Windows Into Hell

by James Wymore

  it seems important to remember,

  How were you called? It will not

  come. Your name was to last forever,

  but here on this field of death, your

  memory has not lasted even an hour

  after your departure to that cold

  place, across that dark river.

  That river crossed but once. Your

  name did not last forever—not even an hour.

  I see ravens landing nearby. They

  hop about, turning their heads sideways

  to fix their black eye on a fallen soldier

  twisted nearby. A bold, big-breasted

  storm crow hops upon the armored chest

  of that fallen comrade, and with a clever

  twist removes a bit of lip from an empty

  face that no longer needs to smile.

  I look down, trying once more to recall

  that appellation that will restore your

  memory to my mind and to the Gods’

  as well. But alas, forgotten one, it will

  not come. The general signals. We must

  move on. Rumors of another force

  approaching mean we will not pause

  to burn you and do you one last honor.

  Your body will go to these harbingers

  of death. These feathered eaters of death.

  These markers and signifiers of death. I

  pick up your short sword, its tang wrapped in

  hardened olive wood and stiff ox hide.

  It is in better shape than mine, which I

  stab into the ground next to your body,

  and sheath your blade as my own.

  Our names were to be remembered forever.

  Commemorated for deeds worthy of songs.

  Epic poems were to be spoken of our Areté

  at games and sacrifices. But the wind stirs me

  to wander on, to collect with other survivors to

  the place we are gathering to march into

  another fight, and on and on in an endless

  cycle of battles played out in a theater

  enacted for the amusement of the gods.

  As I walk away, I try once more to remember

  your name. But it is gone and I will try no more.

  Your bones will dry here.

  Unmarked. Unmourned. Forsaken.

  II. The Battle for Tissaphernes’ Head

  I once watched a gull and a raven

  battle over Tissaphernes’ head.

  It was loosened by the deep strike of

  a cavalryman’s spear to his uncovered

  throat and kicked fully free by the errant

  hoof of a staggering warhorse. I watched his helm

  bounce among the stones of the strand. His

  head lodged between two barnacle-graced

  stones. One eye was open, the other closed

  and his curly locks falling fetchingly around his

  face, in a handsome and stylish way. He would

  have turned heads in Athens were it

  still attached. The gull arrived first. Its white

  and gray body balanced atop his head seemed

  in a strange way to honor him with its calls,

  as if hailing, “Come! Come! Come! Behold, here

  wedged between two rocks, is Tissaphernes’ head.

  Come! Come! Come! Honor him.” The raven

  arrived a few minutes later. She landed on a

  nearby bit of drift wood appearing at first uncaring,

  preening indifferently. Then with deft quickness

  she leapt in a bound to his perch and plucked from

  Tissaphernes his open eye. Oh, how that gull

  screeched at this audacity. And so it began.

  Why these two fought so over this bit of property

  only Athena knows, for there were many fallen

  comrades among the rocks of low tide, and their

  flesh was there for the taking. But on and on

  they fought. Feints, thrusts, attacks, retreats, bold

  ventures, stealthy maneuvers, and both false and

  true strikes. Many feathers were lost, both black

  and gray, leaving patches of white and red.

  Tissaphernes’ ears were the spoils of

  the raven. The lips and one cheek were won by

  the gull. Long after their bellies were full they

  fought on. Neither willing to yield to satiety, or

  reason. At last I had to leave them to their

  conflict for it was time to form ranks and

  take the road to our next conflict, where we ourselves

  would fight on, for land, for glory, and for the Empire.

  As I made my way up the guarding cliffs, I could

  not help but check my bare arms and naked legs

  for missing feathers, and other things lost for

  reasons ungiven as we marched into the

  growing darkness of night, to join the same dance

  as this vain skirmish for Tissaphernes’ Head.

  III. Departure

  On the bright morning of my desertion,

  I saw a Greek bearing three babies

  upon the shaft of his iron-tipped spear. He held

  them over his shoulder light and easy

  as if carrying them to market like so

  many sedge ducks. I watched from the roof

  of a merchant’s house, on a balcony rich

  in verdant vines. I had sacked twelve cities

  and had taken my share of spoils, but those

  dark-haired Persian nurslings skewered

  as if for roasting, turned my stomach sour

  and emptied my heart of manhood. Of rage.

  Of battle lust. The city is now awash in flames

  and screams. Cries of passion and anguish.

  As one of the conquerors, I walk from

  the broken gates unmolested to the tents

  from which we had lain siege for four months

  and six days until the walls were at last breached.

  The camp followers ask for news,

  I answer them no word, and slouch to my

  bivouac and take the woman I won at

  dice from a minor king of a minor island

  and bid her walk before me. Three woman

  demanded to know where we are going and cry out

  “He is running!” And so I am. But there is

  no one to fear, all are gone mad as the city is razed,

  bloodied and raped and we walk out. I now forgo

  empire. Foreswearing citizenship. And in doing so

  leave behind my farm and olive trees and

  the wife that bore me two daughters and who

  I have not seen in seven years. She thinks me

  dead, I have no doubt, if she remembers me at all.

  And so I am dead. I will go east. To a land

  of mysteries. A land where I spoil nothing

  more. Where war and death will not find me.

  Where babies bawl and are fed mother’s milk.

  IV. Travelers (I and my wife standing next to each other)

  We join a caravan You join a caravan

  Me as mercenary You as mercenary

  You as my wife Me as your prisoner

  The camels stink The camels remind me of home

  The air is dry The air is dry

  The flies relentless The flies relentless

  We head east We head away from home

  To a new land To a foreign land

  Away from war Away from war

  A red sun shimmering A sunset red aglow

  I speak of the farm You speak of pasture

  Along a river Along a river

  Where such sunsets Where such sunsets

  Will grace the day Will grace the day

  And we will sing

  Well-fed goats Goats

  Will give us milk and meat Milk? And meat?


  And make our children strong Children? Strong?

  Once I had a wife Once I was a wife

  She was well-favored To a blacksmith in the city

  She bore me two daughters I bore him two daughters

  I left her to fight He was killed by Greeks

  For what? For what?

  Now all is gone Now all is gone

  No daughters No daughters

  No homeland No city

  Only this sword Only ravens

  He made me laugh

  He is cruel and kind

  He is Greek! Never!

  It is night and in the firelight In the firelight

  I hear the bark of jackals The noise of the wilderness

  They draw near Quiets me

  A thousand stars A thousand stars

  Ignite a sky Whisper changes

  Portending life Portending life

  V. Storm Crows Uncalled

  You lean against the table and hold your expanding belly.

  Our son and daughter watch the black goats nearby,

  they wave and our daughter yells something

  I cannot make out. You ask if I want some cheese

  speaking our new tongue, the language of this

  land—using vowels that emerge windy and round

  from the verdant wet air that hangs heavy after

  the summer monsoons. I assent, and you cut off

  a piece white and thick. You pour the juice of

  a melon into cup fashioned from the pale clay found

  downriver a bit. I drink and hand it back to you.

  You finish it. We have many neighbors

  skin black and hair long and straight unlike

  the tight curls of an Ethiopian I met in Corinth

  many years ago. They welcomed us here and

  asked no questions. They taught us how to

  care for goats. How to plant grain. These are

  they who will gather tonight to sing and dance

  because the rains have come and gone and we

  are still here. Floods have been abated and we

  must honor the gods that make it so. Soldiers

  pass here from time to time, long speared and

  fierce. Warriors of kings whose palaces dot

  this strange land, but they bother us not at

  all but go to and fro on business of which I

  have no interest. I tell my wife and children

  to hide and I bow my head like the others

  and lean hard upon my hoe and let them pass.

  I like to imagine sometimes they stop to harass

  and I pull from under my bed my iron-tipped spear,

  and my hoplite short sword, and my curved

  shield and let the soldier hidden in my breast

  burst out, to find again the scent of blood that brings

  the storm crows from the clouds. But I look at my

  fair Persian wife, and those she has born me, and I

  smile. And remember the words of the mendicant

  who stayed with us a night and taught me that life is

  suffering, and that in letting go of the past I can

  move to better cycles of birth and rebirth. But I say this:

  If this moment alone is all there is as my father taught.

  It is enough.

  Guess whose light shined through the eyes of my Persian wife?

  Often I was afflicted with an idle curiosity I had no way to satisfy. I’d lived the life of numerous musicians and now understood much about the fine art of music. A musical ability never graced my original life, but now I could play thousands of instruments. But could I really? I would never be allowed to actually play. Someone else’s hands always do the work. I can feel the pressure on the strings of a guitar, or holes lining a flute, or even my hands dancing on the keys of a piano. I lived entire lives as a master player, and yet they are not my hands.

  If I were released would these talents remain? I’d like to think so. For example, I find myself anticipating the next note, knowing exactly how my hands would fly into the next position. I have practiced this within my host thousands of times and so know how to play, what I imagine, is with the same expertise as she in whom I dwelt. While I am lost in the music, it feels as if I am leaping to my next sequence of notes. But it is not, at least not in any way I can control, for if I try to move differently or improvise, nothing happens of course.

  There were some people I inhabited who had little freedom. I remember a homeless man. A veteran ruined from saran gas in the Gulf War. He had grown nearly mindless from years of inebriation. He dressed in rags. Even so, each day, dirty and homeless he did one thing that was truly free: He chose a flower from a woman who sold them from a small booth tucked into an alley, which he wore in his hat as he begged for coins to purchase sustenance and drink. His one act of freedom was to choose a flower. Freedom, it appears, can be lost and gained.

  Enough. There is no end to these stories. I must move more quickly. To give you details about my life as a Neanderthal or small bipedal apes would become tedious. As I left humans and other semi-rational creatures behind, freedom shrank. I spent a lifetime as a small ape. Then reptiles, whose minds were calm and languid. I would descend lineages and then climb back up them, so from a certain bird-hipped lizard, I would ascend the taxonomic lineage to become every bird (I even saw myself many times from the perspective of a robin or a house sparrow). Down I descended until a fish I became, and on down the chain until I was then a worm-like segmented creature, then small bacteria. My lives were short in such creatures, and the change from one to another involved little differentiation. Were I ever to go mad, it would have been here. My shadow persona blipping in and out of billions upon billions of incarnations of these nearly identical creatures. I was exposed to a staccato of consciousness flashes as I moved among these fellow travelers. But I learned a way of being that helped me through these tedious years that made existence possible. I will explain in a moment.

  Were I to tell you of the nearly endless blades of grass or the forests of trees and shrubs I became, you would likely shriek in horror. Yet it was a time of calmness and it seemed to me that the eons rolled past rather pleasantly. I rested from the jostling existential noise of being a rational creature.

  Isabeau, far down the chain of life where consciousness largely disappeared, became an ambient kind of glow. Not that I could see, but feel. Isabeau followed me here below.

  Then I saw it coming. I had moved down the great chain of life so far, until one day I realized that I was moving through a population of single-celled organisms very rapidly. The population was getting smaller with each generation. Signaling that in all the Earth there were only around a thousand of these primitive cells, then the population reduced to a few hundred. Suddenly there were only sixteen, and since my life span was only a few hours I realized it must be the end for me! The point where life began, where the population narrowed to just two, then one. I was about to be released. I had been placed in everyone and everything that had ever lived. Untold billions of humans. Trillions and trillions of plants and animals. So many. So, so many. It was coming to an end. If I had had eyes, they would have filled with the tears of a thousand oceans! I would be free! At last, it was over. How many eons had passed since I started this Hell? I could not fathom it.

  Then there were eight cells. On all the earth there were only eight cells.

  Four.

  Two. (Here. At the end. When there were only two. I sensed Isabeau beaming in the aspect of the other primitive cell.)

  One.

  I had only a few hours to think about what I had been through before this cell died. Then I would be free. Suddenly I was overcome by the realization that Isabeau was with me. I was able to apprehend her in a way I never had before. We were in the same being. For an instant we were aware of each other intimately, however, we had been non-rational for so long as single-celled organisms that words did not come easily during the short existen
ce of the cell we were in.

  If I could have found voice, I would have pled to know which of all women I had been though the nearly infinite eons, was she. But my voice had been silent too long. Still, we basked in each other’s presence. I was excited. I had imagined the moment I would depart Hell. I thought when this happened I would engage in a meditation on the enormity and complexity of the lives I had lived. But, here at the end, I was with Isabeau, and a wild cry of joy erupted as I contemplated meeting her in a few minutes. I could feel her excitement too. I was too distracted to contemplate on this Hell—there would be plenty of time to do so in the eternities of paradise that lay ahead. I was now in a cell driven completely by my chemical makeup. A strange, carboxyl group had joined my chemical machinery that allowed a copy of what I was, allowing this form to create a new copy of itself that would detach and be born new in the world I had known a few minutes ago. I began to divide. It was over. This was it. I was leaving.

  I was enclosed in something. Like the mummy bag I described earlier, inducing the familiar panic. I started to struggle. Wiggling frantically to escape from this prison. My host, too, was panicked and terrified. Together, we thrashed about in alarm. I did not understand. I had been every animal on Earth and the closest that had come to this experience was as a baby lizard trying to escape from a leathery ovum, or the baby bird’s desire to escape its hard-shelled egg by pecking its way out. Then it hit me. A realization. An inescapable logic poured over me. I had been every form of life that ever lived on Earth . I had not been this. I was not on Earth. Despair flowed over me, overwhelming me. I wanted oblivion more than anything imaginable. Was I somewhere in the galaxy I knew? Or a far distant one? At least on Earth I had some scope of the task before me. What awaited me now I could not guess. I was lost in time and space.