IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
II: Tests of Fire and Blood
Chapter 43 Moving Teofilo
Tuesday, May 26, 2708,
continued Fine and dandy. I don't have that much trouble climbing to my
feet. Madame brings out a real stretcher
and I do myself proud by remembering a trick with the sheet, despite everything,
to transfer Teofilo with as little jolt as possible, though with all those
happy pills in him he hardly cares. Just as well; we carry him
up and out with uneven steps as he rolls to and fro on the stretcher, now and
then softly humming snatches of rebel tunes, now and then drifting gape-jawed
into sleep. Lucinda and Fatima take
turns with Imad and Chulan to carry him while Madame leads us, lanternless
under the full moon, her arm firmly around my waist as if I needed it. And she keeps bumping into me, too. Patrolling police clop up
on horseback. Dodge into the alley. Soldiers march to their barracks after
requisitioning food from the good citizens of Sargeddohl. Dash behind the houses, through the jungle of
hanging laundry that should've gone indoors before dusk, if the housekeepers
weren't too tired to see to it. Stagger
through the nice gardens of better people's yards. Lift Teo over hedges and fences and then
climb after. More alleys, all alleys
now, we don't belong on these streets.
But who feels ashamed with rum in her tummy?..and whatever else. Imad slips me a flask
that's been making the rounds behind Lucinda's back, but after the second or
third pass Luci snatches it from me, hissing, "How dare you--on the
job!" Then she gulps the last of it
down herself and tosses the bottle. Lights
flick on in the windows above where it smashed and we take a hasty detour. "Had to remove temptation," she
husks. "You fools have had
enough." Madame just smirks, her
breath redolent with its esters. We take a shortcut through
a particularly enchanting bit of property, by way of the brook that ambles
through it unimpeded. The camellia
bushes have long since shed their flowers, but the lunablossom vine still
blooms, near luminously white along the footbridge that it intertwines and up
the mansion's mossy brick, effulging its fragrance all the way. Maybe it's just my blurring vision, but the
glimmer of pale sculptures against the night-dark foliage, in the rich
moonlight, makes the stone dryads seem to quiver on the verge of motion, the
cherubs just about to fly. We tiptoe
here, as much in reverence for the beauty as for stealth. "Mommy, there's
fairies in the garden, carrying a mummy!"
We bolt into the camellias and hold our breath. A woman leans out of a high
window and gives a cursory glance outdoors.
I for one see the footsteps in the dew, but she just says, "There's
nobody out there, Teresa; you're imagining things again. "But I saw
fairies! In pretty fairy
gowns." I glance over at Madame,
Chulan, and Fatima, still decked out in their working clothes: drifts of
chiffon and lacy ribbons, sparkle of sequins and rhinestones, delicate fluffs
of marabou and corsets a-gleam with gilt.
I giggle before I can stop myself, God help me! Fatima claps her hand over my mouth, nails
into my cheek. "Mommy, I hear the
fairies laughing!" Just then Fatima belches,
to her shock, and her hands fly to her own mouth. "Sounds like the
garden-toad croaking, to me," the woman drawls. The shutters close firmly above us, but we
can still hear the woman say, "Teresa, I don't want you listening to any
more of Nanny's stories, do you hear me?
I don't know what that woman's thinking of to fill your head with such
rot." "But Mommy..." "No more excuses,
young lady--get back to your homework--right now." And what if she had cried
out, "Mommy--there's criminals in our yard"? Would her mother have believed the truth? After a tense interval we
creep out of there with utmost care, into an unpopulated stretch of garages and
carriage houses, tucked neatly out of sight, in hearing range of no one. There we laugh until we can barely stand. "Deirdre, you
sot!" Fatima gasped. "You ever do anything like that
again and I'll..." "Do what? Smack me with your magic wand?" Fortunately, I don't feel the cuts in my cheek
at all. "You're one to talk,
'Tima," Lucinda chortles so that she can hardly speak. "Remind me to never, ever, let you drink
beer before a stealth-job again!" "Give her a
break," Imad snickers. "First
time in my life I was ever saved by the belch." And we laugh so hard that I for one fall
rump-down to the ground and just keep on laughing where I sit. It takes awhile to quiet ourselves till we
can safely move on, because every time Lucinda tries to pull us together she
breaks down into giggle-fits herself. But we do master ourselves,
and we do move on. Buoyed up in a genial
fog, we still have the presence of mind to shake Teo a bit whenever he
snores. Good--I think we finally have
full pain control--a laudable accomplishment. After a few wrong turns, we
totter at last into a clean, adobe-paved courtyard, under an arch carved with
the words, "St. Anne's Preparatory School for the Meritorious
Student." Madame sticks two fingers
in her mouth and whistles piercingly. "Young lady!" A fat old nun throws open shutters above us
to shout, "How many times have I told you that ladies never whistle?" Madame grins up tipsily and
waves. "Hi, Sister Assunta. Love you, too." "Whistling girls and
crowing hens always come to a bad end!"
The shutters slam shut. Even out
here we can hear the heavy steps thumping down the stairs. Then the door swings open to three hundred
pounds of righteous indignation.
"Amalie you hussy--shame of all your class! What trouble have you brought to my doorstep
now...oh. Oh dear me." She comes over and peers down solicitously on
Teofilo. "Cookfire
accident," I say quickly. "You
know, one of those cheap oil-stoves that..." "Don't lie to me,
girl! Nuns watch the news like anybody
else." Her brow crinkles as she
sniffs at his bandages. "You
should've brought him to me immediately." "We had some
problems..." "I don't want to hear
it! Just get the poor scoundrel
inside--one of your hellbound perverts-for-hire, Amalie, am I right?" I answer for her, "No
actually, he's now a..." "I don't want to hear
it! Honestly, I don't know how women in
your profession have any business drinking themselves silly and loosening their
tongues. That way, down the hall, second
door on your left. No, not that one, you
drunken reprobates! Over there! Silly maenads. You'd think the vices would cancel each other
out, Amalie, if you'd ever had a lick of sense, never mind some shred of
maidenly shame. Put him down there, on
that bed--that's our burn bed. Cost us a
pretty penny, too, come down all the way from Istislan to treat sorry riffraff
like yourselves." She mutters on
and on in an old-womanly way, her lips hardly moving but her meaning loud and
clear, as she snips away bandages with an expert hand. "Riffraff and fisherfolk and carpenters
and all kinds of undesirables darkening the doors of Ol' Meritorious these
days, prostitutes even, like your sorry selves, and the wild zealots who riot
in the streets. Hand me that jar over
there, the one that says ‘sterile saline’, and the silver nitrate solution next
to it, too." Madame/Amalie asks, “Can
you handle it from here, Deirdre? I need
my beauty sleep.” “Sure,” I say, and Madame
leaves. Sr. Assunta surveys the
damage critically and says, "Not
too bad, not as bad as you'd expect, leaving the poor wretch to the mercies of
hooligans. Close that door, we can't
have a draft on him now, can we, though sooner or later he'll warm up toasty
enough in Hell despite my best efforts, body and soul, why do I even bother? Hand me the spray in the blue canister, my
little harlot. Hmpf! Never heard of Jesus turning anyone away,
more's the pity. Lord knows I’ve looked
all through the Bible, but I can't say I found it mentioned anywhere. So what can you do? What can you do?" I fumble at her side,
assisting where I may, glad to let her do the detail work while I flog myself
to remember all the medical data that I should and tell it to her in some
coherent form. Stupid Teo--curse his
insistence that we celebrate his calamity! When I hand her the forceps
and the #15 scalpel before she asks, she gives me a second glance. "So--you do know a bit about this, don’t
you, young lady?" "A bit," I
say. "Not as much as I'd
like." "You must be the one
who bandaged him up and kept him alive this long." "Uh huh." Her fingers fly so fast that I keep
forgetting to see them as pudgy and wrinkled.
"I did my best." "You know," she
says thoughtfully, "Anytime you want to leave the life of wickedness
behind you, we can always use another nurse." |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |