The quiet man and the even quieter man were sitting poolside, at dry reach of a tumult of water and cannonballing children. There were amazing sights within view, all about on the other sides of their sunglasses. Women of various ages with bodies that returned them briefly to the freshness of long-lost years of teenage gawking and fantasizing. All winter long where had these figures been hiding? Like the bulbs of tropical plants lying dormant in hard cold ground, spring rains and consistently warm weather had brought them alive again, complimented gloriously by swimwear. It was impolite to stare, so they sufficed with glances. For anyone helplessly beholden to the female form, a bikini was a masterpiece of charged suggestion. For those who weren’t, two-piece, one-piece, it was nothing more than an overpriced contrivance of peekaboo.
The quiet man had been talking about The Hague, about email exchanges with the lawyer of a war criminal serving a life sentence in one of its affiliated prisons. The quieter man had just finished talking about curses, his great-grandmother’s strong conviction they were credible, though how feeble a curse could become when laid on the head of a non-believer. The quieter man’s great-grandmother had lived half a life in dread, for as a girl her own mother had placed a curse on her, may you suffer a family, may you keep fertile until you’re old, eternally pregnant, and that’s what’d happened, the quieter man swore, from age sixteen until her thirties and past her thirties through her forties, then beyond that even, not long after giving birth to yet another kiddo she’d find herself pregnant again. Two months after the pregnancy curse had been laid on her head, her period had gone missing, the worst kind of morning sickness began hitting her, morning after morning, and her mother, wholly unsympathetic, actually smugly pleased by her daughter’s confusion and stress and growing dread, suggested they visit the family doctor. The mother made sure to sit in the room, not holding the daughter’s hand as the doctor delivered the news. In hindsight the mother had known her daughter had been carnally tempting fate with a boy she had foolishly called a boyfriend, so the curse was more a gamble against the odds repeated unprotected sex wouldn’t turn up punished by Mother Nature. How else had she gained an education on such things, except by a youthful first pregnancy herself? She’d hoped to cultivate a healthy fear in the girl by supernatural means, since the force of natural lust had come upon her, a boy eager to undress her and bed her. Alas, she should’ve chosen a curse that wasn’t so likely to fall on a girl, because she’d brought hardship on herself, once-removed. A grandmother at thirty-one. The mother of a young mother will usually carry half the burden, she should’ve considered before casting curses against her own bloodline. But that hadn’t been the consummation of the curse but merely its beginning. The girl was unholy fertile. Her loins were cruelly prolific and couldn’t be held in check by established folk preventions, continual breastfeeding, consumption of abortioning herbs and roots. No, these only seemed to anger the girl’s womb, stoke its appetite for generating children from nothing. Twins, triplets, three sets of the former, two of the latter, babies burst from the girl and stole her youth from her, leaving her exhausted, feebly at the mercy of her own fruitfulness.
Wait, the quiet man interrupted. How many kids she end up having?
It depends. Counting stillborns and miscarriages or not counting them?
Not.
The quieter man leaned a head slightly to the left, blind to the beautiful bodies before him and many children swimming and running. Fifty-four, I think it was. A few died before they made it past their tenth year, but counting those, I think fifty-four. Hard to believe, I know. Don’t blame you if you don’t.
They’d arrived at the topic circuitously, as they arrived at most points of shared irritation or curiosity, never quite progressing along a linear path, digressions springing up as certain details caught their interest. Their wives characterized this as distractedness, a lot of noise extracted from a mere whisper. The husbands quiet and quieter would of course point out the plain case that the wives were no better, conjuring all sorts of thrashing semantic energy from analysis about so-and-so’s comment the other day, or speculation about some recent retread of public outrage over some endlessly recurring political jackassery. The men were simply quieter, so often from across a room their leaning towards one another was mistaken for conspiratorial commentary on the women, judgment over what they were loudly talking about. It hardly ever was, the men would claim. It was never, actually. The wives would cap off such exchanges with an ironic uh-hmmmm, nodding to each other rolling their eyes. What the husbands could be sure of then was, returned to their corner of a room or pool, their wives would certainly be talking about them.
Babies. Neither the quiet man or quieter man had wanted them and it was good fortune they had fallen in love with women who didn’t either. But someone who had, somewhat surprisingly, was this man indicted for crimes against humanity, sentenced by the Hague for ordering the murders of upwards of two hundred women, children, and elderly villagers some thirty years ago. The quiet man had heard from a friend, a lawyer familiar with the case, the man had lived in hiding in a city not far from that very village, grew a beard and disappeared, supposedly. Though the war had been settled the hard way and the people whose will he’d served had been arrested, tried, imprisoned or executed, this man had somehow become a figure of admiration and sympathy among the defeated. This is where the legend started, with perceived nobility in defeat, that the man was moved from town to town to city every few years, given shelter, protected by loyalists, the last surviving leader to evade capture. Providing for his needs became a form of soft protest. From his middle years into his sixties, he enjoyed their protection but also, it was said, the comforts of their daughters. Mothers and fathers encouraged their young women to visit the man’s room, to lay with him, believing it a high honor to bear his babies. Two and half decades of knocks at his door, women waiting on the other side convinced they shouldn’t be repulsed or afraid but proud to be worth his time and attention. Impossible to estimate the numbers of women who shared a bed with him, coerced or willingly, so impossible to say approximately how many babies born during those decades were his. Father of an aborted nation, literally.
That’d been my pitch I’d made to his lawyer, the quiet man said, I didn’t want to talk about the war or about the tangle of ideological nonsense that’d caused it, I wanted to talk about his life as a stud set out to pasture. Flatter him with questions about his priapism, gain trust that way, get him talking, then once inside his personality, explore its dimensions, take measure of it.
You eventually score in-person counsel with him?
Nope. Never could get past the lawyer. We went back and forth with emails for better part of a year, an endless string of conditions tacked onto the prospect of a first meeting. I’m sure they read up on me and learned a bit about how I felt about the war and decided I wouldn’t interview in good faith. The lawyer only ever forwarded along one direct quote by his client, in their most recent and probably final email. My adventure in beds is a matter of privacy. Tell the young professor asking after me to create his own fun and leave me out of it.
Fair enough then!
I’ll say.
The quiet man shooed a fly from his right nipple, the quieter man raised a chin to enjoy the sun’s warmth on his throat. This cloudless sky and sun the same sky and sun that had overseen the executions of villagers and the births of countless hypothetical children. Here it was doing peaceful work toasting their bodies with ultraviolet radiation. Number this one among many subtle indulgences to be enjoyed by terminally comfortable men, the warmth of a sun that promises to only gradually harm them.
In the shallows a group of children had begun another round of Marco Polo. Both men had played the game when they were younger, the quiet man on his birth continent, the quieter man on his, summer days long gone and mellowing the present moment with nostalgia. There were six or seven, boys and girls, each wading away from a kid who’d turned his back to stand in a corner eyes closed, counting to ten. Count finished, when he turned the game would rely on the honor system, that his eyes would remain genuinely shut, no peeks or cheating. The kid in question was skinny, not much sweep or reach to his arms. Marco! he’d shout then listen with head tilted, gauging approximate angle and distance of the Polos coming back to him. Some kids waded closer, just out of reach, to tease him, others submerged themselves and swam to a fresh spot from which to call back to him. When’d they last played the game, the quieter man asked. Poignant to consider, one summer decades ago unbeknownst to them they’d played their final round of Marco Polo, unaware the following summer they’d have outgrown it, the pool surrounded by something far more interesting, female figures conjuring to dominate their imaginations, breasts, thighs, hips, asses. Testosterone emboldened them while their boyishness still shamed them. They wouldn’t have dared been caught indulging in children’s games, though that was the real shame, because both of them agreed at the time they’d still wanted to play, looked on the younger kids in envy.
What’s changed? the quieter man noted. Here they were sitting watching the children still, hindered by their will to impress or at least not embarrass themselves.
The hunt before them continued, skinny boy creeping towards the voices taunting him. Another boy waded carefully to bob head above water behind him. Bold, the quiet man said. That kid’s toast, the quieter man predicted. Sure enough, at the next Marco the boy was tagged before he could swim beyond reach. The skinny boy opened his eyes and words were said and somehow an argument had started among the children, rules invoked, some infraction claimed, skinny boy opening his eyes at the critical moment just before calling Marco. Arguing over the rules, the quiet and quieter man recalled, had been central to enjoyment of the game.
What I’d really like to do is run a paternity test on the whole county, the quiet man said, finishing aloud some thought he’d been having. Their earlier conversation, the lawyer, the prisoner, his gracious inseminations of daughters of men and women who admired him. He got more ass as a fugitive than most free men can ever hope to get! The quiet man’s jokes usually swung from the gallows, not to delight in heartlessness but to stand in shadow of whatever swung above him with neck through noose. His cousins, first, second, third, could be girls he’s talking about, but would he know, given how divided his family was in their affiliations about the war?
The fly was back again, flirting with the quiet man’s nipple. Look at this, the quiet man complained, pointing a finger down at his chest. Lifting sunglasses for brighter scrutiny, the quieter man followed the finger to the offender in question. Climbing through a tangle of hairs, the fly nervously sniffed the baby-soft pink of an aureole. What sustenance could it possibly find there?
Breastfeeding? the quieter man joked.
One of my many many offspring, the quiet man deadpanned.
This was it, the volta, the volte-face, absurd remark that inspired the turn towards the quieter man’s great-grandmother, Appalachian matriarch from early last century. The curse of unceasing pregnancy. He’d never met the poor woman but there were photos of the clan taken back in the late 60s, early 70s. Gathered for a family reunion barbecue, most of the children still living standing and kneeling around a blasted tindersticks old lady in ankle-length gingham dress. Sitting there like exhausted royalty, lawn chair making do as her throne. At a glance anyone would be forgiven for mistaking the clan as extended family. But no, this brood was hers alone. The youngest knelt at her side in the grass, a boy fresh from his teens. This is what he had been told. Describing it now he was inclined to doubt it himself.
You thinking what I’m thinking, the quiet man asked his friend.
What?
My prisoner, your great-grandmother. Imagine if we could collapse the decades and bring them together, her curse and his appetites would’ve complimented each other perfectly.
A cursed race and a master race evening out their respective bloodlines.
There they were again, swaying on the gallows, laughing modestly at expense of their ancestries. This had somehow caught the attentions of their betters across the water, wife unquiet and wife unquieter, mock-accusatory fingers pointing in the men’s direction. They missed nothing, these psychic wives. With them hypervigilance was casual as a hobby. Before the husbands could mime shrugs of innocence and pleading, the women were out of water and sauntering over, their shadows following them like worshippers.
What’re you talking about? they asked.
Not about you, if you can believe it!
Either side of their husbands were chaise lounges waiting, but for dramatic effect they remained standing.
He was telling me about his great-grandmother.
Oh, Jesus, the one wife said to the other, ever heard that?
The other wife nodded no, which lead to the details of the poor woman’s life inventoried again for inevitable disbelief and horror.
It almost doesn’t even need to be true, the other wife said after the story had ended, leaving all four refreshed in their gratefulness to be childless.
They’d had such conversations before. The topic of children would come up and off they’d go, rehearsing yet again the many high-toned nuanced talking points about why children weren’t for them. The conversation was working in that direction when the quieter man cut in, a thought he’d been having bursting into comment.
That photo of my great-grandma, I just remembered, it wasn’t a family member who took it. It was a crew member of a T.V. show popular in Japan. They’d heard about our family and had contacted one of my grandmother’s older brothers, offered to pay for the reunion, food, liquor, rental of the hall, on condition they could film it. All these Japanese guys showed up with their gear, just one of them speaking understandable English, gathered my great-grandma’s kids around her and snapped a bunch of photos, a few which ended up in tabloid papers. The headlines claimed the truth, ninety-year-old woman with her fifty-four offspring, the whole lot of them slotted comfortably among stories of alien abduction and recent sightings of Rasputin.
There she was, conjured four separate ways, the matriarch described. In the quiet man’s imagination she appeared somewhat familiar, with features of his own long-dead beloved grandmother. In his wife’s mind the woman sat in full color, whereas the quieter man’s wife envisioned her in black-and-white. None reproduced with any true fidelity the details of the photograph, not even the one who had seen it and studied it, describing it decades later to his wife and two friends. No myth without distance, the quieter man quoted to himself, a phrase he’d landed on during one of his many conversations with his friend, timid hunter of war criminals and antagonist of flies. Put distance between yourself and others, hide your vulnerability, protect it that way long enough you’ll appear inhuman enough to qualify as mythic. Pick a king, an art hero, a celebrity—each case, always the same.
He considered whether these were sentiments worth sharing, then considered that if he had to consider, he had the answer.
What was her name? the quiet man’s wife asked.
Who?
Your great-grandmother.
A pause. Picturing her again.
Annabelle.
Hmmm, the quiet man’s wife hummed, as if the name was worth savoring.
Now here’s a real challenge for you, the quieter man’s wife said. Can you name all her children, in order of birth, eldest to youngest?
The quieter man lifted his sunglasses to show eyes to her question.
The old old woman still wavered in their minds, hazy sitting in a lawn chair once removed from this summer day all four were sharing with her, other people’s children splashing and screaming within view of her own small portion of eternity.
Choose a name at random, the quieter man sighed, good odds you’d accidentally name one. Same with these kiddos here too, right?
At the suggestion four names came to mind, four minds, each with a name.
Thinking of one? the quieter man asked. The other three looked over at him, face turned to the sun.
Maria, one of the women said.
Claire, said the other, offering her own name.
Paul, the quiet man suggested. Matthew and Mark also options.
Emily, the quieter man said. He had been thinking Grace but somewhere between thinking and speaking it had become Emily.
Look then, he told them. We’re parents now. Which kids here playing in the water are ours?
Take all or take none of them, his wife said, modestly surprising herself with the rightness of how that sounded. She hadn’t said it loud enough for the others to hear, not over the chaos of child-noises, so none agreed. Maybe she would say it again. Maybe then they’d hear and voice their agreement. It was at that moment, on the cusp, in tune with her thinking before speaking, a fat brittle fly landed pat like a kiss on her cheek.
