by Joy Kogawa
OTHER BOOKS BY JOY KOGAWA
Obasan
Itsuka
NOVEL FOR YOUNG READERS
Naomi’s Road
POETRY
The Splintered Moon
A Choice of Dreams
Jericho Road
Woman in the Woods
PENGUIN
an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited
Canada • USA • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
First published 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Joy Kogawa
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Kogawa, Joy
The rain ascends / Joy Kogawa
ISBN 9780143013204 (paperback)
ISBN 9780735233898 (electronic)
I.Title.
PS8521.O44R35 2002 C813.54 C2002-905505-9
PR9199.3.K63R35 2002
v4.1
a
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by Joy Kogawa
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Each of us must discover the secret key to divine abandonment—that God has abandoned divine power into the human condition utterly and completely, so that we may not abandon each other.”
ROSEMARY RUETHER
PROLOGUE
The town of Juniper, in the foothills of Alberta, celebrated the opening of the Juniper Centre of Music by declaring it C.B. Shelby Day after the founder of the centre, my father, the Reverend Dr. Charles Barnabas Shelby. Schoolchildren were given a holiday. Banners and balloons decorated the stores. The Shelby Family Quartet sang with the combined church choirs in a free concert in the shining new auditorium, and my brother, Charlie Junior, and I were the proudest children in town. The programme was heard later on Father’s weekly radio broadcast, “Shelby Selects,” and letters began to arrive enquiring about the Juniper Centre. Within five years, through our father’s efforts, three new centres of music and healing were opened—one in Ontario, one in northern B.C. and a smaller one farther north.
In the beginning is the fog, the thick impenetrable fog. The lie is the source of the fog and the lie is the fog. In the beginning there is also an unquenchable light. Everything in the house is touched by the fog and by light.
From within the density, this much alone is known: the way out of the lie is through mercy, the name of the path is mercy, the one who stoops to help is Mercy. Mercy’s light is stronger than deception and betrayal, brighter than the most unspeakable abominations. Mercy will guide. She will circle the darkness and overcome it.
She came to me that spring in a dream and touched me in her evanescent way, saying that she, the Goddess of Mercy, was the Goddess of Abundance. Mercy and Abundance. One and the same. The statement shone in my mind with the luminosity of an altogether new moon.
What I am trusting, this pen-holding moment, is that it is she, the abundant and merciful one, who is both guide and transport for the journey. She is map, road and travelling companion, moving through light and shadow, dancing the direction. And what I realize just now for the first time is that it is not I on my own who seek her, but she who seeks me. It is she who in the act of flinging stones onto the forest floor—white stones, stepping stones, word stones—it is she who weaves the way towards herself. She draws me through the miasma of the day-by-heavy-day sad morning wakenings to her as yet unknown glad rising.
The day you start out, the fog is so thick that when you open the window, it rolls into the room. Where the streetlight used to be, there is only a fuzzy yellow blur. From the corner by the bed comes the low growl of the cat, the fur on its back slowly rising. You see her there, her green glowing eyes alert. You try but you cannot close the window again. You back away. The dampness invades with a hissing sound, flowing over the calendar, the telephone, the desk, down to the floor. It rolls over the cat and the green eyes blink and disappear. It attaches itself to your skin and forms tiny droplets on the fine hairs of your arms. It seeps into your pores. It moves softly, softly through the keyhole and under the closed door.
Weariness.
You crawl along the moist floor, feeling for the desk legs, the knobs on the drawers then up to the corner where the phone sits ringing in the grey haze. You lift the receiver. You crouch against the wall. You cannot speak. Eventually your hand grows numb.
Time without measure, in a Middle Eastern land called Moriah, you are walking along, walking along, across the vast stony plain and the blowing sand, past dry bones and scrub, through storm and heat, obedient, faithful, into the dense fog, carrying the fire and the knife.
You are Abraham, that patriarch, that trusting servant of God, with a child, your son, the light of your life, walking beside you, the firewood on his back, his soft child’s hand in your gnarled old hand.
“Father! Here’s a pleasant stream. Shall we…?”
“Why not, my boy.”
This is Isaac by your side, the not-yet-strong, not-yet-powerful dreamer of your dreams, trusting but confused, trudging towards an altar where death and sacrifice are waiting.
“Isaac said to Abraham, ‘Father,’ and he answered, ‘What is it, my son?’ Isaac said, ‘Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the young beast for the sacrifice?’ Abraham answered, ‘God will provide himself with a young beast for a sacrifice, my son.’ ”
It is innocent blood that is to be shed. You shield the child from the awful, the unspeakable truth. It’s Isaac, your love, your laughter, your joy, your everything, who is the sacrificial lamb to be slain and offered to your ravenous God.
“And the two of them went on together and came to the place of which God had spoken.”
Look how obedient I am. Look how I build the altar and arrange the wood, the kindling first, then the brush and the heavier branches on top—here and here, just so. And I take it apart and b
uild it again. And again. And finally now, after all these years, because the wood is so dry, and the pyre is good enough, because I must get on with it, I bind him and lay him on the altar on top of the wood. I stretch out my hand. I take the knife and raise it high. And higher.
Where is the ram? Where in the bushes is the alternate sacrifice? Where is the voice that says, “Don’t kill”?
My soul wails for direction. I walk the streets looking everywhere. I know the ram is there “caught in a thicket by his horns.” If I hold the pen tight enough, with enough determination, if I let it fall just to the point—right up to the throat—that’s when the ram will appear. I won’t have to say the lethal words, will I?
I have enough faith to sit here in the fog by the phone, writing, not writing, telling, not telling. I have enough faith to try again, one more, one more time. I wait, the knife waits, the air sharp as earliest morning waits.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
What Eleanor does not understand, what she refuses to understand, is that the truth is unspeakable. The truth is a knife that slays. That September night a year ago, when she called from Edmonton, she was as incoherent and hysterical as she had been the night before.
I could see her in one of her flouncy hippie skirts, standing in the hallway under the stairs of her rambling old house, her slightly masculine hand on her ample hips, her springy red hair more red than it used to be thanks to bottles of dye. Eleanor, my sister-in-law, was the bane of Mother’s life, Mother’s natural enemy, the thief who had stolen away in the night with her most precious possession, her son’s heart. Eleanor thought to take one other son as well but that came later.
“My wife is clear about things, thank God,” my brother Charlie says, “even if the rest of us aren’t.”
Eleanor is attached to us, grafted onto the family by marriage, but she is not “of” us. Her roots touch clearer water. When the wind blows, she bends. Her branches do not break.
She pleaded with me as I sat there clutching the phone. “Talk to him,” she said.
“I can’t. I just can’t. It was such a long time ago. Why now? What do you want of us, Eleanor? What do you want?”
Father is so very old, I was thinking, as we argued on again about whether Eleanor should come down to Ragland to talk to him herself. Dear God, isn’t love enough? Isn’t it enough that he loves us? I know he does. And I do love him. I’ve always loved him. Hundreds and thousands of people have had their lives brightened by him. Father’s magic was the way he created gift boxes of time by creating events. He gave us life. Sparkling life.
“It’s—it’s just too unkind,” I said finally. “He’s so old. Can’t we let him have some peace?”
“Peace!” Eleanor fairly shouted. “Oh yes! Peace! I’m all for it. How on earth can there be peace if we don’t deal with this? Now! Before it’s too late! It’s not just for him, Mills. I know I need answers. I need the truth, for God’s sake. Let’s have some truth!”
“It’s love,” I said hesitantly, “I think it’s love that’s more important.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Love without truth isn’t love.”
“I know they belong together, love and truth, but….”
“Precisely,” Eleanor interrupted. “They belong together. The thing is, you deny dignity when you deny responsibility. That’s not love, Millicent. It’s cowardice. He’s not an idiot. He shouldn’t be treated like one. He should know what he is. He’s a—a criminal. A criminal!”
“Would you be happier if he was in prison? Who sends old men off to the front lines?”
“What front lines? I’m talking about responsibility. His. Yours too. And mine.”
“Your responsibility? What responsibility could you possibly have?”
She was silent for so long that I thought the phone might have disconnected. Then her voice sounded choked as if she were trying not to cry. “Millie—God help us—if there’s just one thing that history teaches us, just one thing—it’s that bystanders and perpetrators are both on the same side.”
It was my turn to say nothing as I held the receiver against my ear and sat rocking on my chair. God help us indeed, guilty bystanders that we all are—afraid to act, confused by the corruptions into which we are born. When it comes to Father, there’s no denying whose side I was on at the time. If I was guilty of a crime, it was my heart that was indicted.
“I’ve tried to talk to him, Eleanor. I’ve really tried. But it’s too late. It’s just too late in the day.”
“It’s never too late,” Eleanor said. “Truth is never too late for anyone.”
“What on earth do we mean by truth? We can’t possibly know what it means. It’s like the sun shining on the other side of the world. It’s beyond us.”
“Then we have to walk to the other side of the world. That’s what we have to do. Think of it as a quest for fire, Mills. You’re the one right there. You’re the closest person in his life. God knows he won’t tell me anything.”
“He won’t tell me either.”
“Yes he will. You’ve always been there for him. Oh God, you’ve been like—like Hitler’s cat—if Hitler had a cat.”
“Oh how absurd. Father is not Hitler.”
“But all you do is mewl about love. Face the truth, for once, woman!”
I had not pictured myself as Hitler’s cat, but if that was the way she saw me, if that was the way I was to be seen, then so be it, I thought. On the great judgement day, Hitler’s cat can stand in front of that awesome cloud of witnesses and yowl its unacceptable tale of affection. Then all the people will scream and gnash their teeth as they cast it forth into eternal damnation along with the monster.
Eleanor can not know how much I loved Father, how much I have always loved him, in spite of every, every thing, in spite of everything. I am his one and only, loyal, devoted daughter.
A friend, they say, is someone who helps you hide the body. But Eleanor, my brother’s strong-minded wife, was telling me to exhume the skeleton garbed in the robes of a priest—a skeleton busily hiding other small skeletons between the walls.
“God knows how many victims there were,” Eleanor said. “Just stop for once in your life and think about them. The families. Consider the victims, for heaven’s sake.”
She was asking me to hear the wailing in the night, to consider the suffering I did not see, to consider another point of view. My reply was that these considerations were not my province. I was his child, his well-fed cat if you will, and I was witness for the defence. I was retained, before I was born, to be his advocate.
In the late-night courtroom of my thoughts, I heard her arguing that my mothering, surrounding, defending love was misplaced, and that I more properly belonged with the weak. But as I took my stand beside my father, beside and around, I declared that I knew of no criminal who was not also weak, not also a victim. It was only the mob of accusers who were invulnerable.
I tried to give her my perspective—a view from a lowly place beside a bowl of milk and a plate of table scraps. I told her I would leave it to his accusers to chronicle his crimes.
“You’re wrong!” cried Eleanor’s angry voice, her three a.m. telephone weeping voice. “Face the rage, Millie. Let it out before it eats you alive. For God’s sake, let it out!”
“To whom, Eleanor? Let it out to whom?”
“To the bishop. Tell him. Write to him.”
“But he’s our friend! How could I possibly?” She could more reasonably have suggested I take off my clothes and run naked down the noonday street.
“Tell me, then. At least find out what the extent of it is.”
So said Eleanor in the late night, but from within the fog I could think only that I had pledged my loyalty to my beloved father. In my lifetime of knowing him I had experienced such tenderness, such wisdom and kindness and forbearance, such gentle forgivingness and largeness of heart, that I was able, even with all that I knew, to utter the word Father, and to understand it as
a metaphor for God. Father, God. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.
We go to extreme lengths—we devoted daughters, we women, we children, we slaves of the men we love—we go to extreme lengths in our efforts to justify our unacceptable loyalties. We expend our days and nights thinking of ways to protect and redeem them.
Eleanor accuses me of constantly choosing the darkness. “You may be right,” I said. “But people, so many people, see him as the soul of saintliness.” Last Sunday in church, one woman remarked on his “spiritual aura” and said, “I’ve rarely seen that certain quality. He’s so gentle. I feel closer here with him to that spiritual centre than anywhere else I have ever been.” People say these things and I do not doubt their sincerity. I do not. My father, Eleanor, my father, dear people of the jury, is known to be a good man. And so help me, God, this is also true.
But Eleanor, who knows better, who knows worse, chants her mantra in my midnight ear: The truth, the truth, the hidden truth. Take the sword of truth and cut the knots. Then you’ll be free.
The knots are in my bowels, Eleanor. A sword in the bowels is not usually there to make one free.
People go mad in these circumstances. Their minds unravel. As she drags me into the courtroom to take my stand, when I raise my hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I am stating what cannot be done. Yet she persists, my dear sister-in-law, she who is judge, jury and prosecutor, passionate for justice and health. The crime must be uncovered and the prisoner brought forth in his chains. This is required. Vindication for the victims. Vengeance even.
CHAPTER TWO
Once again, then, you are here at the impossible beginning, struggling with the fear that all that you love may yet be required. You are standing at the top of the creaky stairs in the long moment before diving. You begin the descent, one stumbling step after another. The act of beginning is the same act over and over, the half-crazed act with pages torn from the heart’s walls and flung onto the debris-covered floor.
