by David Goff
Chapter XXIII
Fourteen men and two women closed their eyes, and stepped through the steam curtain.
The day previous they had spent in the orchard in the rift, collecting pumpkins, cherries, walnuts, sesame seeds. A handful scoured the outskirts, digging in the ground for tubers.
Their bounty consolidated and tied to their backs, they endured a long walk through the night before arriving again at the city walls mid-morning.
Rhoneh felt fortunate that shame had been the most severe of the consequences he met. He found his bed and slept half a day.
Upon awakening, the first thought he encountered was that he must seek out the boy. That could be his only recourse. Seek out the boy whom he had sought previously — though, then, without knowing.
He recollected the experience from days prior when, in his confusion, he had raced home from the boy’s room. And now he managed to piece together the road that led back to him.
This way, and that, and this — and at last he had arrived at what must be the boy’s door. Rhoneh stood for some minutes, waiting for an answer to the question of what he expected of himself, of the boy, of the impending encounter. He opened the door before he found one.
At once he knew he had chosen wrongly. This was not the correct room. The walls were of an entirely different shade.
But Rhoneh let the door swing open, and as he gazed down into the depths of the room, he saw a figure kneeling. And the figure looked up at him. Still draped in folds the figure was, but the sheer white mask was removed and held in the hands, so that the face lay bare.
Unaccustomed he was to the sight of a grown one’s face, other than his own — indeed, besides during the Days in Adversity, when all trudged in the nude through mud and wind, he could not remember having ever seen one. For several instants he thought he was looking in a mirror. His hand jerked instinctively towards his own face to determine whether indeed it lay exposed. But his hand struck his mask, and he was freed from the illusion: no, the figure in the depth of the room was not himself.
He gave a last moment’s stare, then backed away and shut the door.
It occurred to Rhoneh for the first time what exactly his others might think when they looked at him. If he had wondered at all about this before, he had assumed that he was only to them as much as an alien, a fleeting shadow, foreign, impenetrable, without substance or history. For Rhoneh’s matters were for himself alone. He judged his others as utterly outside and unknowing of the contents of his life.
Yet now he thought that, whatever they knew or did not know of him, they might, nonetheless, acknowledge him. Acknowledge him as something in their world. Simply by seeing him, dig a channel, or run a siphon, between their ocean and the ocean of his own life. And his life would seep into theirs.
It may well be that they would see no alien upon looking at him. Rather, as he had just done, they may see glimpses of their very selves.
This caused Rhoneh no little uneasiness.
For it allowed his others to appropriate him, or some part of him, into their minds. To mix his body’s form and movements with whatever strange thoughts dwelt there inside those skulls.
And, meanwhile, their minds remained dark to his own knowledge.
Rhoneh sat down on the stones, his thoughts a bland, tired haze.
He had never demanded of himself that he be useful to others. But he had considered himself at least his own. His own to claim as wilderness and sanctuary. And if there were aspects of himself that were not his, it was because he chose not to claim them. They were void. He left them to belong to no one.
But increasingly this week it had become apparent that whatever in fact he was, it was not for him to know. Hardly more for him than for any other.
His life seemed to lie in pieces scattered across time and space. And he was a ghost wandering among the rubble, unable to stoop and snatch anything as a personal souvenir.
Rhoneh laid his head against the wall of the tenements. And though he had only just woken an hour before, he willed himself to sleep.
Chapter XXIV
And sleep did as a man beseeched it, as often it does not. It renewed him.
Waking, he looked out on the rubble of his life, the strangeness, the brokenness. He looked as a child looks at an expanse filled with heaps, rusted beams, hovels, wet planks, gutted sheds. For him they needed belong to no one in particular. They needed be nothing other than what they were. Not broken were they, no — they showed just what shapes they wore.
And it remained only for him to explore in their midst, and be shown. Whatever, later, he might build of it all, he need not begin now.
Rhoneh rose to his feet and again sought the door to the boy’s room, eager to discover what would come of the confrontation.
Chapter XXV
At school’s end many of the little ones gathered outside to discuss what had transpired, and what was in Parah’s mind, and what would become of him.
“He’s starting an army.”
“He’s left to build his own city.”
“He’s wandering and fasting.”
“He’s growing an underground garden.”
“He’s done for.”
“Says who?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Beyan did not answer. For Beyan had run to seek solitude at the grate on the falls.
So, in the end, he had not needed to do it. The dreaded thing. It had been done for him.
But that was hardly better, for now what would become of Parah? And, still, what would become of himself? He thought of the voice in the dark room. “What we do we must everyone of us do...”
Beyan slouched and picked at his fingers. One hand groped urgently for his inner pocket where it retrieved a small, wrapped sugar scone. Beyan stared at it, and wondered.
Couldn’t he eat it now, since in the end he had not staked himself on anything, on any principle? To eat it was not to violate who he was. It would violate only some thoughts he had had — and where had those thoughts led him?
Besides, the grown one at school had not taken Parah’s side. He had done nothing at all. And surely he was to be trusted more than Parah?
But Beyan’s thoughts returned to the previous night, and the bodies in the dark room, and many grown ones among them, who had come, hunched, swollen, to hear those words that cut like glass.
Beyan’s mind hurt from confusion. Whom must he obey? Why was it so difficult?
His eyes happened to fall again upon the sugar scone in his hands, and it displaced his other thoughts. He stared, then brought it to his mouth and bit it, chewing aggressively, so that it was not the taste or texture he noticed so much as the movement of his jaws.
It was not because he had come to any conclusion that he ate it. It was not because he thought he would enjoy it.
He did not know why he ate it.
Chapter XXVI
Walk, return, and lie.
Such were the contents of Lhiar’s days and nights, and days and nights. Yet always, more and more, he was as he had never been.
Before, in his angst, and squirming, and oaths and deeds and destructions, it was as if he were spending his life in a dark, mildewed hollow. Still and torpid. Cobwebs collecting on him. Such, in his anger, in his chaos, was the striving of his soul. A mummification. A dark, restless, sleepless dream.
And in the past days now he had never known such striving. Such industry. Simply in his listening. Without deeds. Without oaths.
He felt — he knew — that he was crafting something.
Like a vast, intricate labyrinth carved in bone. Like a cave dug in rock, and its dark walls chiseled into elaborate shapes, openings, figures, ribs, spirals.
Such was the striving of his soul.
Likely no other person would ever witness this cave of his. These sculptures. These intricacies. But that was of no consequence. All of it was there. He had etched it into a corner of the universe, his corner, it was real, and he was shaping it. With the da
ily efforts and attentions of his mind he made forms and convolutions as marvelous as any a human had before cut into stone or soil.
Still, though, Lhiar waited for the radical transformation.
He felt it. It was imminent. He could feel every contour, every ripple of the tomtoads’ song as it flowed over him. Painting strokes, strokes of an image he could always almost yet never quite make out.
And he began to wonder: was it enough to soak in the sound? to be nourished by it? to let events take their course, let the change rise on its own through him? Was it enough just to listen?
Or must he take some action, make some leap, from here, on the brink, to there, the other side, so close? And if so, what?
Lhiar wondered.
And as he wondered a figure entered the room and sat before him.
Lhiar looked at the whiteness of the mask, and he could feel the eyes that lay hidden behind it. Eyes that seized him like frogs’ tongues and took him back, back to the other side of that mask. Back, devoured, into some impenetrable realm, where to be treated with what graces or torments or strange alchemies Lhiar could not begin to guess.
But that was their business. What they took was theirs to take. And Lhiar, undaunted, remained his own.
The figure reached its hands up and slipped away the combs, and drew the mask from his face. And Lhiar saw it was the face of a man. He was startled at first to see the rough, thick skin that hung, and the bulging, lashless eyelids. But he did not look away.
In this fashion the two regarded each other, before the man at last spoke.
“You were in a dream of mine — I don’t know why.....I know why....”
He choked on his voice, which rasped from disuse.
“I saw you — in the street — with your hand smashed...And I dreamed of you....I dreamed of you....I had a question....You were in a strange place —I couldn’t grasp it.....I had a question....And when I awoke — I was in this room — with you — and I did not know how — or for what....”
He was silent. Lhiar watched him. Rhoneh opened his jaws wide and stretched his tongue. He blinked, long. His eyes seemed meant to be shut.
He opened them and continued.
“And what it was — in the dream — is not what it has — become....The question....The question — now is — why I sought you....Or how I found you.....And perhaps — even more…. what will come of this....”
Lhiar listened, but had no answer. Rhoneh was silent for some time, and the two observed each other, having settled into the circumstances of their encounter.
Rhoneh resumed.
“I had thought myself — the fisherman...The fisherman — of my own sea...When I caught you — it was not I — who caught you....Not I — who hung the — bait — who whipped the rod....And it seemed to — me, then — that I was neither — man — nor fish, but — the line that runs — between sea and sky — through the ocean’s deep — and into the light....What I caught I caught — but who wielded me — and why — I could not say...”
Lhiar thought of himself, and of the tramping below of horse’s feet, which were also his own.
“Why you....Why you — not something else — someone else....It seems to hinge — on that...To what was I — drawn — in you....? For I feel that that — will answer for — me — who cast the line — and why.”
A halt. But then he added, as if to himself only:
“Yet no man — fishing — knows what he will find — and has no cause — to cast out — but — for that — he hungers....And what man knows — why he hungers....?”
Silence for some time between them. The silence not a barrier, but a solvent. Through it all Lhiar remained attentive to the man, but also stayed with the soft and distant song, which held him like sunshine at his back.
“Man,” said Lhiar, “I don’t know about your dreams. But when you go you may come again if you like, if you think it will tell you something.”
Rhoneh nodded at the floor. After some time he rose and left.
Lhiar, on an impulse, got up and went to the window. He looked down the cleft to the snaking Crude Stream. The stones jutted from its frothing surface. Downstream some men stood on the banks with their long shafts, raking and harvesting the agar.
The stone facades rose from every side, gray, with the faint pink or grey-green touch of moss and lichens.
Lhiar thought about things built. Things shaped. And he thought, having recently learned to see with new eyes, to walk with a new step, what remained was to wreak with new hands. To lay things. To mold shapes. Like walls, that stood on cornerstones.
Or were these enough? the shapes at work inside of him? Did they not require some partner, some shadow, out in the world to be witnessed?
And if the intricacies of his mind Lhiar did not cut into stone, like the vast, winding city streets — then what? What would he make of them?
Chapter XXVII
Rhoneh came everyday. He sat, removed his mask and gloves. Sometimes flecks of dried clay sprinkled on the floor.
Lhiar learned to regard him as any other household circumstance. The man did not demand any special attention. Sometimes he would speak, and typically Lhiar would listen, though not from any obligation, or courtesy. But with ears to listen why not?
“I think about birds,” said the man. “Birds, in the moments falling from their nest. The falling, the urgency. At first one moves one’s body in conventional ways. Opens the mouth. Rolls the eyes. Tightens the claws. Still one falls — it does nothing. And one struggles to move in unconventional ways. A new impulse stirs the wings. They respond. And one sees what one may do.
“I think about the time I came to you first. I felt such fear and strangeness. I know that fear had lived always in me — unknown to me, but living. And it was only on finding you that that fear was stirred.
“There are movements, of my body and soul, I know, some dreadful, some wonderful. They remain hidden from me. I have not yet found how to work them. And I wonder what drastic actions must I take before I may have writhed enough to master them?”
His voice at first gravelly had grown thick and smooth. He said,
“I dreamed last night. I dream every night. Last night I dreamed my body was like husks of old corn. Dry, flaky, layered. Wisps and fronds. From my fingertips, my lips, my elbows, my crevices, my hair. Dangling. Pushing outward. Knots and fibers, papery sheets. Bending in the wind.”
He trailed off, and stared at the floor. He was silent for some time.
When the man was silent, Lhiar focused more attentively on the song — always, it seemed, on the brink of conferring its form, its message. Wrapping its shape around Lhiar; a gentle breath around a flame.
In this way the boy and the man grew accustomed to one another.
After some days they began to take walks. Rhoneh, in his full garb, and the boy in his clogs and drapery. Silent, side by side.
Lhiar looked ahead, his mind threaded by the song; but the beads of his thoughts took the forms of the stone buildings, of the alleyways, of the agar rakes, of the clay dust that fell from the man’s fingertips.
He thought of things wrought.
Things wrought, that stayed. Like the facades, the cabinets.
He thought, too, of things wrought, that vanished. Cranberry tarts. The tomtoads’ tunnels. The steam from the jets, shot, seen for an instant, only to fade in the white sun.
He thought of all of them. The wrought things.
Some of those things that stayed stood with a voice that could speak, to anyone passing, the story of their birth and nature. And some things spoke nothing of what they were, or had been.
A man turned a corner and, looking ahead, saw two figures walking toward him, side by side, in the grey mist.
The man waited a moment longer than ordinary, regarding them.
Then, turning back, sought a different way.
Chapter XXVIII
Beyan could stand no more.
Why did they wear the masks. Why did they s
cald their bodies so. And hunt for cakes. What did the Maddened want. Why did the children not eat the agar. Why had the teacher been silent. What had become of Parah. What was demanded of him, Beyan.
Why did so few others seem concerned about any of this? And, of those concerned, why was none so thoroughly confused as he?
What did people feel? What did they need? Whose desires were right?
At length he resolved to see for himself the world outside, and the labors of those folk who suffered in it. He knew the place where they met. The exit.
In the dark he rose and hid there, waited. Watched — as the light came, so came the folk, now one, now another, robes trailing, masks sheer and white in the folds. At the threshold they met, and when the last had come they proceeded into the middle chamber.
Beyan peered in, saw them disrobe, hang their every belonging on hooks in the wall. He watched, one by one, their thick bodies pass through the steam curtain, blur, and vanish into the room beyond.
When the last had crossed, Beyan scurried into the room.
He leaned close to the curtain, which hissed with a quiet intensity. He could just discern, through its billowing, the forms of the humans on the opposite side. Taking bundles off the walls. Hauling them over their shoulders.
Beyan breathed deeply, regarding the hazy screen just inches from his nose.
Then he plunged through.
At once he fell to the floor, shrieking, his hands palming his face. He hadn’t shut his eyes. Why not? Wasn’t it obvious he must? And yet he had not. He was weak and stupid, and now he could not see, because of what he had done to himself. He bawled and groped at his sockets.
At the moment of contact the lids had snapped shut of their own accord, but there had been the slightest instant when they lay exposed to the fast hissing, the fury of the jets. And, besides his eyes, his whole body burned with a great though lesser burning. All his flesh seemed to run from itself, ran to the eyes as if trying to dig back to what they had been before, moments earlier, when the knowledge of what could transpire might yet have saved them.
“I didn’t know!” wailed Beyan. Choking, feeling. “I didn’t know!”
Some figure had run to him, had begun caressing him violently. There was a tumult of sounds around him. He felt himself lifted. Held close to some body. He felt a gentle pinch, as of warning. Then his body reacting, again, to the fierce lash of the curtain as they returned back and into the city.
