by Ben Dolnick
Yes.
Remember when we sat at the top of that hill in the sun eating a Kit Kat and said this was the happiest we’d ever be, that there was nothing else we’d ever need.
Yes.
Did you mean to stop the car?
I think so.
Did you think I would jump in the window?
I don’t know.
Are we here as punishment?
I don’t know.
Are we going to die?
Yes.
Do you forgive me?
Yes.
We were so young.
Yes.
The mistake was so small.
Yes.
The disaster was so big.
Yes.
My tears tasted salty and thin. I was rising, by that point, the sound was coming back into the world; I kept trying to open my eyes and realizing they were already open. My tongue was so dry it felt swollen. I could feel Thomas’s shoulder against mine; he seemed to be propping me up; he was tipping water into my mouth. I had to struggle to keep myself from falling asleep.
“Now are we dead?”
“No.”
I coughed and swallowed water.
The doors to the rooms where I’d been were still open, but I was back now in the ordinary, semi-ordinary, rooms of my brain; I didn’t know whether an hour had passed or a week. I felt as if I were treading water in a pool that was exactly the same temperature as my body. I was both as heavy as the mountain we were trapped in and completely weightless. The roaring behind the walls was louder than it had ever been, and I was trying to say this to Thomas, trying to ask him whether he heard it too, but I couldn’t remember what words to use, and it was too loud anyway.
Which may explain why the voices, when they finally sounded above us, seemed like such tiny things, negligible, raindrops against a window. I don’t think I understood what was happening, that something was happening, until I looked up and saw light like a steel spike falling toward us; or maybe it wasn’t until the rope, the wet rough knot of it, touched my arm. I just know that there was a lot of clattering and talking and then there was an era of people grabbing me, pulling me, as if I were a ball of dough, and then that I had my face buried in someone’s chest, and I was clinging to a rope so hard that my eyes were flashing white. Afterward, once we were outside, they told me I kept insisting that we be careful with Thomas’s leg, and that I kept asking him if he was OK, asking if he was with us, saying I was sorry, but I don’t remember any of that.
What I do remember, the first thing that registers as an actual memory, rather than as a kind of mental oil rainbow, is walking, with my arm slung over Ranjiv’s shoulder, up out of the cave and realizing, once the brightness had begun to resolve itself, that it was pouring rain. Standing there on a ledge just outside the mouth of the cave, like the discoverer of a new continent, dripping, squinting, shaking, I felt newborn; I felt like Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from spare parts.
Ranjiv had been having doubts all the way back to Akki’s village, it turned out. He’d almost turned around a dozen times before he’d finally decided what he was going to do. He’d told Akki, who’d bought rope and lights and borrowed a little Soviet-era ATV sort of thing from a nearby village. It had, according to the clocks aboveground, been just over thirty-six hours since I’d gone in, and almost twice that long for Thomas.
But I didn’t know any of that yet. I just knew that I somehow wasn’t dead. And that the rain sounded like a thousand drumrolls. It might have been the contrast to the sensory deprivation of being underground, but I think it really was the kind of rainstorm you only experience two or three times in your life, the kind of rain during which you think, I guess the world’s just going to wash away. There wasn’t, by the time they’d crammed us into the back of the ATV and covered us with a tarp, a thread of my clothing, including my shoes, that wasn’t soaked. I was wetter than if I’d jumped into a swimming pool. I heard a voice I didn’t recognize that must have been the car-owning neighbor’s. We had a four-hour drive ahead of us and every muscle in my body hurt. Someone had put a horsehair blanket under my head, and that was soaked too. I kept calling out to Thomas, thinking he might have fallen out of the car on one of the bumps, and he kept being just a few inches away, wedged and shivering next to me. The only food Akki and the monks had brought with them were crackers that tasted like pepper. The rain was so loud that we couldn’t have talked even if we’d tried. It seemed inconceivable that we’d ever get there; it seemed possible at any moment that we’d flip onto our side and be washed away.
But the thought that kept floating to the top of my mind like an ice cube in a glass, even as I shivered and shook and tried to bite the cracker someone held against my lips, was: What a narrow range of weathers we have in mind when we describe a day as beautiful! Water is falling, in gouts and cups and gushes, from the sky, onto us, who can feel and hear and smell and taste it. What a lock! What a key! Breathable air, spread out in every direction. Trees and dirt and rocks for us to look at, teeth with which to chew our food. This is most of what I was thinking, if you can call it thinking, all the way back to Akki’s front door, where it was nighttime, and where Shima greeted us with dry blankets and scalding tea. This, or something like this, is even what I was thinking when they finally changed me into dry pajamas and eased Thomas and me into side-by-side beds, and I fell into a sleep that was almost a hibernation. Akki’s disappointment, the questions I couldn’t even try to answer, a look at the shaking, bruised wrecks of our bodies, came much later.
Before I fell asleep, though, or before I lost touch completely with what was happening, I said to Thomas, or thought to Thomas, “Are we still in the cave?”
“No.”
“So we lived?”
“I think so, yes.”
What I felt, when I finally believed it, wasn’t entirely relief. Or if it was, it was a different sort of relief from any I’d ever felt before. Because I remembered now what I’d been thinking when we were being saved, when Ranjiv was reaching down and lifting me up like a sack of feathers. It was the strangest thing; it felt, even as I knew that this meant life, and food, and light, like being handed the wrong jacket at a party. I’d tried to say something. There had been a misunderstanding. We didn’t need rescuing at all.
· Four ·
From:
To:
Date: Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 3:28 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. I feel like an astronaut asking to get together for coffee after a mission. I just wanted to see how you’re holding up. I’m weird but all right—panicky, elated, weepy, etc. Give me a call or write sometime. I’ve got lots of time to talk and very few people to talk to.
From:
To:
Date: Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 5:34 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. I was just writing to pester you about my last email when your parents called.
Your mom says you agreed to try the hospital. I think (a) you’re doing the right thing, and (b) it probably won’t feel like the right thing at first. So (not that you’re looking for my advice on this) bear with it.
Things with me have been more normal the past couple of weeks. At first I was spending too much time walking around the streets by my apartment, staring at people, sitting by the Barnes & Noble fountain, studying the brickwork. I thought maybe I’d inhaled poison in the cave, that I might end up the happy, slow-talking homeless person of Bethesda.
I’ve been writing back and forth with your parents a little (I hope that’s OK). They asked me to come over for dinner, but I’ve been putting them off. Pretty sure they just want to thank me and hear more about India, etc., but I’m worried I’d blurt out the whole story of the Batras. Have you thought about telling them? I’m not sure what would come of it (I’m not sure about anything), but part of me thinks it would be good for everybody.
Tell me how you’re doi
ng once you’re settled in.
From:
To:
Date: Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 9:58 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. You know how you can tell when someone’s on the other end of the phone, even if they don’t talk? Well, I’m OK with you not responding to my emails. Your mom says your computer use is limited, and I can tell (I think) that you’re reading them.
I got a note from your dad yesterday, who says you’re looking good. I’m going to call the hospital as soon as I send this to find out about visiting hours, etc.
Not much doing with me. I got that apartment in Foggy Bottom. I’ve been trying to learn how to cook—so far mostly roast chicken and omelets, for some reason. My mom’s been sending me three recipes a day from the Food Network (Carving the tops of the scallions might seem like a lot of work, but your guests will love you for it!).
Hope you’re good. Carve a scallion.
From:
To:
Date: Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 8:09 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. Kind of a weird question. I told you about that girl I was dating, Sonia—things have gotten semiserious. She’s in her residency at GW, very smart, funny, etc. I’ve said “I love you” to an embarrassing number of girlfriends, but this is the first time I can picture meaning something by it other than “Oh my God, please don’t break up with me!” Anyway, I was thinking I might want to tell her about Mira. Would very much appreciate your thoughts.
What else. I’m still listening to those Guruji-lite audiobooks. I hide them in the glove compartment whenever someone other than Sonia’s going to be in the car. Still not used to hearing these magnetic poetry sentences coming out of my speakers. We only truly suffer when we resist what is. Our capacity to love others is in perfect proportion to our capacity to love ourselves. Better than whatever I was living by before, though. (If something bad might happen, think about it. Never let an email arrive without witnessing its appearance.)
Hope you’re good. Detonate a gut-bomb for me.
From:
To:
Date: Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:41 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. Good to see you last week. You do look good (probably not something we’ve ever said to each other). Didn’t know how to tell you in person, but I told Sonia about Mira. She was really good about it. I had to stop halfway through because I thought I’d burst a blood vessel. She’s the first person I’ve ever told, it occurred to me. We were driving somewhere the other day and she said, “Wait, so is this why we never go on Connecticut?” I honestly hadn’t realized.
She said she thought I should call the other driver. We got into a fight about it; I said there was no point, she said it was cruel, I said he’d probably moved by now, etc., etc. I’d pretty much decided not to, but then I found myself searching the Post archives for Charles Lowe and before Sonia came home the other night I was dialing a 202 number. I know I should have told you about it before I did it, but I didn’t want to wait. The conversation was short, like maybe five minutes. He didn’t believe who I was at first. He refused to see me. He sounded like someone who’d grown up in New York or New Jersey, someone with a scary dog.
“You and your friend wrecked my fucking life, you know.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“I should wreck yours too. I could do it with one phone call.”
“I understand. I’m sorry.”
He went away for long enough that I thought he might be making his one life-wrecking phone call, but then he came back and he sounded like he was drinking something. “You know, that girl, she doesn’t belong on my conscience.”
“No.”
“That family, they were good to me, they believed me. No charges, nothing like that.”
“I know.”
Before he hung up, he said something so kind I almost dropped the phone. “You guys were fucking kids. Just fucking kids.”
And that was it.
So he’s not going to call the police or kill us or anything. And I think talking to him did something good for me. I read somewhere there are two kinds of guilt: the sweaty, frantic, four-in-the-morning kind, where you almost wish you’d get caught, and a quieter, sadder kind, where it feels like you’re sitting on a rainy beach, looking out at the water. I feel like calling him might have pushed me from the first kind to the second. (I should probably go easy on the audiobooks, it occurs to me.)
From:
To:
Date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 6:14 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. I’m just back from visiting you. I came there meaning to tell you something, and I managed to spend the whole hour not doing it. Much easier to talk about Sonia and law school applications, it turns out. Maybe you got Raymond’s note too (I’m not sure if he’d have your email, actually) but Sri Prabhakara is dead. He died last week. He was ninety or so, and he had a heart attack in his sleep. There’s a service for him at the center in a couple of weeks. I couldn’t think of how to say it, but I should have told you. I’m sorry.
From:
To:
Date: Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 9:14 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. Reassure me the phone line isn’t dead, OK? I can’t tell if it’s me being paranoid or an actual change (me being paranoid’s usually a pretty good bet), but I’ve been getting a weird feeling. Things are good/normal with me.
From:
To:
Date: Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 8:44 PM
Subject: re: greetings
Adam—
I hope this finds you well. Your mother tells us you’ve got a serious girlfriend—this is, I know, just the kind of thing twentysomethings most like for their friends’ parents to discuss in the lobbies of movie theaters. Anyway, bring her by the house sometime and we promise to feed you well and embarrass you minimally.
Some fretful Thomas news—he’s still in the hospital, but lately threatening to check himself out (Kafka ghostwrote the laws regarding committing an adult against his will, I’m fairly sure). Also—and please don’t repeat this to him, since he seems to have taken his correspondence with you as one of his refuges from all the medico-parental aspects of his life—his doctor told us this morning that he seems not to be taking his pills. Unsure how new a development this is, but alarm bells are jangling in Sally and me. He’s had the usual litany of complaints with the pills—fuzzy-headedness, bloatedness, etc.—but they were seeming to do the job, taking the more worrisome items off his mental menu. And lately those items have been creeping back, so we’d already been concerned: lots of ordinary words used in unordinary ways—becoming, seeing, falling, opening. Mainly it’s been a look, though, which I’m sure you became acquainted with in India—a strong impression of having his thoughts on matters over the horizon, which is, the doctors tell us, precisely the wrong place for them to be.
We’ve already imposed on you more than anyone could reasonably—or unreasonably—ask, but I wonder if you’d be willing to keep writing to him, visiting him, etc., and if you could—if you think it’s warranted—reassure us about whether there’s been a change, whether the story seems to you about to tip back into crisis. We’ve come to trust your vision in all this much more than our own, and to a certain extent even more than the doctors’. I think there’s a sport in making authority figures wring their hands, and Thomas has become all too skilled at it. My sense is that there’s less nonsense between the two of you, and that you might be able to tell us whether this is the sort of thing that could be cleared up with some family sessions and pharmacological tweaks, or if it’s something, again, entirely other.
Fretfully,
Richard
From:
To:
Date: Wed, May 5, 201
0 at 5:07 PM
Subject: (no subject)
Hey. You probably already know this but I tried visiting you yesterday. The desk person told me you or your doctors had put in a no-visitors note, which is totally fine, of course, but I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. Things are good with me. It’s Sonia’s birthday, so about to spend a painful amount of money on dinner. Let me know how you’re doing.
From:
To:
Date: Sun, May 9, 2010 at 1:15 PM
Subject: re: (no subject)
Adam,
I’m grateful for your emails, for your visits, I understand the feeling of duty, I don’t dismiss it, I only hope you realize the things my parents tell you are not the actual matters, they talk to doctors, gorge on gossip, the only course is to nod and murmur and keep things simple, life as a series of chores, a list to be dispatched, one second after another. I’m not complaining, not entirely complaining, their concern is misguided but not malicious, I was going to go home, but now I won’t, the being watched is too much, and the simplicity here does me good, it keeps me settled, I don’t feel fears, the fears I feel are not so full of hidden edges, the last drops of medicine will be out of me soon. What I want to tell you, the only thing I want to tell you, is not for my parents, is not to reassure you, I won’t be living an ordinary life, renting an apartment, tiptoeing around what happened in India, riding the Metro, telling people all is well. We did a terrible thing, I won’t say accident, we owe it to her not to waste it. What I want to say is that for the first twenty-seven years of our lives we were asleep, we were having bad dreams. Sleep is a vault, we dream inside it, weaving what sense we can from the scratches, the scrapes that make it to us from outside. I hope, I trust, your dreams are better now. I know you’re happy, I read your letters, I’ve seen your eyes, your trimmed nails, your shirts that someone else picked out. What you felt in the cave, I held your limbs as they twitched, was the moment in a dream when the noise outside becomes too loud, your eyelids flutter, your machinery falters, you grunt but don’t speak, and then you slip back into the dream but at another angle. I did die in the cave, I know that now, I was empty after that, the person you saw was not the person you knew, my parents, my doctors, even, I’m sorry, you, Adam, you’ve been calling into a tunnel and having conversations with the echoes. I knew it when Guruji died, you didn’t have to tell me, I felt the change, I’d been waiting and it came, and now I’m learning, relearning, what I have to do, but you don’t have to worry, you can keep living, keep writing, keep sitting on your rainy beach and saying “gut-bomb” and feeling more or less happy, I wouldn’t blame you for it. But I just want to tell you, if you do change your mind, if questions catch hold of you, if you can bring yourself, after everything, to trust me, that your quietest doubts are right, and that what seems, on sleepless nights, not to be a life in fact is not. I want to say there’s more, there’s always more, for you to do: it will feel like waking up.
