Realms of Gold Read online

  “Sure—while I do the washing up, I’ll play my new CD. Domingo and Kiri Ti Kanawa. La Rondine.”

  “Good girl! Start some new habits. I’ll call you tomorrow. Ciao, cara.” He kisses her on each cheek, opens the front door, then dashes back to the kitchen for his precious truffle grater.

  After piling up, then guiltily leaving the dishes and pots in the sink, she falls into bed remembering Oxford and the loneliness of those years spent away from her family, wondering sometimes why she’d ever been there in the first place.

  Bianca

  June, Boar’s Hill, Oxford, 1996

  The room is white—as white as the dress of the young woman who stands lost in thought as she gazes out the window. Her room overlooks a garden planted with herbs and trellised roses enclosed by high clipped yew hedges. In its center a small fountain spews a single jet upwards toward a cloudless azure sky.

  It is here, at this peaceful place of prayer and meditation, that she’s learned about her visionary gift. The woman turns from the window and fixes her eyes on the blank white wall above her desk as though to see her reflection in a mirror. She adjusts the white veil covering her head.

  Soon her mother and father will be coming up the staircase to greet her, to embrace her and bid their farewells. Her heart aches because her brother, so far away, could not be with her on what would be the most important day of her life.

  She opens a drawer and takes out her journal, a thick, lined notebook that she has kept every day since she left home. She has been told that from this day forward she will not be able to keep this journal. She has been told her visions are dangerous. Evil. She often wonders why her name is Bianca when there is such darkness inside her.

  Her heart begins to pound. Sweat beads her forehead. She has had her doubts before, but they would always come and go.

  Now from the tower she hears insistent tolling, bells clamoring, bronze against bronze. She closes her eyes tight, welcoming the black screen and whispers, “Tell me, Nina—I beg you, Nina, please help me decide.”

  Above the din of the bells, she hears Nina’s voice. “Bianca, the veil. Take it from your head. You must return with your parents. “

  She slowly lifts the veil, lays it across the chair, then passes both hands over her dark hair cropped close to the scalp.

  She hears a triple knock. The door opens.

  Her mother, her father, and the Mother Superior enter, ready to escort her to the chapel.

  Although she feels the quaking within, Bianca’s voice is strong, unwavering.

  “I’m sorry, Sister Catherine, I cannot go through with it. I’m not ready to take final vows. I doubt that I ever will be.”

  The distinguished, gray-haired American naval officer and the pretty blonde woman throw their arms around their daughter. They are so happy, so relieved, that there will be no good-byes.

  Bianca

  November 21. New York City. 2007

  It is six o’clock on the morning before Thanksgiving when Bianca gets up to go to the loo, then crawls right back into bed to try to get more sleep. She’s feeling the usual holiday-hollowness, an overwhelming sadness. Every year as she approaches her December birthday, the autumn emptiness intensifies. She hasn’t heard from Giovanni. Maybe he’s forgotten all about getting together here in New York during the December antiquities sales.

  After what seemed like an endless day at the magazine, she rushes to D’Agostino’s to shop for the Thanksgiving dinner she’s determined to cook for herself. By the time she returns home and puts the groceries away, it’s still early. She flops on the too short, too soft sofa and channel surfs until she sees Julie Christie’s face. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 again. She’s seen the film three times, once not very long ago. And each time she remembers sobbing at the final scene, not understanding why it always strikes a powerful chord within. The scene is about memory and the people who have become “books” in order to preserve for civilization all the printed books that have been burned by storm troopers.

  The film is almost over.

  The setting, a birch forest at the end of the railway line—characters from books walk by reciting their lines. “I am Anna Karenina,” one woman says. “I am A Tale of Two Cities,” a young man utters.

  Night falls. It’s beginning to snow. A young boy sits beside his grandfather, repeating the lines recited by the dying man. His grandfather has become a book, and now, knowing he will soon die, the old man is passing his story on to his grandson.``

  Tears roll down her cheeks and, as she watches this scene, sadness washes over her, feelings she can’t account for.

  When the film ends, she closes her eyes. Good. No visions. It is still early. She turns on the laptop, thinking about the seventeen pieces of broken crockery, the fragments of Nina’s Rhodian jar, now out being mended. It’s a good time to begin her next assignment for the magazine. She won’t wait for a suggestion from a reader: she’ll write on the mixoparthenos, the goddess with twin tails of a snake— or of a fish.

  The Mixoparthenos and the Black Sea.

  Milouziena of the Scythians

  The Freeing of the Waters

  Listen for I tell you who we are and how we came to be.

  I tell this story as it was told to me,

  To my mother before me and all the mothers before,

  Back to the beginning of time when nurslings

  Were not safe at their mothers’ breasts.

  My people once lived by the edge of a lake,

  A bounteous lake, clear and fed by fresh streams.

  Long- legged birds nested in the marshes

  Where I would gather reeds and grasses to weave into baskets.

  It was the year the crops rotted.

  There were too many mouths, too little grain.

  Winter winds blew early.

  Hard rains beat down day after day.

  Was our double-tailed goddess

  Angry with our people?.

  Or had her son, The River God, sent endless floods,

  To ruin the grain stored in the caverns?

  And then one day when my brother and I were threshing wheat, we heard a sound that broke the stillness of the day. A deep roar of the giant, angry god filled our ears. An unearthly sound like none we had ever heard, at first a distant rumble ever growing louder, like the sound of countless herds of galloping horses.

  Day by day we watched the salty water rise. Dead fish floated to the surface. We could no longer drink our once sweet water. Those who had boats for trade or for fishing pulled anchor. Some of our youngest and strongest ran for their lives in search of safe ground or toward the rising sun.

  Men and boys felled trees for rafts and dugout boats; women twisted rope or gathered food and culled wool for sails. When the rafts were tight with pitch, we climbed aboard, bringing animals, seeds, wheat, roots of trees, and our carved stone image of Milouziena.

  We fit in as many as the wide boats would hold and wept as we deserted our land, our homes, the bones of our ancestors. Our rafts and boats held twenty women and children, ten men. The younger men and lads poled while the women consoled the children. We prayed for winds to carry us to higher ground. For days, carried by breezes and currents, we floated on the rising lake. Our rafts drifted between forests of tall trees emerging from high water. With water turned to brine, we shared the milk of our goats, and nursing mothers gave their breasts to children and the sick.

  At last when we were about to lose hope, we saw crags of white rocks in the distance, hills green with trees we knew were pine, for we could smell the sap on the breeze as our sails billowed with the wind. Flocks of white sea birds hovered, flapping their wings and swooping as we waved and shouted with joy. Soon we would set foot upon the land and give thanks to our goddess of earth and water who brought us safely to this distant shore.

  Bianca

  Thanksgiving Day. New York City. 2007

  This is no day for bleakness and self pity. She looks at the purchases she made ye
sterday at D’Agostino’s—turkey breast, bag of stuffing mix, can of cranberry sauce, two sweet potatoes, pecan pie, and a can of Reddiwhip. That should fill the emptiness.

  She turns on the stereo and listens to Rachmaninoff’s “Symphony No. 2.” Over and over again she plays her favorite Adagio. There’s something about this Second movement, the limpid clarinet solo, the flutes and plaintive oboes, that makes tears well up in her eyes, puts her heart in focus.

  I shouldn’t be so afraid, she tries to convince herself. I will, I must, enter those locked rooms of my mind. The music gives me the courage. She closes her eyes. She sees her again, the same woman.

  A woman with long thick dark hair pulled back and tied in a cord. She’s riding a horse across the steppes. The horse gallops over the windswept earth, and as she rides I see gray grasses gradually turning into fields of green wheat, wheat rippling, bending in the wind. I see it in the glaring sun, ripening to gold , ready for harvest.

  *

  At eleven, she puts the turkey breast in the oven, along with a pan of stuffing and scrubbed sweet potatoes. Before long, the kitchen is filled with aromas it has never known—at least not since she moved in. When turkey and fixings are ready at the same time, she takes a moment to congratulate herself. Brava, Bianca, she says aloud.

  She finds the CD of the Bulgarian Women’s choir singing Thracian harvesting songs from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. At one-thirty precisely she pulls up a chair to a folding card table covered with her only plain white sheet, now centered with chrysanthemums and dried wheat stalks spilling out of a straw cornucopia. Her place is set with one of Nina’s antico bianco Ginori plates.

  She thrusts the steel blade through the turkey breast and feels strangely disquieted as she carves two thick slices. She spoons stuffing on a heated plate and sets a slice of jellied cranberry sauce next to it. The sauce gleams faintly like a giant cabochon ruby. As she admires the effect, the “ruby” melts into a puddle. The Krater. Wine is spilling over its edge, dribbling over the frieze of armored hoplites, parading horses, sliding over the gorgons’ tongues.

  Some moments later, when she opens her eyes, the Krater is gone. She touches the turkey on her plate with her fingertip. Cold. Since her microwave oven isn’t working, she dumps the plateful of food into a garbage bag, sticks the turkey breast back into the fridge. She goes to the medicine cabinet for two aspirins, falls on the neatly made bed, and cries until there are no more tears. She’s now worried that she’s going over the edge. But she forces herself to get up—and then she does something unusual, at least for her. Instead of leaving the dishes piled up in the sink, she tugs on some plastic gloves and washes, dries, and puts them away.

  In the early evening she turns on Rachmaninoff’s Adagio again, boots up her laptop, and sits down in front of it. Closing her aching eyes, she leans her head back against the chair and listens. When she hears the melody of the clarinet solo, the woodwinds, her mind begins to descend. She is overcome with feelings—feelings she doesn’t understand and visions seem to be floating up into her consciousness. Part of her fights them, trying to hold them back. Another part yields, longing to see more.

  I shouldn’t be afraid. I know it will be dark. I know the jarring black moth flutters about in these rooms. Rooms I will enter. I have made up my mind. The haunting melodies of Rachmaninoff give me the courage.

  She begins to write.

  I see hooks and eyes, fasteners of ivory or bone, attached to fabric, rust and mustard colored woven fabric. Why am I thinking this—why does my mind light upon hooks and eyes?

  Then I see a hand unhooking the fasteners, a turgid breast exposed, a baby’s lips eagerly searching for the teat. The child is wrapped in shiny fur, like otter, with silvery hairs.

  When the woman smiles at the baby. I can see her sharp teeth. Her dark hair is long and matted. She has a tattoo on her cheek. I try to make it out. The baby turns its head, seeking the other breast. But there is no other. Her chest, on one side, is flat and scarred.

  Is she an Amazon? She would have given her child to someone else to nurse if she were. Who is she? Where is she? Near the Black Sea?

  Suddenly she feels drowsiness overtaking her. She saves the document and turns off the computer. She goes to bed thinking about the woman of Vix, buried with the golden torque and the black figured kylix of Amazon women fighting Greek hoplites. Who was la Dame de Vix? And who is this frightening woman with the tattoo on her cheek? Moreover, does she have anything to do with the woman buried with the Krater? Or—does she have something to do with me?

  *

  “Zatoria.” It must be about three o’clock when she wakes up with a word repeating itself in her head. She lies there in the dark, spelling it letter by letter in her mind. Z-A-T-O-R-I-A. Zatoria. Is it a place like Astoria? Or`` a woman’s name? It has a Russian ring to it. She seldom forgets names or words that sound so loud and clear in her dreams. When they pierce the fragile, eggshell surface of consciousness, they stay with her forever. But what kind of name is Zatoria?

  There’s one way she might be able to find out. Switching on the desk lamp, she takes her habitual swig of Evian before turning on the laptop and, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, she enters “Zatoria” in Google search.

  Names appear on the screen, names of actual women from Virginia, Michigan, Sweden. So the name really exists. There’s also a place name, a town called Zator, in Poland. She finds it on the map— not far from the Ukrainian border, near the Black Sea. She hadn’t just “dreamed it up.” And ia is a Greek suffix, Zatoria, like Astor and Astoria! Maybe she should call one of the listed telephone numbers. But then what would she say to the woman who answered? “Your name, Zatoria, came to me in a dream”? Or —”When I woke up this morning I heard Zatoria ringing loud and clear in my head, so I decided to check you out on Google?” Of course the woman would think she’s crazy. But then she mightn’t be too far wrong.

  She switches off the computer and the lights and crawls into bed. Staring at the ceiling, a cloudy starless sky, she whispers, "Zatoria, Zatoria, how far back in me do you come? Why do you haunt me? Who are you--what are you trying to tell me?"

  Then she jumps out of bed, turns on the lights, heads straight for the computer. She switches it on, then cradles her head in her arms and closes her eyes tight, waiting for the visions, the knowledge to translate the darkness.

  Zatoria

  I, Zatoria, tell this story as my mother told it to me,

  As did hers before,

  Back, back in time,

  Before the seasons of my life,

  Those seasons before hers.

  I do not read. I do not write

  It has never been the way of my people.

  All knowledge must be stored in the head

  So that it will live within our souls through countless lifetimes.

  My mother taught me the legends of our tribe, my father the wisdom of the everlasting soul.

  Countless moons have come and gone since my father’s people left the birch forest where

  white butterflies flutter, where shamans gather golden mushrooms spotted like fawns.

  I bring you a branch of the birch tree,

  Sprouted green, spring sap sweet as honey.

  Listen as I tell you of who we are and how we came to be,

  Back in time I will lead you, before the seasons of my life,

  Back to the time when Giants roamed the earth and nurslings were not safe at their mothers’ breasts.

  When we came to worship the double- tailed goddess

  Twin mountains belched fire into the sky and boiling black rivers

  Like writhing snakes ran down their breasts,

  Turning all into shiny black stone that sea traders carried away on square-sailed boats.

  The Hellenes called me Zatoria, but Zato was the name my mother gave me. I wear white, the color of the robes of the shaman, Zalmoxis, the man my mother claimed to be my father. I was born out of their union offered
up to Dionysos.

  Year by year my mother’s people moved westward leaving the steppes, planting fields with wheat and barley we sold to the Hellenes who had built their cities on our land along the Pontus Euxinus. My mother was the storyteller of our tribe. She rode stallions and fought as well as any men. Every spring she led us to the river’s mouth near the polis, Olbia. She sold wheat to sea traders plying the sea in flat barges collecting their golden cargo.

  While my mother haggled my little brother and I gathered up bones of sea otters that feed in the marshes. I spent hours scratching on them the magic signs my mother taught me. My brother painted symbols with red powder ground from madder roots.

  My mother paid no heed to my brother, let him do as he pleased. With me she was strict since I would someday follow her as the leader of our people, the one who led our horses, oxen, wagons in the direction of the setting sun, to new land, new fields, and to the forests we would clear and build cabins for the wintering over, near pastures where our cattle could graze, leaving their droppings to enrich the earth, making our wheat grow tall and burst with seed.

  I remember that fateful year when winter came early. Horses were tethered, axes sharpened, trees felled, and soon the clearing was dotted with log huts lined with bark peeled from silver branches. We gathered twigs and tied them into bundles to cover the roofs of our sheds and those of our livestock. Horses can endure cold, but oxen cannot. Then we made ready for the long days ahead.

  We huddled by the fire, carving or sewing or braiding marsh rushes into mats while we listened to the elder women tell stories of our people, of our goddesses, Tabitha of the hearth, of the double snake-tailed Argimpasa, the goddess my mother’s people call Milouziena, goddess of the harvest and of springs and rivers. During those endless days I took to my memory many stories,