The Candlelit Soul

Rodia placed a cup of warm tonic before her, then measured a small spoonful of bromide powder into it and stirred. He watched the liquid swirl clockwise, until it dissolved completely.

“This tonic will numb the dread and loosen your tongue.”

The candle between them began to dwindle while the last of the evening light crept through the dusty window, mingling with the candle’s soft orange glow. Together, the two lights barely held back the shadows gathering in the barren wooden room. There they sat around an old table.

“I can’t…” she said, shaking her head, fighting back the disgust of conjuring up the memory. Her eyelids were swollen from days of weeping since that morning, and still, the tears sat ready behind her eyes. Her hands trembled as she seemed unsure where to put them.

Rodia slipped two fingers into his waistcoat pocket and drew out his silver pocket watch.

“It will take two minutes before you start to feel it. Close your eyes, and when I tell you to begin, tell me what you see,” Rodia said gently.

A worn leather satchel lay open on the wooden table, filled with charcoal and pencils. Beside it lay a blank sheet of paper. Rodia watched her swallow air, trying to steady the involuntary heaving of her shoulders.

At the top of the page, he wrote:

October 29, 1894

Village of Verkhnyaya Kolva

Summoned by the Administration of Krasnokamsk.

Rodia glanced at his pocket watch. “Two minutes have passed.”

“Sveta… my charcoal and pencils will capture your every word. Just close your eyes. Let your mind walk back to that moment, everything you see, hear, feel. No detail is unimportant.”

He studied her face; the slight sway of her head told him the mixture had taken hold. Her hands, restless moments ago, were now still, gripping the table.

“And his face,” Rodia said softly. “I know that will be the hardest part. Look hard. Look deep.” Her face went pale. Her eyes seemed to say that too much was being asked of her. She breathed in, then out.

“Close your eyes, Sveta…” Rodia reminded her.

Silence settled over the room. The only sounds were the wind outside and the old wooden izba shifting as if it were still settling into the earth.

“My first question is the easiest: what was the address where this took place?”

“45B Gogolov,” Sveta whispered.

“Walk me through the day,” he said.

“It was early morning…” Sveta said. “The light had just climbed over the earth. I was walking my normal route, going home. I had two buckets of water on my koromyslo, drawn from the well along the road.”

Rodia sat listening, his hands still, his pencil poised above the paper.

“The ground…was wet with morning dew. The hem of my dress became soaked on the grass…” She stopped. “This is nonsense. What am I saying?” She wiped tears that had involuntarily made its way down her cheek.

Rodia handed her a white handkerchief, and said “Here... take a little more tonic, if you need it.”

“No… I am okay, my head feels light.” She sighed.

Steadying herself with her arms on her chair, she continued, “The sky burned orange. We always said a red morning sky was a bad omen. I walked into the house. It was quiet. I thought nothing of it. I poured the water into the barrels and hung the yoke outside. The quiet was unnatural… Come to think of it, I had never once heard the floorboards, but that morning they announced my every step.

“The hair on my arms began to stand. I could feel something… wrong. A presence that wasn’t right.”

She clutched her chest for a moment hugging herself tightly.

“The hallway was dark, just the morning glow. And in the corner of my eye, in my brother’s room, I saw a man.”

Rodia’s pencil touched the page.

“His hair was matted. A tangle of gray and brown… mostly brown. Curled and wild, as if he had worn a cap for too long.”

Rodia’s fingers began to move, the charcoal whispering across the page.

“Stay at this moment,” he said. “Keep it still as a day… see it as you would a portrait.”

“There was a nervous excitement about him, as if he wasn’t moving but shaking all over. His lips were moving, saying something yet nothing at all. His face was pale and gaunt, his eyes blue, with eyelashes ladies like us would only dream of—his one redeeming feature.”

She shook her head in disappointment, as if tasting something bitter.

“There is something I left out….”

“What? What did you leave out?” Rodia asked.

Her face showed her revulsion.

“He was on all fours.”

Rodia looked up, saying, “On all fours?”

“Yes, he was crawling across the floor like an animal. His fingers were thin and dirty, his palms black with something. I didn’t understand what he was doing… the blood…”

She closed her eyes tighter, shaking her head as if hating the memory. They sat in silence as her head swayed back and forth.

“Then I saw the flies.”

Rodia’s pencil paused.

“They were everywhere. On the floor. Dead. Hundreds of them. Buzzing even towards me. And he was picking them up.”

She placed her hands over her mouth, then held one hand up, as if picking something invisible off the table.

“One at a time.”

“What was he doing with them?” Rodia asked.

Sveta mimed what she was about to reveal, then faintly whispered.

“He was… he was eating them.”

The charcoal snapped in Rodia’s fingers and he looked up astonished.

“He would pick up a dead fly between his fingers, put it in his mouth, chew it… then reach for another. There was an unsavory smell of unwashed skin. His beard gave him a truly feral appearance, as if he had walked straight out of Preobrazhenskaya Psychiatric Hospital.” Her eyes remained closed, her face grimacing at the memory.

“Describe the beard,” Rodia said glad to be back on track.

The pencil scratched against the paper.

“It was long around his chin, wavy and black with some gray. But there was something unwholesome about it. Patchy. Like wild weeds in places, then balding to nothing but sallow skin in others.”

“Hold still,” Rodia said. “Look into that face… what did you see?”

“In his hands… a knife. Something was dripping from it…”

Her shoulders began to shake again.

“Don’t look at the knife,” Rodia said quietly. “Move your eyes from it. Go directly to his face. Only his face. Tell me what his eyes were like.”

“They were angry, with a laughter of mockery within them. No mercy. I saw more humanity in feral cats. Also… seemed like a web of red lines were around his blue eyes.” She adjusted her head-scarf, and one leg started bouncing with nervous energy.

“They were not symmetrical… one larger than the other, sitting slightly lower, as though his face had been pulled crooked. His forehead was broad, deeply lined, making his eyes look sunken. His nose was thin, nothing defining. And his lips kept moving…”

She opened her eyes. “But now he was speaking.”

The tallow candle almost died. Rodia immediately reached into his satchel, took out several more candles, and lit them one by one, placing them around the table. The room brightened with that orange glow. Sveta closed her eyes again, moving her head back and forth slowly, in deep thought, still under the influence of the tonic.

“Now,” he said, returning his pencil to the page. “Tell me what he said.”

“Not really talk… I misspoke… he began to sing, at first,” Sveta said, looking as if she were about to open her eyes.

“Keep your eyes shut,” Rodia reminded her.

Her closed eyes clamped even tighter. Her face twisted into a scowl.

“He was singing in riddles.”

“Singing?” Rodia asked, unintentionally.

“Yes… It rhymed—something about catching spirits and flies and the taste of earth.”

Her lips trembled and she began to hum the tune.

“I began to back away when he smiled… flies buzzed around me.”

Rodia looked up from his portrait as sweat began to bead on his forehead, and for the first time his palms felt wet as he started shading again with charcoal.

“His face—back to that, please,” Rodia asked.

“His face was shrunken… as if his bones were trying to push through his skin... the look you get from starvation… I’d seen that look before. And one mole on the bottom lip.” She pointed where it was on her face.

“His teeth were mostly rotten or missing, making his lips sag a bit… but I started to back away down the hall. My brother… he was not moving. On the floor, face down.”

"My brother..." Her voice cracked. "My sweet younger brother..." She whispered... "was born in that very room."

Her shoulders began to heave once again, and she rocked back and forth slowly on the chair with her hands covering her face.

Rodia looked up and discerned that her emotions were beginning to rise hotter than the tonic. She removed her hands, then opened her eyes and looked directly at him.

“He sang a familiar tune, of all things… Not correctly, but over and over… ‘Take pity, oh my dear soul, on this young lad’s dear shoulder.’ And then he stood up. He had a knife in his hand.”

“What then?” Rodia asked.

“I ran.”

Rodia kept drawing, asking a few more questions as she supplied details about the man’s face and build. After what could have been an hour, he finally stopped.

“I am done. Can you tell me if this is him?” It was already almost dark, so Rodia positioned the candles to illuminate the paper.

Sveta jumped up and held her mouth as if in horror. “You make their souls appear as they truly are on paper… That… that is him.”

Rodia, taking her reaction as confirmation, said, “You confirm this? Look at his face carefully. Anything missing? Think hard.”

She glanced once again at the portrait. “Yes, that is him. His soul is tethered to that paper.” Sveta looked away, covering her eyes.

“Sign this portrait with your name—it’s for the magistrate. I will need to talk to one other who might have been a witness to this event, your neighbor.”

“Yes, babushka Maria. 52A Gogolov Street.” Sveta wiped at her eyes. “She lives alone, since her husband passed. She might have seen something.”

He handed her the pencil, and Sveta looked at the picture, then turned her face away as she signed it. Rodia placed the paper into his satchel.

“It will take two weeks. You will be contacted if we learn anything. I am sorry for your loss.” Rodia bowed politely, and before he departed, he stopped at the doorframe and glanced back at Sveta. She was staring at the candles with a blank expression on her face.

He had drawn the faces of murderers, people who had done things far worse than what Sveta was describing, but something in her voice, the tremble and inflection, the fear within her, made his own stomach churn. He wondered what this work was slowly making of him.

“Do you need help getting home?”

“No…” Sveta said absently. Then she turned toward him. “Do you believe in demons?”

Rodia studied her for a moment. Her blue eyes still looked soft in the orange glow of the candlelight.

“I am inclined to, at times, based on what I have seen in my work. Sometimes… it’s just insanity.”

He reached for the door, then stopped.

“Is there anything else you wish to tell me, ma’am?”

"Just to see that portrait one more time." Sveta clutched a cross around her neck and then turned back to looking at the candle.

"To make sure... indeed it is him."

Rodia hesitated, then placed it on the table once more.

Sveta didn't reach for it right away. She only looked, much longer than she had the first time, her eyes drifting slowly over the face as if discerning something written beneath the charcoal. She traced her finger along the portrait's face. Then, gradually, her eyebrows drew upward into a V, and she began to sway, as if she'd had more tonic.

"Are you all right?" Rodia asked. "Let me walk you home tonight."

Rodia watched her as she pushed the portrait toward him.

"You want to hear what he sang?"

"If it would make you feel better..."

Six little flies came riding on the Eastern wind,

Six little mouths opened wide,

The swine ran squealing toward the big blue sea,

And something little swam inside of me.

She looked up at Rodia, fighting back something, a struggle showing on her face.

"I told you about the silence, the presence, the flies..." She closed her eyes once again, grimacing.

He looked at the table. The candlelight made the drawn figure seem almost to move. He told himself it was only the flame. Her face had gone terribly still and stern.

"I forgot to mention—they flew inside of me as well."

He stood in silence, the sound of the evening wind hitting the izba.

"What do you mean, Sveta?" Rodia asked.

She didn't answer. She stood, taking her head-scarf off and placing it on the table. Her long black hair frizzed around her face.

Rodia stepped back. She began to hum the same tune as before, then blew out the candles, one by one.