Babayaga

at the library. Adèle lived with her widowed mother in a one-bedroom flat where they drank ginger tea and ate very little. Vidot lived with two other patrolmen in a small apartment a few neighborhoods away, which made courtship difficult. So the pair of them would steal away for walks here in this park, the infamous Bois de Boulogne. He recalled kissing her against trees and slipping his hand beneath her blouse, how the feel of the warmth of her soft skin against his touch deliciously confused him, separating his body from his mind and taking him to a realm where the only things that existed had to be felt or tasted, like heat and flesh and desire. As the tender recollection returned, he desperately wanted to keep hold of it, the way one savors a delicious flavor before it vanishes from the mouth, but as hard as he tried, his grasp of the memory was slipping away, because this man Oliver would not shut up.
    “Oh, and gosh you wouldn’t believe it, in the nineteenth century they had an exhibit of human beings in the park. Live ones, Zulus and Pygmies. The whole city came out to gawk. I suppose that is what people now do with their National Geographic magazines, ogle the natives’ bare black buttocks and fulsome breasts, but it strikes me as particularly surreal to have it happen live and in person. Do you think any of the sophisticates strolling in that human zoo looked into the noble savages’ eyes and found a universal brother? Seriously, one has to wonder, in that particular scenario, which side of the iron cage the savages were on.”
    As they made their way along the familiar path, the flea looked over to a passing row of benches. He could not recall where specifically, but he knew they had been sitting near here when he had decided to propose to Adèle. It was a Saturday, he recalled, and while they had often laughed and joked about the funny people who strolled by with their parasols, their little pets, and their ill-behaved children, that one particular day Adèle had seemed more thoughtful than usual, almost distant. He had wondered if she was sad, or perhaps distracted, but then he noticed that she was simply paying very close attention to all the things around them, the textures, the light, the nuance of each distinct element, the blossoms and the buds. Probing with some seemingly lighthearted philosophical question, he learned that Adèle did not see life as so many did, a mere entertainment to be enjoyed or blindly consumed, and she did not see it as Vidot did, a great series of interlocking puzzles waiting to be solved. Instead, she described her vision of life as an enormous great act held within an infinite and immutable instant, one where she was present both as a witness and a participant. He was stunned, recognizing this idea of existence was the most logical and true interpretation he had ever encountered, and he knew that he had to marry Adèle and become one with those eyes and that mind, or else he would never experience what it meant to be present in the world.
    “And right over there, back in 1900, they held the tug-of-war competition during the Olympic Games. Believe it or not, tug-of-war was quite the competitive sport back in the day. Incredible, isn’t it? I believe Sweden won. I recall reading that someplace, as a child I was quite the encyclopedic sports trivia wunderkind.”
    Listening to Oliver rattle on, Vidot was reminded that he himself could also talk too much, especially about his work. He wondered if this had driven Adèle away. He recalled how he was always diving into details about his grisly cases. Even once they were solved, he kept the stories alive. How many times had he told the tale of the wedding groom found with the hatchet in his head (the priest did it). He wondered if he had been curious enough about Adèle’s life, toiling there amid the long shelves and crowded stacks of the library. He always assumed that his work, with its stories of thieves, cheats, scoundrels, and scourges was something she would want to know more about. But perhaps that was a false assumption; yes, probably so. Thinking about it now, he wanted to slap himself.
    “Once upon a time, these woods teemed with criminals. Pierre Belon was murdered by highwaymen right down that path. Do you know Belon? Remarkable man, an explorer, naturalist, artist, actually he sketched out one of my most favorite drawings, a scientific comparison of a man’s skeleton and a bird’s. Amazingly parallel,