The capital of Kazakhstan is Almaty, a name that means "Father of Apples".  This is, therefore, is the Land of the First Apple, The Place Where Apples Began.  It's easy to believe, too, since apples do grow there, in psychedelic orchards that proclaim God's tacit approval of diversity, purple pippins and tiny sour reds, orange globes and oblong greens, sweet and sour bedded down improbably, preposterously on the hillside.  In the nature of people everywhere to subscribe to the belief that home is where the world begins and ends, the people there believe their orchard to be the First Orchard, next to the Tian Shan, the Heavenly Mountains.  Once, a woman owned a box there.  And last week, when I wrote about the Ice Maiden and Marya, The Box came to my mother.

My mother called me the other day.  She had the voice- the one she has when she is thoroughly enchanted with something, when it's got all of her infatuated attention and she adores it and she's trying to figure out what it's trying to tell her.  I hear the voice when she's working on a piece. It's been a while since I've heard it.

      "I have a Box I need you to meet."

      "A box?  What kind of box?  Did you make it?"

      "No....I found The Box.  Or The Box found me.  Anyway, it's here now."  You can tell from her voice that when it's in the room, she's looking at it, and when it's not in the room she's thinking about it.

      "Well, what does it look like?"

      "It's a kind of wood.  Maybe a fruitwood?  But a pretty big tree.  It's cut out of the same piece.  It's about 11x7...that sounds small, but it's not small, it, uh, takes up the room.  The varnish is reddish, and the light...it glows.  It feels big.  Oh, and there's a crack in the lid, you can tell it split when the box was new, and it's been repaired with inlaid wood and bound with a scalloped band of metal."

    "Is it decorated with anything?"  What a question.  It was in my mother's house, wasn't it?

    "It has these symbols.  They are kind of embedded in the wood- you can just make them out in some places under the varnish.  Snakes,you know, the snakes that are eating their tails?  and plants.  Palmy things, and ferns."

     Primaeval forest and snakes?  Snakes devouring themselves?  Like worry.  Like eternity.  Like Eden and the First Trouble, circling.

   "What is that, African?" I asked, trying to tie the symbols to an image I could place.

    "No...I mean it's old, I sent it over to African Studies at the University.  I got it from a sale, and the owner had gotten it from a yacht, and the yacht had been everywhere, so I didn't know.  They told me at the Department what the symbols would mean if it were African, but it's not.  They sent it to Asian Studies, and they said it was definitiely from the Silk Road, Kajik....no, Tajik,no...that's not it...

    "Kazakhstan?  Mom, is it from Kazakhstan?"

   "Well, yeah, I guess it might be.  One of the stans.  It is really old."

    I'll bet it is.

   "Mom, that's really odd.  I've just been thinking about.."

    "Oh, I know.  I've just been really obsessed with Central Eurasia and the Silk Road.  And I really did think it might be African or from Madagascar.  The way it smells..Imean, it just smells wonderful."

     "What does it smell like to you, Mom?"

     "The outside?  Like some sort of spice, maybe a perfume, like sandalwood, but not.  The inside?  Musty, and sweet, leafy, like tobacco or something...I don't know.  I can't place it."

     I can.  I bet it smells like the inside of the first precious thing I wanted and owned, a scrimshaw snuffbox I collected when I was 10.  Like the inside of L'Epicerie du Monde, in the Marais, in Paris, where I stood at the age of 20, crying for an hour, because it was the only place left in the world that smelled like my mother's kitchen cabinet in the house where I grew up.

    "I forgot to tell you about the clasp- it's like a small Persian lady's slipper."

    "Mom?"

    "Yes, dear?"

    "Why do you think we're being pointed toward Kazakhstan?"

    The voice seeps into her conversation again.  I remember the voice from when I was too young to speak in words.  The voice means I love you,you are mine,and what on earth are you trying to tell me about you?

  "I don't know, honey.  But I bet we find out."

    I bet we do.  And I don't know if I'm fascinated by that, or terrified, or both.  I've been thinking about The Box.  If a woman opened a Box, once, and let loose all of the troubles in the world, could there be another Box, somewhere, that could capture them?  Or at least where we could find Hope, still resting safely encased in the wood of the first apple tree?

11:07:57 PM