Any Deadly Thing

by Roy Kesey

  Then, however: fieldwork. I pleaded, schemed, filled the margins of my notebooks with Andean foothills doodled in high relief. As my grant was insufficient to purchase all of my own equipment, I requested the loan of a mini-cycler and an MML, and stopped by the lab each day to fondle the equipment—microfuge and mini-gel box, bench-top enzyme chiller and compact transilluminator—but a fourth-year headed for Belize took precedence, and I was left with only lysis buffer.

  My advisor remained unpleased with many of my choices. She warned of institutional prejudice against small sample sizes. I iterated my lack of concern. She pointed out that I didn’t speak Spanish. I said I would learn. She spoke of the virtues of cardinals and bluebirds and grosbeaks—all fine birds to be sure, but I wanted something rare, something distant, and it had to be a hummer.

  –Okay, said Marsha. But still, the Grey-Bellied Comet for a study on sexual selection? Why not something more clearly appropriate? Why not the Marvelous Spatuletail?

  To which I replied: Oh, please.

  –Right, too obvious. But there are others. The Napo Sabrewing? The Collared Inca? The Fiery Topaz!

  To which I replied, Forests near Jesús del Monte: humid. East-facing low-lying montane strips: humid. Jungle along the Río Corrientes: very, very humid. And you know how I am, Marsha. You know how I feel about humidity.

  Thus my long flight south to Lima, and my short one northeast to Cajamarca. A hostel room to serve as base, annotated observations of the hostel owner’s daughter, and plans to return to the hostel slightly more often than the refrigeration of blood samples might require. The purchasing of provisions, and a permit from INRENA. A rented burro and burro wrangler, and the four-hour walk.

  I established camp, and did a spate of surveying that was unfortunately unsystematic due to the fact that the thin air kept making me fall down. I built blinds deep in the Sangal Canyon, and a few more on the hills above. I set up Russell traps, hung drop-gate traps, baited them all with sugar water, and at last I was ready to begin gathering the data which would enable me to prove beyond all doubt that certain male plumage characteristics were not in fact predictive of both dominance rank and reproductive success.

  A more common target species would have made for denser days, but the weeks were not without their triumphs. I slipped each capture into its lingerie bag; now scale now ruler now pliers now calipers, I clipped and tweezed, labeled and photographed, dyed and banded with abandon. I drew blood, generally that of the hummers but not always as there are thorny thickets in many places here. I filled Eppendorf tube after Eppendorf tube and swung certain samples in circles, a human centrifuge. I kept a spectrophotometer perpetually at the ready, and tracked down nests nestled in their bromeliads. I graphed color saturation, pigment asymmetry, patch area, even patch area asymmetry.

  After eighteen months in the field, I returned to the university to analyze my samples and interpret those analyses. Gradually I came to see that I had failed. Somehow the evidence regarding male gorget coloration as an honest signal of quality lay on one side, and the conclusions I sought lay on the other, and I found the gap unspannable.

  The only solution was a return to Peru for more and better data. This second trip was meant to last less than a year, but while investigating torpor I flopped off an outcropping and fractured a fibula. Then cows snarled my mist nets. Then a group of old women mistook me for a mining engineer and pelted me with shale. Then I lost months of blood work when the hostel owner’s daughter moved it to the freezer to make room in the fridge for tripe.

  Of course I forgave her, but all the same: four years of failure at that point. I had seen no behavioral indicators in support of my original thesis, and was afraid to begin a new round of genetic analysis without them. Also Marsha called to say that it was time to consider switching topics. She suggested that I investigate whether female coloration predicted female investment. I replied that that was not the question. She asked about possible correlations between plumage coloration and that of the flowers chosen for sustenance. I replied that I was uninterested. She implied that I would do well to delve into the fallacy of averages, or the costs of alternative rate currencies, or the energetics of foraging and competition, at which point I crumpled a piece of paper to feign interference and hung up the phone.

  A month later my grant was canceled. I was informed that the laboratory wanted its spectrophotometer back, and replied that of course that was not an option. I was told that a university agent would be arriving soon to retrieve it, and headed for my farthest blind.

  The agent found me nonetheless. He’d apparently majored in linebacker. He beat me to mush and scooped up the spectrophotometer. Limping and begging, I pursued him back to Cajamarca, and stood outside his room as he bonked the hostel owner’s daughter: his grunts and her squeals and the livid squeaking of springs. I followed his cab to the airport, and watched as he flew away.

  A Saturday, and thus the meat market again. I go as ever early in the morning, when the air is still cool beneath the tin roof, before the flies come and the smell of rot grows dense. And as I walk the remarkably clean aisles, and listen to the women call, and smile at them, and make my meat-oriented decisions, I dream of choosing one vendor above all others—the one with clearest or prettiest or loudest voice, the kindest one or the smartest, the friendliest or most efficient.

  In my dream I take her aside and whisper, and she whispers back, and smiles. I take her home, and lead her to my bedroom. Or, no, first I lead her to my bathroom, undress her, bathe her in a tub full of bubbles, rub her shoulders and back and breasts with a loofah, and scrub her hands and fingers and fingernails with a soft scrubbing brush of some kind until not one single fleck of guinea pig flesh remains, and rinse her, and dry her, and then lead her to my bedroom: a culmination.

  Thus far my best attempt to initiate this process consisted of buying a pork roast instead of ribs. I returned to say, I am so very sorry, but it appears that I made a mistake, yes, it appears that I was mistaken. Sadly this was unsuccessful, much like my efforts to find local research funding. It has been three years since I lost the spectrophotometer, and my materials are now limited mainly to pencils and paper. That is not to say I have given up, however. I teach biology at the local preparatory institute, and spend my weekends observing the Grey-bellied Comet to the best of my abilities. I reread my notebooks in search of telling details I may have missed, and pine for a fully stocked lab.

  Returning home, I refrigerate my purchases. I scan Kirk’s latest letter from Manhattan, and answer with a postcard of the Hanging Tombs of Otuzco. I pack a lunch, set off once more for the foothills, and it occurs to me now that perhaps in my imaginings I have skipped a step, that perhaps the words I whisper should be other than those I’d planned. Perhaps they should regard not a visit to my home but a walk.

  Yes, tomorrow or the next day or at some future point I will whisper newly, and if I have chosen well, she will smile. Together we will walk through the dawn, out past the Inca Baths and the egrets shivering in the eucalyptus, across the Retama Bridge and into the olluco fields of Puyllucana, northeast and climbing the Capac Ñan, lapwing and sparrow, full white clouds slipping across a chalcedony sky, the wind ruffling the lupine and anise and sage; briefly along the White Path and up to the limestone thrust of the Rangra, its multicolored lichen, its siskins and kestrels and swifts, then through the pass and down past Linliconga and Huichopucro, the old church at Tres Cruces, caracara and dove and now the trail through Gallorco into fields of oca and chocho, Corralpampa and down the ridge into the Chonta River valley, alder and willow, thrush and wren and tanager; north along the water, slipping between the jagged rock walls of Sangal, and here at last the blinds, my blinds, the rare Grey-bellied Comet flitting from puya to tillandsia, and if by this juncture I have discovered that which I seek, if my hypothesis has become a theory both elegant and falsifiable, I shall take her by the hand, shall lead her into the sharply delimited dark.

  Scree

 
TONIGHT IT IS THE father’s turn. He checks the thermostat and turns off the hall light. Walks into his bedroom, stands beside his bed, sways with exhaustion. Lies down as quietly as possible beside his son, and the boy does not wake. The father smiles. Closes his eyes. Then something is wrong and he sits up. The curtains, still open. Digs his thumbnails into the sides of his forefingers, deeper and deeper. Goes to the window and takes a curtain in each hand. The draft is cold against his chest and if the building across the street were demolished, and the one behind it, and another three or four along that same line, his apartment would have the view of San Francisco he’d promised his wife six months ago when they agreed they had to leave Beijing. There is the smell of dry dusty heat as the furnace kicks on. He draws the curtains tight. Lies down carefully again. Slips toward sleep, away from it, back toward it, is driving down a Beijing side street and that sound, he knows that sound—idiophonic, the fish, muyu. The river had risen, flooded its banks, was now a rough dark liquid plain too wide to see across. A monk came, stood at the edge, watched. A massive fish roiled the surface, disappeared, appeared again and spoke: I will carry you to the other side, it said, if you promise to ask the Buddha to forgive me for cursing my master, to free me from this body and guide me toward wisdom. The monk agreed, and was ferried damply across. Seven years later he returned, his sack bulging with the palm-leaf sutras he’d gathered. He found the river once again flooded, and the giant fish was waiting. And? it said. What was the Buddha’s answer? Am I free? The monk covered his face with his hands. I am so sorry, he said. I forgot to ask. The fish flared out its tail, knocked the monk into the river and swam away. A fisherman saw what had happened, rowed over and saved the monk, who opened his sack and found the sutras waterlogged, ruined. Seven whole years wasted! Once home, furious in turn, the monk carved a wooden fish and smacked it on the head with a wooden mallet, but instead of the sound of wood on wood, what he heard was a word. The monk hesitated, smacked the fish again, and heard another word. He closed his eyes, remembered, yes, the first two words of the first sutra he had been given. He smacked the fish yet again, and out came the sutra’s third word. He grabbed an inkstone, a brush and an inkstick, a blank scroll. It took another seven years, but in the end there they were, all of the sutras rewritten, the hollow fish now a common musical instrument, mulberry or sandalwood, the fish eternally wakeful, beaten to accompany the chanted texts, to mark the beginning and end of meditation, then brought into orchestras, court music and opera, and its sound, something like water dripping into a well, the very sound of a certain depth and the father hears it as he drives, not just one muyu but hundreds, a rain of that sound, impossible, and in front of him there is a splintered scurrying in the street, hundreds of tiny bits of movement along the asphalt, quick darting jumping runs like those of mice but these are smaller still and bright blue. He catches up to them and they scurry alongside his car, on all sides of it, the music continuing: hundreds of plastic bottle caps pushed by the wind. They lift and bounce and that is the sound, the music of bottle caps, though at points where the asphalt is perfectly smooth they roll cleanly instead like slanted wheels, the wind bearing them on the diagonal and they run and the asphalt roughens and they bounce and the music is all around him. He slows to exactly their speed. The wind dies, and the bottle caps roll more slowly, more slowly still, fall to their sides and rattle to their rest arrayed like coins at the bottom of a fountain, and the figure at the center of that fountain is a beautiful woman standing perfectly still, her eyes closed. The father stops the car and gets out. The woman opens her eyes. Did you hear that? he asks. Yes, she says, from all the way around the corner. They stopped right at your feet, he says. She smiles, turns away, steps carefully through the bottle caps and he jogs to catch up. She asks where he is going. He invents a restaurant around a corner and across an avenue and up another side street. The Burmese place? she says. So he nods. Why didn’t you just drive all the way there? she asks. He doesn’t have an answer, invites her to join him, and she says yes, Burmese sounds perfect. Funny, she says. He nods again, lets her lead. They arrive, enter, and the owner is a friend of hers; he seats them, brings menus, shimmers and disappears. He gave us the best table, she says. The father looks around. All of the other tables are identical to theirs, but he and the woman are seated precisely at the center of the restaurant, and perhaps this is what she means. The owner reappears and they order. Then small talk: traffic, weather, bottle caps. What were they doing on the street like that? the father asks. Maybe someone dropped their collection, the woman says. But they were all the same color, the same kind. Yes, she says, someone obsessive. The father wonders where she is from, doesn’t want to ask directly but if he had to guess from her appearance and accent he would say nowhere, would say one European parent and one African parent and birth on one continent and school on another and now some job here, some allegedly interesting job, but he doesn’t ask about this either, as it so often turns out like traffic, like weather, like polishing silverware with a paper napkin. He polishes his silverware with his paper napkin. The food comes, the usual food, ohn htamin and goorakathee kyawjet hin, thanatsone and pe thee pin pauk ngabaung kyaw, wetha see byan and panthe kaukswe, lychee juice to wash it all down and sanwinmakin for dessert. As they eat he asks her if she’s ever heard the story of the muyu and she says, Yes, dozens of times, who hasn’t? So instead he tells her of a party he once accidentally went to, a fetish party, glass after glass of absinthe and all of the female guests were naked except for their leather aprons and unarmed except for their cleavers and unadorned except for the heads of pigs—real heads from real pigs, and the women carried them by the ears. The woman laughs and nods and finishes her lychee juice. She’d heard of that party too, had actually tried to go, got all dressed up and bought her pig head and everything, but the taxi driver couldn’t find the address. It was kind of hard to find, says the father. When they are done eating, he pays and she tells him that her apartment is only an eight-minute walk away. And so they walk. She leads in and up the stairs, through a door, tilts her head at the sunlight. He sits down and she serves him something, a drink, unbuttons her blouse. The woman of the future’s svelter, she says, or, The woman of the future swelters, the father is unsure, and the voice wasn’t her voice, wasn’t anyone’s voice. For a moment he has no idea where he is and it is all his fault. I am so sorry, he says. Sits up. It has started again: his son, coughing again. The father closes his eyes as if the cough might stop on its own, and it doesn’t, this deep hard rasping cough, five nights now, horrible. He doesn’t understand why the antibiotics aren’t helping. Opens his eyes, rolls toward his son, rubs the boy’s back, strongly and then softly. The rubbing doesn’t help either. Nothing helps. Each time it is eight coughs, four sets of two, like a telegraph, and the father thinks about tomorrow: a dozen interviews, new teachers for the TESL school he has started, six hours of answers about skills and experience, mistakes and amends. He thinks about his wife asleep in the son’s room, and most likely their daughter has crawled in with her and thank god the daughter has not gotten sick as well, in Beijng it was always the daughter but here she is strong. Four sets of two and again and again, he is so very tired but at least his wife is getting some sleep, and he hates her for it. Except that she is probably not asleep—is probably awake, listening, has always been a light sleeper. Again the smell of hot dry dust and the father listens for the furnace, hears nothing, waits, and there is a glow of some sort coming in through the curtains, brighter and then dimmer and off, makes no sense. The boy coughs on and on, but slightly quieter, not quite so deep in his chest. The father starts rubbing his son’s back again, in case it helped, in case it helps.

  A woman in her forties on a motorcycle, and tied to the sides like obscene padding are six live sheep. The traffic is heavy, the father stops and starts and stops, the motorcycle slips past him on the shoulder and disappears. He does not recognize this road, does not know why he is here. The traffic thins a bit and he catches up t
o the motorcycle, counts the sheep again, sees that strictly speaking they are not tied to the sides, are in fact strung together in pairs, the front legs of each sheep bound to those of the other in its pair, and the back legs not quite scraping the ground. The first pair is tied across the gas tank, the second across the seat, the third across the frame behind the seat; the woman sits on the forelegs of the middle pair and the motorcycle is a large one but the road leads slightly uphill and the father can hear the engine straining with the load. The sheep are on their way to stud or shearing or slaughter and now he remembers, Datong, the road into Datong, but still doesn’t know why. Traffic thickens, thins. The legs of the sheep are tied with blue twine, a soft beautiful blue stained in places with reddish brown and the sheep are out of sight behind him. Beneath Datong the coal glistens in bright black veins. There is also coal in the air, gray and particulate. It is fueling the factories on all sides, will be loaded onto the trucks that are causing this thickening traffic, and the very act of extraction can be observed at the Jinhuagong Mine—the tour includes a shower afterwards, he is sure of this. Bituminous, he thinks, and there is or was a Steam Locomotive Museum somewhere in the city and perhaps this is why he has come. Again the sheep, and now the woman is svelter, glances at him as she passes, swerves slightly away, the tendons rise on her neck as the motorcycle tilts back and forth but then she regains control and the sheep are saved. The Steam Locomotive Museum, and also the mass graves west of the city, sixty thousand Chinese miners worked to death and tossed into the mine shafts by Japanese soldiers, the crushed vertebrae, the nails driven into skulls or perhaps he is here for the Yungang grottoes. Yes, more likely the grottoes. The Turkic Tuoba sixteen hundred years ago, Taiwu’s twenty-eight-year reign, the monks he executed and the temples he destroyed but his grandson Wencheng makes restitution: five master sculptors brought from India, forty thousand local slaves, and it takes decades but in the end there are fifty-one thousand sculptures carved in fifty-three sandstone caves in the bluffs above the Wuzhou River. The smallest sculpture is only an inch high, and the tallest is more than fifty feet from top to bottom. The father watches the sculptors at work, shudders and the coughing again this coughing it has started again, the boy’s body hunches, shivers, hunches and now two sets of four and much worse, much deeper in the boy’s chest. The father looks at the clock. Slightly less than halfway through the night. Cough medicine as pointless as rubbing and the father pours a spoonful anyway, the fake cherry smell a thin wave of astringence in the close warm air. The son sits up when asked to, sways, coughs and the medicine mistimed, coughed straight back into the father’s face and he turns and says Fuck!, almost shouts it, or maybe did shout it, grabs his son, pulls him close kisses his head hopes he didn’t hear, and of course he heard but maybe he didn’t understand, and of course he understood. The father lifts a corner of the bedsheet, wipes the medicine off his face, kisses his son again. More rubbing, rocking back and forth, useless, the coughing again, fading, stares up at the monastery stuck to the side of a cliff a hundred and fifty feet off the ground: the Xuankong Si. Wooden cantilevers fixed on small ledges, wooden beams embedded in the stone and yes this is why he has come. Three stories tall but only twelve feet deep; six pavilions and dozens of smaller rooms linked by roofed corridors; an altar where Confucius and Laozi and the Buddha sit in a quiet row. The guide acknowledges the absurd location, ticks three reasons off on her fingers—silence, protection from floods, shelter from bad weather. The father nods, makes notes for the guidebook entry, stops. These reasons are insufficient. He asks the guide for more, and she shrugs. He squints but then knows. Sacsayhuamán, and the Mound of Óengus, and La Grande Chartreuse, and here at Heng Shan, the air vibrating differently in these places, and that is why they are chosen. He says this to the guide, and she agrees, says that one of the first monks must have suggested the site as a joke, and the other monks all laughed and shook their heads but looked again and yes, no other choice. The father asks the guide if she knows the story of the muyu, and she doesn’t so he tells her. On his way back from India, Xuanzang sought refuge one night in the house of an old man whose son had just been thrown into the river by the man’s new wife. The old man was horribly distraught but knew what was required of him as host. He prepared a dish of spring onions and celery and bamboo shoots, but Xuanzang refused to eat it, asked instead for fish, not just any fish but the largest fish in the river, and the old man was aghast: what kind of Buddhist master asks that an animal be killed? But this was Xuanzang himself, and so the old man sent for a fish to be caught, specified that it had to be immense, and when it was brought he cut open its stomach and found his son inside, still alive. The man, overjoyed, asked Xuanzang how he could repay him. Carve a wooden fish, said Xuanzang, and hang it in a temple courtyard, and let it be beaten to call the monks to their meals. The old man did exactly as he had been told, and the sound of the muyu was found to be so pleasing that thousands more were made—muyu everywhere, everywhere you look! The End, says the father. The guide smiles, and the father steps closer. The guide steps back, asks what happened to the murderous stepmother. The father says that as far as he knows she simply disappears from the story. The guide frowns, and the father is driving again, driving home, but something is wrong, the road, this is again the road into Datong. Oncoming traffic is far too thick for a U-turn. He searches the car for a map—glove compartment, visor, console. Perhaps under the seat? He waits for the shoulder to widen, pulls sharply off the road and hits the woman on the motorcycle. The father stops the car and jumps out and runs to her. There is the stench of singed wool. Three of the sheep are dead, the ones on the side that hit the ground. The woman’s right wrist is broken, her right leg a rash of blood and shredded flesh. The father kneels down, hears the screech of brakes behind him.