Inferno by Nathan Ballingrud

Author:Nathan Ballingrud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2023-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Keeper

P. D. CACEK

She arrived just as the sun was setting.

Summer was over and the last of the autumn leaves—the ones that had for weeks filled my bedroom window with fire and gold—were gone. Only the gray branches and twigs remained, and it was through them that I first saw her.

“A cousin,” Zaideh told the family last year at Hanukkah as he held the telegram that had come that morning and which had become the immediate focus of all our attention. All day we had waited and all evening, too; so that by the time he finally sat down in the big chair in the front room, our curiosity had built up inside us like steam in a kettle.

“Just one?” one of my aunts had asked.

And Zaideh had nodded. “Yoh, just one.”

I can tell you that I wasn’t the only one disappointed. All of us, the children, looked at each other and shrugged. We had cousins, more than we knew what to do with sometimes, so why did this one send a telegram? It seemed such a waste after so full a day of imagining. But our parents were moved by the news—some to tears, some to anger, some to a silence that went beyond all feeling—and it frightened us, making us draw close to each other. The petty squabbles and thoughtless words that were our usual playthings were set aside as we wondered and worried about this newly found cousin.

For almost a year we worried.

For almost a year we made up stories.

And, once again, we were disappointed.

From the few snatches of conversation I’d heard between Zaideh and my parents—conversations that always ended when they noticed me—I’d expected her to be bigger, almost full-grown … but she was younger than I was. Only nine, Mameh had told me that morning.

“And she’s had … a hard time, so you’ll have to be good to her. Like a little sister, yes?”

I’d never wanted a little sister, but because there’d been tears in my mother’s eyes I lied. Yes, I said, of course I’d be good to her.

I barely let myself breathe until I saw her from my bedroom window … the little girl bundled into a coat that was too big for her. Just a little girl with pale skin and large dark eyes that looked up and caught me staring through the branches.

Just a little girl who didn’t smile when I waved.

It was dark by the time the front door opened, closed, and the low, constant murmur of voices that had filled the house since midday stopped. Silence wasn’t ordinary in our house … there was always noise of some kind or another—pots clanging, the rustling of my father’s newspapers, the grinding hiss and occasional music from the old Philco radio that my grandfather insisted sounded as good as the day he bought it—and its absence made me press my arms against my belly.

She had stopped all that. My new, unknown cousin had killed the sounds that made our house alive.

I

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