Landscape: Memory

by Matthew Stadler

  I thought about our situation, us shuffling along in silence, dragging our toes down the dirty hill as slow as could be, and tried to think what could make things better. Really I wanted to be back in Bolinas, even back five years ago in Bolinas.

  "Let's go to a ballgame," I suggested, as a way of getting over this horrible morning. He looked out across the bay as we walked along, turning toward me as he thought.

  "I don't know. Max," he started, as if apologizing. He stopped for a moment, keeping on with his own thoughts, evidently pursuing demons that even baseball could not dispel. "A ballgame doesn't sound right just now."

  He cocked his head, hoping I'd understand.

  I imagined, for a moment, that he was mad at me and that made me angry and a little panicky, like if he left right then I'd be so confused and nervous I'd curl up and cry. But that thought was far too complicated and I couldn't imagine ever finding words to get it right. So I just nodded yes, I understood, not wanting to risk speaking what I felt, and he nodded back.

  "I kind of want to go running," he continued. "Just running by myself. It helps when I'm mad."

  The sun sat still in the sky and the air was silent, the trees halted by the absence of wind, motionless. There really was no one around, no cars or trolleys. I could feel the wide green hills rising up behind me, looming large enough to make me feel a slight pressure on the back of my head and neck. I walked all the way to the ferry without really stopping to think, and rode across the open blue bay looking back at Berkeley, thinking I might see Duncan if I looked hard enough.

  I imagined I could just think him back near me. Not that I could think so well he actually would appear, but just, I imagined, that I had so many and such particular thoughts about him that that would be enough to make me feel the same as if he were with me. I'd think them all as intently as I could, each tiny touch and tone of his presence. I'd remember so vividly, as I truly did, every possible feature of him being with me and then I'd feel the same as if he were with me.

  If memory could hold him completely I'd not feel this sudden loneliness. But it couldn't and I did, and I could only lie there on the worn carpet of our little front room and cry over some elusive failure. Our failure to get classes together, or my failure to say "Don't leave me now," or his failure to understand that that is what I meant, though I couldn't find the words to say it.

  16 AUGUST 1915

  We made wonderful friends with an old Latvian woman and her daughter, and They've invited us for dinner this Wednesday. They live on Hillegass off Parker in a towering thin, three-story, some hybrid strain of row house with nothing else in its row. It must've been built by someone who fancies windmills, and needs only the blades to complete the picture.

  Their rooms are full to bursting with Latvian doo-dahs: ornately carved little mushroom boxes, mammoth swaddling boards and wooden toy birds with articulating wings and dangerously sharp beaks. Mrs. Meekshtais, for that's her name, explained that these were intended for the Latvian exhibition at the Fair but then the plan was scuttled by the war and political squabbling among the Baltic states. Unt, her daughter (who'll be going to Berkeley as well), performed a quaint folk dance accompanied by the melodic howling of Mrs. Meekshtais, who also played the harmonium.

  They offered us a tiny little room off the kitchen, as that was the only space available in the house. It really was far too small but we promised we'd take it if nothing bigger came up in the next two days and indeed we would have, had this other special place not been available.

  This other place is nestled on the hill north of campus, set back amongst a grouping of young cedars. Its steep pitched roof rises to a crest above the trees. We found it by accident, calling at any house that appealed to us as we wandered around east of Euclid. The southern wall has a window stretching two stories high. It opens up on a vast living room with nothing but wooden beams and a rich wood ceiling overhead. There are two other wings, one running east, very squat, with stone walls and a fat thatch roof, and the other jutting out to the west.

  We knocked on the heavy wooden door.

  Mrs. Dunphy answered. It was dumb luck.

  "Oh, dear," she said. "Oh, my, dearie. What a shock." Duncan wasn't sure what to make of this display of familiarity and looked to me for the introductions.

  "Maxwell," I reminded her, "Maxwell Kosegarten. The Fair in late May?"

  "Oh, yes, of course. Maxwell, of course. That awful night at the Fair. Your terrible dizzy spell." We both clucked with reminiscence:

  When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish,

  In the Paleozoic time.

  And side by side on the ebbing tide,

  We sprawled through the ooze and slime,

  Or skittered with many a caudal flip

  Through the depths of the Cambrian fen —

  My heart was rife with the joy of life.

  For I loved you even then.

  Mindless we lived, mindless we loved,

  And mindless at last we died;

  And deep in the rift of a Caradoc drift

  We slumbered side by side.

  The world turned on in the lathe of time,

  The hot sands heaved amain,

  Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,

  And crept into life again.

  We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed,

  And drab as a dead man's hand.

  We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees

  Or trailed through the mud and sand,

  Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet,

  Writing a language dumb,

  With never a spark in the empty dark

  To hint at a life to come.

  Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,

  And happy we died once more.

  Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold

  Of a Neocomian shore.

  The aeons came and the aeons fled,

  And the sleep that wrapped us fast

  Was riven away in a newer day,

  And the night of death was past.

  Then light and swift through the jungle trees

  We swung in our airy flights,

  Or breathed the balms of the fronded palms

  In the hush of the moonless nights.

  And oh, what beautiful years were these

  When our hearts clung each to each;

  When life was filed and our senses thrilled

  In the first faint dawn of speech!

  Thus life by life, and love by love,

  We passed through the cycles strange,

  And breath by breath, and death by death,

  We followed the chain of change.

  Till there came a time in the law of life

  When over the nursing sod

  The shadows broke, and the soul awoke

  In a strange, dim dream of God.

  I was thewed like an Aurocks bull

  And tusked like the great Cave-Bear,

  And you, my sweet, from head to feet,

  Were gowned in your glorious hair.

  Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,

  When the night fell o'er the plain,

  And the moon hung red o'er the river bed,

  We mumbled the bones of the slain.

  I flaked a fiint to a cutting edge,

  And shaped it with brutish craft;

  I broke a shank from the woodland dank,

  And fitted it, head to haft.

  Then I hid me close in the reedy tarn.

  Where the Mammoth came to drink —

  Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,

  And slew him upon the brink.

  Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,

  Loud answered our kith and kin;

  From west and east to the crimson feast

  The clan came trooping in.

  O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof,

  We fought and clawed and tore,

  And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,

  We talk
ed the marvel o'er.

  I carved that fight on a reindeer bone

  With rude and hairy hand;

  I pictured his fall on the cavern wall

  That men might understand.

  For we lived by blood and the right of might,

  Ere human laws were drawn,

  And the Age of Sin did not begin

  Till our brutal tusks were gone.

  And that was a million years ago,

  In a time that no man knows;

  Yet here to-night in the mellow light.

  We sit at Delmonico's.

  Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,

  Your hair is as dark as jet,

  Your years are few, your life is new,

  Your soul untried, and yet —

  Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay,

  And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;

  We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones.

  And deep in the Coralline crags.

  Our love is old, and our lives are old.

  And death shall come amain.

  Should it come to-day, what man may say

  We shall not live again?

  God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds

  And furnished them wings tofly;

  He sowed our spawm in the world's dim dawn,

  And I know that it shall not die;

  Though cities have sprung above the graves

  Where the crook-boned men made war,

  And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves

  Where the mummied mammoths are.

  Then, as we linger at luncheon here,

  O'er many a dainty dish,

  Let us drink anew to the time when you

  Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.

  I'd forgotten to introduce Duncan.

  "Duncan," I announced, turning toward him. "Duncan Taqdir, my very best friend. This is Mrs. Dunphy," and he took her fishlike hand in his and shook it vigorously.

  "I'm pleased," he said to her. "Pleased to meet you." The little poem drifted back into blurred unremembrance.

  We stood at the threshold for some long moments, the aroma of curry drifting out across our noses. Mrs. Dunphy stood and stared, clucking thoughtfully and shaking her head in apparent disbelief. I smiled big and dumb.

  "We'll both be attending the university this term," I tried.

  Mrs. Dunphy snapped back into phase. "Oh, yes, certainly. Do come in, mustn't stand around on ceremony, come right in and have a seat in the kitchen." And we walked in through the cozy vestibule, all warm wood and carpets, and followed Mrs. Dunphy and the heady aroma into the kitchen, up and back of the enormous room we'd seen from the street.

  "It's all coming back quite vividly. Maxwell," Mrs. Dunphy called over her shoulder, lifting pan tops to sprinkle spice and stir. "You'd been feeling ill that evening, am I right?"

  "Oh, yes, quite ill. Rather dizzy really, and hungry."

  "There was that nasty spell at the Fountain of the Ages," Mrs. Dunphy continued, sitting down by us with a little ladle of curry. "You disappeared off into the bushes, I believe. Curry?" And she held the lurid yellow ladle up to our noses.

  "No thank you," Duncan answered. "We've just eaten."

  Mrs. Dunphy smiled briskly and plopped the dripping treat back in the pan. "Did you meet Mr. Dunphy that evening?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "He'd gone home. The Fair had 'tired him out' you told me. In the Court of Mines? The pretty pink gravel?" I tried, prompting her memory. We sat again in silence, remembering.

  Mr. Dunphy came knocking along the hallway (I presumed it was he) with his face in a book and an empty mug in hand.

  "Dear." Mrs. Dunphy beckoned. "I'd like you to meet two young friends. Maxwell and Duncan." We rose from our chairs, me knocking mine over backward, and extended our two hands to Mr. Dunphy, whose two hands were both busy. He nodded politely and went to the stove.

  "It's a pleasure, gentlemen. To what do we owe their visit, dearest? What brings them to our little kingdom?" He peeked into the empty teapot and put some water on to boil. Mrs. Dunphy turned to us, eyebrows upraised in wonder.

  "Maxwell and I," Duncan started, "will be attending the university. We've come looking for lodgings, just a room and some sort of arrangement for use of the kitchen." He could be so cordial when he wanted.

  "I thought we could let the upstairs to them," Mrs. Dunphy improvised, "up above the sewing room." We maintained our calm dispositions, taking this fiction as the fact Mrs. Dunphy intended it to be, and showed no surprise.

  "Fine, fine, fine," her husband answered, putting his book down at last. "You're in charge here, dearest." He looked over at both of us, looking us up and down as if we were diseased trees. "They seem to be healthy young specimens, I'd say." And he snorted in conclusion, turning back to the stove to pour the whistling water, and trundled back from whence he came.

  Our room has one wide window looking west through trees and across the water. The low walls slant in about four feet up from the floor and come to a white flat ceiling only eight feet high. The two beds tuck up into their own little window bays, facing out south with nothing but wild green branches to see. Mrs. Dunphy said we could drag a desk up from their basement and if we didn't mind would we keep the endless shelves of books right where they were in our room. There's no fireplace, but well adjust.

  Tomorrow is the first day of classes.

  17 AUGUST 1915

  We stayed our first night at the Dunphys without going back to the city for fear we'd oversleep again. Mrs. Dunphy was being more than generous with linens and towels and that thick curry she let stew all day.

  We slept together in one of the thin beds, which was fine and cozy for sleeping but proved comical and impractical for all else we might do in bed. Everything goes loose in sleep. Like that groan and growl I make in my throat if I've just come or am falling fast into sleep. Or the way thoughts which have been buried come drifting by, let loose from below. If I'm not yet sleeping and try to seize hold of the thought, it disappears. But if I let my mind loose, it all comes in again.

  We might rearrange the furniture, pushing the two beds together in the wide western bay and making a little sitting area where the beds were.

  18 AUGUST 1915

  Professor Brown asked why can't you voice someone else's memories and I remembered what Father'd said about songs sung in our bones and spoke up. I thought, I said, it might be possible. He said try. It was so silent and dusty, with sunlight sliding in through trees, and our little gallery of desks fanned out in front of him. I knew no one there, though we'd all given our names. I felt bold and anonymous.

  It was cheating really, because I didn't say whose memory I'd voice and the tale I gave was so general it must be that everyone remembers it from somewhere.

  "It was a bright sunny morning," I began. Mr. Brown watched with interest, allowing me to let out enough rope to hang by, I presumed. "I had never slept so well, lying so relaxed and awake, or both asleep and awake, this particular perfect condition being something words can't describe, really. I felt eager and ready for the day ahead.

  "I was very young. We were off to visit relatives, ones I feared because their house smelled so odd, all mothballs and camphor and such, and because their manner was so stiff and accusing. I often had nightmares about these particular relatives, especially, I remember, one in which I'm devoured. Today was a birthday and I was to bring a gift. Still the lovely morning had me feeling brave.

  "Should I go on?"

  "Whose memory is this?" Mr. Brown asked the class, looking to them for the answer. Some few of the thirty-odd students raised their hands.

  "Mister," and he paused, looking to his list.

  "Maxwell."

  "Mr. Maxwell has begun a fable, or, potentially, a myth." Mr. Brown nodded to me appreciatively. I fairly burst with the pleasure of recognition. "A fine example of shared memory. In any group there is a common ground of experience, a history of trials and triumphs through whic
h every individual must go and does go, somehow. My intention, however, was to establish quite the opposite point.

  "My intention was to establish, by my little question, the isolation of individual memory. How will each of us remember Mr. Maxwell's story? Is there a correct memory of that event? Would the event have any existence without our memories of it? Given the inevitable differences in memory, what is the true nature of that past event? Is it Mr. Maxwell's memory of it? Is it only what We're remembered in common? The fact of Mr. Maxwell telling it, the fact of our being together here in this room? There is no question each individual collects those pieces of experience which somehow suit his needs, that memory is selective and idiosyncratic, and purposeful, though perhaps not consciously so.

  "I hope we'll all begin this course with that as a given. Memory is an individual phenomenon, a struggle for persistence guided by the evolutionary forces at work in each man's psyche. What survives in your world may not survive in mine.

  "As for Mr. Maxwell's welcome diversion, the myth or fable. Every culture has its fables." Here Mr. Brown paused to sigh, approaching what must've seemed an unwelcome can of worms (given it was just our first day). "Some set of stories that gives form and voice to their common experience. Especially as children we take these stories into our own experience, even enacting them as a set of struggles of our own making, practicing, perhaps, for our inevitable future struggles.

  "As adults, however—and perhaps this point will help us synthesize the two views—as adults we manage a distinction between real memory and myth, experience and stories. It is typical—and this point is telling—typical of primitive cultures that they, just like children in our own culture, take the myth as real, regarding that which they've imagined as real experience.

  "I can't stress enough the wisdom of that old rubric 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.' Here, as always, it is true. Just as civilizations have advanced from that primitive infancy, in which what is myth and what is actual experience are so blended as to remain indistinct, just as they have advanced to a more mature separation of reality and fable, so we see individuals in our own lives grow from a childhood of wonder, of shared memories and stories enacted, felt as true, see them grow, I say, to an adulthood of wisdom, a clear sense of the separate experience of each individual. Myths may successfully abstract our individual experience, but they cannot be called equivalent.