Strange…Yes, strange to think that we used to move around so much. And then we came back and settled down here, in a government town, where everyone else is always moving. Every four years, every eight years, a new population. And yet, everyone who arrives always looks just the same as the ones who left—as if it were all a giant square dance.
“What?” John says.
“How did Bob look?” I ask.
“Bob?” he says. “Older.”
Driving back along the highway this afternoon, flowing along in the reflections on the windshield, the shadows of the branches—it was like being underwater. Morning, evening, from one shore to the other, the passage between them is your body.
I stroke Oliver’s hair, but his jaw is clamped tightly shut and he’s staring up at the ceiling, his eyes glazed with tears.
When he was little, he and I used to lie on his bed like this and often I’d read to him, or tell him stories, and he liked to pretend that he and I were characters from the stories—an enchanted prince and a fairy, the fairy who put the spell on him or the one who removes it, or Hansel and Gretel, and we would hide under the covers from whatever wicked witch. His imagination was so vivid that sometimes I even became frightened myself.
Yesterday I was sorting through some papers upstairs at my desk, when I noticed him and Kate outside on the lawn. He was holding the lapels of her jacket and they were clearly talking, as they always seem to be, with tremendous seriousness, as if they were explorers calculating how to survive on their last provisions. I could see Kate’s round, rather sweet face—at least it’s sweet when it’s not flickering with doubts, worries, fears—and then Oliver held her to him, and all I could see of her was her shiny, taffy-colored hair, pinned loosely up.
It’s an affecting romance. It’s not likely to last long, though—none of Oliver’s romances do, however intense they seem to be. Oliver is way too young. In any case, I can’t help imagining a warm young woman as a daughter-in-law, someone who would be glad for my company, rather than someone beset, as Kate always seems to be, by suspicion and resentment.
They came inside, and I could hear Oliver talking. The house was so silent I didn’t have to make any effort to hear the story he was telling, a story I’d certainly never told him myself, which he must have heard from the help someplace we’d lived or stayed during our time away, a strange, winding folk tale, it seemed to be, about a man who had been granted the power to understand the language of the animals.
Oliver spoke slowly, in a searching way, as if vivid but puzzling events were being disclosed to him one by one. Kate said not a word, and I was sure that the two of them were touching in some way, lying on the sofa feet to feet, or holding hands, or clasped together, looking over one another’s shoulders into the glimmering mist that fans out from a story. And in the long silences I could feel her uneasiness as she waited for him to find the way to proceed.
It was as if they were sleeping, making something together in their sleep—an act of memory. But I was a stranger to it, following on my own as morning after morning the poor farmer discovers the broken pots, the palm wine gone—as finally one night he waits in the dark, watching, then chases the thieving deer through the fields and hills all the way to the council of the animals—as the Leopard King, in reparations, grants him the spectacular power on condition that he never reveal it—as the farmer and his wife prosper from this power, year after year.
The story spiraled in until the farmer, now wealthy, is forced to face an enraged accuser: “I was not laughing at you,” he says in desperation. “I laughed because I heard a little mouse say, I’m so hungry—I’m going into the kitchen to steal a bit of the master’s grain.”
Oliver paused to let the story waver on its fulcrum and the shame of eavesdropping broke over me in a wave, but before I could get up and shut the door of the room or make some other alerting noise, Kate spoke. Her voice was blurred and sorrowful. “What happened then?” she said, but it was clearly less a question than a ritual acknowledgment of the impending.
“Then?” Oliver said. “So—” He seemed to awaken, and shed the memory. “—then, as all the people of the village watched, the man’s lifeless body fell to the ground.”
All that time we were away, during his childhood—which seems as remote to me now as the places where we were—and John was working so hard, Oliver was my companion, my darling, my heart. And I was shocked, I suppose, to be reminded yesterday that his childhood could not have been more different from mine, that he and I—who hardly even have to speak, often, to understand one another completely—are divided by that reality, by the differences between our earliest, most fundamental sense of the world we live in. I had never stopped to think, before, that he had heard stories from beyond the boundaries of my world. And I was really shocked, actually, that it was one of those stories, a story I never could have told him, that he had chosen to recount to Kate.
My gaze wanders around his pristine room, as orderly as a tribute. When he’s away, no one would think of disturbing anything he has here, of course, any of his possessions. But I do sometimes come in and sit on his bed.
He’s still focused at the ceiling as though he were urgently counting. “Shall I leave you alone darling?” I say. “Would you like me to leave you alone?” But he reaches for my hand.
“Oliver?” I say. “Darling?”
He blinks. His startling, long, thick eyelashes sweep down and up; his eyes glisten. “Darling, Katie is a dear girl, but sometimes I worry that she’s too dependent on you. You can’t be responsible for her, you know.”
He draws a breath and licks his dry lips. “I can’t be responsible for anything, Ma, haven’t you noticed?”
“That’s not true, darling. You’re a very responsible person. But I just want to be sure that you and Katie are using protection.”
He laughs, without lifting his head or closing his eyes, and I can tell how shallowly he’s breathing. “Protection against what, Ma? Protection against Evildoers?”
“I don’t want to pry, darling. I just want to set myself at ease on that score.”
“Be at ease, Ma. Be very at ease. You can put down your knitting, because whatever you’re fantasizing just isn’t the case.”
Well, I don’t know. I remember, when we returned to the States, how it seemed to me, the onslaught of graphic images that are used to sell things—everywhere the perfect, shining, powerful young bodies, nearly naked, the flashing teeth, the empty, perfect, predatory faces, the threat of sexual ridicule, the spectre of sexual inadequacy if you fail to buy the critical brand of plastic wrap or insurance or macaroni and cheese. Either the images really had proliferated and coarsened during our absence or else I had temporarily lost something that had once kept the assault from affecting me.
I became accustomed to it again soon enough, though, and I don’t know that I would have remembered the feeling now, that feeling of being battered and soiled, unless I’d just been reminded of Oliver’s expression when, for example, we would turn on the television and that harsh, carnal laughter would erupt.
Maybe Oliver’s fastidiousness, his severity, is typical of his generation. These things come in waves, and I know that many of Oliver’s friends have seen older brothers and sisters badly damaged by all sorts of excesses. And it is a fact that Oliver spent his early childhood in places where there was a certain amount of hostility toward us—not us personally, of course, but toward our culture, I suppose, as it was perceived, and it wouldn’t be all that remarkable, I suppose, if his view of his native country had been tarnished before he ever really came to live in it.
There were a lot of changes occurring in all the places where John had to go, and foreigners, like ourselves, from developed countries, were seen to represent those changes. Fortunately, most of the people we encountered personally received us, and the changes that accompanied us, with great enthusiasm.
In time, it came to feel to me as though we were standing in a shrinking pool of light
, with shapes moving at the edges, but, especially at first, I was delighted by the kindness, the hospitality of the local officials, by parties at the embassies. Everyone was always kind to Oliver, in any case—more than kind.
And there were always children around for Oliver to play with, the children of other people who had come to help, the engineers and agronomists and contractors of various sorts and people who were conducting studies or surveys, and children of the government officials to whose parties we went and so on, who invariably spoke English. And sometimes there would be a maid on the premises, or a gardener, who had children. But when we would drive by local markets or compounds, or even fenced-off areas, Oliver would cry—he would scream—to play with the children he saw outside the car window.
John would explain, quietly and tirelessly, about languages, about customs, about illnesses. We brought Oliver up to share—naturally—but how does a child share with another child who has nothing at all? I always thought, and I still think, that John was absolutely right to be cautious, but the fact is, when Oliver was a bit older and John was away for some days, I would sometimes relent and let Oliver play with some of the children whom, for whatever reason, he found so alluring.
Oliver had spent so little time on the planet, so all those places we went were really his life—his entire life until we came back—and maybe I didn’t take adequate account of that. Sometimes now, when I hear one of those names—Nigeria, or Burma, or Ecuador—any of the names of places where we spent time—it is as lustrous to me as it was before I had ever traveled. But usually what those names bring to my mind now are only the houses where we stayed, all the houses, arranged for us by the various companies John was attached to, similarly well equipped and comfortable, where I spent so much time waiting for John and working out how to bring up a child in an unfamiliar place.
Oh, there were beautiful things, of course—many beautiful and exciting things. Startling landscapes, and the almost physical thrill of encountering unaccustomed languages and unaccustomed people, their music, their clothing, their faces, the food—the sharp, dizzying flash of possibilities revealed—trips into the hectic, noisy, astonishing towns and cities.
Sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, when he wasn’t traveling around, John liked to go to a fancy hotel if there was one in our area, and have a comically lavish lunch. Or, if we were someplace where the English had had a significant presence, a tea—which was Oliver’s favorite, because of the little cakes and all the different treats and the complicated silver services.
There was the most glamorous hotel, so serene, so grand. The waiters were handsome—truly glorious—all in white linen uniforms that made their skin look like satin, dark satin. And their smiles—well, those smiles made you feel that life was worth living! And of course they were charming to Oliver, they could not have been more charming.
And there were elegant, tall windows overlooking the street, with heavy, shining glass that was very effective against the heat and noise, with long, white drapes hanging at their sides. It was really bliss to stop at that hotel, such a feeling of well-being to sip your tea, watching the silent bustle of the street outside the window. And then one afternoon, beyond the heavy glass—I was just pouring John a second cup, which I remember because I upset it, saucer and all, and could never get the spot out of my lovely yellow dress—there was a sort of explosion, and there was that dull, vast, sound of particles, unified, rising like an ocean wave, and everyone on the street was running.
Well, we were all a bit paralyzed, apparently, transfixed in our velvety little chairs—but immediately there was a whoosh, and the faint high ringing of the drapery hardware as the waiters rushed to draw the long, white drapes closed.
Early on, John would sometimes describe to me his vision of the burgeoning world—lush mineral fields that lie beneath the surface of the earth and the plenitude they could generate, great arteries of oil that could be made to flow to every part of the planet, immense hydroelectric dams producing cascades of energy. A degree of upheaval was inevitable, he said, painful adjustments were inevitable, but one had to keep firmly in mind the long-term benefits—the inevitable increases in employment and industry, the desperately needed revenues.
Well, in practice things are never as clear, I suppose, as they are in the abstract; things that are accomplished have to get accomplished in one way or another. And in fairly fluid situations, certain sorts of people will always find opportunities. And that, of course, is bound to affect everyone involved, to however slight a degree.
In any case, eventually there was a certain atmosphere. And there were insinuations in the press and rumors about the company John was working with, and it just wasn’t fun for John anymore.
It was an uncomfortable, silent ride to the airport when we finally did come back for good. I remember Oliver staring out the window at the shanties and the scrub and the barbed wire as John drove. There was a low, black billowing in the sky to one side of us, fire in the distance, whether it was just brush or something more—crops or a village or an oil field, I really don’t know. And after we returned, there was a very bad patch for John, for all of us, though John certainly had done well enough financially. Many people had done very well.
“What is it, darling?” I ask Oliver. “Please tell me. Is one of your courses troubling you?”
He turns to gaze at me. “One of my courses?” His face is damp.
“You’re not eating at all. I’m so worried about you, sweetheart.”
“Ma, can’t you see me? I can see you. I can see everything, Ma. Sometimes I feel like I can see through skin, through bone, through the surface of the earth. I can see cells doing their work, Ma—I can see thoughts as they form. I can hear everything, everything that’s happening. Don’t you hear the giant footfalls, the marauder coming, cracking the earth, shaking the roots of the giant trees? What can we do, Ma? We can’t hide.”
“Darling, there’s nothing to be frightened of. We’re not in any danger.”
“His brain looks like a refinery at night, Ma. The little bolts of lightning combusting, shooting between the towers, all the lights blinking and moving…”
“Darling—” I smile, but my heart is pounding. “Your father loves you dearly.”
“Mother!” He sits bolt upright and grabs me by the shoulders. “Mother, I’ve got one more minute—can’t you see me, there, way off in the distance, coming apart, flailing up the hill, all the gears and levers breaking apart, falling off—flailing up the hill at the last moment, while the tight little ball of fire hisses and spits and falls toward the sea? He’ll close his fist, Ma, he’ll snuff it out. Are you protected by a magic cloak? The cloak of the prettiest girl at school?”
“Please, darling—” I try to disengage myself gently, and he flops back down. “Oh, God,” he says.
“What, darling? Tell me. Please try to tell me so that I can understand. So that I can understand what is happening. So I can try to help you.”
“It’s all breaking up, Ma. How long do I have? I’m jumping from floe to floe. Do I have a minute? Do I have another minute after that? Do I have another minute after that?”
I run my hands over his face, to clear the tears and sweat. “This is a feeling, darling,” I say. My heart is lodged high up near my throat, pounding, as if it’s trying to exit my body. “It’s just a feeling of pressure. We’ve all experienced something like it at one time or another. You have to remember that it’s not possible for you to fix every problem in the world. Frankly, darling, no one has appointed you king of the planet.” I force myself to smile.
“Every breath I take is a theft,” he says.
“Oliver!” I say. “Please! Oh, darling, listen. Do you want to stay home for a while? Do you want to drop one of your courses? Tell me how to help you, sweetheart, and I will.”
“It’s no use, Ma. There’s no way out. It was settled for me so long ago, and now here’s your poor boy, his head all in pieces, just howling at the moon.”
> During that whole, long time, when we were away, I used to dream that I was coming home. Almost every night, for a long time, I dreamed that I was coming home. I still dream that I am coming home.
I stand, for a moment, outside the bedroom door.
“Well, there you are,” John says, when I bring myself to open it. “I was calling for you. Didn’t you hear me?”
“I was…Do we have any aspirin?”
“Come in,” he says. “Why don’t you come in?”
The blinds are drawn, the house is a thin shell. The acid moonlight pours down, scalding.
“Talking to your son?” he asks.
“John?” I say. “Do you remember if Oliver ever had a nurse—maybe in Africa—who told him stories?”
“A ‘nurse’?” John says. “Is he having some sort of nineteenth-century European colonial hallucination?”
I sit down at the dressing table. In the mirror, I watch John pacing slowly back and forth. “He needs reassurance from you, darling,” I say. “He needs your approval.”
“My approval? Actually, it seems that I need his approval. After all, I’m an arch criminal, he must have mentioned it—he’s not one to let the opportunity slip by. I’m responsible for every ill on the planet, didn’t he spell it out for you? Poverty? My fault. Injustice? My fault. War somewhere? Secret prisons? Torture? My fault. Falling rate of literacy? Rising rate of infant mortality? Catastrophic climate change? New lethal viruses? My fault, whatever is wrong, whatever might someday go wrong, whatever some nut thinks might someday go wrong, it’s all my fault, did he not happen to mention that? The whole world, the future, whose fault can any of it be? Must be dear old Dad’s.”
I rest my head in my hands and close my eyes. When I open them again, John is looking at me in the mirror.
After a moment, he shakes his head and looks away. “I noticed we’re running low on coffee,” he says.
I turn around, stricken, to face him. A neat, foil packet, weighing exactly a pound—such a simple thing to have failed at! “I meant to pick some up today—I completely forgot, I’m so sorry, darling. But there’s enough for you in the morning.”
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Page 87
