“You answered your question already,” Saul said, waving off Kurt’s offer of an extra cigarette.
For a second Saul had a perfect memory, Kurt, leaning against the railing of a steamer he and a bunch of dancing girls had taken down to British Honduras to do a winter tour. Kurt was sketching, painfully contorting himself to see the foxhole of the ship while using the railing as a table for his sketchpad.
Goin’ to see my brother at the plantation, he’d mumbled. It’s a long story.
The story had grown and grown.
“You wanted to go?” Saul said, taking some cards.
“I get enough damn noise here. I stay with the art.” He exhaled a lot of smoke. “It’s all I need.”
“To the art,” said Saul.
“To the art.” Glasses clinked.
“You know, it occurs to me that we’re not gonna have any more trouble from the Decency League.” He shook his head. “The way things go.”
“Wouldn’t think so. Good for you not saying that at the police station, though.”
They laughed and Saul took one of Kurt’s smokes after all.
Chapter 40
Curve now with the smoke from Saul’s cigarette, up the stairs, towards the box.
In a darker place, in a wider place, the being called Penamue stood on a beach next to rocks rich with glowing things.
Fascinating. He had not made this world. It did not emanate from his own consciousness, or at least most of it did not. It was a world seeping from the mind of the other being in this box that was all his current world, and he was intrigued by the shining and dark vista that her angry consciousness built.
Waves swelled in the black ocean and he became aware of the ghost, in the image where she focused her consciousness as surely as her consciousness flowed through this entire experience he was seeing.
He saw her rise from the surf, her back to the shore where he stood, white-skinned in her black dress, the black waves flowing around her calves as she stood, arms at her sides, long hair undulating as if under its own will.
Then she looked back at Penamue— he suspected that she did not see his true form at all, and he wondered what form he appeared in. Then she looked away and out to sea again. A great black swell built and burst forth in a hard, onyx curl, a long tube of black liquid that rolled and finally ebbed, and after a moment she shuddered. He could feel her shudder as the waves broke around her.
A shadow emerged on the waves, a personage both there and not there, clearly a vision of this ghost. Penamue recognized the vision as the surfing man who had taken part in his capture. She kept the vision before her, a shadow that floated on the waves on a surfboard of translucent gray, bobbing and riding, circling away and back. The shadow rider there craned its head towards her, listening. Penamue was fascinated by the urgency with which she created all of this around her.
He did not know this lost ghost, but he knew a consciousness he could manipulate when he saw one.
And he seized the moment, saying, so he is the one you are angry at.
She answered: He was good. We were good to him.
But when the time came for him to help you, said the demon to the ghost, he did not, did he?
No! And the whole world shook, great geysers of black water and foam whipping around the shadow-surfer who floated and stared at her.
Penamue read her thoughts and said: And when you sought his attention again, in the best way you knew, making many sacrifices—
He let her continue with her mind and he studied her, the agitation so plain to see. He burrowed into her, seeing it all, seeing her trek across the oceans, seeing the mortals that she dragged under and led into the waves.
He did nothing!
And worse! He betrayed you, he and his friends, they came to you and tempted you with peace and they put you in this captive world, and are you at peace?
The ghost turned to the shadow surfer who reached the edge of the water and stopped, a glistening shadow of the mortal she loved.
We can be at peace, she implored the shadow surfer.
But this is not he! proclaimed Penamue, This is a dream. Do you not surmise that you have created this yourself? What is it you feel, Sang-ook, the always good?
Love!
Love for the one who is out there, not this shadow! Look at it and tell me if your soul is at peace!
The ghost faltered and then the shadow surfer began to shimmer in and out of view.
He is still out there, Penamue whispered, and should he now know your love? Should he not feel your loving RAGE? You could be out on the waves with him, now, he waits, just beyond this word. As people say, love is as strong as what?
What, the ghost turned, what do they say?
Love is as strong as death. Sang-ook, as you were called, call forth your own soul’s power, that power that is greatest of all, that force that hastened you across this human sphere.
Penamue floated closer to her, and now flowed past her, a fluttering wave of birds, circling the shimmering shadow surfer. The birds perched on the shadow's shoulders and dipped through the waves around him, and the shadow surfer put up its hands, then faltered and slipped into the black waves.
Penamue knelt, taking a mound of the black sand in his papery fist. Let go and reach to the edges of this world—feel its false boundaries, for they cannot hold your strength, your will, your desire!
Cliff!
The whole world began to slide and flash, lightning crackling cross the sky. The ghost’s eyes grew wide, her hair flowing like a whipping wave of snakes.
Yes! Shake this world and feel it fall, reach out and show these fools your rage, and let us go and take this love of yours!
Love! Love is as strong as death!
Stronger! Love can peel back these waves and this false sky!
She roared and the waves curled back towards the horizon like a tsunami about to break, the black sand bare and dancing with gasping white fish. Shake this sand and send it back!
The sand began to churn, little holes and cracks growing and the grains disappearing in waves below the ghost’s feet, and as they churned away Penamue looked down and saw a foundation of wood.
Shake! Shake the sky! Shake the world!
And the sky cracked and began to splinter in chunks of plaster and wood, and as the chunks rained down Penamue read in the pieces of wood the engravings of mortals, the pitiful spells.
This is fakery, a dream, no great reward. You can leave it. Burst this accursed illusion with the love that draws you to the man you deserve!
Sang-ook spread her arms and flew as the whole world roared with her. Penamue looked up with great satisfaction as the sky split asunder.
Saul was about to uncork the bottle when he heard a crash that shook the foundation of the café.
Kurt looked up. “What the Hell?”
Saul put down the bottle as the sound of shattering glass and the howling of wind echoed down.
Running up the stairs, cursing himself and his faith, knowing already that he would fail.
He reached the upstairs room, throwing open his niece’s door, then the next one.
The door was embedded with chunks of wood. Flurries of paper birds whipped around the room and cut Saul’s flesh. He could see the dybbuk box on the floor in pieces, exploded, the table the box had sat on overturned. The wind whipped where the window had been burst. Beyond the flurry he saw the ghost at the window.
The birds spoke for the ghost and the demon. I should kill you, shaman. But there are more delicious hurts than death. The ghost and the waves of tiny birds lifted off and crashed through the window, sending shattered glass to the street below. The birds went fast, flowing over the sill, tearing curtains as they went. Saul ran to the window and saw the birds and the ghost soaring across the parking lot, across the highway, aiming for the beach and the sounds of celebration.