20

by John Edgar Wideman

  ————

  It was as if the Volkswagen had driven off the road and into the driveway on its own volition. There is nothing you can do for her, he told himself, cutting the engine. She sprung out of the rocking chair and stood, very nervous and brittle, regarding him with an angry panic as he got out, straightened to his full height, and approached. Her hair was shorter, cut bluntly and shiny clean.

  “Hello, El,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  He juggled two peaches in his large hands. They were fuzzy and pale and not ripe. The basket was not even full. The shelf tipped at an angle. She looked down at her feet, then around at the display that was not up to snuff, and her face showed signs of another panic. He put the peaches back in the basket.

  “Hell,” he said, “I don't want to buy anything.”

  “Good,” she said. “I don't want to sell anything.” Suddenly she grinned.

  “Are you running?” he asked.

  She sighed. “A little. I swim more now.” She squinted again, pointing past him, across to the motel where he could see the turquoise glimmer.

  “Not much of a pool,” he said.

  “It's enough,” she answered. The energy seemed to be collecting in her chest, about to come charging out in a torrent of words, he knew, if he waited. She squinted at the road as a car slowed down. The car drove on. Her eyes brightened. “I've started swimming underwater. I do laps underwater and it's as if I don't even need to breathe, I get into this rhythm, and the water takes over and there's no difference between the water and me.”

  “It must feel good,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She paused. “It's really the only time I ever do feel good.”

  His heart seemed to contract.

  “And all the chatter in my head is quiet. What a relief!” She gave a little laugh. “It's like I don't have to be there any more. It's enough that there's energy and water and—and feeling. When I'm underwater, I don't have to keep talking to myself.”

  He smiled.

  “I don't have to keep listening to myself, either,” she said, smirking.

  He smiled again. She needed to lose herself in those sensations, and yet the sensations rendered themselves into words, almost despite her. Then the words sought him. And he wondered if she would stay with her body, in the energy and sensation, or if someday she would abandon it, to wander off entirely in the chatter of her head, locked irrevocably into articulation.

  He said, “Keep swimming, El.”

  “I know,” she said.

  He turned back to the Volkswagen, opened the door, and folded himself up to fit in. “But for Chrissakes,” he yelled sternly. “Don't forget to breathe!”

  ————

  She watched the gray car get back on the road, she heard one gear shift, then another as it passed the mailbox and the pines—and it was off, dissolving into the world of one dimension. But here it had stood out, as he had, in its entire form, all dimensions. Everything had, while he was here. Even the bushel baskets of fruit had suddenly jumped out at her, alive with their own color and shape. Peaches round. Baskets square. He had stopped to talk to her! And by stopping, he had made the world fill out and occupy itself again, so that there was within her vision a distinct near and far, a brighter and duller, a center and an edge. There were spaces between things, there was here, and there was there. He had stopped, for her, in the middle of a summer afternoon!

  ————

  Like the year before, he sat at his desk, facing her, as she sat atop a front-row desk, a tenth-grader now, no longer in his English class but there, after school, alone. She wore nylons now instead of socks, but still swung her feet in the old ungainly way. Her shoes had fallen on the floor. She sat there, reciting by heart the T. S. Eliot poem he had once mentioned that he knew by heart, and she did it with fine intonation, tender feeling, not a word wrong.

  “Hey, pretty damn good,” he said when she finished. She beamed at him with good color in her face, the wrinkles gone, her dark hair showing blond sun-streaks, her eyes full of light.

  “It's good to have the old kid back,” he said softly.

  Suddenly the light and feeling in her face vanished. “I am not the old kid!” she shouted. “And I will never be the same!”

  He saw at once that she was right. She would blossom—had already begun to blossom—into all the facets of adulthood from that single stem, her father's death.

  “El,” he said.

  She looked down at her stockinged feet. “It's no use. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell. It's just that everything seems ruined.”

  “Hey, El. You were never what I'd call a happy-go-lucky, carefree sort of kid to begin with. You think, remember? It's what distinguishes you from the apes.” He coughed. “And a few other people we know.”

  She smirked, almost as if she would laugh. But she did not laugh. “I know.” Her face darkened. “But this is worse.”

  “You miss him,” he said softly.

  She shot that angry look at him again. “It's not that easy!” she shouted hoarsely. Then her voice lowered. “Don't you see? If you, if someone had mixed feelings about a person to begin with….” She stopped, shook her head. “Okay, yes, I loved him, he was my father, but he was difficult. Don't you see?”

  He nodded.

  “And everybody comes up to you and says, you must be heartbroken. Well, that's not it! I'm not such a good little girl! But it's death. It's so final. I was in the middle of something with him!”

  They were silent for a minute. Then he spoke. “You can't say, ‘Poor, wonderful Daddy, he was a saint, only the good die young.’”

  “Right,” she said, almost triumphantly.

  Again they sat in silence. Again he broke it. “And you can't hack through the rest of your understanding of each other.”

  She sighed. “Yes,” she said.

  Another silence occupied another minute. Finally he said, “Well, hell, El,” deliberately elongating the rhyme. “If I were you, I'd be pissed as hell at him.”

  She nodded. “There,” she said.

  “Don't,” he began, and then he paused, wondering if he should say it, because he didn't really know, did he?—except from some mute instinct. “Don't let anyone stop you.”

  ————

  She lay absolutely still in bed, but her mind began to rush out, further and further, hurtling into a black space that had no end, it went—she went—at a dizzying speed, racing outward through the blackness, which was suddenly infused with faint sprays of light, then utterly black again. The force and speed of her mind's propulsion into blackness erupted into a buzz, a hum, that grew into a grinding racket that got faster and louder and faster again until the sound itself exploded into white light, a terrible flash! And still she hurtled into space, all directions at once, until—what was it? Everything began to contract in upon her, the vast oceans of space dipped inward, faster and faster, it all came hurtling back at her, whirling up a storm in the spaces of her head. The blackness streamed inward now. She lay there. In the box. With blackness. The voices around her were distraught. Her mother, her sister, her aunts were all weeping. No! I am not dead! She tried to cry out. But the furious streams of movement, in a sudden whoosh! swept her core into their current so that in this fraction of a second she felt herself ebb away, the all of her gone, except for the thinnest thread; and there was nothing but the vast quiet that she would not even know, but for this thread….

  She awoke with her head pounding violently; she realized that even awake she was still on the thread's end overlooking the negation of her self. And she could not bear it, this complete encircling with all her senses of the core that was her death, the knowledge itself as total as the emptiness it knew—and for a brief second the two were in balance, the thread stretched taut. If it broke, she would not be there to know it or to know the rest of the world going on. “No!” she cried aloud, and the thread brought her back into herself, so that in another second she could not even imagine whe
re she had just been.

  ————

  “And I was dead,” she said matter-of-factly. She had summoned him for a talk during lunch instead of waiting until the usual time after school.

  “Except for this thread—no, not even a thread, like a fragile spiderweb hair, that's all. That's all there is between life and death. Now I know exactly what it is.” She spoke with intense animation, her face flushed. “It snaps—and then you're gone. All I had was this thread; I felt the rest of me flow out and leave. I heard them talking around me, at the funeral. And then I was gone, and all that was left, beside the thread, was the nothing.”

  She shuddered. And it was about time, he thought, because he had felt his own hair—what was left of it—stand straight on his head at the start.

  She went on. “But then the thread pulled me back enough into being alive that I was aware of the death, I had a complete grasp of it, just for a fraction of a second. Not the dying, exactly, but the not being there. And that” she paused, eyes bright with fierce assurance, “was horrible. I can't describe it.”

  “You just did,” he said.

  “Oh, no. You can't imagine.”

  “Give me a chance.”

  She laughed nervously. “But even I can't imagine. Not now. Even right after it happened I couldn't. Because as horrible as it was, I did try to bring it back. But I couldn't. I tried very hard to summon it back.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Finally he said, cautiously, “Do you think if you can get back there again—into death—you'll find him there?”

  Her response was not at all what he expected or what he feared. She burst out laughing. “How mystical!” she cried. “Oh, God, no, that's not it at all,” she said, laughing harder. And then, her laughter subsiding, she said, “No, I just want to know what it is, that's all.”

  And although he thought he was relieved, the hair stood up straight once again.

  ————

  Thwop! The piece of maple went splitting out into two big chunks. Thwop! All the muscles of his back rippled in the motion. He stacked half a cord of wood from an hour's work, which was still not enough. He needed more: not more wood, he had mounded up enough, during the summer and fall, for another three winters, but more motion.

  He put on the worn running shoes and took the trail at an even pace down the hill and along the rushing stream, but instead of climbing up to the main road, he turned and took the stream trail back again, lost in the music of his own footfalls. At the flattest stretch he thought he'd try it her way, just for once, and he took off in a sprint. But after fifty yards a deep ache started in his lungs, and not long after came a knot that seized the muscle in his right calf. Then both knees buckled.

  Later, as his wife massaged the leg, she said, “A cramp in your leg usually comes right before your foot goes in the grave.”

  “Hey!” he barked. “That's not funny.” And tears of pain moistened the corners of both eyes.

  ————

  Putt-putt-putt. She heard the under-rhythm of the Volkswagen in the distance and waited in the shadow of the stand, boarded up now, grass growing high around it. Across the street, Nelson pushed the laundry cart along in his slow, quiet routine. At last she heard the sound more clearly, putt-putt-putt. It set off a pounding in her chest as it grew closer. She stood motionless, knowing she was hidden, and watched the small gray car putter past with him gigantic in the front seat. She felt the first surge of a yearning so new, so vague, so light a flutter in her throat, that she hardly knew she was feeling anything at all. And then the putt-putt-putt faded and was gone.

  She took off down the driveway and forced herself into his rhythm, so that she could feel the lifting from the ball of one foot and the firm landing of the other. What was the point? Plod—plod—plod—she jogged along this way, his way, the length of the driveway, down the highway the short distance to the dirt road, and halfway up to the Sayer farm. Then she broke into a sprint, filling her lungs on the first leap, and tore out of the jog in a burst of her own breeze. The air brushed her cheeks, her hair flew out, her feet barely touched the ground, and she flew! Along the road and down the hill the wind was her very soul, and as she dissolved into the wind she felt herself become life, pure life, her surge through the air matching the push of blood through her veins. She was the same as that force and no more than it, she was the thread of life, flying down a country road.

  ————

  In his quiet classroom after school, she sat at a desk by the long row of windows, her geometry book open next to a sheet of lined paper and two sharpened pencils. She had already worked out the answer to the first problem in her neat print and careful triangular drawings. But now she dropped the third pencil beside the book and looked out the window. The afternoon sunlight filtered across the deep green soccer field and through the row of stately maples at the far border, where it wove a gold pattern on red leaves. As the breeze blew, the gold tones shimmered. The air around them seemed to shimmer, too. She watched the breeze waft through the grasses below, which leaned gently. And then the team of boys in shorts and sweatshirts came running down one side of the soccer field, the whole group at the same brisk jog along the field, then toward the trees. They were all caught by the slant of sunlight and lit momentarily by the golden hue, and from the gold they jogged into the trees and disappeared. Ellen stood up to watch the last boy fade away, the gold light closing back in around the space where he had been, and a peacefulness, which had not been disturbed by the runners but made somehow more luxuriant, now redistributed itself along the grass and trees and sky.

  He came and stood next to her, looming so close that if she looked sideways but an inch or two she saw the thick brown and black wool weave of his jacket, halfway down the arm. Her heart began beating wildly; a hot flush spread from her forehead down her face and throat to her neck. Why was he standing so close? She stole a rapid look up at his face, which stared out the window where her own look had just been fixed. She saw the coarse bristle of a new day's growth on the underside of his chin. His huge, square shoulder jutted out beside her head. She stopped breathing. Then she could hear him breathe. Just as she turned her head to face out the window again, she felt his look begin a downward, sideways glance at her. Too close, much too close! The heat rose back from her neck into her face. She would explode.

  The heave of his chest and a puff of air yielded a sigh. She did not look back up toward his face, but fixed her glance out the window, seeing nothing, taking no breath, paralyzed. If he said one single word her pounding body would burst into a million pieces. But why was he still there? It could not have been even a full minute that he stood where she could hear each of his breaths and know the fibers of his sleeve, but it was forever.

  At last he turned, and she sensed the movement of his shoulder hoisting up, heard the soft rustle of his clothing. And then, with one hand cupped, he touched her head just below the crown, he lay his hand upon the spot with an exquisite, tender firmness and drew it down another inch, without lifting it or even loosening the pressure, and there, above the nape of her neck, pressed his fingers a bit more firmly with the same awesome tenderness. Then the touch lightened, lingered a second more…and was gone. This unimaginable caress had lasted three seconds, at most four, and was gone.

  He left her side, slowly turned and walked up the row of desks back to his own. He sat down. She reached up and felt the spot, as if to make sure it was still there. She cupped her own hand and laid it firmly on her head, capturing the touch. Then she let her hand drop limply to her side. She kept her look fixed out the window and let herself take a breath. She breathed again, she began to pace out each breath as if she were sprinting down the road, taking air deeply into her lungs, slowly releasing it, breathing in again. Each new beat of her heart pounded a bit less wildly in her chest. The light in the maples now shone with a glint of silver laid over gold. The wind had shifted, the time had changed. A stronger breeze skimmed through the grass. She s
at down at the desk and looked ahead, at him. He corrected papers, reading intently, his forehead furrowing.

  She picked up a pencil and looked at her book. Then she glanced one last time out the window to see the stream of boys running another lap down the field and through the trees.

  2000

  WAITING FOR GIOTTO

  Adria Bernardi

  At dusk, he crosses the threshing floor. The soles of his wooden shoes hit against the stones. The stones fit closely, embedded into the ground, squared blocks pressed tightly, one against the other such that no weed can grow between them. The threshing floor is Apennine sandstone, slate-grey, and not easily splintered.

  ————

  When he exhales, his breath is visible in the faltering light. Below, to his left, in the valley, a bell pounds five times, a hollow knocking toll. He pauses and looks. In Ardonlà, minute lights begin to flicker; the river has already disappeared in the dark. The mountain peak and ridges are looming hunchbacked beasts.

  He whistles, a sharp, cranium-piercing whistle, and Diana the goat trots up beside him and follows. He is a tall, gangly man, all limbs and neck. He approaches the stable, leans a shoulder into the door, loosening it, lowering his head as he passes underneath the lintel.

  Inside, he lights one candle and sets it up high on a shelf, out of the way, so that it will not be accidentally toppled. A tunic falls to just above his knees; it is a plush material, a purple so deep it is almost black.

  Diana the goat settles into the corner and is sleeping like a patient dog.

  He takes a panel from the corner, unwinds the piece of sackcloth that covers it. He hangs the cloth on a wooden peg. The panel of chestnut has been planed and smoothed, then coated with lime, which dried, and then was rubbed and smoothed some more. He lays the wooden panel on freshly scattered straw and drops to his haunches, his long legs bent and splayed, the heavy cloth of the tunic draping over his knees.

  With jagged fingernails, he scratches his scalp and his arm. Patches of skin have turned white, then red, and he must try not to touch them. The skin throbs and pulls apart from itself, and when he can no longer tolerate it, his nails nick hatch marks into the skin, and the sting relieves his incessant discomfort.