R B Lemberg - [BCS300 S04] Read online

  To Balance the Weight of Khalem

  R.B. Lemberg

  The Market of Khalem

  While a student refugee in Khalem, I discover the market by chance. It is the heart of the city—not the palace, not the high-end shopping streets, not the historical museum—the market is the heart of Khalem’s people and their food. Thick lentil soups cook in old brass vats under perpetually dirty awnings; flatbreads glide through the air as they bake upon overhead oven belts. There’s yelling and bargaining and stories and arguments; I thought I was fluent in the language of Khalem, but it turns out I’m only fluent in the smooth, dry speech of the university. The voice of the market fills me up like warm bread dipped in oil.

  The honey seller lets me sample spoonfuls of honey: buckwheat, dark and viscous; the golden quince blossom; pear. Have you gone to the sidewise market yet? he says. My brother has a stall there.

  Where?

  Sideways, sidewise—I am not sure I understand the word. He gestures over his back. Right there. I cannot see anything. Just a wall.

  The Sidewise Market

  I do not have money to come back in daylight. At dusk, a copper coin buys me a grab bag of slightly overheated vegetables the merchants do not want to lug home. I come after closing hours.

  When they start bombing the market, I stop going. But I need to eat, and I need to breathe the air of the sweet decay of the night, the winding stone streets squeezing in the stalls; the star-full sky veiled by the city’s breath.

  I return again and again. In the newspapers: the familiar stalls of dry beans and fruit in their burlap sacks are gone; the honey seller’s face, stilled forever. I am hungry, increasingly hungry; the dormitory rent is raised because of the war. My stipend remains the same. Then it is reduced.

  In despair, I apply to study abroad in Islingar. They will not want me, but I have to do something. The application fees to two universities eat up my stipend; I cannot apply to more.

  One evening, I fall into the sidewise market by accident. Too hungry to think much or notice where I’m going, I take a wrong turn; pass under a stone arch I have not noticed before. The other side is not much different, except it is quieter, as if the night itself holds its breath. In the velvet folds of darkness, I smell vegetables ripe with the day’s heat, almost falling into decay; slops and garbage and urine; above, the old fabrics of the tents rustle softly, their dirt swallowed by the night. A lone lantern sways above the only open stall. It is a simple, rickety construction, a tray of worn wood under the awning whose histories had been smoothed and devoured. On the tray are onions, each globe perfect and golden, shining with some inner light.

  I sway on my feet; I have not eaten since the morning’s single egg; in my hand, the crinkly bag of bargain vegetables makes a desperate noise. The owner of the onion stall has not moved all this time. He is a person behind the light. I am afraid of large men. But he smiles. There is nothing predatory in it. He is not after my vulnerability, my aloneness; he is not after anything. He is the jeweler of the market of shadows, when all the sirens are resting and all the people have left. He is the inheritor of crevasses into which gold has spilled and stilled, the magic of the fissures of the world. So am I, I think, and wonder if it’s true.

  I shuffle on my feet, and slops and refuse squelch under the only shoes I own. He says something. Perhaps something as simple as, would you like to buy some onions? Perhaps he says something else. I am a golden king of loss, and leaving me you will forever hunger for my jewelmaking craft, visible only in the warmest hour of darkness.

  Where are you from? he says. I understand this much.

  Raiga, I whisper. I do not much remember it. Cold, and big men threatening my father. Later, people standing in a long line, three streets long. A serpent of people dressed all in gray, their heads bowed under the stone heaviness of the air. We are trying to leave Raiga. My father holding my hand. We must obtain documents. But I can’t, we can’t. Islingar is not receiving; you are out of quota. I remember people slipping money to Islingar’s representatives. My father’s twitching hand. He does not have enough to give, to be counted in the quota of refugees allowed to flee Raiga’s wars on a ship to Islingar. My father’s face is ashen with defeat, like a curtain falling. He does not speak when the two of us walk back home. There isn’t much home left. Three more months, and then gone.

  Raiga, the onion jeweler says, and his smile brings me back to the sheltering darkness of the sidewise market. Did you want to come to Khalem?

  I shake my head. No, Islingar. But they did not want us.

  He does not say, I’m sorry about the war. How can we be sorry about a war that is not of our making? I’m sorry you had to come from one war to another, from your war to ours, but he does not say it; perhaps he does not even think it. I am not afraid. I should be, I think, but he does not mean me harm.

  Do they have onions there? he asks.

  In Raiga? Yes, they do... I’ve eaten onions since I was little. Onions split in half and roasted in a cast iron skillet. Onions cut into rings and battered in millet flour. Onions diced and browned to sweetness, then mixed into buckwheat kasha. I have not eaten since the morning’s single egg. I do not eat much, now. I have no money; only the market and its darkness feed me, when I can come here at all; when the trolleys are running, when the sirens are silent. A bag of leftover vegetables for one copper coin—vegetables teetering on the tender, sweet edge of rot.

  Do they have onions like these in Raiga? he says. The warmth of his voice neither pulls me closer nor pushes me away.

  No, not like these.

  Never like these, he echoes. I make them out of this city. Like that piece of jewelry described in ancient books: Khalem of Gold. Nobody knows what it looked like, not even people who work at the historical museum—but I will tell you this: Khalem of Gold is an onion; each onion contains the city, and is reflected in it. They glow and are shaped by my carving hand, and so that the city can never be destroyed or forgotten.

  His fingers wrap around an onion. He lifts it to the lantern’s lone light, and in the onion, I suddenly see: the goldwork towers and walls of the Old City; the broken bridge, jagged after a recent bombing yet still shining; rows of humble houses etched in ebullient metal; the curve and sway of the historical museum.

  Would you like an onion?

  I shuffle from foot to foot. I do not know how to tell him I spent all my money so I could eat something, and I will have to walk forty minutes to my dormitory.

  Free, he says. I’m sorry about the war.

  I reach out my hand, and he drops the city into it. It feels warm in my palm. I lose sight of the jeweled detail; my eyes see nothing but onion skin, layers and layers of it, brownish-orange and curling up, and underneath it, golden.

  I do not remember how I make it back to the dormitory. I walk, the onion in my right hand, the bag of vegetables in the other. It is a long walk in darkness, but I am safe in the glow, or I simply do not remember.

  My good knife was stolen a week ago. In the communal kitchen, I cut the vegetables into jagged pieces with a blunt table knife. I am so hungry that my hands are shaking; a stray motion of the knife grazes my finger. I cut—more tear apart—the bell peppers, the zucchini, and the eggplants; throw them with some oil into the pot. It is a deep blue pot. My father gave it to me. A good pot for many things, he said; you can make soup or kasha or even braise fish. But what I have are these vegetables, soft and spotted but still releasing an aroma of secrets and warm stone. The clove of garlic from the bargain bag has begun to rot. I scrape the bad bits off.

  It is more than I’ve eaten in days, since I last dared go to the market. I steal a pinch of turmeric and a
few peppercorns from the neighbor; it feels only fair after my knife disappeared, and it is night, and nobody will see me. Darkness has been my first line of defense for as long as I can remember.

  The vegetables sizzle and sag, reminding me of another life—a summer in Raiga, when my grandmother made sinenkie i belenkie—each piece of aubergine and summer squash perfectly cut with an unstolen knife. But mine is better. The vegetables smell of gratitude and secrets, of the sidewise market and words spoken in the dark.

  I have not cut the magic onion from the stall. I look at it while the vegetables cook. Khalem of Gold. The onion does not come with chains, but I think about them now, chains glimpsed only from afar, from a ship, that one time before we landed—the chains of Khalem, upon which the city is balanced. This city, unlike any other, uncomfortable with its own weight and with the war; a city that must always and forever be balanced.

  I spoon warm vegetables into my mouth straight out of the pot, swaying in the bare dormitory kitchen with its grayish floor tiles and a single forlorn ceiling light. We have almost been discarded, these vegetables and I, blemished and sagging and rich with the promise of rot.

  I stand over the pot and eat. There is no point in leaving anything; it will be stolen. I eat until my stomach hurts. I eat until I’ve scraped every last bit from the pot, eaten everything except the onion.

  I take the onion with me to my room, curl around it in bed. I do not know when I will eat again.

  Leaving Khalem

  On board the departing ship, I see the whole of Khalem clearly the first time. It is a carven globe of gold floating in the sky, tethered to the ground with ancient linked chains. The city shines in the evening’s gloom—the humble houses and the arc of the museum’s roof, and the palace, and the cratered bridge, the black pockmarks of recent bombings stark upon gold. One of the chains has been recently severed and repaired in modern fashion, clumsily, quickly, piling rough metal over the ruin of gold.

  It begins to rain. The sheen of water softens the dark evening sky to a deep layered blue. The sea is shivering; wave after wave rocks the ship, but I am allowed to stay on the deck, grasping the railing with hands gone numb in the cold.

  Ten years ago, when my family fled Raiga to Khalem on a similar ship, we were herded into a single windowless room belowdecks. We were not prisoners, but neither were we free to leave—a mercy of Khalem, who took us in when Islingar refused us. We found out later that people had died in Khalem, and the government needed more people to balance the weight of the city on its chains. It wasn’t about offering us refuge, not directly. They had a need—the city needed to be balanced with our bodies.

  But now, leaving Khalem and its glow, seeing it clearly for the first time, I grieve—for all I have seen and have not, for all the doors in the market that I could not open, doors that led to tiny eateries serving dumplings in fragrant green sauce and fried chicken hearts; and how I would smell them and look at the people—older, dressed simply, their faces wrinkled from work—dreaming that one day I would be like them, I would open a door and walk in, coins in my pocket, and order a millet flatbread with tart yoghurt sauce and a tiny glass of tea, and be full.

  In my bag, the onion rests, safely wrapped in tissue-thin paper, together with my acceptance letter from one of Islingar’s top universities. Impressed by your record—but I have excelled out of desperation to get the merit stipend and eat. The student papers to Islingar, too, are conditional. Conditional on my continuing unwavering excellence, my perfection, which will be judged and tested every year. The new university paid for my ticket, too: room and board in third class, with a possibility of a discounted upgrade, but I could not afford that.

  I become at once queasy and elated from the motions of the ship, the salt spray in my face like a lattice of diamonds; all the stars of the night. The carved globe of Khalem recedes into the rain.

  I had a choice

  Belowdecks in third class, I see the same windowless room and wonder if I am on the same ship that brought me from Raiga to Khalem a decade ago. I do not remember much. The smell of despair. Somebody’s grandmother sitting very still on a cot. She was translucent, taking as little space as possible; her eyes glazed with memories of two wars. Children crying. Somewhere, in the distance, a light.

  I shake the memory away. On this ship, people are pressed together, but it does not feel as desperate. Children are crying here too, but grandmothers do not; I see an old woman stirring a soup in a pot. She looks so ordinary, her back stooped, her hair gathered and bound in a garish flowering kerchief, that I almost call out to her in the language of Raiga. She turns, and the greeting is swallowed on my mouth. She looks from under a forest of brows. Her eyes are sunken and dark. She is not translucent—rooted into the planks of the ship like a stubborn ancient tree. Her lips leaf through daughter, son, and settle on child.

  Child, she says in the language of Khalem. Child, what about the onion?

  I am clutching it, always clutching it in my pocket. The streets and gates and towers. Khalem of gold. She looks at it through the fabric. Looks at me, and suddenly I am afraid, and fear snakes like a wet wind around my torso.

  I don’t know what you mean, I lie.

  Oh you know, child. There is a magic onion stall in the sidewise market of Khalem, where every globe is burnished and mellow like the city that was taken away from me, for even though I weigh more than you do, they cast my people out and let your people in to balance the chains of Khalem.

  She stirs the soup in its pot: it is verdant and vivid, herbs and secrets ground first between her palms until their scent opens, then lowered gently into the simmering water. She has shaped millet-flour dumplings and set them adrift in the broth. The ladle with which she stirs is carved, and for a moment I wonder if my eyes betray me. Its handle is golden—an open-jawed lion—and the ladle itself is made of old dark wood. She does not cook this soup for the crowd that presses and sighs belowdecks. This is a memory that twists my stomach and makes me sway on my feet.

  A magic onion stall, she says, that once belonged to my family and now belongs to yours, once belonged to my father and now belongs to yours...

  Nothing belongs to my family. My voice is bitter. My father owns nothing. He is very ill. He gave me his pot, but it was stolen in the dormitories before I left. He gave me his knife, but that was stolen even earlier. When my father fell ill, we could not afford to treat him. He told me to leave Khalem while I still could.

  She sways and stirs the green soup with her princely ladle, her wizened hand gripping the lion by the waist. You had a choice. A choice to stay or leave, she says.

  Yes, that is true. I left Raiga with my family, but now I am older and alone. I could have stayed in Khalem, I guess.

  I collect a dry meal from the opposite side of the room. The sea rations taste of nothing and smell like third class, warm and smoky and sad.

  Abovedecks

  The sea is gray and sputtering, and I can no longer see land. Fog has risen over Khalem, and the far-off Raiga can only be imagined, a rough outline of loss.

  I try to remember it. Pine forests, drops of amber sap at my feet. It is always cold. Big men are threatening my father. Standing in line; it is three streets long, made out of people dressed in gray, their heads bowed under the heaviness of the air. My father’s hand is big and reassuring, but I wonder if he is afraid. We must obtain documents. But Islingar isn’t receiving.

  On the ship bound for Islingar now, I check and recheck my documents. These are not refugee invitations. Mine are student documents with not much weight or rights, but my fingers touch my pocket over and over. I’ve wrapped the permission to enter in waxed paper, put it in my right pocket, sewed it shut. My hand keeps touching, tracking the crinkly outline of the packet, caressing it over the fabric. My fingers worry at the seams. Each evening I finger the stitching open and check, then stitch it shut again. My left pocket holds the onion.

  Nayra

  The grandmother is still there, in t
he third class common room by the stove. It is an electric stove, white and battered, but I do not see it connect to anything. Why is there a stove here, if the food is dry rations? I did not think about it before.

  She stands in the same way, her stooped back to me. The ladle has transformed: its handle is a silvery seahorse with enameled eyes and the wood is mahogany. She is cooking a thick lentil stew in the manner of the markets of Khalem, spiced with turmeric and cardamom and leaves of amber. I am not hungry, for a change; my stomach is full of dry pieces of bread from the rations; but the smell of the lentil soup stirs me. I’d eat it forever. I’d ladle it with the ladle with the silver seahorse and the lion of gold. I’d scoop it with my bare hands and be burned.

  I am Nayra, she says without turning.

  I take too long to respond. I have had many names, but none of them fit.

  She gives up. Give me the onion, and I’ll feed you.

  I can’t.

  Nayra stirs and stirs her pot, on the hot stove that does not connect to anything.