Babayaga

scales on the floorboards.
    But I am curious, why so many gods come
    bullish, hirsute, and bearded?
    What bullies and brutes elbowed them there?
    Yes, women are tucked in amid your marginalia,
    Mary, Sarah, Hagar, Hera, Hestia, I can name each,
    sulking there in the testaments’ shadows, outshone
    like Diana by Apollo’s ever-bright aura,
    or shunted to the side like Jacob’s two patient wives,
    waiting there past the river’s ford as he wrestled his angel
    the way boys will do, the same way this stupid flea
    now wrestles against gravity.
    Oh, watch him descend.

Book Three

I’ve come to consider bravery as just about the most pernicious of virtues. Bravery is a horrible thing. The human race has it left over from the animal world and we can’t get rid of it.
— JAMES JONES , The Paris Review

I

    Superintendent Maroc had an important errand to run. But he was a procrastinator by nature; in his experience if you put off most things you found in the end you didn’t truly need to do them. But this errand was most likely not going to go away. Yet still, he stalled. He sat behind his desk, watching the big yellow clock tick its way around and listening to the little old detective rattle on: “This was, I don’t know, thirty years ago now, between the wars. I was then working for my father, who was prosperous then.”
    “Your family had money?” Maroc said, not really listening.
    “Before the war we did, yes, a bit. Mostly in property speculation, apartments out in the sixteenth. In any case, I was sent up to Frankfurt to meet with a group of Jewish bankers. Typical of business travel back then, they insisted on entertaining us every night. We’d start in their fine, fancy homes, I’d meet their wives and children, the butlers and maids would serve the thick coffee, I’d pet the little dog, hello, hello, et cetera, but afterward the bankers always wanted to take us out for a bit of additional entertainment. Their wives would never come along. You see, this was their time with their mistresses. We would meet up with them in the city’s various cabarets. It wasn’t so bad, there were lots of dancing girls, we’d drink champagne and sing along with “Das Lila Lied” and pretty women would come along and shake their round asses on my lap and, well, it was fun.”
    “Good for you.”
    “Yes, well, one banker, Jacobson, he had this girl. Amazing. A drop-dead beauty. Big dark eyes. She was a Russian but unlike any Russian I’d ever known. I’d always found them lean and angled, but this one had full breasts, the kind you want to drop your face into, and a sweet round apple of an ass as well, maybe not the type for everyone but I liked it. Just looking at this girl stole the breath out of my lungs. Every night out with the bankers, I found a way to dance with her, and more than once—probably too many times.”
    “I cannot imagine you dancing, Lecan.”
    “Ha, ha, me neither now, that would be a pathetic sight. But you remember how it was then, jitterbugs and Charlestons and lots of legs kicking high. Jacobson’s girl was so mesmerizing, positively hypnotizing. I knew it was rude, trying to monopolize her like that; it did not look good, especially night after night. But I still can remember one waltz we danced, my hand on the soft flesh of her hip, the other hand aligned with her shoulder blade, her little smile, the delicious glint in her eye … well, looking back, I can see that the banker was jealous. I’m pretty sure that’s why I came home without the loan. Papa was very upset. We could have used that money, it turned out we needed it pretty desperately…” The little man’s story tapered off.
    “So why are you telling me this?” Maroc yawned.
    “Oh, because I saw her,” said the little man, becoming animated again. “Last night. I swear it was her. I was sitting outside at Chez Loup and she walked by. Not a ghost, and not a girl that looked like her, but Jacobson’s girl, looking exactly as she looked thirty years ago. I swear to the saints, the woman has not aged a day.”
    “Lecan, you are an idiot.” Maroc chuckled as he rose to put his jacket on. “Either you had one too many last night or your mind is rotten for good. Now, do you want to come with me or do I have to do this alone? It’s time to go.” Lecan gave him a resigned shrug as they gathered up their overcoats, hats, and umbrellas and went out into the wet night.
    The first stop was a half hour from the station. It