Alex Kapsidelis
Star Anise
Excerpt
Toward the back of Lucky’s Lot, in a three-trailer cul-de-sac surrounded by dogwoods and gall-blighted oak trees, an old Airstream was shaking with some kind of piano music. No, it wasn’t quite a piano, but Sylvester couldn’t think of what else to call it. It sounded like a Renaissance fair. While every other home had been dormant, this one thumped, and he could feel the sound vibrations through his boots as he approached.
Sylvester climbed an old milk crate and peeped through the plexiglass kitchen window. Except for the stereo receiver’s blue glow and a steamy crack of golden light oozing from the bathroom, it was dark. Sylvester pushed his fingertips into the lip of the window to gain a little more purchase, and spotted a deeply soiled pair of drawers in the sink. Well, ain’t that peculiar? He kept scanning, looking for some other clue that could confirm this man as his garden’s vandal. He lost himself in a fantasy, administering justice, and didn’t hear, in a moment of quiet between songs, the shower squeaking shut.
E exited the bathroom, soaking wet and naked. Sylvester dropped to conceal himself, but lost his balance and tumbled from the milkcrate, landing ass first onto gravel. Worried he’d given himself up, he crab-walked along the edge of the trailer away from the window. Shit! Fuck I’d look like, watching a man shower? He held his breath and just as his face turned scarlet, the music came back. Louder. He gasped a few greedy breaths then scurried to a patch of milkweed to spy from cover. Ten minutes passed. The door opened and E walked out and into the woods; he didn’t bother locking the door.
E saw red and purple flower petals falling everywhere. He pictured himself coated in viscid, black licorice molasses, dripping from his body into pools of pastis. Star anise, suspended in space. An ouzo mist over an ocean of absinthe. He was salivating again, but the liquor store was in sight, and he wasn’t like he was before—a wretched apparition of himself—he was an upright man, with a little bit of money in his pockets, heading to a store that was open for patronage. Certainly open. He entered, greeting the half-sleeping proprietor by wriggling his hand overhead in a mirthful, well-mannered gesture, but had unintentionally forgone the customary welcome-mat-boot-wiping, and left a rude mud trail in his wake. He caressed every plastic jug he passed, but it was the sambuca calling. He bought four and tipped his hat to the cashier.
He suckled the first bottle on the sidewalk in the purple glow of the liquor store’s neon. The hot nectar hit his empty stomach and acid splashed his tonsils. He felt good. Good again. Hot, real hot. Across the road, the ambient light of the gas station softened from a harsh white to dazzling azures, vermilions, and peaches. A sedan rushed by, inches from his toes, and his clothes rustled and bulged in the happy exhaust. E crossed, taking long, relaxed steps, and reclining farther and farther until the back of his head was parallel to the asphalt. The sambuca bottle bobbing between his lips mooned the stars.
D Waggy worked the night shift at Lohengrin’s Gas was alone. She was reading Milton when E dragged himself feet first, flat on his back, through the double doors that from D’s vantage point appeared to have opened upon their own volition. Alarmed, she stood plumb on her stool’s front spindle and, leaning over the counter, watched as E slowly righted himself, using the display racks of sunglasses and potato chips for support. The towers wobbled, but seemed like they would hold until they shattered, sending merchandise scattershot. E took another long pull to finish the sambuca and tossed the bottle to the floor. He belched. D watched him, locked by some morbid enchantment. His lurching movements were excitingly grotesque. He staggered to the candy aisle, stuffed two of the sambuca bottles in his pants, opened the third, placed it in his mouth, gathered an armload of licorice, and loped to the exit, pushing his way through the door with the side of his head.
D, after regaining her senses, called Fuftos and Farvta Lohengrin to report the bizarre theft. They were twin brothers, identical in every aspect: face, voice, and height—both nearly seven feet tall. For a brief time, one would have been able to differentiate them by their hands. Farvta, on his right hand had Fuftos’s name, and Fuftos, also on his right hand, had Farvta’s name. The ornate script, once clear, was now faded and blown out. With a close inspection, one could see they were different, but identically illegible. D never knew who was who.
The two giants had been born to Igerna Lohengrin on September 13, sixty-six years prior to E’s theft, in the same valley where the village of Chibi Leipzig was nestled. Their father had died during their birth. Despite the doula’s request for his presence, he’d gone for a walk. Leaving from the cabin’s backdoor, he strolled barefoot through the pasture to the edge of the woods, where he startled a baby copperhead, also out for evening air. The snake bit his ankle, and he fell elbows first, into its nest—a soft, hollow log. The mother was out, but the snake’s three siblings—shocked and roused from their naps—bit his face, neck, and wrist, before slithering into the forest. This was at the height of Igerna’s labor, and his moaning was silence compared to her cries. Missing, moribund, dead—the father was far, far, far from the minds of Igerna and the doula. When the mother copperhead returned from her hunt, a fat vole bulging her midsection, she was shocked to find her nest gone. She slithered in panic around the corpse, convinced her children had been crushed. Grief-stricken, she assuaged her pain by resting through the night in the body’s fading warmth and did not stir until the morning, when she was greeted by an exceptionally hot September sun and the sound of her babies worming across dropped leaves. Reunited, the family glissaded into the woods.
Fuftos and Farvta grew in lavish spurts. So much so, that after two years Igerna ceased sewing them clothes. The boys ran naked until they were thirteen, except during the mild valley winters, when she’d drape them with sheepskins and cowhides fastened with twine. Igerna taught her boys to read and manage the farm. Antoine, her neighbor and occasional lover, taught them the fundamentals of construction and carpentry. At fifteen, they tore down the old stable and built one better positioned to the sun and wind—minimizing odors and easing maintenance. At eighteen, the twins made their initial killing. A storm destroyed the mayor’s residence up the mountain in Leipzig Proper, the county seat, and they saw an opportunity. After a four-day trek the boys, reeking, presented themselves at the town hall. The mayor, in truth, thought they weren’t up to the task, but was intimidated by their size and eagerness, so he allowed them to build—on spec.
A month in, the town’s baker noted he’d yet to see a trace of wasted effort—each brick, each piece of lumber, each joint was crafted by the giant brothers to fit the project’s exact needs. They became a curiosity. Crowds gathered daily to watch for mistakes, but the twins, working silently from a shared mental blueprint, made none. The building rose and rose, and the baker dubbed it the Soufflé of Leipzig. The twins finished after four months, and the mayor moved in on the fortieth anniversary of his taking office. Symphonies were written and banquets and galas were held for weeks to consecrate the mayor’s new home and celebrate his ruby year.
The mayor—thanks to his brother-in-law, the mayor of La Chaux-de-Fonds—had a surfeit of fine wines, liqueurs, cheeses, chocolates, and cured meats. For the sake of the festivities, he exhausted his private reserves, and then gifted the rarest bottles to the twins who, having arrived in Leipzig Proper with only their tools and overalls, returned home: famous, in identical lacquered wagons carrying alcohol, cash, chandeliers, charcoals by Benini, marbles by Algardi, rugs, and tailored suits, drawn by identical Arabian horses. They built their own mansion, twice grander than the mayor’s, above a limestone cavern, which they fitted as a wine cellar, carving shelves into the flowstone.
E was sitting behind the liquor store eating licorice, drinking his final sambuca, and counting glimmers in threes. By his own ratiocination, he figured he needed to remain seated until they came in fours, any sooner might jeopardize the coruscations delighting his vision. Each body has an allotted role with assigned talking time, listening moments, and spells of inaction, where it waits for its cue. He was silent now, but wasn’t sure if he was listening or holding. A good actor is onstage even when offstage. The anise was doing less. He felt good, but not enough to eviscerate the phantom of future need. Anise was discontent. He needed pure plant; garden plant. He started to read the moment for nuance, but stopped cold. If I shine my mind’s light on the page, the letters might act up—might make the whole molecule shift—become something else completely. No, I can’t be sure about anything if I try to know it through force. It was best not to wonder. The sambuca was oversweet, the licorice was oversweet; he kept eating and drinking.
About the Author
Alex Kapsidelis is a New York-based writer of fiction and poetry. This excerpt is from his novel Star Anise, a psychedelic abstraction of Euripides’s Bacchae, the Pelasgian creation myths, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle.