Fire
Every year for my birthday I went out to dinner with my mother, as she would not allow the date to go by without some kind of celebration. I was her only child, my father had left when I was thirteen, and from then on my well being had been her only concern. She provided me a comfortable life and paid for my not so inexpensive studies with great personal sacrifice and she was very proud of my academic career, my mild prestige, my intellectual friends. Her only other desire was that I got married and gave her grandchildren while she was still young enough to enjoy them, but that was a much harder ask. She still had hope, and would bring it up every once in a while, and my reply would always be the same, I was too busy.
My anniversary marked the end of summer, and the beginning of a new school year, the challenges ahead, all of it used to fill me with excitement and expectation. For the last couple of years, however, and perhaps more than that, I had grown quite bored of my life. During the last couple of semesters I had barely taught any classes, and this year I was hoping for the same amount of leisure. I was supposedly working on a book about pre celtic religion, a topic that in theory interested me but that, much like everything else in my life, I had grown bored with, so that I had maybe written ten pages, with great difficulty and definitely of little worth, in the previous six months.
I did not speak of my malaise to anyone, not my mother, not my colleagues, not my girlfriend, if that is what she was. I started seeing her three years before and although I no longer felt anything for her other than lust, and even that was waning, I had allowed the affair to go on, in part because I did not look forward to having such a talk, destroying our social circle in the process, and in part due to vanity, since it was a mystery to everyone, including myself, how a woman like that was with someone like me. She was exceptionally beautiful and shapely and quite a few years younger than me. She was also intelligent and witty. Yet, despite all this, I had grown bored of her.
Since then she hadn’t changed much at all. She was just as beautiful and just as shapely, and perhaps even more so. This was objectively the case, but to my mind they seemed like two different women, the one in my memory and imagination and the one in front of me. If I had seen her on the street I would have been excited. Naked in my bed, I had no interest in her at all. When we made love I often thought of other women. Women I had passed by on the street, or that I’d seen in a coffee shop, women that were, by all objective measures, not as beautiful or as shapely or as young or as interesting. But more often than not I was not even thinking of women, but of a show about the african savannah or a news article on the melting of the polar ice caps or a funny video compilation of dogs chasing their tails. Anything at all. I was distracted and bored of her even in those moments of ecstasy, and how much more when my mind was fully present. This puzzled even me, and if I had to give a reason I think it was the fact that she admired me. She saw me not only as a lover but as a mentor, she hung on my every word, and assented to my every request, she was understanding and conciliatory when I was in a bad mood, which now was quite often, and if at first I thought there was something wrong with me, afterward I began to think that there was something wrong with her, clearly she could not be as intelligent as she seemed and as everyone thought, if she loved someone like me, and to that extent. My mother sometimes would ask me when I would make an honest woman out of her, and I would invoke the same fake excuse, the work kept me too occupied.
I could not find a way to prevent our spending the summer together, even though what I desired most was to be alone, to not speak to anyone, especially anyone I knew. In any case it wouldn’t matter, because while I had no particular desire to spend time with her I had even less inclination to spend it with anyone else from the university, and unfortunately it was almost an unbreakable rule of the faculty that it should spend the summer down south by the sea. It was a small country after all, and it would be impossible to avoid the people I knew, but not only that, there were events and dinners already planned out in advance, and university life would just be transferred to the seaside, the same crowd, the same conversations, the same boredom, except with fewer obligations and thus fewer excuses to get away. Still the summer gave me some resolve, things could not continue as they were. I had finally decided to break it up with her when we got back. I would argue that I needed to focus on my work, and if that was not accepted as a reason I would give many others, real or imagined, plausible and, if needed, implausible.
That year, however, my mother wanted to throw me a birthday party at her house, instead of our customary dinner out just the two of us. What possessed her to do this I do not know. Perhaps it was because, in her mind, thirty five was an important milestone, only later did I reason back to the fact that my father had left shortly after his thirty fifth birthday. She made sure to invite all my so called friends from the university, and the woman I was planning to sever ties with. From my point of view the event was half disaster and half embarrassment. I of course did my best to hide my boredom and even annoyance, especially from my mother. At the end of the evening she brought the cake and everybody urged me to make a wish before I blew the candles. I was going to say out loud something generic to get it over with but one of my colleagues, I can’t remember which one, said that it had to be silent, only in my mind, or it wouldn’t be granted. And so, staring intently at the flame, I wished that by this time next year my life would be different.
Some time after that I received a letter from an attorney summoning me to a meeting. The letter did not specify what the meeting would be about, there was a number that I should call to arrange the date. I assumed it wouldn’t be anything good and considered ignoring it completely, but that night I couldn’t sleep, imagining all sorts of trouble and reasoning that if the first letter was an invitation, the second would probably be an imposition, so the next morning I called the number and set the meeting for that same afternoon. I was quite surprised when the lawyer told me that my father had died and had left me quite a large sum of money. It was not large enough to live off forever, but it was a larger sum than I had ever laid my hands on. I remember being confused. First of all, I hadn’t seen or heard from the man since I was a teenager. Second, if my mother was to be believed, my father’s mismanagement of finances had been in no small part responsible for the divorce. Third, he had died in a plane crash, along with many other people. The case was tragic enough to be news, I remembered seeing it or reading about it, the plane caught on fire and exploded almost as soon as it took off, and I remembered that he was afraid of flying because it was a trait we shared. Apparently he had gotten over it. And fourth, he had made his money by investing in some kind of technology that was now ubiquitous but that the general public did not know about, the lawyer himself could not explain what it was exactly and I wasn’t very interested, although it was quite curious since what I remember of my father was that he was utterly uninterested both in business and in technology. The lawyer told me he had been living in south america for many years and had fathered several other children with at least a couple of women, which is why, despite the fortune he had made, I got only a relatively small slice, the smallest one in fact, according to the lawyer. Still, I was happy, or at least I felt better, perhaps better than I had felt in the last few years, and immediately started to imagine what I would do with the money. Yet, even with the unexpected inheritance, I knew I should not give up the pursuit of a tenured position at the university. The thought did cross my mind, because at once I remembered my birthday wish, that I should take it as a sign and an opportunity to sever my ties with the woman and the university, but I lacked the courage for such extremes and my cowardice came to my aid, for in the end it was the woman who brought to my attention the facts that put everything in motion and it was my field of study that provided an excuse to go away.
***
That summer the country had been ravaged by wildfires, especially in the north, and the flames had revealed a curious carving in a midsize boulder, hidden until then by dense brush, although it was known to the locals, as I was to discover later. An untrained eye would not have caught it, as it could be mistaken for natural indentations in the rock. It looked like two sets of parenthesis, the smaller ones encased, as it were, in the larger ones, with a hole in the middle in the shape of a vesica piscis. The carving had appeared in a photograph taken by a journalist covering the aftermath of the fires, and a foreign scholar had seen it somehow and knew what it was, a variation on a common fertility symbol, a symbolic representation of a vulva, in fact. My girlfriend learned of this and thus suggested I should go there and study it to include it in my book and be the first to decipher its mysteries. I had very little conviction that there was any mystery to it, but immediately I recognized the opportunity and played it up to the university as a great discovery, one that I would have to spend months researching up close. This wasn’t difficult. That part of the country was known to have been inhabited by those same pre celtic peoples I was studying, as many menhirs and other standing stones had been found throughout the northern regions. I argued that I had to be in the field, and that most likely there were other similar carvings and perhaps even artifacts, and what a boost to the university if it was to get there first, then summoning other specialists to research in their respective fields. In other words, a simple visit would not do. The university could not afford or did not intent to send me on this wild goose chase, not for so long as I argued was necessary, but in the end I was allowed six months of unpaid leave to pursue it. I also played up the opportunity to my mother, and other than making me promise to call every other day, she had no objections and was happy for me. The hardest part was to convince the woman, but despite her very reasonable objections, I had only to point out that she had been the one to bring this to my attention. I told her six months was not too long, and she could always come visit, the place is not that far, a mere four hour drive or train ride away.
It was easy to rent a room in a village close to the site. Despite the fires there were still lots of beautiful spots to visit, natural pools and waterfalls and springs, and around them the lush greenery had been spared by the flames, thus attracting a moderate amount of tourists. Luckily it was the off season, and so the room was cheap, and I shared the house with no one else other than the host. A large stream ran right alongside the village which was how it too was able to escape the fires that had raged all around it, on the other side of it there was the mountain, and behind it the valley where the carving had been found. There used to be a village there as well, it was already mostly abandoned even before the fire, and the few inhabitants could be counted in one hand, all of them were very old and had been relocated, a couple of them to the same village I was in, while waiting for the government to dispense relief funds.
My host was an older woman, not so old as most in that village to be sure, but old enough to be my mother, and that’s how she treated me. I ended up eating most of my meals at her table or at least prepared by her to eat in my room when I was supposed to be busy with my scholarship. I insisted on paying her more when I realized after two weeks that this had become a habit, but she would not accept, she enjoyed having me around, especially when she discovered I was a scholar, and was interested in the history of the place. The stone carving was known to the locals but they never imagined it would be of interest to anyone. As far as she knew, it had been there for centuries. She mistook my feigned interest as genuine and so told me about her youth, how the place used to be back in the day, all the legends, all the oddities, and there were many. For one reason or another, most of them had to do with witches, something I believed in as much as I believed the efficacy of the religious rites I supposedly studied. But I enjoyed listening to her, and even pretended to take some notes.
I spent most of the first three weeks taking walks along the streams and swimming in the pools. That october was unusually warm so it felt like summer, and because it was so late in the season, there were no tourists, so that rarely did I see another living soul outside the village, and I enjoyed every minute of the isolation I had been dreaming of for quite some time. Very rarely did I think of my colleagues, of my lover or even of my mother. In fact, most times I thought of nothing at all, I simply enjoyed the peace and quiet. I can’t remember ever being so free of preoccupations and exhortations from my mind. And yet, I wasn’t bored at all, I was just deeply relaxed. Every day after dinner I fell asleep with no anxieties, without ever picking up a book, or the phone or watching television.
Then finally the weather started to change, and with it my mood changed too, and it compelled me to go down into the valley to investigate the carving. I crossed the old roman bridge over the stream, and then drove around the mountain to the old village that had burned down, after which I would finally reach the carving. After a certain point there was only a dirt road, and it became increasingly difficult to drive on, especially in my old urban car. I parked at the top of the hill so that I wouldn’t have to drive back up, it was very steep. I got out of the car, looked down to the village and immediately saw something I did not expect to see. There was a wooden house, intact, right in the middle of the only street, rubble and ash all around it, somehow spared by the fire. It was too odd to ignore, so I stopped on my way to examine it more closely, and that’s when I saw, carved just over the front door, the same shape that I had seen in the photograph. Almost instinctively I raised my hand to touch the indentations in the wood, and then knocked but no one answered. I took a picture of the carving, and then stepping back I took one of the whole house, and then continued walking.
The carving on the boulder appeared smaller in person than in the photographs, it was about the size of my hand. The boulder stood at about seven feet tall, and the carving was level with my face, almost six feet from the ground. I examined the indentations with my hand, and then took a few pictures myself. Then I proceeded to check the rest of the rock for other carvings or markings but there were none, and the same was true for all the other boulders in the area. When I saw the carving on the lintel of the lone house and then again when I saw the carving on the boulder, I felt a certain excitement, perhaps I was wrong and there was indeed some mystery to be discovered, or several mysteries even. But as I walked around the area examining every rock, first the large ones then the midsized ones and finally the smaller ones I could have even lifted, there was nothing else. The university had been right, there was no real reason for me to be there. If you can believe it, that actually filled me with a strange satisfaction. When I had this thought I started to get back to the car, I had wandered quite a lot and it was now getting dark, but as I turned there was a fox standing just a few steps away from me. We were both paralyzed for a minute, the red hair on the animal’s back was raised, I wasn’t sure if I should make the first move or not, and as I thought this the fox bolted past me and disappeared behind the rocks.
I got home just in time for dinner. My motherly host asked me how my day was, and perhaps because I was in a good mood, I told her what I had been up to, and that quite naturally led to me commenting on the miracle of that one house which hadn’t burned down. As I said this the old woman became pale, then serious, and said, That was no miracle, What do you mean, That house belonged to a witch. She had talked of witches before, but it was always a legend that she had heard from her mother, and that her mother had heard from her mother, and so on, a tall tale going back to the beginning of time, and always in a playful manner. But now it was clear she meant something recent, something she experienced, and something that frightened her. We shouldn’t talk about it, Why not, Because there are certain things that are dangerous even to mention. I was not able to leave it at that, as now my curiosity had been aroused, and thus I was able to suspend my normal disbelief, so I told her, Of course, I understand, it’s just that it might be useful for my research, I study religion after all, Well, I suppose there is some kind of religion involved, but not a good one, Oh of course, that is the case with all the pre christian religions, precisely, the peoples that inhabited this region and that I study, they could be quite savage in their rites and in any case prayed to very strange gods. She was not totally convinced, so I added, You see, when I was walking through the village I noticed that house has the same carving over the front door as the rock, that very same carving I came to examine. This seemed to frighten her even more, and it seemed to me from her reaction that this was something she did not know until then. In any case, whether she was caught off guard by the novelty or convinced by the importance of my scholarly pursuits, she agreed to tell me what she knew.
My host was born in that village, and the witch arrived when she was still a small child. At first everything went fine, the villagers contracted her services when needed, and everyone was happy. What kind of services, I interjected, and she said, You don’t see these things anymore, but back then a witch was also a kind of doctor, and often the only kind that someone in a village could get a hold of, So the people sought her to cure illnesses and aches, Yes, but it was more than that, a witch is a doctor that can treat illnesses and aches not just on the human body, but on the body of the earth, What do you mean, specifically, Well, for example, I remember my father having her help one year with our crops, I don’t know exactly what she did, but it involved all the things you would expect from a witch, potions and dances and incantations and all the rest, and then that patch that had been dwindling for years, and that now could not grow anything, soon became lush as the autumn rains returned, What do you think is the explanation, Oh that I don’t know, But you believe it worked, It’s not about belief, I know it did, I saw it, So what happened then.
There was a couple in the village that could not conceive and so they sought the help of the witch, but for the first time since she arrived, she refused to help and would not explain why. Then soon after that, the husband was found dead, in her bed. She was told to leave and never come back, but once again she refused and said that if she ever left all their crops, and all their flocks, and all their houses would be destroyed, and everyone was convinced this was a threat. She remained in the village but no one talked to her after that, and my host remembered watching her leave the house and go into the woods, but only when it was dark out and everyone else was indoors. The village started to die on that day, because the more time went on, the more they became afraid that the witch would leave without their knowledge, and disaster would befall them.
The story was not as interesting as I had hoped, but I was able to learn that my host firmly believed this was why the fires had started, and how that house had not burned down. The witch was finally gone. Of course I didn’t believe her, but most people did, and that’s why most had left the village well before the fire. I retired to my room and had trouble going to sleep. That night I dreamed of the witch. The image was very fuzzy, I could not quite picture her, she looked both young and old, or maybe the image morphed from one to the other, until by the end she became a silhouette of fire, and when I woke up the next day I was determined to investigate the matter further. The first thing I did was ask around about the folks who had lived in the village and had been displaced by the fire. There were two of them, one was not in the village at the moment, but in the hospital, the other was an old man, ninety seven years old, and he was eager to talk to me. He spoke for almost two hours, taking too many tangents, but both because I didn’t know exactly which details would prove important and because I felt bad for the old man and saw he was happy to reminisce, I did my best to not interrupt him, only sometimes nudging him back to the main topic, the witch. Unfortunately, most of what he told me about what I wanted to know added nothing of substance to what I already knew, my host had been succinct but thorough. He also knew nothing about the carvings, except that when he was very young, people used to leave flowers, or small objects, at the base of the boulder, but he didn’t remember what for, and apparently it had ceased by the time he was an adult. Still, I was able to learn that when the witch was young her hair was red, the color of flame, that she had been quite beautiful, and that the other women in the village never liked having her around for this reason, even before the incident. In any case, he too was just as convinced as my host that the fire was caused by the witch, even though he admitted he hadn’t seen her in years. But why now, I asked, why after all these years, why after most everyone had left, Who knows, was his only response. It was nearing noon, so the man invited me to lunch but I politely declined.
As I left the man’s house I suddenly became aware of a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a very long time, it was neither the boredom of the last few years, nor the deep relaxation of the last three weeks. I was awake, alert, excited even. Then I suddenly remembered my girlfriend, and I didn’t even cringe at the word, and no sooner had I processed the thought, my phone started to ring. I hadn’t spoken to her in more than a week, she sounded serious and sad, and she said, I miss you, when can I come visit, I don’t mind if the room is small, I just need to see you. Caught off guard, and feeling guilty, I agreed, next weekend most likely, I just had to confirm with my host that she was ok with it, You know how old fashioned these old folks are, and we aren’t married yet. The word burned a whole in the back of my head, Yet, there was so much meaning implied in those three letters, why did I say it, now I felt even guiltier. The woman noticed the word but not the guilt, and I could feel her spirits had been lifted. Since the witch was still in my mind, even though now relegated to a secondary plane, and I wanted to move the conversation in another direction, I told her the stories and asked for her opinion. She found them interesting but could not see how it differed very much from all the other legends, if one discounted the proximity of the events. She was more interested in the fact that the house had the same carving, and so suggested that I should try to get inside the house, Maybe ask the county and explain that it might be valuable for your research, and the research might be valuable for the county. She was always so incredibly practical.
I decided to do what she suggested, but I had no desire to go the town, ask for a meeting with some bureaucrat, then explain everything, both because it would be a bore and take a long time, and because the explanation was quite thin, or so it seemed to me. In any case, it would probably be easy to break in, the house was very old. Even though I hadn’t eaten anything and it was past noon, I wasn’t hungry so just walked back to the guest house, got the car keys and left. I drove quickly and carelessly through the winding roads, but for some reason every minute I felt more hurried, I couldn’t quite think, just move, so that I was almost running when I finally reached the door with the carving on the lintel. It took me a while to regain my composure and return to normal breathing, but when I did I thought immediately to knock before I attempted to break in. I knocked a couple of times, and I heard rustling inside. There was someone in there. No, it could simply be an animal who had gotten inside looking for food and had been scared. So I knocked again and listened. It was definitely an animal, because it seemed to be scurrying. Maybe it was the fox I had seen. I debated with myself what to do, maybe if I stopped knocking and making noise the fox would eventually get out of the house, thinking it now safe. At the same time, it could be the opposite, thinking I had gone away, the animal would go back to the task I had interrupted, it was probably looking for food. So in the end I knocked again, more and more violently, and the scurrying noises returned, I assumed the animal was trying to find its way out of the house and away from the front door where the knocks were coming from, but suddenly, even as the noises seemed to be getting further away to the back of the house, the front door was opened, I was leaning on it so I almost fell forward and I stopped myself only because in front of me was a woman, her hair was red like flame, her skin was pale and smooth, her eyes were so light and so bright, she was beautiful, I thought I was seeing an angel. I had no time to think, she was upset and said to me, Please stop, my grandmother is very old and very sick, what do you want. It took me more than a while to be able to reply, I was not only surprised to see a person, but more than that I was mesmerized by her. I recomposed myself as best I could, and tried to explain who I was and why I was there, but I felt a part of me drifting, being pulled towards her, and even though I wasn’t fully myself when she replied that she knew nothing about witches or symbols, I could see she was lying. She asked me to leave and I left.
I was walking without a destination, my mind was thrusted in multiple directions yet all of them led back to her. Yet I wasn’t agitated, I felt a great peace all around me and inside me, and when I looked at things, they seemed to shimmer, the whole valley was alive, vibrating with light, even though there were only the little weeds and grasses, my perception was that I was in a lush forest. Some time later I thought with a clear head about what I was feeling then, and I was able to remember two other times I had felt it. One was the first time I made love. I was fourteen and the trance lasted a week or more. But there was another time, I was much younger so the memory is harder to recall in detail. I know I was in church, and I know I ended up staring intently at a painting of Jesus as a baby in his mother’s lap, and then my eyes became fixed on the mother’s eyes, and when we left the church I was in a daze. Of course I made nothing of it at the time. Nor did I connect it later when it happened the second time. Perhaps now I could tie the two together and recognize them as the same feeling because the encounter with the red headed woman seemed to be a strange mixture of both.
The feeling started to wane once I got near my car and when I got inside I realized that, because I was so mesmerized by the woman, I had failed to register the other things I’d seen when the door opened, but now I saw it clearly. From where I was standing I could see the house was very small, on the left there was a partially collapsed hearth full of ashes and debris, and on the right side there was a bed, and it was empty. Everything happened very fast after that, I got out of the car and ran back to the house. I knocked on the door and it was answered. I kissed her and she pulled me inside.
I woke up with the sound of the door being closed. There was very little light coming from the only window. I got my clothes and ran after her but she had disappeared into the darkness. I suddenly realized I didn’t know what name to call. Then I had a sudden intuition that I would find her near the stone carving. There was a full moon, but it was shrouded, so it was hard to see and couldn’t walk as fast as I wanted to. I walked and walked and then I saw two small circles of flame just a few steps ahead. I could not see anything else, but I was sure it was the fox, and it was her. This time I did not hesitate and she did not run away, instead as I got near I saw the witch kneeling down at the base of the rock, crying. And in a flash, I understood everything. Because of the wild fires it was impossible to tell that the base of the boulder was an hearth. The witch had maintained it all these years, until she became too old, and then she made the carving over her wall until the hearth inside collapsed, and as both fires had been extinguished, so the other fire raged over the land, after which she found herself young again. I kneeled down and put my arm around her, then her head came to rest against my breast. Then she looked me in the eyes and said, Please go and do not return, I will only bring you misery, forget about me, forget about all of this. I could see the sadness in her eyes and I think she could see it in mine as well, because she turned her head when she finished what she had to say. I got up, and with great effort of will and pain of heart, I walked without ever looking back.
*
I returned to the guesthouse well after the sun had come up, having spent the rest of the night driving in the dark. Then I made several calls to announce my return keeping details to a minimum. Then I told my host I would be checking out. I thanked her for the hospitality, got my things and left. My plan was to keep the promise. I was to go back and forget all about what happened. But I wouldn’t return to my old life. I severed all my ties with the university and the woman who I had called my girlfriend as soon as I got back. All of it brought its own kind of sadness, and yet it seemed so small compared to the other. My mother knew something had happened, but she didn’t ask. I took the rest of the year off. I read a lot, and went to the movies, and to the gym, and took long drives to remote beaches, and ate a lot in restaurants, and was reasonably content. I also finished my book, with no mention of the carving. Once in a while I would remember everything, but I suppressed the memories immediately with some activity or other, and within a couple of months they became less frequent, and then afterward I rarely thought of it at all.
For my thirty sixth birthday I took my mother out to dinner, and it was she who brought up the news about the wildfires, they were raging in that very same region where I had been the year before. And that brought back all the memories I had successfully blocked. I thought of nothing else throughout the dinner and when I got home I couldn’t help but look through the pictures I had taken and had not been able to delete. The first ones were of the guesthouse and the village I had stayed in, and then of the waterfalls and springs and mountains I had visited, and finally there was the symbol carved in wood over the front door. And then there was the house, but something was different. The door was open, the woman was inside, and she was holding a child.
