Smoke and Mirrors

set into the white marble of the floor,

it said:

Be bold,

be bold,

but not too bold.

Or else your life’s blood

shall run cold.”

“There were stairs, wide, carpeted in scarlet,

off the great hall, and I walked up them, silently, silently.

Oak doors: and now

I was in the dining room, or so I am convinced,

for the remnants of a grisly supper

were abandoned, cold and fly-buzzed.

Here was a half-chewed hand, there, crisped and picked,

a face, a woman’s face, who must in life, I fear,

have looked like me.”

“Heavens defend us all from such dark dreams,” her father cried.

“Can such things be?”

“It is not so,” I assured him. The fair woman’s smile

glittered behind her gray eyes. People

need assurances.

“Beyond the supper room was a room,

a huge room, this inn would fit in that room,

piled promiscuously with rings and bracelets,

necklaces, pearl drops, ball gowns, fur wraps,

lace petticoats, silks and satins. Ladies’

boots, and muffs, and bonnets: a treasure cave and dressing room—

diamonds and rubies underneath my feet.

“Beyond that room I knew myself in Hell.

In my dream . . .

I saw many heads. The heads of young women. I saw a wall

on which dismembered limbs were nailed.

A heap of br**sts. The piles of guts, of livers, lights,

the eyes, the . . .

No. I cannot say. And all around the flies were buzzing,

onelow droning buzz.

—Bëelzebubzebubzebub, they buzzed. I could not breathe,

I ran from there and sobbed against a wall.”

“A fox’s lair indeed,” says the fair woman.

(“It was not so,” I mutter.)

“They are untidy creatures, so to litter

about their dens the bones and skins and feathers

of their prey. The French call him Renard,

the Scottish, Tod.”

“One cannot help one’s name,” says my intended’s father.

He is almost panting now, they all are:

in the firelight, the fire’s heat, lapping their ale.

The wall of the inn was hung with sporting prints.

She continues:

“From outside I heard a crash and a commotion.

I ran back the way I had come, along the red carpet,

down the wide staircase—too late!—the main door was opening!

I threw myself down the stairs—rolling, tumbling—

fetched up hopelessly beneath a table,

where I waited, shivered, prayed.”

She points at me. “Yes, you, sir. You came in,

crashed open the door, staggered in, you, sir,

dragging a young woman

by her red hair and by her throat.

Her hair was long and unconfined, she screamed and strove

to free herself. You laughed, deep in your throat,

were all a-sweat, and grinned from ear to ear.”

She glares at me. The color’s in her cheeks.

“You pulled a short old broadsword, Mister Fox,

and as she screamed,

you slit her throat, again from ear to ear,

I listened to her bubbling, sighing, shriek,

and closed my eyes and prayed until she stopped.

And after much, much, much too long, she stopped.

“And I looked out. You smiled, held up your sword,

your hands agore-blood—”

“In your dream,” I tell her.

“In my dream.

She lay there on the marble, as you sliced

you hacked, you wrenched, you panted, and you stabbed.

You took her head from her shoulders,

thrust your tongue between her red wet lips.

You cut off her hands. Her pale white hands.

You sliced open her bodice, you removed each breast.

Then you began to sob and howl.

Of a sudden,

clutching her head, which you carried by the hair,

the flame red hair,

you ran up the stairs.

“As soon as you were out of sight,

I fled through the open door.

I rode my Betsy home, down the white road.”

All eyes upon me now. I put down my ale

on the old wood of the table.

“It is not so,”

I told her,

told all of them.

“It was not so, and

God forbid

it should be so. It was

an evil dream. I wish such dreams

on no one.”

“Before I fled the charnel house,

before I rode poor Betsy into a lather,

before we fled down the white road,

the blood still red

(And was it a pig whose throat you slit, Mister Fox?)

before I came to my father’s inn,

before I fell before them speechless,

my father, brothers, friends—”

All honest farmers, fox-hunting men.

They are stamping their boots, their black boots.

“—before that, Mister Fox,

I seized, from the floor, from the bloody floor,

her hand, Mister Fox. The hand of the woman

you hacked apart before my eyes.”

“It is not so—”

“It was no dream. You Creature. You Bluebeard.”

“It was not so—”

“You Gilles-de-Rais. You monster.”

“And God forbid it should be so!”

She smiles now, lacking mirth or warmth.

The brown hair curls around her fare,

roses twining about a bower.

Two spots of red are burning on her cheeks.

“Behold, Mister Fox! Her hand! Her poor pale hand!”

She pulls it from her br**sts (gently freckled,

I had dreamed of those br**sts),

tosses it down upon the table.

It lays in front of me.

Her father, brothers, friends,

they stare at me hungrily,

and I pick up the small thing.

The hair was red indeed and rank. The pads and claws

were rough. One end was bloody,

but the blood had dried.

“This is no hand,” I tell them. But the first

fist knocks the wind from out of me,

an oaken cudgel hits my shoulder,

as I stagger,

the first black boot kicks me down onto the floor.

And then a rain of blows beats down on me,

I curl and mewl and pray and grip the paw

so tightly.

Perhaps I weep.

I see her then,

the pale fair girl, the smile has reached her lips,

her skirts so long as she slips, gray-eyed,

amused beyond all bearing, from the room.

She’d many a mile to go that night.

And as she leaves,

from my vantage place upon the floor,

I see the brush, the tail between her legs;

I would have called,

but I could speak no more. Tonight she’ll be running