The Mason Takes a Wife
by Jennifer Howard
"....All over the world stories of human sacrifice are associated
with bridges, to the erection of which the rivers are supposed to
have a special antipathy....When the Bridge Gate at Bremen was
demolished in the last century the skeleton of a child was found
embedded in the foundations. The bridge of Arya in Italy is said to
have kept falling down until they walled in the wife of the master-
mason...."
--note on "London Bridge Is Falling Down"
from "The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes"
They all envied me, that day I brought her home. Every one of them,
the young men stupid and eager, the married men growing fat in
middle age, the old ones creeping along on withered limbs. I could
see it in their faces, their stupid greedy faces, turning
openmouthed to stare at us--to stare at her, with her dark hair
loose and gleaming around her shoulders and her black eyes shining
and her skin smooth loveliness itself, a dish of cream, a pool of
moonlight.
A silly joke, she says, you are a silly man, and
though there is laughter in her voice I hear fear there too.
I brought her to this place through a wind that tore with cold
fingers at our faces and our clothes, but here in the shadow of the
foundations, the air is calm. Up above us, the bridge is only a
darkness against the sky, wiping the stars away. It is the river I
hear rushing by us now, not the wind.
We drove past, and I could see it in their faces, the hunger
behind the hands raised in salute, the question in each pair of
eyes: Why you? You're no better than we are. Why you? Their stares,
their questions covered us like a swarm of flies, but she, pale and
smiling, did not notice.
If I looked up from my work I could see her face,
floating above me in the night air, pale and unsmiling as the
frozen moon that's risen out of the trees. Her face, floating like
a second moon in the darkness of the alcove. Her face. I will not
look up.
The bridge throws its shattered bulk halfway across the river,
which beats, angry, against the stone bulwarks.
She sat beside me, laughing and waving to them, as we drove
away from the church, and all along the way, all through town,
their faces told me I was lucky. The flowers I had brought her lay
forgotten on the seat. What did I have to offer, to earn such a
woman?
It was the question her father asked me when I came seeking a
wife. But to him I knew what to say, and the answers had come
easily, unprompted. I was not handsome, I said, but I was healthy;
not a young man anymore, but not yet old by anyone's reckoning. I
had a trade I could be proud of, a skill other people paid me for;
I had money, I had property, I could hold my head up in the town.
I said I admired his daughter; it would have been presumptuous to
say I loved her. Only young men, foolish men, said such things. I
said I would be a good husband to her.
Haven't I been a good wife to you? she says, and
calls my name. Let me out and I will prove it to you.
The river boils madly against the stones.
She must have heard me say these things to her father. He and
I sat on the stiff upright chairs reserved for company, and as I
made my case to him I saw her out of the corner of my eye, a
fragrant shadow, a form that passed down the hall and paused,
listening, just out of sight. If she had shown herself, glanced in
at us, would her gaze have met mine? What would I have seen in
those black eyes? An answer, a supplication?
The stones are damp, she says. I can feel the
cold sweat of the night on them. Take me home and let me sit with
you beside the fire.
The river rubs itself against the stone columns that pierce
it.
At the wedding she danced with all of them, all the young men
who would learn to follow her with their eyes as she walked
graceful and lithe through the streets of the town. I would see
them staring at her when she passed by them. She should have
ignored them, turned her head in a gesture of disdain. Instead she
smiled at them, laughed at the silly things they said to please
her, and at the wedding she danced and danced as if she would never
dance again, partnering always with the young men. They pressed
sweaty hands against the smooth silk of her dress as they spun her
around the floor. I came to claim a dance and felt the moist fabric
under my hands and I said, Your dress, your lovely dress, but she
only smiled and began to hum along with the musicians.
She is singing now, soft and low, as if trying to
get a child to sleep. There are no words, just a tune almost beyond
hearing. The scrape of the trowel against the bricks drowns it out.
Under the broken arches of the bridge the river goes, moaning
to itself.
A group of young women gathered in one corner of the room,
laughing and whispering behind hands. She ran among them, seeking
out friends and cousins to kiss, darting in and out of shadow like
a minnow in the deceiving shallows of a stream. I stood in my stiff
clothes, feeling the new roughness of the wool against my neck. One
woman looked at me and whispered to her; her reply sent laughter
rippling to the edges of the little group, and I turned away from
them, closing my eyes against the fiery brightness of the hall.
She has stopped singing. It's so dark, she says.
Won't you give me a torch? A little candle to see by?
Mortar, brick. I don't need a torch, or a candle to work by.
The river, dancing over the stones, gathers up moonlight and flings
it back at me like bright handfuls of water.
I was glad when we could finally leave the company. They saw
us out with jokes and singing and shouts of laughter; they threw
handfuls of rice that fell around us like a frozen rain. One man,
one she had danced with more than all the others, stood back and
watched as I took her by the arm and led her away. He did not smile
or joke, did not raise a torch for us like the rest. She looked
back over her shoulder, then turned to me to say that it was early
yet, we did not have to leave so soon. Haven't you had enough
dancing? I asked, and she was silent.
Silent all the way home. Silent as I led her into the darkness
of the house--that good solid house I had built for her, that house
not grand but strong and sturdy, dark now. Silent through the
furtive act that followed, the shameful desperate act. Silent when
I discovered I was not the first. She did not weep, made no
apologies.
A moan, then silence from inside the dark
alcove.
The river slips along, sly and eager, hissing to itself.
I told no one. I went about my business, smiling when people
stopped me in the street with their well-wishing and
congratulations. Their smiles mocked me, told me that they knew,
but I only smiled and shook the hands they offered. Did I hear a
whisper as I passed by? Hear laughter, only barely stifled?
A scream, stifled by the stone. No one nearby to
hear it.
The river chuckles to itself in the soft darkness under the
bridge.
We worked on the bridge all that summer. I mixed mortar, laid
it thick over stone and brick. It should have stood for an
eternity, that bridge. But there was a rottenness to it, something
in the structure that gave way under us one day without warning,
sending half the crew into the river below. One man drowned; the
rest were lucky. We began to build again, and the river flooded,
sweeping all our work downstream. I knew, before we tried a third
time, what had to be done.
Floor to ceiling the wall rises. I have left one
space empty, a small darkness punched in the wall at eye level; one
brick remains, lying on the ground at my feet. I stoop to pick it
up.
I bring my ear close to the opening. I bend my head down. A
murmur--I feel the warm breath from her lips, as if she is blowing
me a kiss.
The mortar isn't dry, she says. You won't leave me here. Make
an opening just wide enough for the wind to slip through, and I'll
slip out to you, slide by you like a ghost.
One gentle push, the brick whispering into place, and only the
wall, fresh and unbroken, stands before me.
The river sighs along the bank, waiting in the night like a
lover or a ghost.
...................... 
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