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If I Forget Thee

by "what a noble mind is here o'erthrown"

The characters Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes in this story belong to Laurie R. King. The others are my creations. I'm not sure to whom Great-Aunt Sarah Tiano and her husband, Great-Uncle Ezra, belong, since they are my interpretations of LRK's "elves," so with many thanks and great affection I give them to her.

Blinded by tears, I groped along the sides of the buildings through a purulent yellow fog roiling through the streets and alleys, clinging to walls and pavement, smelling like the anteroom to Hell. My spectacles were useless, coated with greasy dampness, but I thought I knew where I was; the corner was familiar.

On this street my elves lived and worked in their small, narrow building crowded with bolts of fabrics, mannequins, samples of garments, whirring sewing machines and hissing steam-presses. I turned the knob; the downstairs door was open. My hands were numb and would not work when I tried to grasp the banister. The pain in my stomach smote me like a thrown cobblestone, and I stumbled onto the stairs, grimly crawling one step after the other, dragging myself upwards. Write his eulogy...

The door at the top of the stairs flew open, and Ezra Tiano ran down the steps. "Shmah Yisrael!" he cried as he saw the shambling wreck toiling upwards. Directly behind him, his wife Sarah echoed his words: "Hear, O Israel!" Jews when witnessing a disaster or some awful sight commonly utter this phrase. Between them, they dragged me into their small, cluttered apartment and over by the fire. They pulled off my dank overcoat, my sodden shoes and stockings, my wet skirt and blouse, wrapping Turkish towels around me. They manoeuvred me into an armchair, and I sat. I was dimly aware of their low-voiced conversation in archaic Spanish too rapid for me to follow even at the best of times.

Sarah put her fists on her skinny hips, surveyed my head, with its sopping mess of hair, and said something that sounded extremely profane over her shoulder. Ezra muttered a reply, and handed her more towels. The kettle whistled on the stove.

Ezra brought over a mug of tea, and held it for me while I attempted to bring it close to my chattering teeth and trembling lips. He was a small man, with oval dark eyes, a mostly bald round head, and finely arched black eyebrows, which gave him a quizzical look. I managed a few sips and choked on the hot liquid laced with honey and brandy trickling down my throat. Ezra set the mug on a small side table, put his arm around my shoulders, and rubbed my back until I drew my breath. He took up the tea again: "Toma, ija," he said softly, and a wave of anguish lifted me and threw me against a rocky hillside somewhere in California. "Drink, daughter," he had said. My mother would say it, comforting me with tea when I woke with a nightmare, or suffered with a cold. My mother: I could not call her face to mind.

Sarah stood behind me, pressing my wet hair in a towel. "What happened to you, child?" she asked. I shook my head, unable to speak. Ezra proffered the tea again, and I drank some more of it. The pain in my stomach had settled into a dull throb, as if a stone lay there, pulsating. With as much will as I could muster, I looked up at the concerned faces of my two elves.

"Mourning. I'll need a black outfit, won't I, and a veil, and..."

Sarah clamped her lips together. Then she stood straight, her face composed. "We will tend to you first," she said. "Then we will see about what else you need." She was quite small and thin, with high-cheekboned features, a stylish bob of dark red hair, and she looked to be about fifty or so. Her ice-blue eyes were enormous, and abruptly I could see the resemblance to my mother, Judith.

Sarah surveyed the mess of hair in front of her, sighed, and took up a large comb of sandalwood. Where was my mother's comb? My mother had a sandalwood comb...

"If I were you I would cut off this mop," she said, sectioning off a furiously tangled skein and beginning to work the wide-toothed comb through the damp, resistant strands. "It does nothing for your appearance that would justify its being such a nuisance. No te prenda bien." It doesn't suit you.

I said nothing, working hard at sitting absolutely still under the kindly ministrations. Move, and Sarah pulled my hair without mercy. At least, I thought, I was no longer shuddering with cold and fever. Cold comfort, I chided myself. It seemed that I had been cold and wet for most of my life.

The comb glided through my hair smoothly, over and over, the last of the knots gone. Sarah set down the comb, plaited my hair loosely and secured the end with a clip. She came round and sat down in front of me on the ottoman. Wearily, I lifted my head, not quite ready for polite conversation.

"You're not used to being cared for, are you?" I stared at her. How does one answer such a question? It is similar to that old damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" I opened my mouth to reply, but a large lump that felt about the size of a lemon had formed in my throat, and I could not speak. I tried to swallow it, but it stayed stubbornly put. My face must have mirrored my surprise and discomfort.

Sarah pulled the ottoman closer to my chair, and I squirmed backwards into its depths in avoidance. She did not touch me, only sat more still than I had ever seen anyone sit (with exception of Holmes). Her ice blue eyes fixed mine. The lump remained, and to my horror, a pulse began to beat in the back of my nose and an unholy prickling began in the inner corners of my eyes. I am going to sneeze this huge lump out; I shall have no nose left, only a ragged hole, I thought, and commenced to shiver.

"Let it go," Sarah said. "Let it go, Mary."

"What? What-what should I--" I croaked. And with that, a huge outrush of air boiled up from my lungs and exploded out of my eyes, nose and mouth in a terrible wash of tears surrounded by an unearthly wail. The world went black. My stomach flooded up into and then out of my mouth, something trickled down my legs. My ears were filled with roaring.

I saw a child in the black distance, a thin, small child. She had wrapped herself in her long, tangled hair. She was crying, calling out to someone: "Don't leave me! Please, come back, don't leave me alone!" Flashes of brilliant light stung my eyes; I felt burning heat, then cold. The child seemed older. She read from a book. She sat down on a rock. When she stood up, she was taller, thinner, with two plaits over her shoulders. She wore serious little round glasses, and a man's old suit, a tattered overcoat and a boy's cap. She sat at a desk, studying. She took books from a shelf, she read, alone, at night, by the light of a single candle, holding her book up to her nose. Then, she was lying on a heap of rocks, broken and bloody, her glasses shattered and her hair torn from her scalp. I heard her cry out: "Papa! Papa! Come back, don't leave me alone!" Two voices cried the pitiful plea: the younger child I had first seen, then this older child. Then she rose, scarred and gaunt, with immense dignity, and walked away.

I was thrown back into myself abruptly by a pounding ache in my chest. I forced my eyelids open, and I was still in the deep chair in the Tianos' flat. I was dressed in a soft, voluminous robe. In each hand, I held a linen handkerchief, and Sarah was changing the folded cold compress that lay on my forehead.

"An hour and a half, you've been fighting," she said. "I don't know what you fought, but I would say that you won." I sat up weakly.

"Thank you," I whispered. "My psychiatrist would have said that I had a flash-back, to the time my parents were killed. She calls it 'separation anxiety.'"

Sarah took my hand between hers. "That is not all of it, Mary. You came here -- you said, mourning -- now you will tell us what happened."

I felt numb and sick, and it was agony to speak, but I made myself do it. "Holmes may be dead," I heard myself say, as if from a great distance. "He was pursuing two men who had murdered our client's wife, and the last I saw of him he was grappling with one of them, in between two train cars as the train pulled out of the station. They had pistols. There was no sign of him in the train yards, nor in the countryside between here and the first station stop. I had Scotland Yard combing the area. He's gone over a week, since Friday last, and no word to anyone."

Ezra stood at Sarah's side, his hand on her shoulder, listening.

"This is perhaps the twentieth time something similar has happened, and every time, Holmes turns up just when I have given him up for dead. This time, it's different; I can't stop searching for him. I've telephoned Sussex a dozen times and Scotland Yard twice that. Mrs Hudson has seen neither hide nor hair of him nor heard a word. I walked the streets of London today praying that I would be overtaken by a dilapidated old hansom cab pulled by a knock-kneed, spavined old horse and driven by a disreputable cockney with a fake gold tooth. Or that an evil-smelling old beggar with one eye would accost me. I am afraid that I am losing my mind; in between worrying about Holmes, I find myself dozing even standing up, and in that sleep -- oh, in that terrible sleep I am back in California, at the accident, begging my father not to leave me."

I thought of Mycroft, my brother-in-law, and John Watson, two men who had become more of family to me than anyone else. I had sent telegrams to both of them but had received no replies. Did they know where he was? Mycroft must know. There were times, I recalled, that Mycroft did not know. And with that, the rock-hard pain slammed into my stomach again, and I bent over my knees, groaning.

"I can't stand it any more. It's Holmes' way to become absorbed in what he is doing at any given time. I've known that since we met: he goes away for what is to be three days and returns two weeks later. He leaves the cottage dressed to go to London for the afternoon and returns four days later, wounded, bloody, gasping for breath and wearing rags. And then he refuses medical attention. I thought I had gotten used to his comings and goings -- I thought I trusted him implicitly. It seems lately that no matter how much I trust him, I'm filled with terror every time he goes away. It's been getting steadily worse for the past year, and now, this."

Sarah pulled her shawl about her shoulders. "Many men of valour take no notice of their infirmity, for it is as you say, they are consumed by their task. You understand that Holmes can care for himself -- you know that; your mind knows it; you trust that he will return safely. But your heart doesn't understand. It seems that it is one of the afflictions women suffer, to wait for their men, to fear for their lives while they are away doing what they must do and to continue their own lives with dignity and purpose until they return."

"All women are not the wife and partner of Sherlock Holmes," I said bitterly.

"Life is about loss," Sarah replied. "It is taught to us, right from the beginning, that from dust we came and to dust we return. But," she continued, "we are also taught, also from the beginning, that our Father saves a place for us at His right hand, and when we leave this world of blood and earth, we return to the True World, arets ha-emeth, of which we may, if we are fortunate, have glimpses during our lifetime. You, of all people, must remember this. All your years of study and devotion have led you to the True World."

"Yes," I said. "It has been my abode of choice, and as far back as I can remember, I ran to its sanctuary when I could not endure this place."

"Scholars all through our history have known the True World," Sarah stated. "Shall we be surprised that they would rather study than anything else? That they must be reminded to eat and sleep and watch where they are walking lest they fall over stones and crack their heads?"

I smiled, recognising myself as I wandered over Sussex Downs, my nose in a book, my head in Virgil, my consciousness in another, and truer, world. Was it any wonder that I fell over Holmes and had ever since been cracking my head?

"Before you met Sherlock Holmes, your solace and refuge was in study. Your mother and father, may they rest in peace, died as you entered your teen-age, a difficult time for any child. By the time your father's cousin in America heard of their deaths, your aunt, your mother's stepsister, had been chosen as your guardian. I could do nothing: Ezra and I had been in the Orient, buying fabrics, and we heard nothing until we returned." She pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders. "It had all been arranged, you were in Sussex with your aunt, who would have nothing to do with us. It was not surprising that you soon found refuge in the order and logic of study."

"Holmes is as much a part of me as I am of myself," I said. "I was only fifteen when I met him, and he became everything to me."

He was more than that. There was all that strength to push against, deeply satisfying to the old soul I was inside. I could exercise all facets of my being with him from humour to malevolence. I could laugh at and with him, loathe him in the same breath wherein I loved him. To lose him would be, once again, to lose my life, for so much of what I was, was his creation, his spirit in me. He was the water that made me grow and blossom. Without it I should die.

Ezra had been puttering about in the tiny kitchen, and now he put his head around the corner and called, "A la mesa!" Come to the table. Sarah took my hand as I stood up shakily, and we walked to the small round table, which had been set with a richly embroidered cloth, Moroccan pottery and heavy silver utensils. There was a large loaf of bread in front of Ezra's place, and a tureen emitting savoury smells stood in the centre of the table.

Ezra blessed the bread and cut thick slices, sprinkling one with salt and handing it to me. My eyelids prickled with tears: the loving gesture of breaking bread and offering it with salt is ancient, and I had not seen it since my father presided at our family dinner, the night before his death. Sarah poured red wine into goblets, intoning the blessing for wine at top speed; then she ladled soup into bowls. Not trusting my stomach, I took a small spoonful and was enveloped in the fragrance of chicken broth thick with vegetables, rice and tiny meatballs with an exotic spicy flavour.

Before I knew it I had emptied my bowl, accepted a second helping and put away two slices of bread with olive oil to hold it all together. Sarah cleared the table, waving away my offer of help, and shooed me over to the fire. I felt heavy, sleepy, calm in the close embrace of family.

"See what I have," Ezra sat down next to me on the settee, holding a thick photograph album. "You may know some of these people, but maybe not; come and meet them." Together, we looked through the pages of the album. Some of the photographs were so old that one could see the neck-brace that the subjects leaned against to keep them from moving during the long film exposure times. There was the grandfather I had never known, Harold Klein, my mother's father, and his wife, Rebecca Levi. Sarah was a younger cousin of Rebecca Levi, my mother's mother. There were many pictures of the Levi family, including Great-Grandfather Salomon Levi and his six brothers and sisters, his wife, Perla Cardozo, and their four children; various aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and their friends and family. One uncle was pictured reclining on a lavishly fringed sofa, wearing a fez and feeding a monkey with grapes. Two sisters, far from identical twins, wore heavily embroidered Turkish robes and what must have been a hundredweight of gold chains, bracelets, earrings and other jewellery apiece; they were accompanied by two young men who looked distinctly uncomfortable, wearing tight-fitting English suits and bowlers which were too small.

The fire, Ezra's soft voice, the faces of the ancestors conspired to weight my eyelids, and my head drooped. Ezra said something to Sarah; again, I could not follow it, but I surmised that it had something to do with sleep. Ezra led me over to the long, wide sofa against a far wall, and Sarah covered me over with a soft blanket. Her small, calloused hand passed gently over my forehead, and I slept for the first time in almost a week. Dimly I heard the sounds around me, a dog barking, someone singing raucously in the street, a telephone ringing, Ezra and Sarah's whispered conversation. Then I sank down into a soft, cushioned oblivion.

I swam slowly up to the surface of consciousness, unwilling to open my eyes. An arm braced me to a half-sitting position, and the rim of a teacup touched my lips. I sipped and swallowed. The teacup retreated. I turned my head, and my face touched a warm linen-covered shoulder, the shoulder I had known for almost ten years. Holmes put his arms around me, and I could feel him trembling. I sat up and put him back: "Holmes, you are in for a right drubbing," said I, pulling his pocket-handkerchief out of his jacket, wiping my streaming eyes, and blowing my nose loudly. He pulled me closer, holding me tightly.

"If I had died without telling you that you are more precious to me than life itself, it would have all been in vain," he whispered.

"Well, Holmes," I answered with asperity, "that being said, please tell me how you were occupied in a manner that had me contemplating writing your eulogy yet again. If you disappear on me again, with no word, I shall have no recourse but to murder you myself so I will at least know where you are."

Holmes leaned the edge of his jaw against my forehead. "That you should suffer so," he said, "I can't bear it."

I sat straight upright. "Then don't do it again!" I shouted.

"Olé!" cried Sarah, applauding loudly and then disappearing into the kitchen.

Holmes put one arm under my knees, lifted me and set me upon his lap. I kicked him smartly in the shins, stood up, teetering wildly, and grabbed a floor lamp for support. "I was going to write your eulogy, and in it I was going to say that you were wholly self-absorbed, indifferent to all but your own ends, and that you were better served had you not survived Reichenbach Falls."

Humbly, Holmes stood up and held his arms out to me. "At least hear my defence," he said. "I have been self-absorbed, yes; arbitrary, domineering and insufferable, but with it all, I have loved you with all my heart and soul, suffered your slings and arrows, unreasonableness and rockheaded stubbornness and indulged you mightily in anything you wanted, whether you asked for it or not."

I stood still. "Then indulge me in this," I said. I was aware, out of the corner of my eye, of Sarah peering around the edge of the kitchen door, and of Ezra trying to pull her back into the kitchen.

"Promise me solemnly," I said, "that you will not endeavour to perform the feats of derring-do which you did when you were in your forties and fifties. You are no longer Douglas Fairbanks; you will have to make do as Ronald Colman."

Holmes stood stock-still, his mouth open, an expression of outrage and dismay on his face. Then, he broke, and bent over, howling with laughter, that full-throated laugh that always surprised me. He strode to my side, bent me over his arm and, in a very creditable imitation of Colman, said, "Well, my dear Nora, it's off to the Pyramids again for us, hey?"

With that, a double shout of laughter resounded from the kitchen. Ezra came out, bearing a bottle of Champagne and a number of glasses. "Now, now, let us have a little celebration. I think, Mr. Holmes, you had better heed Mary's warning."

"At least you have been likened to a romantic hero, Sherlock," Sarah said, coming in with a tray of coffee cups.

I leaned against my still-chuckling husband, considering whether a final box on the ear was warranted, and told him so. We sat down together on the settee. "Holmes, if you are wondering why I fell apart this time, where I have been stoic throughout your earlier escapades, I will tell you: what should happen to us if you were to be killed?

Holmes opened his mouth to reply, and then shut it with a snap. He turned towards me, his grey eyes narrowed over a question. I nodded. And with that, the Great Detective held me against his heart, tears running down his lean cheeks, and placed his hand against my still-flat stomach, and was rewarded with a stout kick from what was surely the heel of the redoubtable creature we would greet in another five months.