Her thoughts continued past luck, as night thoughts do. And as Harriet thought and thought and thought some more, it seemed to her that there was something particularly Druhástranian about this dream of Gretel’s. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to arrive at, and initially she balked at it, being only barely aware of having inherited discourse that the only characteristic Druhástranians really share is a rejection of commonality, of some worldview only intelligible to a Druhástranian. Quite right, it’s all I can do not to tune out whenever anyone starts talking like that, but nevertheless, nevertheless, Harriet argued with herself, Gretel dreamed quite a Druhástranian dream. I mean, the absence of inclination to pass commentary, a reluctance to subscribe to any ideology in case the compromise proves catastrophic; those aren’t the only clues as to the Druhástranian nature of this dream. What about the fear that not having a point of view is in some way a crime? If this dream had been dreamed by a non-Druhástranian perhaps it would have had moral or spiritual overtones, or nationalist ones, or Gretel would have dreamed we were in a psychiatric hospital being treated for this chronic lack of a point of view.
Nonsense, nonsense, Harriet argued back, if we really must call the dream something, let’s just call it Gretelian.
But listen, listen . . . a mind-set that’s caught up in, even imprisoned by legality and correctness of form . . . what is that way of thinking if not Druhástranian? To be Druhástranian is to be dissatisfied with one’s condition until one can find some official personage to sign off on it. And if someone says that what you’re doing is all right today, won’t you need to get that approval reconfirmed later, get another stamp at some other desk a year from now? Of course this is a mind-set that a nation can be stunned into. All you need is a century or two of freedoms and strictures that appear and disappear between one year and the next, words and deeds that were frowned upon just yesterday receiving vehement acclaim today . . .
Oh, then Gretel’s dream wasn’t specifically Druhástranian after all.
Just think of all the mayhem a mind-set like this is proving to be the basis of elsewhere, everywhere; there’s nothing unique about this . . .
There was a smidgen of sadness that came with washing her hands of the night thoughts in this way—also . . . sneakiness? She felt as if she’d just told herself a good lie. A lie sandwiched so beautifully between a couple of truths that its form couldn’t be delineated.
(Harriet’s daughter squirms, and the dolls named Prim and Lollipop share a couple of night thoughts of their own:
“This is the kind of thing you thought about in bed when you were sixteen?”
“You should’ve played with dolls more when you were growing up. Luckily it’s never too late to start . . .”
Harriet reminds them of Dr. Ilesanmi’s express stipulation that talking to Perdita is part of the girl’s therapy, that what she says is less important than letting Perdita hear her voice and letting Perdita hear words arranged and pronounced in similar ways to those in which Perdita herself spoke before the gingerbread. Perdita and the dolls quiet down, and Perdita gives Harriet an eye-smile of stunning purity: Tyra Banks would be proud.)
Anyway, Harriet did her bit of thinking in bed, and then she slept, but not so deeply that she didn’t feel and hear levers and pulleys at work as her room went up two floors, down three floors so that it rested atop the basement, and then back up to her preferred height. Gabriel must be back. He and Ari were the only ones who didn’t hesitate to keep pressing buttons like that.
(Harriet has fetched the letter from Gretel. Perdita and the dolls pass it around and confirm that it’s written in what they believe to be Druhástranian.
“And when Rémy gave this to you, he said what again?” Bonnie asks.
“Read this and unwind a bit, something like that.”
“Sounds like he’d read it first. He knows Druhástranian? How?”
Harriet tells them that that question has taken time to settle. Two Kerchevals wanted to forget they used to share a hobby, and a third wanted to cover up all traces of having gone against Ari’s wishes. So after much fruitless sleuthing, all Harriet Lee had to do was put a couple of direct questions to Ambrose Kercheval in Druhástranian. He jumped. Right out of his skin, as they say; quite athletic, really. He high-jumped and then started chattering away. He’d taught his son and nephew Druhástranian when they were little. He’d been teaching himself, and they wanted to learn too—Rémy because he found the language easy to pick up and Gabriel because he found it almost impossible. It all started with some lullabies Ambrose came across in a job lot of recordings he bought when his friend’s music shop was closing down. He played them to Ari and revived the rumor about their great-grandfather the Druhástranian hot-air balloon pilot. Ari did like a bit of heritage but wouldn’t hold with lullabies. Namby-pamby drivel that doesn’t prepare you for adulthood . . . he told Ambrose he’d better not hear him singing lullabies to their boys.
So Ambrose just made sure Ari never heard it. But after a few months of the language lessons, his pupils stopped believing that the “Druhástranian” they’d learned could be understood by anyone outside of the trio. Gabriel made a tactful accusation—if there can be such a thing as a tactful accusation, Gabriel would be the one to make it—that Ambrose was basically inventing the language and trying to use it as a relationship bandage. A father–son bandage, a cousin bandage, that sort of thing. And when Ambrose thought it over, it began to seem that really had been his subconscious project. Especially after he’d made contact with citizens of various countries who said they were Druhástranians. They all turned out to be people whose Druhástranianism was a nonviolent product of their alienation from every society currently known to them. He had some good chats with those ones, but not in actual Druhástranian. Harriet couldn’t keep from mentioning her conviction that at least a handful of these contacts really could speak Druhástranian, but she didn’t feel like being of assistance to the kindly man with scarlet spilled all over his shirt collar. There are plenty of reasons why a Druhástranian abroad would claim not to know a word of Druhástranian, but sheer bloody-mindedness is probably top of the list.
Perdita says that must have been amazing for Rémy, unfolding Gretel’s letter and being unable to read it, then picking out words here and there and slowly realizing that he knew what they meant. The experience Perdita describes is very similar to that which Harriet and the dolls undergo as they listen to the half-words she’s stringing together.
“I don’t think it can have been that amazing if he was thinking about jumping off the side of the building afterward,” says Harriet. “I mean, when there’s that kind of change in the way words work, it can make you think you’re no longer in your right mind.”
Lollipop says: “You appeared before those two cousins like . . . like a fairy.” Harriet doesn’t know why saying this should earn anyone a nudge and a death stare, but this is what Lollipop gets from Perdita.
“Like a fairy?” Harriet repeats.
Lollipop isn’t scared of Perdita. “I mean, they invoked you, and there you were in front of them, saying: Hello, would you like some gingerbread? Furthermore, that chap over there . . . the one with the tasteless shirt and the peppermint cane . . . did you know that what you’d come to think of as his abject poverty of spirit is actually MAD SWAG?”
“Well—ha-ha—OK. But Margot came too.”
And Bonnie wonders aloud whether it’s still nighttime or not.)
* * *