For Love of Audrey Rose

by Frank De Felitta

  The night was endless. There was no possibility of sleep. Elliot Hoover was certainly in the next hut, or in the field she had passed, or sleeping with the animals at the edge of town. She thought of Bill, probably strapped in his bed. She wondered if Dr. Geddes would consider her as insane as Bill. It would not occur to him that half the world believed as Bill did, as she almost did, having come to believe stronger and stronger since seeing Benares. But what was the use? Bill was not in Benares. He was on Long Island. On Long Island they put you away for too many religious ideas. Or at least for acting on them.

  She fastened upon one consoling thought: Elliot Hoover would know exactly what to do. Janice prayed the night would pass swiftly, that she would finally find him before the dew was dry.

  Janice lay on the canvas sacks and stared upward at a bare electric wire. The filaments dangled in tiny radiating circles. Lightning flashed behind her back, shot through the cracks and holes of the far wall, and made her silhouette leap out in front of her eyes. Rain was falling. It came without an interruption of sound, a steady drumroll on the roof. The air was cold and wet.

  Something cold grazed her cheek. She screamed, bolted upright, and saw a dark trickle flinging itself down from the roof crossbeam. She stood up and dragged the canvas bags to the other side of the floor and lay down miserably again. Instantly the canvas bags were soaked. Janice moved to the far corner, sat down on the dusty floor, and disconsolately watched a large puddle form around the sacks. The thin trickle of water had widened to a black stream thudding into the dirt floor.

  “Jesus Christ,” she whispered.

  Just then a chunk of mud fell from the roof beams. A column of water roared into the room, and with it the cold of the predawn. Janice stood as though afraid of the watery intruder and stared at the floor turning into mud. She backed against the wall. That wall was also wet, oozing the monsoon rain like cold sweat. When she looked up, she saw the roof beams bending down, weirdly elastic, sagging toward the floor.

  Janice ran to the door. As her hand touched the doorjamb, the roof caved in. It was like being on a ship that was breaking up. Waves of water billowed down, flung by roaring black winds. The night thundered its storm, a horror of death in a steady, roaring imprecation.

  “Oh God!” Janice called, her voice unheard in the roar.

  The water was already ankle deep. The canvas sacks and boxes were floating, nudged back and forth by the storm. Bits of debris from the walls and corner supports bobbed at her feet. Overhead Janice saw a clear track of lightning, a perfect forked tongue of livid white against massed black sky. There was no roof anymore.

  Janice stood under the doorjamb. Beyond the door was the dirt road and the village, and small palm trees driven down under the weight of the rain. The mud in the village was moving, carrying dead animals, rusted cans and vague shapes that looked like corpses.

  “Elliot!” she screamed.

  She could not even hear her own voice. Lightning illuminated the village. There were three structures standing and two structures with only walls. A dog was frightened and half swam, half walked uphill against the moving mud, its coat matted and slicked back until it looked like a wart hog. The darkness returned, and with it a low roar was heard under the storm: a house had collapsed, its clay and timbers were crashing together.

  “Elliot!”

  It was absurd. The dog was also howling. But the only thing audible now was the driving rain and the sucking, sliding mud. The mud had become more liquid, and it flowed faster downhill and around the standing houses, eddying, pushing, relentless. The support over Janice’s head blew off and, soaked to the skin, she saw the mud coming her way.

  She groped out into the night. An electric wire somewhere was live, flashing and spitting sparks where it flapped hideously at the violent trickles of water. Figures were moving inside, but there were no lights, and they looked as helpless as the dog. Far in the distance a piece of the hill bulged behind the outpost. Then it opened up into five holes and spouted water like a fountain. The dark earth vomited forth and shot forward into the outpost with the force of the water. A small supply truck tipped over slowly, grandiosely, like a ballet of elephants. With horror Janice saw the distant remnants of the army fighting for their lives, ignoring cries for help, grabbing and kicking for higher ground.

  Janice looked around her. A raft went by—a morass of saplings, mud, a piece of religious shrine, and a screaming cat—right where her hut had been. Janice panicked, but her legs found incredible strength, and they dug against the oozing mud. Her arms paddled at the heavy liquid around her calves. The only thought in her existence now was higher ground, higher ground. A crimson robe floated by, oddly elegiac, like Ophelia, on the vicious waters. Janice screamed.

  The water plastered her trousers to her legs, her shirt to her breasts. She felt soaked as she had never felt soaked. Her hair was a dense black mass, heavy and sodden, lumped in front of her eyes. She reached for a firm root, but the root slid upward out of the liquefied earth. Janice fell backward, rolled into the rushing water, and smelled the noxious odor of the red clay in her mouth.

  Tiny sharp bits—gravel or nails—stung her face. She fought to stand up, but her feet were being washed out of the mud, until there was no mud, nothing to stand on, only water. She was being pulled downstream. She swam, her arms and legs kicking in unison, swallowing the heavy water that slammed at her face. Her lungs were bursting; there was no way to breathe in the ferocious river. She felt herself trailing away, falling backward into a deep darkness, down river, down the hill, always downward into the maelstrom.

  Her arms clutched something that floated. She threw her clinging hair to one side and looked behind her. Matted clumps of army boxes, blankets, and food tins bobbed up and down, catching the light of a cold gray day. The rain came down like a wall. There was no village. Only a moving river of mud, water, and bits of things that had once been huts, fences, or chairs. A piece of colored cloth rapidly floated by, and Janice remembered the crimson robe. Desperately she turned to look down the stream, and then she saw what she was clinging to: two dead goats, their forelegs locked in a death embrace.

  Janice screamed, but her arms only grappled tighter against the cold, hairy forms, feeling the bones underneath. Somehow there was sufficient air in their bellies to keep them afloat. There was no sense of a river anymore, only an angry ocean of currents going in opposed directions, filling the valley, destroying everything it reached.

  Far away in the darkness, form crumbled from form, and Janice knew that the hills were giving way. Huge splashes showed where boulders and entire trees on the upper slopes were rolling into the rising water. Lightning cracked in two places. Janice sensed utter physical defeat, and her arms grew weak. In horror, feebly protesting, her cramped fists beating uselessly against her fate, she saw the monsoon rip her two dead goats away, and the muddy taste knocked into her nostrils again.

  Then eternity seemed to pass through her. It was loathsome and dark and vicious. She had no will, no intelligence, only a small spark of something that was afraid. It was as though she did not exist. Strange sounds, like bells, clanged far away. She felt no sensation in her legs or arms, or even her head and chest. Something dark was coming to reclaim her, to make her disintegrate once again.

  Sounds of the monsoon; her head was above water; a knock from a dislodged timber; screams of iron wrenched from its beams; something steady underfoot, dislodged, whirling around; a whirlpool, falling, with timbers. The small spark inside flickered, tried to go out; lungs bursting, on fire, under water…

  Rough hands. She knew the sensation. Rough hands, callused. With bone underneath. Along her shoulder and back. An illness, a nausea that she could not expel, shot through her. The roaring was inside, not in the storm. The rough hands dragged her upward. She sensed her own feet, far away, dragging through slimy mud. She wanted to open her eyes, but they were closed in the opiate of a leaden fatigue. Just then a sheet of pain flared along her left leg.
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br />   “Elliot!” she blurted.

  Still she could not open her eyes. An undulating green roof seemed to be lifting in front of her. Something was under the stinking roof: it was herself, in some way, the remnants of what she was. She felt warmth everywhere like a fever, and she knew she was alive.

  She opened her eyes. A mud plain stretched under her feet. Around her were dead bodies, most bloated, naked, their genitals scarred, their arms and faces caked with mud, their eyes squeezed sockets where the skulls had caved in. There was no river, no village, not a tree, not a blade of grass—just the mud, with a thousand sloping channels where the water had receded. A cool drizzle plopped into the mud, making a million tiny holes.

  Janice was being dragged up the slope. Her two feet made a trail that stretched as far as she could see. Suddenly she passed a huge bulk: a dead bull, its front legs folded peacefully underneath, its enormous horns jammed into the mud. Still she was dragged higher. Just as she wondered who was pulling her, and turned to look, the curtains seemed to come down again, and she slipped into nothingness.

  Slowly her eyes opened. She was in a large room. The ceiling was mottled with decay and mildew, but it was dry. Two naked light bulbs hung from the ceiling, both on, even though the small windows showed it was day. Rain came down on the roof, but it was a smaller rain. Janice heard a chorus of moans. She turned her head. Next to her was an aged woman’s face, the hands tucked under the cheek, the mouth and eyes open in silent horror, dead.

  She was in a makeshift hospital. At least that was what it looked like. Two doctors in dirty white coats, pockets bulging, pants soiled by mud, pus, and streaks of dried blood, darted among twelve mattresses on a cold stone floor. The doctors were both North Indian, with the longer, more oval faces and slender noses. They were totally fatigued, their eyes glazed with weariness, and they stumbled as they walked, barking orders, irritated. Wails rose from the twelve beds; Janice realized her own mouth was giving out moans, and she grew silent.

  Through the door the smaller, darker South Indians were visible. Two of them hauled a corpse up from the mud. They all wore handkerchiefs over their mouths and nostrils. A fire burned ferociously despite the rain, and Janice watched in fascinated horror as the corpse was laid, with the barest formality, on top of the flames. She turned her head to avoid the charring of flesh.

  To her left Janice saw the doctors operate on a man whose arms beat wildly into the air. They had no anesthetic, and it took three villagers to hold his feet and two more to hold his other arm. Finally the doctors found a piece of rope and lashed the punctured arm to a beam in the wall, where they quickly began their incisions. Janice turned away and stared at the ceiling.

  Already the dead woman next to her had been removed. Another body, this one making tiny gasps like a frightened rabbit, took her place. Janice knew where the old woman had gone. She heard the villagers throwing sticks onto the fire. Janice stared up continually at the ceiling. She had difficulty remembering who she was, or why she was among these dark people. The ceiling rose and fell as she breathed, her fever making it almost glow.

  Through the day she slept, woke, watched the ceiling, and slept again. She did not turn to look when the body next to her was removed and another put in its place. Vaguely she wondered why she did not die, why they did not drag her out to the huge bonfire. She turned. In the same fire that burned the bloated bodies, the doctors were sterilizing instruments in cans of boiling water.

  Night came, and the steady rain kept up. The doctors did not sleep. Janice remembered how she had been pulled from the mud. She remembered the mud swirling through the village. But only gradually did she remember why she had been in the village. She craned her neck, looking for orange robes. There were only the dull, matted clothes of the villagers, many of whom slept against the walls.

  This was a chamber of death, Janice thought. They had all been pulled from the mud, and those who survived at first nevertheless died later. Maybe the soldiers had shot them. Maybe they had the cholera. But they were all thrown onto the twelve mattresses until they could die and be burned.

  She raised herself to an elbow, looked all around the dark room. A chorus of heavy breathing, whimpers, and grunts of pain came back to her. A primeval fear of doctors overwhelmed her and she became frightened that they would come to her with their lethal scalpels. She sank back onto the mattress.

  The soldiers on the porch to the long room, their arms in slings, argued loudly. The doctors remonstrated with them and stalked off. Janice wondered if the sergeant was there, or the officer who had been so unfriendly at the crest of the hill. She saw only the unkempt, wild-eyed soldiers, who bore not the slightest trace of being disciplined.

  A warm hand soothed her forehead with a damp cloth.

  “Elliot?” she asked, startled, looking up.

  Two pale blue eyes looked down at her from a thousand miles away. A rough face, a familiar face, grizzled, drawn from lack of sleep, with a small scar on the lower lip. The hand wiped away the sweat, the mud and the confusion. Her eyes blurred in hot tears.

  “My leg…” she whispered.

  There was a general flow of pain through her left leg, clear to the hip, and a sensation of rough hands under her. The leg was straightened and the pain became diffuse again. The sheet, dirty and bloodied, was tucked under her shoulders. The face began to swim away from her, and she reached for the hand that had soothed her forehead.

  It was not there. No one was there. Only the wall, where flies had gathered, anticipating death.

  She blacked out, feeling the familiar sheet of oblivion cover her.

  Days seemed to pass. Gradually voices became more distinct. In the front room the soldiers barged in, pushing the doctors aside. Janice recognized the officer from the crest of the hill. He was angrily pointing and shouting orders. The soldiers dragged a sick man from a mattress and dumped him in the rain. A wounded soldier was gently laid in his place. All this Janice saw through a feverish haze like a movie in a hot theater.

  More soldiers were brought in, more villagers dragged out. Then the soldiers shouted in surprise, discovering Janice. Grizzled faces peered into her eyes. Hands poked and prodded her in amusement. The officer shouted and Janice felt rough hands pull her up. The room jostled, she cried out in the shock of pain shooting up from her hip, and then she was outside.

  The soldiers carried her like a dead log. The mud slopes were visible again: a few clots of grass, but mostly the rivulets of rainwater and mud trickling down the morass of tangled logs, boulders and dead animals far below. Janice had never seen death on such a scale. It was the earth itself that had been mortally wounded. Hills were gouged out, roads dislodged, and whole forests cracked and rubbed away.

  They lowered her to the ground next to the rusted canister in which the doctors sterilized their used bandages and knives. The rain came softly, cooling her forehead. Moans rose like the sound of distant barges. A sick cow, the huge rump in the air and the forelegs buckled, lowed pitifully.

  “I’m burning… burning up…” Janice heard herself say.

  No one turned to look at her. An ox was brought up slowly through the rain, pulling a small cart. A tall man, head lowered, led the ox. Villagers lifted two shivering children into the cart, then Janice, and then the cart jolted, she gasped, and the landscape began to recede.

  The cart brought her higher into the hills. The field hospital became smaller, and the soldiers like tiny tin figures. Smoke rose without a waver from the fire. As she watched, another small body was placed onto the fire. The villagers hardly stirred. The entire slope of the hill, the valley floor, even the higher hills where the forest had been, was mud, still slithering occasionally in sudden spurts downhill—a foul landscape, viscous with disease.

  So this is death, came the thought. It’s like a fever and it looks like mud.

  The cart jolted regularly as the ox found its footing in the wet earth. As they went higher, bits of dead root and choked pools of black water went by.
With each step four points of pain stabbed into Janice. The cart stopped. The man stepped down, examined the faces of the shivering children, and covered them with a thick blanket.

  “Elliot—” she whispered. “Is it you?”

  A voice came from the other end of the earth, gentle and kind, but almost broken by the exhaustion of suffering.

  “Yes,” he said distinctly.

  Astounded, Janice wiped the rain from her eyes. She blinked rapidly, and her hands groped toward the hallucination. But the hallucination took hold of her hands and gently pushed her back down against the children and the blankets.

  “I heard from Mehrotra,” came the voice. “I went to the outpost at the river. They said I’d just missed you.”

  “Is it really you?”

  “Lie down, Janice. We have to get away from the soldiers.”

  He went back to the front of the cart. The ox exhaled a steamy breath and pulled. The landscape began juggling again. A child whimpered. Janice pulled herself backward, wondering if she were dreaming. By instinct her arm went around the child; a small boy nestled against her chin, and the eyes began to close in sleep.

  Janice craned her neck, staring at the driver. Now he did not look like Hoover. He was squatted down, with the posture of inexhaustible patience that all the farmers showed. Nothing moved except his chest as he breathed. He coughed, sending small puffs into the chill atmosphere.

  He did not turn around. Janice sank back and huddled against the children. One of them asked her a question. She could only smile and caress the feverish cheek. It was getting dark, and the landscape was dissolving into a heavy gloom. The cart rumbled up, up to the crest of a hill, then it wound along a path that snaked its way across a green plateau. Night came, and the cart still moved on. Janice kept waking up to different patches of black earth, to different dead trees, and finally the cart began going down the other side. The trees here were still alive. Grass glittered in the moonlight, rain-wet but alive. Water trickled everywhere, a musical, pleasant sound that made sleep easier.