The Bath Beneath

I am raking the last charcoal from the furnace as you asked. By sunset the floors will be cold, and you may break the locks or take up the tiles without my interference.

Only leave the western pool until morning.

You believe the missing went into that water because I held them there. This is nearly true. I held some of them, but only at the threshold, when the body mistakes arrival for drowning. Anyone will struggle when the lungs begin to open in a new country.

The lower bath does not appear often. The cistern must be full, the furnace dead, and the air outside warmer than the water. There must also be no wind through the roof vent. Under those conditions the western pool becomes perfectly clear. Not clear like drinking water. Clear like an open doorway.

My wife, Sabine, noticed it first.

We had stayed late after the winter feast, scrubbing oil from the benches. She dropped a copper pin into the pool and knelt to find it. After a while she called my name softly.

Below the surface was another bathing room.

It lay beneath ours, floor to floor, where the foundations should have been. Its lamps burned downward from stone brackets. Pale figures moved among the benches with towels around their shoulders. The mosaics below showed dolphins from above, as ours did from below.

One woman stood looking up at us.

She had Sabine's face, though Sabine was beside me.

That is why I object when you call the place a grave. Graves do not look back.

Sabine returned the next night with her hair unbound. I begged her to wait for another still evening, but she said our little son might be there. We had buried him before he learned to sit. She entered without hesitation, though at the last moment her hand closed around mine.

I held her under because she asked me to.

Her grip loosened. The water did not cloud. No body rose.

Afterward I saw her below, standing beside the other Sabine. One wore her hair loose, the other braided. They looked at each other with such tenderness that I could not tell which one had been waiting.

That was many winters ago.

People came to me because grief makes its own map. A cooper who heard his dead brother singing in empty barrels. A girl whose mother had vanished during lambing. Old Caspar, who had outlived every person able to pronounce his childhood name correctly. I told each of them the conditions. I concealed nothing.

Some lost courage at the edge. Some fought me after entering. This does not mean they refused. Fear is only the body's loyalty to the room it knows.

The door is narrow because we are broad with sorrow.

You will find scratches on my arms. You will find clothing in the furnace room, neatly folded. You may even find teeth in the drain, though those were loose already.

Call it wickedness if that helps you tend the place. But when you have lived beside an empty chair long enough, you may come to understand why I kept the western pool clean.

This morning, before you arrived, the lower bath appeared once more. Sabine was not among the figures. None of those I helped were there.

The lamps below had gone out.

I thought the place deserted until ripples touched the rim beside me. Something had entered our pool from underneath. The water remained smooth, yet wet footprints crossed the tiles toward the outer door.

They were Sabine's size.

There were two sets.