Gravedigger
It’s a covenant between them that she will be asleep before he gets home each night. It’s not that he’s digging graves long into the darkness of the night. No. It’s just that she doesn’t want to talk then, or see his face. She needs that purification, the darkness of the night to wash him clean of his day, to let the graveyard sweat dry.
She didn’t actually marry a gravedigger. He took up that trade. So he goes where he goes when he’s done, the tavern, the river where men fight for joy, a den of thieves. She doesn’t care. It really doesn’t matter. She never asks. And then he comes home, later and later, a shadow in the shadows of the house. He climbs into the bed where she sleeps face to the wall. She prefers the stench of the town to that other scent.
He climbs in the bed and slips his arms around her often. He clasps them over her womb. The uncanny thing, the thing she never tells anyone on earth, is that he always has one cold foot and one cold hand. She never understood it. At first, she didn’t. And then one day, sitting in the brightness of her kitchen, it struck her. He had one foot in the grave, one foot in the other world. And the hand? Obviously that’s the hand he uses to drive the shovel down. The one he uses to throw that last handful of earth atop the finished grave. The blessing or curse or exorcism that everyone throws at a grave. What does he wish for those strangers?
Tonight, she listens as he disrobes and slithers into the bed. She feels the warm parts of him and waits for the touch of death from that singular foot, that earth-cold hand. But it never comes. He’s warm through and through, everywhere. He wraps around her and he smells different, strange, he smells sweetly of dried oranges and cloves, a well-kept linen drawer. She keeps her face turned to the wall and her eyes gently closed.
He kisses her narrow neck and his hands massage the small of her back. Soon, he starts to jog her, gently at first, and it’s different. She knows without knowing. She finds she doesn’t care. He never speaks, never makes a sound. So that part is accurate performance. Her gown is like magic water flowing uphill. She never touches him. She keeps her hands in front of her, clasping in a form of prayer. The night drifts, moonless and dark. The curtains are thick. No clock snickers time. Only the silken threads of her gown whisper her ecstasy.
Nine months later the child is born. The husband stops digging graves, finds work as a farmhand. The babe is lovely. She smiles and has blue eyes that may stay. It appears they will. Enough time has passed. If anything, they appear poised to deepen into violet. But the little girl has one hand that stays always cold. No matter how long the mother lets her lie in the sun or holds her close to the fire. And one of her tiny perfect feet also gives her mother a chill when it grazes her belly. It’s the feel of a grave in winter. Her husband’s cold foot and hand have warmed. It took time but he feels himself again, the body she first met and married. But what does it mean? And why does the child close her eyes when she eats? Why does she sing in her sleep when she has no words? Why does she feel a bargain has been hidden from her? Why does she feel this babe will disappear one day with a fairy smile on her face, with as little regret as the winter wind has for its worst blows?
