I Live With You

by Carol Emshwiller

  I’m everything the opposite of her. She’s even small for one of the enemy, while I’m tall for one of us.

  She says, “We thought your eyes were so dark they were blind to all things delicate and light. We said you were too tall to be strong, but you’re as if made of ropes.”

  “We thought you were blind for the opposite reason.” Then I say, “My group… they betrayed me. Where are they? What did you do with them?”

  (No doubt by now all my men want are books and bare breasted librarians.)

  “We fed them periwinkles and clams. They spit them out and ate their own dried up things. We walked them back to the beach where there are cottages. Most of us went with them. We thought you were safely tied up.”

  “How many librarians stayed?”

  “Six. And me.”

  The perfect time to bomb it and set fires.

  I talk to her about chemicals. She helps me read the labels. I find things to use as fire starters. I even find stuff for a few bombs.

  We work well side by side. I think what it would be like bringing her back to my people. How shocked my people would be.

  “What we’ll do is put these little sacks all around, inside and outside the library. It’s time. It’s already getting dark. Let’s do it now.”

  She says, “There’s nobody there at night.”

  “Good. First you can pick your favorite book to keep just for yourself.”

  I feel good that I can give her something. I’m going to make sure she gets a butterfly or a bird, and some of the gold.

  She says, “We’ll need a lamp. There aren’t any windows except those high stained glass ones. Books take up all the wall space.”

  We gather up the little packages and tubes and carry them to the library. Right away I climb up and put some under the roof. She’s never seen anything like my climbing. All I need is a little finger grip and toe grip. My own men can’t do that. I see I impress her even more than before.

  When I place the last package and climb down, I can’t resist the admiration in her eyes, I lean to kiss her. She looks as if she’s leaning to kiss me, but she turns away at the last minute.

  We light our lamp and go inside. Right away she takes out a huge book.

  “We can’t bring that!”

  “I just want to show you some pictures. There are lots like this here, but this book is the best.

  The book is so big she has to put it on a special stand. She opens it and there they are—in gold leaf, or looks like it, a golden woman and a golden man. Naked. The woman is handing the man grapes or dates, and he reaches, not for them, but towards her breast. It’s as lewd as we always said their drawings are. But the green of the trees is as beautiful as the gold, so is the blue of the sky, as though green and blue could be as valuable as gold. The landscape is more like my world than like hers. It’s a picture you could fall right into—and would want to except for the naked couple. If I were there I’d hurry away behind the trees in the foreground.

  She turns the page and the next is even worse than the first. It’s as if you’re standing on a higher hill than before, in the shadow of pine trees, looking down. This time the couple is farther away, but you can see the golden man has his hand on the woman’s golden breast now, and the grapes or dates are on the ground, forgotten.

  Why is she showing me this? And she looks so young and innocent? She isn’t. Art has ruined her. She knows everything already. Probably more than I do. No wonder they want me to destroy the library.

  I don’t want her to turn to the next page. Nor the next and the next. I can imagine what they’ll be. And why look when we can do?

  I grab her and throw her down … on the make believe octopus. I drop on top of her. Kiss her—hard.

  At first she’s too shocked to react. She doesn’t seem to know what’s happening, but then she struggles. She bites my lip. I pull back and she yells, first a wordless shout and then, “No! Help!” If she keeps on making a racket, whatever other librarians are left here will come. I cover her mouth with my hand. She bites my hand this time and knees me. I’m the one should be yelling No.

  “I’ll let you go if you don’t shout.”

  “You’re an animal.”

  “It’s you, are an animal. How could you show me those pictures? And why? If not for….” But we don’t have words for that—not ones you can say to women.

  “I wanted you to see something beautiful. I thought if you saw them you might not want to burn them.”

  “I want to burn them all the more. Are all the books like this? Full of nakedness and corruption?”

  “Let me read something to you. Let me find the book—the one I’d choose if I could have one of my own.

  She goes straight to a small, hand-sized book. She holds it close to the lamp and begins to read, translating as she goes. Even in my own language I don’t understand it at all.

  Last to leave and first to come.

  A guessing game of death or life.

  Leaves of summer, leaves of spring.

  We fall but in our own ways.

  Neither like streams nor leaves.

  Perhaps the meaning is lost in translation. I say, “Poetry lies as much as pictures do.”

  “We think it’s more true than truth.”

  “There can’t be such a thing?”

  Even so… even after the bad pictures and the meaningless poetry… even so I still like her. And she… even after I threw her down and almost raped her. She still likes me. I can see it on her face.

  I say, “I like you. In spite of the pictures. But I don’t suppose you can like me.”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I don’t either but I like you anyway. But I don’t even know your name.”

  “Yawn,” she says.

  “What!”

  “My name is Yawn.”

  That’s an ugly word in our language. I can hardly make myself say it. I wonder what my name means in hers.

  “I’m Gabb.”

  “Bless water.”

  Should I have said the same after she said her name? Why bless? And by what crippled god?

  “Let me read you this other poem.”

  Joy is in the view from above

  As houses seen by eagles

  As after storms or in them,

  Seen as if you are the whirlwind.

  Be such.

  It doesn’t make sense to me anymore than the other one did. I’ll destroy this gobbledygook. “Let’s get on with the burning. We’ll start with that big book.”

  I should have known better than to start with that book. Even the little book of poems can be a weapon. And I’m not ready for it. She hits me hard in the stomach. I lean in pain, but then my training kicks in. I hit her so hard she flies across the mosaic floor into the shelves of books beyond.

  I go to her. I call, “Yawn. Yawn.” I don’t bother keeping quiet anymore.

  Before I pick her up, I take out the fire starters. I throw out several in different directions. Then I carry her out to the pool. Halfway across it I put her on the edge of it and turn to watch the fire. It starts fast and when it reaches the bombs I set around the edges and under the roof, the blasts begin. Not as large as I’d have wished them to be.

  Of course the librarians come, but six women are no match for someone like me. One problem, though, I have to keep my eyes shut because of all those bare breasts. I’m afraid I might touch one.

  They trip me. I fall into the pool. They’re water people and I’m not. I’m helpless in it. They hold my head under. It’s Yawn yells for them to stop just when I’m choking. They pull me to the edge and Yawn turns me over and pumps the water out. It takes a while before I can breathe.

  The little homemade bombs are still going off now and then as the fire reaches them, but they’re much too small. The building won’t come down. Some of the librarians stand near the carved doors, their silhouettes outlined against the flames inside. They don’t dare go in yet.

 
; Nobody’s paying attention to me. I roll over on my back and watch the dawn come, turning everything pinkish again. But the library is a mess, black from smoke, some corners are broken, but my bombs were too feeble to bring down the walls.

  It’s still an imposing sight in an entirely different way. The caryatids still look down in disapproval from over their bare breasts. A few gold tiles have fallen from the roof but nobody is rushing to pick them up even though just one would make a person rich. The librarians walk right past them.

  Yawn sits beside me. I tell her I didn’t mean to hit her so hard. She says, “I know.”

  Finally the fires settle down enough for the librarians to wrap wet scarves around their faces and go in. Yawn stays with me. Says, “I don’t understand why you wanted to destroy it.”

  “To show your side we can bring down your most magnificent building.”

  “But you didn’t. We don’t even have any soldiers to protect it, and you didn’t. Even so you failed.”

  “But look what one single man…. I, alone….”

  “You failed.”

  “I’ll bring you a bird. I’ll bring you gold.”

  “What would you do if you were a golden man and lived in those pictures?”

  “And you were the golden woman.”

  “Would you throw me down like you did?”

  I’m thinking I would put my hand on her breast, but I don’t say it. “Never again.”

  “Or maybe you’d melt me down and have me made into coins. Or you’d melt yourself down.”

  “I don’t think unreal things. Besides, I’d rather be of use after I die. My skin gone for leather. My bones for spoons. I’d never become anything for beauty. Promise you won’t let that happen to me.”

  “We’re not going to kill you. I won’t let us.”

  “Let’s escape together.”

  She’s tempted. “What would you do, go steal tiles?”

  “I’d rather have you than golden tiles.”

  That pleases her. She will come. She says, “Hurry,” takes my hand to pull me into the bushes by the side of the pool, but I pull her in the other direction. I want to see what the librarians are doing in there. Maybe I can keep them from putting out fires.

  She tries to hold me back. “But you said….”

  “Your art tells lies and I lie, too.”

  Inside, the library is full of smoke. Librarians are stamping out fires, putting rugs and wet towels over books. Some bring smoldering books out and dump them in the pool. Some books are so large it takes two or even three librarians to carry them.

  Those still inside have wet scarves around their faces but Yawn and I don’t. We begin to cough right away. A librarian hits me from behind and knocks me into a still burning book. Two and Yawn drag me out and dump me in the pool to stop my burning clothes, my burning topknot.

  They argue about me. Mostly in their own language. Then one says, on purpose in my language, “He’s not worth the trouble. Finally they say to Yawn—in my language, “He’s yours to do with as you wish.” They sound disgusted.

  They get thongs to tie my ankles—loose enough so I can walk a little. The fires are out in the library and Yawn hurries me through the smoke to the central garden. It’s untouched except a little smoky. She doesn’t say a word. She ties me to a bench and leaves.

  There are trees in there. Flowering bushes. A birdbath but no birds. Still too smoky. I watch the little fountain. I don’t try to get loose. I’m tied so I can lie down. I do.

  Finally Yawn comes back with a lumpy awkward bundle and with tea and food. She gives me the tea and a fishy smelling sort of cake and dates. I don’t feel like eating, especially not a fishy cake, but the tea is good.

  Then she starts unpacking the things she brought, a folding stool, a folding easel, a wooden slab, long as her arm, to paint on. An odd thing to be doing after what’s been happening. I’m an exotic creature fit for a zoo. She can’t wait to get me down on a flat surface. To put on some wall, I suppose. Which makes me wonder what she’ll do with the real me after. Will the painting take my place?

  She begins, even as I’m sipping tea.

  She works in spurts and then looks at me and thinks. Finally she shows me what she’s done so far. There I am, just begun, but even so you can see it’s me. You can see my topknot curling down behind my ear and then over my shoulder though now it’s burned off. She has my eyes almost finished. They’re like holes in the board. I suppose all of it will look like a hole through the board when she’s done.

  She starts to paint again. We’re quiet and then she says, “I want you to be…. I wish you could be….”

  “I’ll never be.”

  Whatever it was she was going to say, she’d hate me if I was. She loves me because I’m not like her. Same reason I like her.

  Then, again, she turns the painting towards me. She sits beside me to study it. Now my face is almost finished.

  She keeps looking over at me as though wondering what I think about it. I’m impressed. Not only with how much it looks like me but that it only took her a short time to paint it. I’m thinking I might steal it if I have the chance.

  But I’m angry with myself for thinking it. I say, “This is a lie. Does a flower need a painting of itself?” I hear myself saying, “Do I need this?” even as I’m thinking that I do.

  At that thought I bang my fists against the edge of the bench.

  “You hate my painting.”

  “I like it. I like it. I shouldn’t, but I do. But where I come from images are not allowed.”

  “How can that be?”

  “And no bare breasts.”

  “Are breasts bad?”

  “You’ll learn that if you come home with me.”

  She says again, “Bless water.”

  “We don’t bless things like water.”

  “Youir language has no word for what we mean by blessing. And no word for asking somebody to come see a sight. No word for a sky full of birds and we all look up. Even my name, you can’t guess its many meanings.”

  “Tell me.”

  But she says, “You keep saying we should love the real, but the real disappears. One of these days this painting will be all that’s left of you.”

  Is that a warning?

  Then we hear a great rushing sound, loud as thunder right overhead, and the ground shakes and the painting falls and the stoa surrounding the garden… every pillar breaks.

  Then it comes again. Worse.

  After that, silence. Not even the cry of a seagull.

  We wait, looking at each other.

  And it comes again, just as we thought it would.

  We are safe in the center of devastation. Everything is already flattened around us, but we don’t move.

  So it isn’t me that makes the golden tiles for all to pick up, that buries the books in debris—though I would have wished it were me.

  It won’t be easy to leave the garden considering what’s piled up around us.

  I say, “I need to be free now. I can’t be tied up.”

  She can’t answer. She can’t move.

  “I can’t go anywhere. Look around you. We’re both prisoners.”

  Odd how the garden itself is untouched. The birdbath and sundial still stand. The trees. There’s even water still spouting in the fountain though not as much.

  And here’s another aftershock.

  “Let me go. What harm can I do now? We can’t even get out of here. Not easily.”

  The library looks like piles of talus from back in my home mountains. Unstable to try to climb over. I can but she can’t without my help.

  Finally she unties me. She’s so shaky she can hardly do it. I make her drink the rest of my tea. For a few minutes she can only talk her own language. I say a few words in mine to remind her. I say, “Don’t worry, only this large stone building is destroyed. The librarians are most likely safe and I’ll wager your little house still stands.”

  I take off my shirt, take it to t
he fountain, rinse it a bit first, and then wet it and wipe her face.

  After a while I leave her sitting there and go to examine how hemmed in we are. I leave the dates and cakes beside her. I tell her to eat them if she wants to.

  All the arcade is collapsed. I feel as if I’m in my own private grove. This is my fountain. My grape arbor, still climbing up its frame. (The frame stands and yet the wall is rubble.) I make the complete circuit. I see a nest with baby birds in it. I wonder if the parents will come back. Whiffs of smoke and dust still rise now and then. But getting out of here doesn’t look good. I can do it, but Yawn can’t without my help. Now she’s my prisoner.

  I pick a bunch of grapes to bring to her in case she wants something cool and sweet.

  It’s already getting too dark for climbing the rubble—or for painting. I wonder if she’ll ever finish my portrait.

  I think to build a fire but the garden is so immaculate there are no dead branches and no dead leaves. Trust these overly refined people to have everything all cleaned up.

  I come back, sit beside her and give her the grapes. I put my arm around her and she doesn’t flinch away. I say, “It won’t be easy getting out.”

  I feel like First Man and First Woman. They have just crawled out of the earth after the fires and floods of formation, all around them devastation, and it’s up to them to clean up and populate the world. Up to Yawn and me. I hold her. I don’t say anything. There’s the sunset. We can’t see the sun setting behind the rubble, but we see the pink and purple sky. She glows pinkish gold. I say, “That book… and us….”

  She says, “That book is burned. They said it was the first to go.”

  “That was them wasn’t it?”

  She says, “I was named for her.”

  I say, “I was named for a god of war.” Then I say it, “This is our garden. We’ll live here.”

  She leans her head against my shoulder. “How will we eat?”

  “The fig tree, the grapes…. I’ll build a shelter out of rubble and tree branches. I’ll make us a bed of young boughs.”

  Then I, like the golden man, forget the grapes and dates and put my hand on her breast.