at me, tell me:
Did it happen?
MAN:
And it billows up
abundantly,
an endless
wellspring. And I
know—as long as
I breathe,
I will draw
and drink and drip
that blackened
moment.
WOMAN:
Mourning condemns
the living
to the grimmest solitude,
much like the loneliness
in which disease
enclothes
the ailing.
MAN:
But in that loneliness,
where—like soul
departing body—
I am torn
from myself, there
I am no longer alone,
no longer alone,
ever since.
And I am not
just one there,
and never will be
only one—
WOMAN:
There I touch his
inner self,
his gulf,
as I have
never touched
a person
in the world—
MAN:
And he,
he also touches
me from
there, and his touch—
no one has ever
touched me in that way.
(silence)
WOMAN:
If there were such a thing
as there,
and there isn’t,
you know—but if
there were,
they would have already gone
there.
One of everyone would have
got up and gone. And how
far will you go,
and how will you know
your way back,
and what if you don’t
come back, and even if
you find it—
and you won’t,
because it isn’t—
if you find it, you will not
come back,
they will not let you
back, and if you do
come back, how
will you be, you might
come back so different
that you won’t
come back,
and what about me,
how will I be if you don’t
come back, or if
you come back
so different that you don’t
come back?
TOWN CHRONICLER: She gets up and embraces him. Her hands scamper over his body. Her mouth probes his face, his eyes, his lips. From my post in the shadows, outside their window, it looks as if she is throwing herself over him like a blanket on a fire.
WOMAN:
That night I thought:
Now we will never
separate.
Even if we want to,
how can we?
Who will sustain him, who will
if our two bodies do not
envelop
his empty fullness?
MAN:
Come,
what could be simpler?
Without mulling or wondering
or thinking: his mother
and father
get up and go
to him.
WOMAN:
In whose eyes will we look to see him,
present and absent?
In whose hand
will we intertwine fingers
to weave him
fleetingly
in our flesh?
Don’t go.
MAN:
The eyes,
one single
spark
from his eyes—
how can we,
how may we
not try?
WOMAN:
And what will you tell him,
you miserable madman?
What will you say? That hours
after him, the hunger awoke
in you?
That your body
and mine, like a pair
of ticks, clutched
at life and clung
to each other and forced us
to live?
MAN:
If we can be with him
for one more moment,
perhaps he, too,
will be
for one more
moment,
a look—
a breath—
WOMAN:
And then what?
What will become
of him?
And of us?
MAN:
Perhaps we’ll die like he did, instantly.
Or, facing him, suspended,
we will swing
between the living
and the dead—
but that we know. Five years
on the gallows of grief.
(pause)
The smell
from your body
when your anguish
plunges on you,
lunges;
the bitter smell in which
I always find
his odor, too.
WOMAN:
His smells—
sweet, sharp,
sour.
His washed hair
his bathed flesh
the simple spices
of the body—
MAN:
The way he used to sweat after a game,
remember?
Burning with excitement—
WOMAN:
Oh, he had smells for every season:
the earthy aromas of autumn hikes,
rain evaporating from wool sweaters,
and when you worked the spring fields together,
odor from the sweat of your brows,
the vapors of working men, filled the house—
But most of all I loved the summer,
with its notes of peaches
and plums,
their juices running down his cheeks—
WOMAN:
And when he came back
from a campfire with friends,
night and smoke
on his breath—
MAN:
Or when he returned
from the beach,
a salty tang
in his hair—
WOMAN:
On his skin.
The scent of his baby blanket,
the smell of his diapers
when he drank only breast milk,
then seemingly
one moment later—
MAN:
The sheets of a boy
in love.
WOMAN:
Sometimes, when we are
together, your sorrow
grips my sorrow,
my pain bleeds into yours,
and suddenly the echo of
his mended, whole body
comes from inside us,
and then one might briefly imagine—
he is here.
(pause)
I would go
to the end
of the world with you,
you know. But you are not
going to him, you are going
somewhere else, and there
I will not go, I cannot.
I will not.
It is easier to go
than to stay.
I have bitten my flesh
for five years
so as not to go, not
there,
there is
no there!
MAN:
There will be,
if we go
there.
TOWN CHRONICLER: She looks away from him. They are distant, as though he is no longer here, on this side. He takes a deep breath, inhaling the small kitchen and the entire house,
and her—her face, her body. Then he straightens up. As he walks past, his hand rests briefly on her waist, barely touching. He leaves the house and shuts the door behind him.
And stops: the sky is low and black, the broad-chested night pushes him back to the house. He looks at the closed door. His feet hesitate, probing. He walks—strange—orbiting himself in a small circle. Slowly, carefully, again and again, one circle after another. His arms spread out, the circles grow wider, he walks around the small yard, and now he circles the house—
WALKING MAN:
Here I will fall
now I will fall—
I do not fall.
Now, here,
the heart
will stop—
It does not stop.
Here is shadow
and fog—
now,
now
I will fall—
TOWN CHRONICLER: The night air is damp and cool. Clouds roll over the big swamps in the east, covering the stub of moon. Again and again he circles the house, as if hoping his motion will rouse her and enthuse her.
WALKING MAN:
Your icy voice
ensnarls
my feet. How will I walk
without your warmth, without the light
of your eyes?
How will I walk
if you withhold
your grace?
TOWN CHRONICLER: His gaze always fixed on the shuttered blinds, he circles the house again and again, but gradually moves farther away. He opens up, spreads out, walking farther, farther, his circles growing larger and wider. He walks there—there is no there, of course there isn’t, but what if you go there? What if a man walks there?
WALKING MAN:
I am not alone, I am not
alone, I whisper
like an oath,
and his breath
through my mouth
clouds the mirror.
I am not alone,
with him I am
not alone—
TOWN CHRONICLER: He gradually encircles the whole village, then he does so again. He walks by houses, yards, wells, and fields, past barns and paddocks and woodpiles. Dogs bark at him and quickly retreat with a whimper, and he walks.
WALKING MAN:
I am not alone. With him
I am not one,
I am alone
with him in all
my thickets, my labyrinths.
He pulses in me, lives
with me, one
with me, with him
I share the vast expanse his death
created in me—
and he surges
and he wanes with me,
unquiet
unquiet
roaming
embittering
redeeming
shackling
healing
purifying,
not letting go,
not letting go,
this
lonely
dead
child.
TOWN CHRONICLER: Night after night after night. Things are happening in your town, my lord, and I fear I will not have the time to record them all for you.
Right now, at midnight, at the old wharf by the lake, something stirs inside a skein of fishing nets. A head pokes out and glances around. A tiny, supple body pulls itself out of the skein and sits up breathlessly. It is a person, undoubtedly. Frightened eyes gleam white in the filthy face as they scan the hilltops surrounding the town. The gaping mouth turns to look, like a dark third eye.
Now I see: it is the net-mender. You may recall, Your Highness, that years ago, on one of your visits to the harbor, you enjoyed her sharp tongue when she argued with you over the needle tax you had levied, in your benevolence, at the time. A cheerful, curly-haired boy was tied to her chest in a brightly colored sling. He played a game of peekaboo with you, and you gave him a gold coin. I do not know what became of him. From time to time I see her roaming the streets near the harbor, grunting, muttering unintelligible words to herself, encumbered by a tangled web of fishing nets that makes one wonder whether there is a human being inside at all.
She suddenly leaps up as if snakebitten. Her hands rise and she points far away. She groans—
If you are awake, my lord, and would be so kind as to look out of your window, you, too, will see: a small luminance of sorts encircles the town. A man walks there, up and down the hills.
WALKING MAN:
One step,
another step, another
step,
walking and
walking to you.
I am
an unleashed question,
an open shout
My son
If only
I could
move
you
just
one
step.
TOWN CHRONICLER: And on the third night watch, in a side alley on the outskirts of town, in a little house with one room, a centaur sits at a table. That is what the townsfolk call him, Your Highness, and I promise to try to find out why very shortly. His massive head, adorned with snowy-white curls, droops onto his chest. His spectacles have slid down to the edge of his nose, and his snores shake the house. I glance right and left: no one. I rise up on my toes and peer inside. The room is dusky, but I can discern that it is overflowing: strange mounds and heaps that might be dirt or garbage, or piles of old furniture, surround the man and at times reach the ceiling. It is hard to see how he can move in this room.
A dirty blanket is spread out on the desk before him. A few empty beer bottles, pens, pencils, a school notebook, all scattered around. The notebook is open; its pages have thin blue lines. As best I can tell from here, they are all empty.
“Scram before I wring your balls,” the centaur growls without opening his eyes, and I flee for my life.
Only when I reach the fence outside the home of the woman from whom I have exiled myself does my heart recover.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
The passing time
is painful. I have lost
the art
of moving simply,
naturally, within it.
I am swept back
against its flow. Angry, vindictive,
it pierces me
all the time, all the
time
with its
spikes.
TOWN CHRONICLER: The next evening, in a hut in a slum on the outskirts of town, a young woman—trained as a midwife—gets up abruptly from her kneeling position by a tub of water and stands with her hands dripping. As far as I can see, there is no laboring woman in the room, nor a baby. Only a man’s trousers and shirt float in the tub. The woman freezes. Her neck is a stalk, her face long and gentle. Somewhat rigidly, she turns and walks to the window. Outside it is cold and stormy, and since the chimney emits no smoke—allowing me to peer through it—I assume it is very cold inside, too.
Her gaze probes the faraway hilltops on the horizon. She is silent, but her fingers rend her mouth apart as if in a scream, until I hold my breath as well. When she finally sighs, her shoulders collapse, as though her strength has suddenly left her.
Her husband—barrel-chested, with a reddish shaved skull and three thick folds on the back of his neck—who all this time has sat in the corner cobbling a pair of riding boots, punctuating and vowelizing her silence with the rapid blows of his hammer, hisses through the nails in his mouth:
COBBLER: Poisoning your soul again?
MIDWIFE: Y-y-yesterday she w-w-would have been f-f-five.
COBBLER: I’ve told you a hundred times not to think about these things! Enough, it’s over!
MIDWIFE: I lit a candle by her p-p-picture and you said n-n-nothing. Don’t you ever think about her?
COBBLER: What is there to think? How much of a life did she even have? A year?
MIDWIFE: And a h-h-half.
TOWN CHRONICLER: The cobbler slams the boot heel with his
hammer as hard as he can, curses, and with peculiar lust sucks the blood that spurts from his finger.
Heavy with thought, I leave. The town is asleep; its streets are empty. At the edge of the old wharf I stop and wait. The leaden clouds almost touch the water. Daybreak will soon come.
As she did last night, the mute net-mender thrusts her head out of the skein. She looks around, searching, as if a voice had called her. I hide behind a lamppost. She suddenly leaps and runs down the pier with unbelievable speed, past skeletons of boats and rusty anchors, her long nets dragging behind her, floating.
On the wooden bridge she stops. I can hear her breath whistling. Who knows what is plaguing this miserable creature’s mind? She grabs the railing and rocks it wildly. How much force and fury that little frame contains! I carefully move closer and crouch behind an overturned boat. The lake is turbulent tonight, and it sprays my glasses with droplets. In such moments, Your Highness, I practically curse my blind obedience to your orders. It is hard to see from here, but it seems as though someone is trying to force the mute to turn back and look at the hills, and she fights him and grunts and spits, squirming as her tiny, supple body is tossed from side to side. I write quickly in the dark my hand is trembling I apologize for the handwriting Your Highness perhaps she is about to throw herself into the lake and then what will I do it’s been so many years since I’ve touched anyone and her head at once pulls sharply back maybe there really is someone in the dark breaking her neck—
Her mouth gapes, teeth exposed, and suddenly all is quiet. How such silence and the lake as if the waves do not
MUTE WOMAN IN NET:
Two human specks,
a mother and her child,
we glided through the world
for six whole years.
TOWN CHRONICLER: Astonished, she plunges once again into the mess of nets. I am exceedingly cold, Your Highness. Such phenomena disquiet me. The lake coming back to life so suddenly, and the boats once again knocking into one another and creaking in mockery. You will ridicule me, too, my lord, but I am willing to swear that I saw a slim band of light coming out of her mouth. Perhaps just a moonlight apparition. But there is no moon tonight. And the fact that for one moment, when she sang, she was almost beautiful … I am merely reporting. Her voice was clear. I might even venture to say: heavenly. But what do I know? I am tired. This is all so confusing. Perhaps I should take a nap in one of the boats
Wait—