Gothic Romance
For Valentine's...a love story...
Let me tell you about how I met my life’s companion. I was at the Museum of Natural History with my friend and neighbor Frank, the two of us enjoying a day off together. Frank is retired, and I had the day off from work and so it seemed a natural idea to check out the museum and learn a few things. How could I have known how this day would so radically change my life? Our outing was generally a pleasant if less-than-notable excursion until I saw her, her black eyes catching my own, long hair the color of night spilling down over her olive-skinned shoulders, a slight smile playing at the corners of her lips. She was the love of my life; I knew it at once. From the way that she looked at me, I knew that she felt it too. Instinctively, unable to help myself, I reached out my hand to touch her shoulder. My fingers met with glass, not flesh, and I was momentarily startled out of my reverie.
“It’s amazing what they can do with facial reconstruction software now,” Frank said from besides me. I stared at him for a second wondering what he was talking about. “She’s a beaut all right,” he continued, “much better than how she looks now.” With that he cast a thumb over his shoulder, and I followed it to see, in the middle of the room we had wandered into, a petit figure under a glass case, wrapped up tightly in linen and stained brown by resin.
It took my brain several minutes to realize that the eyes that had seemed to catch my own were only an image on a computer screen, and that the real woman, laying silent for all to see, had died sometime approximately when the Jews had fled Egypt. As I stood there, dumbfounded, children and their parents or teachers filed by, touching the glass tomb that protected her, and Ooohing and Aahing at the sight of her. I was horrified at this public humiliation she must daily endure; horrified still more that my one moment of true connection with another human being was split asunder by 4000 years.
Frank hadn’t noticed the change that had come over me, for he was reading all about my newly found love. What was known about her was written in big type on the walls of the room, between glass cases showing off the various artifacts and jewels that had been found in her tomb. Eager to know as much as I could about her, I read along as well. There were no specifics, of course, only supposition (based on the quality of her embalming and the numerous valuable goods found with her sarcophagus) that she was a woman of high status, perhaps the daughter of a priest or a priestess herself. She had died young, of uncertain causes, still in her early twenties at death. The image on the computer screen was reconstructed from her facial bones, and there was an X-ray also of her body, illuminating the bones within her wrappings.
Silently I walked back over to her body under the glass. How slender and beautiful she looked even now. I could imagine her in the full radiance of life, coursing with energy and goodness. I could almost feel her hand in mine, warm and soft and full of life. That moment when our eyes had locked, our moment, had been real, realer than anything else I had ever felt or experienced. In knew in that moment what I must do.
“Indian artifacts in the next room,” Frank told me. “You about done here?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “we should be moving on.” It was hard though, to know that she was so close and yet not be able to see her, to touch her.
I was back that night, of course, come to rescue her. No longer would she suffer the indignities of a life under glass, scores of strangers filing by her and gawking every day. The museum had its protections, elderly security guards and some alarms. I know something about alarms and locks though, and elderly security guards tend to nod off sometime after the Matlock reruns are over.
By 1am, I had gotten her away from that horrid place. How good it felt to hold her in my arms, to feel her body, light as that of a bird, against my own. Exhilarating too, to know that I had rescued her. It was like something from a fairy tale.
I took her home and lay her in my bed. I knew, of course, that whatever force had brought us together had not yet done its complete work, for she was still trapped in death. Yet her remains held a promise of something much more and each time I touched her a current of electricity passed between us. I knew it could not just be my imagination.
Gently, I unwrapped her a bit; just her face so that I could look upon her, and her arms, so that she would not feel trapped. Her features were dry, leathery, and skeletal; sure, I could see that. But beyond the effects of the dry desert air and natron I could see the gentle grace of her cheekbones and the elegant slope of her forehead. I stroked her long black hair, still as silky as when she had been alive. I took her hand in my own, careful not to break off her fingers.
Together, we slept like that the first night. In my excitement, I slept very little. I could not believe my good fortune in having my beloved by my side. Still, come morning, she was just the same and I can only confess my disappointment that the miracle I had been expecting had not yet come to pass. I knew that our time together would, by necessity, be short. Her frail body, taken from its refrigerated and humidity-free cage, would quickly disintegrate in the outside world. I would have to be honest in saying too that the ancient resin and natron left terrible marks upon my bed sheets and my arms as I held her. Still, I believed beyond all reason, that the magic I had felt between us had been more than just my imagination.
Leaving her in my bed, I went out briefly that afternoon to get a few things for her: a bottle of white wine, some strawberries and kiwi, some supplies with which to make sandwiches. I hoped to prepare a picnic for us to enjoy when she finally awoke, as surely she must. Frank was outside his house when I returned and he said to me, “Another day off, Ted? Bad guys must be on vacation.”
I tried to laugh politely, although my mind was only on my beautiful adored, and how I ached to be back with her. Still I managed to say, “Just wasn’t feeling quite well, and took a sick day.” When I made it inside after a little forced small talk, I found the black-haired woman just as I had left her. I felt depressed, and then guilty for having such a lack of faith. I resolved to think only optimistically and believe in our union against all reason.
That night I slept with her in my arms and prayed to whatever higher power that there existed to grant me just a few moments of true love, of which everyone dreams, but few truly attain. I leaned over and kissed my love goodnight and did not mind that it was a kiss of leather and bone.
When I awoke there was warmth against my body, and the flesh under my fingers was soft and alive. Without opening my eyes, I leaned over and kissed her and where once there had been just leather and bone, now there were lips and warm breath. I opened my eyes and saw her looking back at me, her eyes deep pools with black irises and long lashes. Her teeth, once stained brown and exposed by dried gums, now were perfect and white like pearls. She was more beautiful than even the museum computer had guessed. And she smiled at me with the warmest smile that I had ever seen.
“I thought that I had dreamed of you,” she whispered to me in perfect English. I saw that she was clothed now in a long white dress, elegant and flattering to her figure. Of the linen wrappings and the resin and natron, there was no sign.
“I’m real,” I told her. “I have so much that I want to show you. Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”
Have you ever known the perfect bliss that comes with the first blaze of true love? If you have, then you know something of what that day was like for me. Her name was Ankhetitat, and she told me that she had been a priestess of Isis. Though it is difficult to bridge four thousand years of history in one day, she wondered at the modern miracles that I showed her. She soaked it all in, like a child in a toy store. Nothing of the modern world frightened her in the least.
I prepared that picnic for us, and I took her to a secluded spot I knew by the ocean in Newport. She marveled at the wine and the fresh fruits and even the bread in the sandwiches.
“There’s no sand in the grain!” she marveled with a look of ecstasy. “I’ve never even seen these fruits before; they’re so sweet and plump!”
“Genetic engineering,” I told her.
She gave me a quizzical look that was most endearing.
“I thought that we might not be able to speak together. How did you come to learn English?” I asked her.
“I’ve had decades to do nothing but lie under glass and listen as thousands of people streamed by me year after year. Eventually I began to pick up some of the language, some phrases at first. My first English words were ‘Oh look daddy, a mummy!’ How often did I hear people remark that I was looking a bit under the weather, I can’t even begin to tell you.” She plopped a big red strawberry in her mouth and smiled with delight.
“So, you were awake the whole time?” I asked, amazed.
She shrugged, “It felt more like a dream, really. A very long and mostly boring dream. Until you arrived in it.” She gave me a sweet smile, and then looked very serious, “If I die again, will you come back to visit me so that I might dream about you again?”
I put my arm around her, ostensibly to comfort her, but I think I was comforting myself more, “Don’t speak like that. I hope that we’ll have a long time together.”
She looked down, her long black lashes like the wisps of a dandelion pointed toward the earth. “I hope so as well.”
I drove her then to the airport, where we sat by a deserted field and watched the airplanes take-off and land. This excited her very much and her excitement was infectious.
“Your moment in time has so many wonderful things,” she said, breathless. “I wish that I had been born here at this moment.”
“You’re here now,” I told her, happy as ever I had been.
She looked thoughtful again, then asked me, “If we are destined to have only one day together, will it have been enough for you?”
“Nothing but eternity together would be enough for me,” I told her, and I meant it.
“Would you be glad for it,” she persisted, “if we had only one day together. Would that have been better for you than if we should never have met?”
“For one day together, I would sacrifice everything,” I told her, and I meant that as well. Then we held each other close, and I knew such happiness as I have never known before or since.
By the time that I took her home that night I could see that I had exhausted her, and her eyelids were closing. “I’m so very tired,” she told me, with a contented smile, “I think my mind is still trying to absorb everything that I have seen.”
“Won’t you have something to eat for dinner?”
“I couldn’t possibly have another bite, and I don’t think that I can stay awake for a minute more. You’ll have to put me to bed I think; won’t you come lie besides me?” I could never have denied her, had she asked me to walk into a wall of flame. To lie beside her, my arms around her as she lay with her back against my chest…well, there was no part of me that wanted to deny either of us that. And so the sun set and the stars came out and twinkled at us through my bedroom windows. I stayed awake for a long time, watching the soft curve of her cheek, feeling her chest moving up and down under my arm as she breathed. I would have continued like that for eternity if I could, but regrettably I could not. At last sleep overtook me as well and I lapsed into the dark expanse of night that brings us as close to death as ever we come before the final journey into darkness that we all must take.
When I awoke in the morning, my heart once filled with joy, now knew only sadness. When I leaned over Ankhetitat to kiss her good morning, her kiss was once again of leather and bone. Our one day together was over.
I could not bear to bring her back to the museum, to allow the hordes of outsiders to watch over her as if she was merely some ornament for their curiosity. I resolved to bury her in my garden so that we might be close for the remainder of my days. Perhaps, in death, we would meet again. In fact, I was sure that we would.
Frank must have seen what I was doing. I don’t begrudge him for what he did; there’s no way that burying the body of a mummified young girl could ever look innocent. He’s a good friend still and visits me often when his health allows.
I’ve been on good behavior since they brought me to the hospital. Ankhetitat is back at the museum to my great dismay, and I am helpless now to rescue her once again. I think about her every moment, but I tell no one, I know better than that. I do what I am told, attend group, say all the right things to my psychologist, take my medication and pretend that it has done something for me. If I can not be with her, then here is as good a place as any I suppose.
Since I’ve been on good behavior, they’re going to start to let me go out on day trips with a group of the other inmates. I’m scheduled to go on my first outing tomorrow. I do so hope that it will be to the museum.