kept pulling and tugging and did not notice, hardly seemed to see me at all, I was a service, less to him than his horse or the subordinate who had taken it away.

It was all happening too fast; I was not having the expected effect on him but it was too late, he snapped a cord and the last of my clothing fell and pooled at my feet. I felt as if he had gone too far, as if he had gone beyond my clothes and stripped off a layer of skin, my body felt raw and sensitive all over like a fresh cut, a hangnail.

This was the moment when he was supposed to grovel at my feet, look up at me with worshipful eyes like the men in Anya’s room. Instead he muttered something about chicken bones and boosted me onto the bed.

He threw himself upon me, and I undid my hair and let it fall all around so at least he would not see my face as he did what he did. He puffed and groaned and breathed his sour breath into me, and dug out the deep places in my body and scraped and chafed against them so long I thought I would develop calluses before he was done, and as he did this I looked up at the ceiling at a crack in the plaster that seemed to be branching and spreading even as I watched it, like the crack in an egg as the chick begins to peck its way out into a harsh new world.

When he was finished he lost no time in getting back into his trousers. He put on his tunic, polished his boots with a cloth and then put them on, gazing down at them fondly. He was brisk, efficient, on his way to a fine dinner, no doubt.

I asked him when I would see my brother.

He laughed into the mirror. He was smoothing his mustache with oil.

You’ll never see your brother again, he said.

You promised, I said.

If you want a promise kept you should get it in writing, he said.

Your brother’s no better than a horse, he added, if they can’t train him they’ll take him out back and shoot him.

I leaped from the bed, landed on his back, sank my teeth into his neck. I could not inflict much, his flesh was leathery tough meat, my teeth could not pierce it.

He smashed the handle of his pistol down on my fingers and I fell from him. He raised his foot to kick, but the polished perfection of the boot made him reconsider. He did not want to soil it, after all.

He stepped around me, put on his coat, paused at the door. I expect you to leave here before nightfall, he said. And he added: Rinse the sheets before you leave. There’s water in the basin.

He opened the door, paused, and said in a fatherly tone: You should be careful in the forest at night. There are timber wolves, they are unpredictable.

Then he was gone.

I stood a long time before the mirror; it was black speckled, rippled with age, looking into it was like looking into a deep pool that sucked up most light and only gave a little back as reflection. But I could see enough. I saw how my bones stuck out like scaffolding, and the skin was sallow and rough. The officer had left bruises shaped like fingerprints all over my shoulders. There was nothing in my face that could tempt or intrigue; my hair was long but it looked only like hair, not like precious metals or sunsets or fires. Worthless merchandise.

How foolish of me to bargain with this.

How foolish to think I could move mountains just by being a woman.

I stood looking at the girl in the mirror who held her breasts in her hands and cried. Stupid girl, I thought.

I had never seen my mother cry.

Outside the sky was crowded with clouds dark as smoke, or smoke thick as clouds.

I washed and dressed and went to the stables and stole a horse because although I may have been ignorant of men, I understood animals and knew how to win their complicity. I ached between my legs and each step the horse took sent a jolt of pain a little farther up, a little deeper in.

My brother was nowhere to be seen.

So I rode away from that ugly place.

Those three old women who used to plague my village told me a story once.

I was a child then, their ancient faces frightened me.

I did not want to listen to them. I turned my face away and pretended that I was very busy thinking of other things, the way you do sometimes. But their words bored in.

The story went like this:

There once lived in the village a girl who was so spirited, so lighthearted her feet barely touched the ground. Her mother had to sew stones into the hems of her daughter’s skirts, knot clothes irons and horseshoes into her hair to prevent a strong wind from blowing her away. But the girl was irrepressible, she could run fast as a deer and all day long she flitted through the village, her bright sharp voice spangling the air around her.

Everyone in the village knew her. As a small child she had been inquisitive, appearing unexpectedly at people’s elbows to ask them questions. She pestered the blacksmith at his anvil, dodging the sparks; she floated through the clouds of flour at the baker’s, dug through the cobbler’s greasy leather. She might show up in any house, at any time of day or night, regardless of locks or manners. She would simply be there suddenly, an extra face at the dinner table. You might see her nose pressed against your window, feel her breath on your neck as you squatted on a stool milking into the bucket between your feet.

As she grew older she became taller but lost none of her lightness. Her mother often kept her inside now to work. But when she could get away she wandered through the village as before, stopping where she pleased. The villagers were used to her now; some anticipated her questions and answered them, while others good-naturedly ignored her.

She had a vitality they could not understand. They looked at her and thought she was happy, but in a way that made no sense to them.