1001 Nights Cast

In the closet, Lusitania wakes her little brother, Moishe, once called Bismarck for safekeeping during the War. She tells him the rest of the story of when she killed the SS captain and cut his foreskin off as penance for what he did to their sister Mina.

Lusie finds two sacks of cement powder, drags them over to the dead captain, and lashes them to him. As Lusitania works, Mina watches her sister’s breasts swinging free. Lusie has never looked so beautiful—bloody and muddy, arms straining, sweat cutting pale rivulets through the caked matter on her skin. They roll the body off the pier, waiting to hear the foghorn cover the splash.

They don’t wait to catch their breath. Lusie straightens immediately, taking Mina’s cardigan from her shoulders. Dawn approaching, she can’t be seen walking around town shirtless. At the other end of the warehouse they stuff the clothes in a metal ashcan. Lusitania empties in her butane lighter, setting them on fire with what’s left. When they’re sure the blaze will burn through, Lusie and Mina walk away, arms linked. They move quietly along back streets, slowly regaining the hotel, entering through the kitchen where the morning staff pretends not to see them. They ascend to their bathroom and draw a bath. Their mother takes the knife and hammer, scrubs them clean, wraps them separately in paper, and throws them out in the hotel dumpster. Mina is given a sip of brandy, and the two girls set out to school. To be absent is to arouse suspicion.

All this Lusitania tells Moishe (once Biz) in the dusty comfort of the closet. Her skin smells of flowers and her breath smells of tobacco. She asks Biz if he understands. He doesn’t quite, but nods because he will someday. Anyway, he doesn’t want to let down this fine thing holding him, this voice-smell-feeling he loves more than anything else in the world. Then he feels her hand moving under him, feels her searching for something in the trouser pocket on which his bottom is resting. She pulls out a little chamois cloth pouch and puts it in the palm of his hand, which she then puts in the palm of her hand. She whispers in his ear, ‘Moishelein, Moishele, ma petit,’ over and over until he is melting, being raked gently over the sandpaper scruff of her purring incantation. The name he has been fighting all this time is suddenly gaining appeal.

She tells him the pouch is his now. If he opens it he’ll find nothing but a strange smelling powder—what remains of the dead SS captain’s foreskin. If he holds it when the moil does what he has to do, the pain will not diminish, but its reason will be clearer. She tells him they must go out now, that she knows he will tell no one her story. As she dresses him, and helps him blow his nose one last time, Biz resolves to do what Lusitania wants. She licks her fingers and smoothes down his hair. Then she puts her mouth on his and holds it there, humming an old lullaby. He breathes her floral tobacco scent and announces he is ready.

In the living room a table has been set up with a special cloth. He’s been dressed by Lusitania only to be undressed again and wrapped in another cloth. He has hidden the pouch tightly in his hand, feeling sweat sinking into the soft yellow chamois. Someone tries to take it away, but he hears Lusie say something, he doesn’t remember what, and it is left there.

He tries to keep his eyes on Lusitania, but a circle of men, many unknown to him, block his view. So he stares like a dead thing into the Adam’s apple of one of the men, since that is approximately where Lusie’s face was. He is shivering now, but he tries to stay still. As he plays possum, sounds fall away and an area of darkness begins to saturate the periphery of his vision.

Then everything he sees goes monochromatic, though he cannot identify the exact colour. He feels a hand gently gripping his penis and for a moment he feels a cold thread running across his foreskin. Then the cold turns hot and he feels his head dropping through his neck, plummeting down to meet the screeching pain between his legs. He swoons with fear, but the fear trips and falls and is overtaken in this unhappy race by pain. He feels blood gushing hot down the crack in his rear end. His eyes roll toward the ceiling and before he passes out he smells cinnamon and sees a large black housefly walking a tiny circle on the fresh white plaster. He wants to scream but he can’t do that and search for Lusie’s voice simultaneously. Then the darkness at the edge bursts over everything and he falls far away, down a deep hole. When he lands he is on an enormous pink pillow, his penis, still attached to his body, has turned into a lovely baby seal, and he is dancing with Mina while Lusie watches, dangling the little yellow pouch from one finger. Everyone is smiling.

He wakes in Mama’s arms. Voices come from another room, but are muffled and don’t seem to be saying anything anyway. Dull pain invades his entire lower body. When he moves his arms they don’t feel like his. He tries to say Lusitania’s name but his mouth is dry, and he croaks something so incomprehensible and pathetic that he begins to weep, silent sobs overtaking his body. He feels tears coming out of every pore of his skin. When at last he moves his hand across his face to wipe away the little monsoon that has seized him, he feels something soft and furry brush his cheek. It is the chamois pouch, still tightly gripped in his hand. Only now does he understand he is still alive.