The doctor tried to say a few words to her, but there was nothing to say. Perhaps he wanted to rush Ginny to the morgue so he could go home to his family for Christmas. The unfairness of it sickened Virginia. A sensation of hot anger boiled in her throat, and tears dimmed her eyes. To get away from the man, she went to the visitor’s lounge, hoping to buy a hot coffee from the vending machine there. It was out of coffee, but there was hot chocolate. Ginny had loved hot chocolate: what child did not? Virginia did not have change, but borrowed some coins from an orderly, who had a kind face, and looked at her sympathetically.
Virginia’s anger was too great. She had the impulse to throw the hot chocolate into the orderly’s face. To escape any more sympathy, she stepped outside the glass doors leading to the emergency entrance. She did not bother going back for her coat; she merely shivered, finding dark and perverse comfort in the sting of the cold.
Out from her pocket she took her cellphone. Virginia remembered the salesman at the shop from over a year ago, back when she bought the phone. He had been very handsome and very young, and so she still remembered his face, and his breezy demeanor. He seemed too young for the job, and he had not known how to transfer phone numbers out of her old phone, or how to download a ringtone. But he had been was very charming, full of jokes. She remembered the salesman’s face like the face of a television actor: boyish, smooth, cheerful, full of sunny self-esteem. He had been no older than eighteen.
Eighteen. That was how old Frank had been when they married seven years ago, looking perfectly handsome with his crooked nose and long jaw and big ears in his splendid dress uniform. They had walked under the drawn swords of his fellow graduates together on their wedding day. Now, at twenty-five, he was in charge of an IFV, an infantry fighting vehicle that could blow a hole in a building, wade rivers and crush fences, blasting through walls with high-explosive incendiary rounds before trampling them flat beneath its treads. The M2 was smaller than a main battle tank, but Frank loved his vehicle and what it could do. He loved working with high explosives too, because it required care and precision and knowing exactly what to do.
The salesman had told her that the phone could reach anywhere in the world instantly. Virginia flicked the speed dial for her husband’s number. There was no signal. Of course. He was in the forward operations theater. There were no phone calls allowed. Maybe the enemy could detect the signal. Maybe the commanding officers did not want the men distracted while their machines were trampling rubble.
He was not coming home for Christmas. Leaves had been canceled. It was not even a real war against an enemy with a real name: they called it a “police action”, as if Frank and his men were beat cops stopping purse-snatchers in the park.
Virginia divided the world between pink and gray. Pink people were like the handsome cellphone salesman who had not known how to do his job, and had to stop and ask his manager all her questions. He was as pink as a bunny ear. The people of the pink world believed in themselves, and they lived nice lives, and they criticized other people for being less nice than they.
Grey people included men like Frank. Gray people were those who could repair the motor of a fire engine in motion, drive it through red lights to a burning house; they were the kind of people who ran inside the burning house to save a baby while civilians ran away; the kind who could put out a fire, saw lumber and rebuild a house, and paint it, while also sowing and reaping the field to bring in the harvest so that baby had enough to eat. Gray people did what had to be done because there was no one else around to do it. Frank was as gray as a gun barrel.
But even Frank and all his men and his fine armored carrier vehicle could not save the baby now, not this time. He was as pink and useless as that telephone salesman.
And she had no way to tell him the news. Merry Christmas! Your present this year is…
Virginia threw the cup of hot chocolate into the snow, where it made a strange brown stain. The cup of warmth was gone. And the snow was falling, so soon even the stain would be covered over, and nothing to mark there had ever been a cup of hot chocolate there.
She looked across the street. The robot elves mocked her, with their hideous mechanical smiles of make-believe joy, their jerky motions.
Virginia crossed over to the store, looking for a rock or something to throw through the plate glass.
There was no traffic at all. Who would be out and about on Christmas Eve? Everyone was home snug in their beds, dreaming of sugarplums. The red and green streetlights glinted against the snow of the road, and glittered against the falling snow. Red and green were Christmas colors. She had never noticed that before.
The WALK sign chimed with the sound of bells, telling the nonexistent blind people on the snowy midnight street it was safe to cross.
Her fingers were numb, and her nose was running. The icy wind bit her. Why had she gone out without her coat? What did it matter whether she had her coat or not? What did it matter whether she lived or died? It was not as if the doctors could make anyone better, not when it really mattered.
Sticking out of a nearby trashcan, half buried in snow, was a hefty looking stick. It looked like the broken haft of a protestor’s sign, crumpled and tossed into the trash. Virginia was not sure who had been picketing the store or why. Someone protesting the commercialization of Christmas, perhaps; or someone protesting Christmas and demanding more commercialization. What did it matter? The signboard was wet and ripped in two, with only a few large angry letters visible, and many exclamation points.
She was not sure if the wooden stick that once held the protest sign was sturdy enough to break the plate glass window, but she took up the stick in both hands, held it over her shoulder, and stepped toward the Santa display.
“Batter up!” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. The alarm telling the blind to cross the street had broken, and was ringing and ringing.
Virginia glared at the figure in the window on the throne. He really looked nothing like other storefront Santas. He was thin and stern, with a hard, craggy face. His shoulder length hair was white but flecked with black. His red robes were all wrong. They looked more like something a rich Roman Senator would wear than a Santa. An elbow-length cape, red as blood, richly decorated with crosses and trefoils, a second garment, green as emerald and worked with gold thread, reaching below the knee, and beneath that a long cassock falling to his jeweled slippers. Around his neck was a chain of office, with holly leaves dangling from the links, and a cross beneath. Who, these days, puts a cross in a Christmas display?
In his hand he held a shepherd’s staff whose spiral head was adorned all with gold. Obviously the store decorator had confused Santa with the Nativity display, and put one of the shepherd crooks into the wrong hands.
She hated Santa because he was pink. He was the epitome of the pink life, the nice promises of niceness, soft and weak and meaningless promises. He was the man who made grown ups lie to children.
She hated him because he had not come.
Her eyes were filling now with tears, blinding her. She blinked and blinked, rubbing her face in her elbow. The fabric of her sleeve was soaked through with snow.
When she opened her eyes again, Santa was gone.
There was the empty throne in the store display, surrounded by mechanical dolls in pointed hats and pointy shoes. But the tall figure was missing.
Virginia stood on tiptoes, peering through the glass. Had a clerk, working long after midnight, come by during the moment it took her to wipe her eyes, and removed the six foot tall manikin? It did not seem possible.
The ringing in the air continued. Virginia turned her head and looked down the street. She realized now that it was not the sound of the traffic light walk sign. It was a brighter, sharper sound, like the sound of bells one would hang on a sleigh to tell wanderers lost in the dark woods in the snow that someone was near.
At the same time a deeper, more solemn note sounded, and the echoes walked down the street, huge as ghosts. It
was the bell from the steeple of the cathedral across the city park from the hospital. She could not see the steeple from here. Why was it ringing at this hour?
As she looked, not twelve feet from her, as if pulled open by an invisible doorman, the front door of the Department store opened.
Still clutching the stick, Virginia, step by step, approached the door. Silently it stood open. Perhaps it was an automatic door, and the electronic circuit had failed.
She crept still closer, suddenly frightened. What if there had been someone in the store, watching her? A night watchman or something? He had seen her about to break the window, and damage the display, and so he had removed the Santa manikin quickly. And now he was opening the door, in order to ….
But there was no one at the door. It merely stood open, and a few flakes of falling snow drifted in, onto the red carpet of the foyer.
Virginia shook her head. What did it matter? What did anything matter? The door had malfunctioned, and was open, and was letting the snow come it, and so she was supposed to go to close it up again, because there was no one else around to do it.
She walked closer. It was like an explosion, but entirely silent, when all the lights in the store came on. For a moment, she thought the store was on fire, it was so bright. Down the street, the church bells rang and rang, a solemn noise of joy. The light was red and leaping, mingled with gold light and silver was from Christmas lights and artificial fireplaces and neon angels.
“Nothing to be afraid of,” Virginia said. “Someone in the store just turned on the lights, that’s all.”
A voice from the door answered.
“Come in!”
The voice was deeper and more solemn than even the bell, and it echoed and reechoed in her ear.
“Come in, — come in! And know me better, child!”
Emotion raged up in her as if the blood of she-tigers boiled in her veins. Someone playing a trick on her? Now? Tonight, of all nights?
Virginia gripped the stick on one hand and stomped into the department store, her face slick with tears.
It felt warm in here, so very warm after the bitter chill outside. It was an old fashioned store, with décor that looked like something from the previous century: the aisles were carpeted in burgundy and red rather than with linoleum, and there was a staircase leading to the upper floor rather than an escalator, a stair like one might find in a Victorian mansion. One flight led to a large carpeted landing, and two flights led thence upward to the left and right.
The wooden counters and tall displays were covered with holly and with little bells, and chains of gold; and everywhere, thousands upon thousands, were candles burning.
The candles were on shelves, on banisters of the staircase as well as on the stairs, hanging on the branches of the pine trees, held in the hands of the manikins, and crowding the coping near the ceiling. They must have been scented candles, or else there was also incense burning near, because she felt the rich scent tickle the back of her throat.
Virginia noticed now that none of the candles had any wax dripping, none of them were part- melted; they looked as if they had just come out of the box and been lit.
At the foot of the stair, for some reason, was a large wooden barrel, the size of a pickle barrel.
On the stairway was a feast spread, with plates and cups on each step, leaving only a narrow path between for the customers to walk. Here were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, suckling pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch. The meats steamed as if they just this moment had been carried out of roaring ovens by squads of cooks.
Wreathed about the banister of the stairs were ivy and holly and mistletoe all gleaming in the bright candle light. Vines of ivy ran across the stairs to the two huge Christmas trees which filled the landing. There were live birds in the trees, singing sweetly, unfrightened by the candles.
She tried to imagine how flocks of song birds could have been brought here in the small hours of the night from a nearby pet store, or loads of hot meat and cold fruit from restaurants and grocers. Virginia noticed that the trees blocked the way up the stairs.
Between the trees, on the landing, with his feet on the stairs, sat the thin and tall Santa in his thin and tall headgear. It looked like an arrowhead. She saw that the figure was also wearing a crown, a thin rim of gold just outside the brim the tall cap.
Virginia realized that the store decorator was insane. Who put a manikin in the middle of the stairs to block traffic, or trees, or vines? Who used live birds these days, or living candles?
She looked at the Santa manikin. She gave out a yelp of shock when the figure moved, raising his right hand, fingers toward her. It was alive!
“You have not seen the like of me before,” he said.
But she had. She recognized his headgear now: it was a miter, like a bishop might wear. The staff in his hand was a crosier. He raised his hand as if he expected her to approach and kiss his ring. It was such a simple and regal gesture, that it could not be something from the world she knew. It was from the Dark Ages, or earlier. It was an ancient gesture.
“I know you!” she said accusatorily, her voice ringing with anger.
Gravely, the figure lowered his hand, saying nothing.
“I never liked you. It was Frank’s idea. He was the one who wanted to tell Ginny about Santa. He loved those stupid stories about the jolly old elf and his magic sleigh!”
“Francis knows me. Do you?”
“Where is your pipe? You are supposed to be smoking a pipe!”
“I am older than the year when men first learned to put tobacco weed in clay pipes.”
Virginia raised her voice. “Do you know why I hate you? Gentle lies are even worse than lying lies, because they mean well. But they are false! False! No one ever comes on Christmas Eve. No one ever comes! No one ever answers any prayers! I wore my knees out! I cried my eyes out!”
He stood. “I am here now. Ginny called me. I came.”
“You came? It is too late! She’s dead!” The word came out as a scream. “How could God kill my baby? My sweet little girl! Can’t he save anybody? Doesn’t he listen to anyone?”
He pointed his crosier at the large wooden barrel at the foot of the stair. A sensation of dread came over her she could not explain. Her limbs began shaking. A dark terror filled her.
“No. I am not going to look in there,” she said.
He said nothing, but continued to point.
Finally, she stepped over to the barrel and put her hand on it. She could smell, very faintly, beneath the incense and the candle smoke, the smell of blood, old blood.
She jerked her hand away. “No, I won't look!”
But the lid of the barrel flew up. She grabbed it with her hand and forced it down, but not before she had seen three small white faces, their throats slit from ear to ear, brown bloodstains like bibs spread on their chests, their dead mouths open, their dead eyes staring, all surrounded with a stench.
He said, “Abim, Antonius, and Alimus were three children traveling on their way to Athens to study, carrying money their father had given them. In those days the Emperor Diocletian was strong and well-feared, and it was believed that even children carrying gold abroad would be safe to travel. That belief was in error. The boys stayed at the inn of a wicked innkeeper, who slew them foully in the night and hid them in a pickling tub. It so happened that my servants and I traveled the same route that night, and in my dream, I saw the murders and I heard the screams. I woke and summoned the innkeeper, demanding of him the truth. In fear and remorse, upon his knees he begged for mercy. And upon my knees I prayed earnestly to the Lord Our God, and the next day, the children were revived to life and wholeness. They appeared at the chapel, still smelling of pickle brine, and then they went their way, praising God and singing His glory. The innkeeper was baptized that
Eastertide.”
She lifted the barrel lid. The barrel was now empty, and a sweet smell, sweeter than the first wind of spring from a high mountain, issued from it.
Virginia slammed the lid back down. “You are Santa Claus. You sneak down chimneys and give presents away and eat cookies, you and your red-nosed reindeer. What are you doing with murdered children? What kind of story is that?”
“I am Nicholas of Myra, Bishop of the One, True, Holy, Universal and Apostolic Church. Children and those who dare the dangers of the sea are in my special care and are dear to me. Under Diocletian, I suffered torment, fulfilling what Christ left for me on the Cross; and was in bonds, and for many months was held in a house of darkness, and by my prayer brought my jailer, Simeon, to baptism. With the coming of Constantine, Imperator, I was set at liberty, and all the Holy Church was freed. At the Great Council of Nicaea where all the world was gathered, I smote the heresiarch Arius on the mouth for his impudent blasphemy, and earned the reprimand of the Imperator, to whom I owed obedience and love. When the Sultan stole a child of a man who much honored and revered me, I sent my shade to gather the boy up and return him in a twinkling, in the blink of an eye, from across the sea. None of these things were done by my own power, but by the grace of God which the merit of Christ has won for us, we who are the fallen sons of Adam.”
Virginia looked left and right, as if seeking something to turn her gaze away from the impossible figure seated regally on the stairs above her. “What are all these candles doing here? Why aren’t they being burned up?”
“The power which Moses saw in the burning bush sent up a sweet smoke to heaven, and yet the bush was not consumed. That power has not ebbed since that day, because it is eternal. Do not wonder that these candle-fires never diminish, for they are the prayers of the saints, and all of them pray for you. And there are many more you do not see, numberless as stars, for the world is not large enough, not even if every drop of water in the sea were turned to flame, to show how many prayers are said for your soul.”