Shivered Glass
~Iphigenia~
Somehow—the word
conjures up images of something impossible, somehow, so it is the right word to
use—somehow, she is lying next to me in my bed, her eyelids a pale pink,
visible in the gutted dying flame of the single candle. I know enough of her to
know what she would say, were she awake.
"The
underground man and the prostitute, Liza, Remus, isn't it interesting? Doesn't
it remind you of them? Did you read the book I gave you, Remus? Do you
remember? Remus? Remus?"
The
last two because I am not listening, and never have been—I've been staring at
her eyes, full of age and wisdom and something else too, supreme good and soon,
perhaps, supreme evil.
Her
hair is flung out carelessly against the white pillow, as if someone had taken
a great bottle of honey and spread it haphazardly against my bed linen. I want
to touch her, but I'm afraid. She's not mine; she never could be. Eventually, I
will only be a face to her, no longer a name—and even later perhaps, she will
forget me all together. It is my fate, then, to be forgotten.
And
it is her curse to forget. How can she love anyone? How can she love everyone,
when she knows they are not the One? Her devastatingly beautiful face told me
that even in the height of our passion, but her lips wouldn't tell me. She is
too kind to break my heart. I reach out to touch a bit of the honey, and she
stirs, whispers a name. Whose name? Someone long dead, I'm sure.
She
didn't want to reject me, and her voice, her eyes, her body—they have not
rejected me. But her soul has. Her soul has sized me up, and found me to be
lacking. I am nobody special to her, just a passing memory. In my love for her
I would rather be that passing memory than to not grace her memory at all.
I
remember the day she brought me the poem; it sits here, at my bedside, forcing
me to relive the pain night by night. It is my bedtime ritual to read it, to
remind myself that she is never mine, that her soul does not belong to me, even
if mine belongs to her.
"Read
this, Remus. Isn't it a bit depressing? My advisor showed it to me, and I've
loved it since. I remember meeting Donne; he always seemed so sad, you know, as
if he couldn't quite get on with living. Anyway, this is for you."
"Thank
you, Sylvia." But this isn't her name. She has no name. She has no place. She
has no constant, no compass star. She is her own compass star.
With
the worn paper in my hand, smudged and dog-eared, I trace a finger down the
side of her face, an intimate caress. She shivers a bit, but doesn't wake, so I
read it aloud to her.
"He is stark mad, whoever
says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?
Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.
If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.
Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more."
Finishing,
I look down at her, hoping she is awake, but those ageless eyes are still
closed beneath the pink eyelids, the flame is still sputtering, Liza and the
underground man are still in residence. How could a human heart survive more
than one all-consuming love? It is not possible. But before me is a heart that
has had many—so many—be consumed by her, yet she has not been consumed by a
like soul yet. Yet. But one day soon. I stare at her, and as I stare, I
remember.
What
did become of my heart when I first saw thee…it was nothing special, after all, just a normal day. A day I would
remember always.
Three days before the wedding, when Sirius and
I were with James preparing. Mrs. Potter had walked in with her, and she needed
no introduction. Her face told all. Sylvia. My Sylvia, but not mine. Only mine
to admire
"James, look who's come for the wedding," Mrs.
Potter had announced.
I watched James stand up carelessly, and speak
to the woman in a way I did not think possible—with apathy. "It's so nice to
see you, Aunt Sylvia."
"James," I heard her say warmly. She might have
fooled him, but I had seen the dark circles under her eyes and the strain in
her voice. "I'm so happy for you." Then she was gone.
"Who was that?" Sirius had asked, and he too
was careless. How could they be?
"My great aunt Sylvia," James said
nonchalantly, flopping back down in the chair.
It was a shock to me. I imagine how I must have
looked to them, leaping to my feet in amaze. "Great aunt?" I said
incredulously. "James, that woman's not much older than we are!"
"Oh, yes, I know. She's some sort of magical
being; she doesn't age normally." Clearly he did not find this interesting. I
gaped at him, not understanding.
I had to know more. "And is she married?"
James looked up. "Who?"
"Your great aunt," I said, as if it should be
obvious.
"I don't know," James replied, shrugging.
"What about your great uncle?" I asked. I
wanted her even on that first day, though I didn't realize it until later.
After all, at the time, she had been swollen with child.
"He died a long time ago. Seriously, Moony, why
are you asking so many questions? If you're so interested, just go talk to
her." James was teasing me in that way that always got under my skin, and
Sirius laughed along with him, goading me.
"Maybe I will then," I said forcefully,
standing up and walking purposely into the kitchen. But my sense of purpose
subsided when I saw her standing with a cup of tea in her hand by the window,
alone, and weeping. And then she turned to look at me, two streaks of wetness underneath
each eye. Suddenly, I had the sensation that every moment of my life had been
leading up to this meeting, that some mystical connection was being made.
"I—I'm so sorry," I must have stammered like a
child. "I was just coming to get something and I—"
"No, it's all right," she said a bit hoarsely,
giving me a queer look, a look that made me shiver.
"Here, sit down," I then said, pulling a chair
out for her, trying to be a gentleman.
This made her smile a bit, and she thanked me.
"Now if I could just find out your name…"
"Remus Lupin," I said immediately, feeling
distinctly embarrassed. "I'm sorry I didn't mention it sooner."
"Oh, don't be. You can call me Sylvia, Remus, I
suppose. You seem like a kind person, Remus. I am glad to have met you." She
smiled earnestly at me, lightening my heart, and we talked for quite a while.
But after that day, I only briefly glimpsed her
at the wedding and did not speak with her again. A passing acquaintance, I
tried to tell my heart, just a passing acquaintance. My heart would not believe
it. It said that there had to be some different story.
And there was a different story five months
later, on a rainy and cold night, when I heard a knock at the door over the
sound of the Wizard Wireless.
"You'll get it, won't you?" Sirius, with whom I
was currently and unfortunately living as a roommate, called from another room.
I'm sure I smiled a bit, indulging his boy-like behavior. He had Thalia
Lawrence with him, and I naturally assumed the two were otherwise occupied.
When I opened the door with a little sigh and
general feeling of discontent, she was there standing before me, looking quite
different from the pregnant woman in the Potter's kitchen. Drenched, pale, and
trembling, she stared at me for the briefest second, trying desperately to
communicate something to me, before collapsing in my arms.
"She's clearly in a postpartum state,"
Hippocrates Lawrence (Thalia's father and a Mediwizard) proclaimed, after
examining the prostrate woman.
"She's what?" Sirius asked, Thalia hanging on
his arm, gazing down at Sylvia with morbid interest.
"She's just gone through birth. How long do you
think it's been, Dr. Lawrence?" I asked, beside myself with concern for the
woman I hardly knew. I think my heart knew her better than I thought it did,
though.
"No more than twenty-four hours," the older man
replied. "Frankly, I'm amazed she was able to walk at all. She's in serious
condition. I have to assume the same is true for her child, wherever it is."
"What do we do with her?" Sirius wanted to
know.
"We make her comfortable and wait to see if she
wakes up," Dr. Lawrence said grimly.
"If?" Sirius echoed. Hippocrates only nodded,
and I seemed to feel my throat close up with dread.
But why should I have worried? I think about it
now with the laugh of the ironic, those who can look back and see in hindsight
that their emotions had been falsely played. I didn't know Sylvia's secret
then; that it was not "if" but "when" for her, that she could not die. I sat by
her bedside faithfully until she awoke.
There is something so intimate about the act of
watching over a sickbed; it made me feel like her husband or her lover, and not
the stranger that I was, and when she awoke in due time, it was an awkward
situation for me. How to deal with her now that she was awake? How to regain
that feeling of intimacy, that feeling of being the husband or the lover?
"Thank you," she said suddenly, surprising me
while I read. I looked over in shock to see her sitting up on the pillow,
smiling weakly.
"Sylvia! You're awake. What about the child?
Where is it?" It was the foremost question on my mind.
She looked down at the blue blanket that
covered her for a moment. "He was stillborn," she said quietly.
"I'm so sorry," I murmured. "And…and the father?"
This was what I dreaded to ask, because I didn't want to know. I wanted her for
myself.
She looked me solidly in the eye, with her
unquenchable courage and a look that said the time for dissemination was over.
"His father is Lord Voldemort. He will be looking for me." She clutched wildly
at her chest. "He is…looking for me," she said with great effort. "He is
su…summoning me." I'm sure I stared open-mouthed at her and she stared right
back at me.
Then she added, "I have to get out of the
country." She was clearly struggling to speak. "There is a…a family that I
lived with in America, the Olivers. I need you to take me to them."
So I did, without a second thought to any
responsibilities I might have left behind. I brought her to America. And then
she asked me to stay with her, and I am here. I wonder what the day will be
like when she asks me to leave her, or when I leave my body and she sits by my
deathbed, watching over me like I am watching her now, or as I was on that
first day that she loved me.
And I think to
myself, surely she is not human. But the honeyed hair, the pink eyelids, the
soft olive skin, they all speak to me as a human does. And here I look upon the
face that I love, the face whose love has shivered my heart as glass. I know
that no other will ever suffice. Perhaps a hundred lesser faces shall enter my
mind, but I will not love another. Not after her.
