Crossings

by Alex Landragin

  I felt the icy sting of the stethoscope on my chest. ‘What nonsense,’ said the doctor.

  ‘They’re Baudelaire’s words. They’re just as true now as they were when they were written, almost a century ago.’

  ‘You’re an incorrigible Jew with a very sick heart. One more shock will do you in. You’re best off forgetting that romance novel of yours. It is useless to you.’ He returned his stethoscope to his bag and took out a pump for testing blood pressure.

  ‘I have thirty-two capsules of morphine in my jacket pocket. I intend to swallow them all, here, tonight. In your professional opinion, will it be a sufficient quantity to kill me?’

  He did not seem shocked by the question. Rather, he considered it for a moment before replying. ‘Not immediately. You’ll lose consciousness first, maybe twenty minutes or half an hour after ingestion. But you won’t die for several hours.’ He noted my blood pressure and put the pump back in the bag. ‘The nuisance of it is that they’ll send for me again in the morning when they find your body.’ He closed the bag and paused. ‘Of course, I’d be more than happy to supervise the process, make sure everything goes smoothly. That way I won’t have to come back tomorrow.’ My physician, I suspected, was a sadist, inwardly drooling at the opportunity to witness my death. ‘And I’ve never had the opportunity to observe the physiological effects of morphine overdose at first hand.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll go ahead and take the pills now.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I have to check on the other Jews in your group. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you wait until I’ve returned. I’ll bring a glass and a pitcher of water. It helps. I’ll be back in just a few minutes. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll wait. While you’re gone, I’ll finish writing my book.’

  That snarl again. ‘Make sure it has a happy ending, like all good romance novels!’ He stood, took his bag and opened the door. Before closing it, he turned and, lifting a cautionary finger, added, ‘Don’t swallow a thing until I return.’

  ‘No chance of that, doctor,’ I murmured after he’d closed the door.

  {39}

  I’M SCRIBBLING THIS note in the hotel room while I wait for the doctor to return, anxious to finish this story before he reappears and I can begin swallowing the morphine I’ve carried for so long for just such an occasion. Yes, this is where it all ends. I’m very close now, I can feel it. These words will be my last. They will be the ending to this book. Of course, the prospect of an ending makes me anxious. My ailing heart is beating quicker than it ought. I think of Madeleine and my heart weeps and is consoled at once. The end of one story is merely the beginning of another.

  Don’t swallow a thing until I return, he said. Rest assured, doctor, that I will follow your advice. I’ve noticed something about you. At a time when no one dares look anyone in the eye, you do so brazenly, with the certainty that your time has come, that your ideas have carried the day. So when you reappear, I will invite you to take a seat on the chair opposite mine. On my lap I will be holding this manuscript. When you are seated, I will give it to you and ask you to hold it while I take the morphine. Then, pills in one hand and glass of water in the other, I will swallow them calmly one by one. And as I wait for death to take hold, I will ask you a question.

  ‘Doctor,’ I will say, ‘will you grant a dying man one last wish?’

  ‘It depends on the wish,’ you will say.

  ‘Oh,’ I’ll say, ‘this wish is the simplest anyone has ever asked for. You won’t even have to get out of your chair.’

  ‘Very well, what is it?’

  ‘I would like you to look me straight in the eyes and tell me exactly why it is that you hate me so.’

  THE END

  Tales of the Albatross

  Alula

  Born circa 1771

  First crossing 1791

  Second crossing circa 1840

  Died circa 1840

  MY NAME IS ALULA. I am the one who remembers. Your name is Koahu. You are the one who forgets. You were my beloved once, all those lifetimes ago. I loved you the way the seashell loves the sea: when people put their ears to my mouth it was your song they heard. I loved you the way the sand loves the water: always receiving you with hushed pleasure. I loved you the way thunder rolls through the night, the way butterflies attend to the flower, the way the moon follows the sun. Since childhood, we had longed for nothing – you, Koahu, and I, Alula – other than to be united, although we belonged to rival bloodlines that would not be conjoined by the Law. I was older than you, a fully initiated woman, a master of the crossing. You were barely a man, still a student of the crossing, but you were more interested in other pleasures: laughing, singing, dancing. Each animal on our island had its own dance, and you knew them all. I was a scholar, and you were a dancer.

  You were the first to see it. Do you remember? You must have dreamed about it a thousand times since. We were lying together on the grass, in the shade of a hibiscus tree on the hill between the village and the sea. It was where we went whenever we wished to be alone together. The morning sea was calm, the sky was still and a dappled sun played on your skin. I was looking so closely into your eyes, I could see my reflection in them. Then something caught your attention, and you looked away. You cast your gaze behind me and out onto the sea. In one motion, you narrowed your eyes, creased your eyebrows and the smile on your lips vanished. Oh, that moment when everything changed. Do you dream about it still? It lasted no more than a second, but it marked the end of our happiness.

  You jumped to your feet. I turned to look in the direction in which you were pointing. I saw it and sat up with a start. It was a wonder to behold, drifting cloud-like on the water, shattering in a single moment our every notion of the universe and all it contained. My heart fairly leapt out of my chest at the sight of it. As you watched in silence, drinking in that most miraculous sight, I covered my eyes for a moment, for I could not be sure that what I was seeing wasn’t a dream. After a moment, I lowered my hands and looked once more; it was still there, floating on the becalmed water like an island of miracles. We were in such a state of wonder at the sight of it, our eyes could not look enough. I decided we should tell the others. I took your hand but you would not be moved. I pulled again and you told me to go without you. I ran back to the village while you stayed there on that hilltop overlooking the water.

  I went to our chief, Otahu, and described what we had seen, you and I, out on the hilltop. He listened carefully and, when I’d finished, looked down at the ground and considered what he’d heard. He bade me follow him as he sought out our sage, Fetu, and had me repeat what I’d told him. Fetu also listened carefully, and stroked his beard, which he did whenever he was considering a delicate matter. Then Fetu and Otahu spoke to each other in murmurs. Otahu took the horn that hung around his neck and blew it to call all the people to council. When the people had gathered together to hear, I was once again asked to describe what I’d seen.

  ‘The boat,’ I told them, ‘is like one of our own, with masts and sails, but as if made for giants to sail in. Upon it, three great trees are fastened, the one in the middle being the tallest, as high as any tree on our island, but straightened and stripped of all leaves, twigs and branches. Only the trunks remain, as well as three straight boughs, fastened crosswise to each. Sails of cloth are attached to them, but greater in size and number than our own, each one wide enough to hold within it one of our pirogues. There are so many of these sails fastened to the masts that, rather than calling them sails, one might imagine them a flock of great, captive birds, paler than the sun, the largest of them in the middle and the smaller ones on the outer branches, with their enormous wings outstretched and fastened by a tangled web of threads, pressing the birds into the service of the wind. These great wings, unfurled, drive the boat forth just as the sails of our own pirogues do, only without oars.’

  When I told the people this, they asked me to take them to where I’d seen the boat. I led them to the hi
lltop, where you were still standing, entranced, in the same place I’d left you. The people marvelled at the sight of the ship floating in the distance. The flock of great birds perched upon its branches was gone, and it drifted still and naked on the water.

  We waited for Otahu to speak. ‘We will honour them as our guests and invite them to a feast,’ he said.

  Then Fetu, the sage, spoke: ‘The Law speaks of all things,’ he said, ‘even of this. It tells us to welcome these strangers but to remain wary of them. These boats carry not gods but people like us. Their tongue, their dress, their ways – everything about them is strange to us. We know not what they seek, nor what they bring. Though these men are strangers to us, they are not strangers to the Law, which sees all and knows all. At the feast, I will cross with their chief to learn his designs.’ Fetu finished his discourse with the usual incantation: ‘Our highest duty is to the Law, and above all else the Law demands this of us: There can be no crossing without a return crossing.’

  The Law was our most prized possession, our most sacred jewel. It did not belong to us; we belonged to it. The Law gave life and took it away. All depended on it, all sprang from it, all returned to it. Studying the Law was my greatest joy, and I was Fetu’s favourite student. I sat by his side at all the feasts and ceremonies. He devoted more of his time to me than to any other, teaching the Law’s highest, most secret aspects.

  The Law’s greatest gift was the crossing. To look into the eyes of another, to sense the stirring of one’s soul, to be transported into the body of the other and dwell therein until the time came for the return crossing – this was the treasure the Law had bestowed upon us. Our teachings taught the crossing, our songs praised the crossing, our dances acclaimed the crossing. The Law forbade all tattoos except those of eyes. With every crossing, another eye would be etched into our skin, until our very bodies became hymns exalting the crossing.

  We spent our entire childhoods learning the crossing. We learned there were three different kinds. The first, a crossing between two initiates, is the easiest, although many years of training are necessary to achieve it. The second, requiring years more practice, is a crossing between an initiate and a novice, after which the latter is left in an unknowing state. This is called a blind crossing. The third and highest form of crossing is the wakeful crossing: it too takes place between an initiate and a novice, only once it is complete the novice can remember everything about it. This kind of crossing takes a lifetime to master.

  Of all the Law’s commandments, the greatest was this: There can be no crossing without a return crossing. All must return. The Law was clear: to break it would bring about the destruction of the world. Only a sage could cross without returning, for the sake of the Law’s preservation, so that it might be passed on undiminished. When the time came and the sage felt death approaching, parents would bring their youths to him, hoping their own child would be chosen to be the inheritor. Great honour and influence came to the family of a child chosen to cross with the sage. The family of the designated youth would ask the best stonemason to carve a statue to mark the occasion. At the appointed time, a ceremony would be held during which the youth and the sage would sit before each other, looking into each other’s eyes, and the spirit of the sage would pass into the body of the youth, while the spirit of the youth would cross into the body of the sage. When the crossing was complete, the inheritor would plunge the sacred whalebone knife into the heart of the old sage, and gouge out his eyes. The sage’s remains would be buried and the carved statue placed upon the burial site. Thus there was only one among us who was deathless. All others must die. So spoke the Law.

  Fetu had decided that, when the time came for his last crossing, I would be his successor. And so, when that time came, my own soul would pass into his body, and his into mine. I would become Fetu and, for the sake of the Law, the body I had only just vacated would kill the body I had only just entered.

  About love the Law was all-knowing and all-powerful. Only the elders could unite a woman and a man. If a man and a woman should desire a union forbidden by the elders, the Law was clear: the lovers must leave the island and sail the currents and winds eastward, and find another island, and begin a new life there, with a new Law. So it was that our own island had been settled by our two ancestors, young lovers whose union, on another island to the west, had been forbidden.

  Sometimes we spoke of eloping, you and I, of sailing east and finding a new island, our own island. But when we were not together our resolve weakened. As much as we wanted each other, we didn’t have the courage for the sufferings of exile.

  We saw the strangers lower a small pirogue from their ship, and fill it with men, and begin rowing to shore. We descended the hill to the beach and awaited them. We studied the newcomers, in their stiff, brightly coloured clothes and hats, and noted how strange everything was about them. They looked wherever and at whomever they pleased, without fear, even though their spears were short and thick and blunt. Did they not know the teachings of the Law about where to look, at whom and in what manner?

  They gathered together on the beach and their chief spoke in a strange tongue, and the others raised their spears, and thunder and lightning exploded from the ends of their spears and into the clear blue sky. Their chief tied a stone leaf etched with strange markings to a tree, and finally they approached us, bearing beads, coins, nails and mirrors, which they held out to us, smiling at us, placing their gifts into our hands. Of course, we didn’t know what these things were and we studied them and were awed by their strangeness. Their chief issued orders that the others followed, but there was a second one among them who did not labour, instead gathering leaves and plants and putting them in a bag, as if harvesting medicines as Fetu did. He marvelled at our tattoos. Meanwhile, other strangers were sent to a stream carrying empty barrels, which they filled with water, and carried back to their pirogue.

  As I watched them, I was also watching you, Koahu, how drawn to them you were, how easily you communicated with them, despite the strangeness of their tongue, with your eyes and face and arms. Your quick wit, your smile, the way you moved – all were tools with which you bridged the differences between you and the strangers. And your eyes, those eyes I had gazed into so often, now betrayed no other desire than for the foreigners and their strangeness, which you found full of wonder and delight. You admired their brazenness, for you yourself were born brazen.

  With your body, with the expressions on your face and the movements of your hands, you somehow made yourself understood to them. Through you, Otahu invited them to feast with us that evening.

  Throughout the day, the strangers were near us or among us. Some of them spent the day filling their barrels with water or hunting for wild pigs and fowl. Others repaired sails on the beach. Their medicine man collected plants and examined our tattoos. Otahu had warned us to keep our distance, and this most of us did, although we kept a watchful eye on them. I helped prepare the feast, but I was watching as often as I could all the same. Whether from near or from afar, we drank in their presence, we studied their strangeness, we observed everything we could about them, noting every last detail, so that, when they were gone, we might feast on our memories of them. Several among us approached them, especially the children, especially you. You helped them wheel their barrels to and from the stream. You helped point them in the direction of the pigs and the fowl.

  The feast was held after nightfall, in the glow of a full moon, in a clearing within earshot of the water. Two great fires burned for light. Otahu wore his ritual cloak of carmine feathers and Fetu wore his ritual cloak of white feathers. They sat side by side. I sat by Fetu’s side, as his favourite. A score of the most senior of the people sat in the circle – I was the youngest – and about ten of the strangers. Others stood or sat nearby, watching the proceedings or talking among themselves. Then everyone in the circle was served kava, which caused the strangers, upon drinking the liquid, to grimace with such distaste that we laughed. Otahu made
a speech, extolling the virtues of the strangers, and the honour they did us with their visit. Then you stepped into the circle and stood between the two fires. The front half of your body was painted with white stripes and adorned with clusters of white albatross feathers. The back half of your body was streaked with lines of grey and clusters of grey albatross feathers. Slowly you spread your arms and, singing the songs that went with it, you began to perform our most sacred dance, the dance that related how our people had come into being: the Dance of the Albatross.

  In the old days, two young lovers from rival bloodlines had been exiled from their homeland far away to the north-west. Back then, people could assume the form of the animals for which they had been named, a skill that was later lost. In order to make their journey into exile, the two lovers took the form of the birds whose names they carried. The woman took the form of Pueo, the owl after which she was named. The man took the form of the bird after which he was named, Para, the white tern. Together, the two set off across the ocean. Para the tern darted ahead of Pueo the owl. The island from which they had been banished was barely out of sight before Para began to tire. By the time Pueo caught up with him, Para was floating on the water, dying. ‘I want to go back,’ he said. ‘I’d rather die in my homeland, at the hands of my own people, than drown at sea.’

  ‘We no longer have a homeland,’ Pueo told him. ‘If you are tired, I will carry you in my claws. We will both spread our wings and beat them in unison, and that way we will traverse the great distances of the ocean without tiring.’ She picked him up from the water, taking care not to wound him with her talons. When they spread their wings and began beating them together, they became one bird, the greatest of birds: Toroa, the wandering albatross. This is why the albatross is grey from above and white from below, and why it is so clumsy when it walks upon the land. And so, as one, the two lovers wandered the skies over the oceans, from island to island, for a thousand years. As one, they learned to drink from the sea by separating the salt from the sea water and expelling it in their tears. They were turned away from every island they went to. Finally they found an island that was the shell of a giant sea turtle that had run aground on a coral reef. No one lived on this island. Here, they assumed their human forms again and named their new home Toroa’eetee, which means ‘Home of the Wandering Albatross’. Over time, this was shortened to Oaeetee. The albatross became our totem. We used its bones for hooks and spear tips, and its feathers, symbols of peace, we wore in our ceremonies.