In the Valley of the Kings: Stories Read Free Page B

answer, plainly, is that she did not. I can imagine the scene vividly, even now, as the child turned the pages of the newspaper, rehearsing in her thoughts such anxieties as she had heard adults around her voice over pages such as these. Anxieties she did not understand, yet could not help but share: anxieties that, for all she knew, were made of words. Words she could not understand, but still she searched among them for some clue, some answer to the riddle of her life.
    Children are suggestible, reader. To go from fear of unintelligible danger to a physical expression of that fear required only one word, any word, any arbitrary sequence of letters that happened to come to her as she “read.” That word, written in blood on her features, took her to the hospital, confirming all her fears—fears that conspired, after three days and nights of what must have been pure, unremitting terror, to stop her heart.
    Do you doubt me, reader? What more would you have? Letters of fire across the sky? A voice speaking prophecy in your sleep? A look in the mirror at your own forehead? A list, perhaps, of the ways death can come to you, even as you read here, safe in your home?
    What is it you want? The word?
    I give you this, and then I must be gone. All you need is here before you—and the knowledge that what kills us now is any word at all, read in the belief that words can kill.
    I know this now. I have been convinced for several days.
    ‘O Λoγoς!
    ‘O Λoγoς!
    ‘O Λoγoς!

MY FATHER’S HEART
     
     
    M y father’s heart beats in a glass jar on the mantel, a steady flickering at the edge of my eye. I try to avoid it, but by dinnertime each night I’m staring. Beneath my gaze it pulses, and perhaps it turns a richer purple. From the jar I hear a low, dull, quick sound, persistent as a muffled watch.
    You may know already what a small thing a heart is. Close your fist. Dig your nails into your palm two times quickly. Repeat. There it is. But my father’s heart is large—fully as large as my head. The wide-mouth jar upon my mantelpiece once held a gallon of mayonnaise. Now, with the heart inside, it takes but two quarts of saline to brim it.
    Atop the fluid, faint ripples shudder. Through them, I see the stubs of the aorta, vena cava, and the pulmonary vessels wave faintly, jerking. I tap the glass, and the tentacles withdraw; as suddenly as a slug surprised the whole mass shrinks, then slowly expands, and pulsates at its former size.
    It has been a difficult possession. I am nervous about letting company near it. They might flick ashes in the jar, or jostle it. They might want to take it home. Vacations are, of course, out of the question. Whether the saline evaporates, or the heart in some way consumes it, I cannot say, but each day the level in the jar recedes, and I must top it off. Once each month the whole thing needs cleaning: I plop the beating mass out on the kitchen table—a few minutes in the air don’t seem to bother it—rinse out the jar, and refill. The heart retakes its seat unruffled, seemingly oblivious, except for a slight flush around the coronary arteries, a slightly grander bulging on diastole.
    But I tap the jar, and it mimes surprise: Don’t tap, it says; don’t tap. There is a dry, bleachy smell rising off the saline, and the faintest whiff of sweat.
    It has learned the trick of propelling itself around the jar. The left ventricle twitches, a wave spurts from the descending aorta, and the whole mass rises from the bottom; a delicate pursing of the pulmonary arteries steers. I have found it at times spinning slowly, tootling an inaudible tune from the upbranching aortal pipes. On each rotation, it brings into view the scarification surrounding one collapsed and knotted vessel. It sees me staring, and with an abrupt spasm turns itself. The tubules wave at me. Go away, it says, go away.
    I can’t remember when it came into my possession. The question seems odd to me. When I stop and consider, of