The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,40
to his bed, and the bullet goes straight to her brain, for she puts the barrel against the roof of her mouth.
The magistrate rises from the bed and his expression travels from pain to stillness. With stony face he walks by the dying Minnebie. He never looks backward. He tears the gold coin out of his beard. He uses the money to travel to the capital, and there he haggles for a pack of cigarettes, some ladies’ silk stockings, and a sausage. He trades these on the black market, and soon has enough business to live well, and, his integrity unbroken to the end, he lives out his days with a new young wife, and a second set of children. And also his blind daughter, Lonie. She cannot see, and in later years she chooses not to speak either.
However, the opera that night was to be interrupted and the story did not come to an end. It happened that Botuun’s fine, donated skeleton was playing the role of Minnebie. The audience was much taken by the new puppet, and they watched in amazement as the delicate motions of the treasure put the other “actors” to shame. But an extraordinary thing happened. When the skeleton mimed the final words of the play, which happened to be set to music in a long and exquisite aria, with much repetition, the skeleton slowly began to turn to powder. The process was so slow at the beginning (although quickly accelerating) that none of the ducks was sure that the skeleton hadn’t been disintegrating since the first act. By the time the song was ended, half the skeleton lay in dust on the floor of the stage, having fallen away from its crystal suspension strands. The other half of the skeleton, the top portion, widened its jaws and seemed to be laughing at the crowds of whale ducks, those curious, hungry birds with their long necks craned toward the extinct species’ remains, watching them enact their grotesque failures to thrive. The skeleton that was turning to dust, with a twinkling eye, seemed to be asking how much longer she would be made to reenact her humiliation—when would she be released into nonexistence? The whale ducks craned their necks ever further forward, cooing and crying, waiting for catharsis as the infant awaits birth.
Margaret stopped reading. She let the book slide to the floor. Some of the parched and rustling pages of the book fell out—the spine was broken. She could still hear the magpie scratching at the ground out on the balcony. She thought: Minnebie! She didn’t pay heed to the rest, she fell in love with the insane wife, Minnebie. There was more than a strand of nobility in the madwoman’s actions. Would not anyone have felt vindicated—refusing to forgive, refusing to forget, refusing to create in this turpentine world? How much finer than the old soul who clutches at the gold in his beard, grabbing at a life gone squalid. Then she heard a small voice coming from outside on the balcony. The voice was avian, squawking.
“Don’t you want to know about the sheaf of paper?” it said. “The one the skeleton was clutching in the steeple, in the beginning. Do you want to know what was on it?”
Margaret raised her head in surprise. “Who’s there?”
“The question is: don’t you want to know?” the bird said. Margaret settled into the pillow, the Unicum she had drunk taming her alarm. She considered. Now she remembered the pages referred to.
“But I thought the whale ducks were not able to read human script,” she said. “They wouldn’t know.”
“But I know what was on it,” said the voice.
“All right,” said Margaret. “What then?”
“It only had two words written on it, but two words written over and over.”
“Which two?”
“The two of her name.
“I see.”
“Her name, because she did not want to be forgotten after her death.”
“Ah,” said Margaret. She thought of this and laid her head back. She breathed deeply. She slept and woke, and slept again. Then she woke herself with a start.
“Why did Minnebie want her name to be remembered, if she chose to die?”
It was as if the bird had been waiting for her to ask just this question. “The dead do not wish to be forgotten. It is only their suffering they wish to erase. ‘Remember me, but ah, forget my fate.’ That is the creed of the destroyed.”
“I see.”
“But why do you assume the skeleton was Minnebie’s?” the bird asked.