Chapter Text
The Damned Woman
St Patrick’s Cathedral yawned before her, an impressive structure which bore the familiar scents of all cathedrals: cold marble and warm wood, lingering sweat, well-worn cushions on the pews. It’d been many years since she stepped into this place, and many more since she’d felt the need to sit in an intimate confession box with one of God’s servants. Doubt was an ever-present friend, one she sometimes made peace with, while with others she wanted nothing more than to wrestle it to the ground and drive a silver stake through its heart.
“I’m not here to confess, Father,” confessed Zosia to Father Damien, who’d been sitting in patient silence for the better part of fifteen minutes. “I’ve a question to pose to you.”
She knew he was cataloguing the cadence of her speech, finding it odd, blaming it on her accent, but his expression (from what she could see of it) betrayed none of this. “I’ll answer if I can,” he said. Tone calm and agreeable.
Zosia had asked the very question she was about to pose exactly two hundred and forty-three times to various religious figures in her long years of life, and each of the answers were variants of each other, displaying how perspective and religious doctrine were shaped by humankind and the environment in which both found themselves. She said, “Does God love the damned?”
His deep inhale told her the question was not one he was expecting. “What makes you ask this?”
“Never mind the reason why, Father.” I was damned long before you were born. “I’d appreciate your honest answer.”
She’d had years to perfect patience. It was no chore to wait while Father Damien considered her question, chewing it over like a morsel whose taste he was asked to describe and the correct words were eluding him.
“If God is a God of love,” said Father Damien at last, words careful, “then I believe He does, because the damned have a hope of being absolved of the sin which damned them in the first place.”
Ah, sin, thought Zosia, lips curling into a papery smile. “And do you say this, Father, because you truly believe it, or because you know this question has weighed upon me so heavily, you desire to lighten the burden?”
“Is it not my own task to lighten the load of those who come here?”
“Perhaps it is, but I didn’t come here to be lightened.”
“Didn’t you?” countered Father Damien gently. It wasn’t often that Zosia was startled by humans. But those brown eyes studying her through the nearly see-through wall separating them looked at her as if he’d seen some part of her she hadn’t meant to expose.
Uncomfortable, Zosia rose from the bench. “You’ve given me much to think about, Father. Be well.”
The Letter
A consequence of long life was it blessed one with much time to brood. Zosia was no exception to this. Stepping into her townhouse in the West Village, plucking up the pile of mail from the parquet floor, her mind churned over Father Damien’s answer, zeroing in, as it was wont to do, on the words damned and absolved of the sin. Such words had been spoken to her many times outside of the two hundred and forty-three encounters with God’s servants, to her face, or within her earshot. At times they ran like meltwater on glass, never sticking, easily ignored after the initial acknowledgement. Today, unfortunately, they grated along her bones like a predator’s sharp tongue, dredging up shards of a past she often wanted to forget she lived.
As far as she knew, Zosia had committed no sin. How could she have, when her prayers had held no meaning aside from camouflage? The sin, if indeed it could be called such, was committed against her. A sin of loneliness, of something she once believed was love but later realised was possession. A sin whose beginnings lay in soft lips.
She strode to the kitchen, poured herself half a glass of brandy from a bottle imported from Norway, took it with her to the writing desk in her bedroom, whose surface was home to her account books, drafts of letters whose pages bore more crossed out sentences than complete ones, unused notebooks, a MacBook Air, and a stainless steel pen holder with several fountain pens. She threw the mail down, sank into her antique leather chair, and, as the sky decided to drench the world in rain, sorted through it. Most, predictably, was unimportant. She let it drift into the bin resting beside her left ankle.
A letter caught her attention.
Try as he might to disguise his handwriting, she knew Koumba Diabaté’s as well as her own. Fortifying herself with a hearty sip, wishing alcohol had more of an affect, Zosia tore the envelope with a letter opener and pried out the fine stationery within.
Dearest Zosia,
Word from you has been sparse, and so I can only assume you’ve at last found a way to live in New York City—a very charming place, if I may say; so much to lose oneself in! — and your time is being taken up by more entertaining prospects than writing to an old friend.
Before you roll your eyes, I’m not only writing out of sentiment. It’s come to our attention that another writer has surfaced, here in the States. A woman named Carol Sturka. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her wife, Helen Umstead, who is also her manager. Her novels’ content, from what we gather, is tame enough, but you, of all beings, should know nothing can be left to chance.
Give it a thought, Zosia. Write when you have an answer.
Koumba Diabaté
Zosia set aside Koumba’s letter with a scoff.
My mind is already full enough, she thought, yet still she opened her laptop and typed Carol Sturka into Google’s search box.
Once, many years ago, one had to actively travel if they desired to become a more worldly person. Or, if they were unlucky, had to read about it from novels, or cradle words picked up in conversation. Now the world was at her fingertips, its knowledge displayed on websites and varying social media pages, and she was looking at press images of a blonde woman in her early fifties, standing beside copies of her novels with the word Wycaro as a constant in the titles. Zosia learned it was a series of books whose genre was considered speculative historical literature, and whose plots revolved around a romance between a female captain named Lucasia and a corsair named Raban, who may hold the gift, or curse, of eternal life. Tame enough, as Koumba had written in his letter, but it was clear to Zosia the others desired her to dissect the books with an exacting scalpel.
The subject of eternal life, of course, was one that has existed for as long as humanity has been telling stories. Most weren’t cause for concern. It was the stories whose subjects were like Zosia, like Koumba and the others, where the concern lay. How much of the writing was sourced from the author’s imagination? How much was taken from extensive research? And how much of that research was accurate?
Zosia wasn’t concerned about the subject, or the research, just yet. Her eyes kept drifting back to Carol Sturka, dressed in a long tawny skirt, a black turtleneck sweater, and a wool coat with a Scotch plaid pattern, her smile convincing, but it didn’t shine in her eyes. No, her eyes, blue as a cloudless sky, told of silent suffering. It was a look Zosia had seen on hundreds of women. I do not belong here. I’m out of my depth.
And then there was a woman hovering in the background, wearing a pale pink pantsuit that brought out her darker hair and the freckles dusting her high cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, looking nowhere but at Carol Sturka, expression perfectly professional, but her eyes, unlike Carol Sturka’s, shone with undeniable love.
The wife. The manager.
Centuries stretched in Zosia’s vision. Projections of long-dead lovers, all of whom she’d loved and fucked and cherished in secret, all of whom had imparted a wish to be other than they were, so their love might be displayed publicly.
Her left hand drifted to her neck.
“You promised me years, Zosia. Ought we to live out that promise, together?”
She slammed the laptop closed. Heard the glass screen crack. Finished off her brandy, relishing its too brief sting down her throat.
Is it not a sin, Koumba, to damn someone to a certain fate before we know them?