another two or three
small moments to which you turn,
return.
Dawn on a riverbed, up north,
the story I read to you there,
the alcove in the strange gray
rock in which you nested,
curled.
You were
so small,
and the blue of your eyes,
and the sun, and the minnows
that leaped in the water as though they, too,
wished to hear the story, and the laughter
we laughed together.
Just that, just those, again
and again,
those memories, and
the others
gradually fade …
Tell me, are you purposely
robbing me
of solace?
And then I think, Perhaps
this is how you slowly habituate
me to the ebbing
of pain? Perhaps,
with remarkable tenderness,
with your persistent
wisdom,
you are preparing me
slowly
for it—
I mean,
for the separation?
CENTAUR: You’re back. Finally. I was beginning to think you’d never … that I’d scared you off. Look, I was thinking: You and I, we’re an odd couple, aren’t we? Think about it: I’ve been unable to write for years, haven’t produced even one word, and you—it turns out—can write, or rather transcribe, as much as you feel like. Whole notebooks, scrolls! But only what other people tell you, apparently. Only quotes, right? Other people’s chewed-up cud. All you do is jot it down with a pen stroke here, a scribble there … Am I right? Not even a single word that’s really yours? Yeah? Not even one letter? That’s what I thought. What can I say, we’re quite a pair. Write this down then, please. Quickly, before it gets away:
And inside my head there’s a constant war comma the wasps
keep humming colon what good would it do if you wrote
question mark what would you add
to the world if you imagined question
mark and if you really
must comma then just write
facts comma what
else is there to say
question mark write them
down and shut up
forever colon at
such and such time comma in
this and that place comma my son
comma my only child comma aged
eleven and a half
period the boy
is gone
period
TOWN CHRONICLER: And with these last words, using both hands and terrible force, he pounded the table, and his face contorted so painfully that for a moment I thought, Your Highness, that he had struck his own body.
MIDWIFE:
Dear God, such pain
cuts suddenly deep down
in my stomach, my girl—
if only I knew that th-th-there, too,
when you arrived,
when you finished
dying,
you were welcomed with loving arms
and a warm, fragrant t-t-towel,
and someone,
or something, in whose bosom
you found peace
in those first moments.
TOWN CHRONICLER: Next to the train station, in the dark, by a lopsided house, stands the elderly teacher. His silver head leans in against the wall of the house to whisper a secret. With a commanding gesture, as though once again having been waiting for me, he invites me to sit on the sidewalk by his feet. Two plus two equals four, I murmur after him, and instantly feel relief. Three plus three is six. Four plus four—eight. My presence seems to fill him with life: he scribbles exercises on the wall, his eyes aglimmer. Five plus five is ten, I sing along joyfully, craning my neck back to see him standing over me. His coattails fly as he leaps from one exercise to the next. My voice grows soft and thin. I imagine that my feet do not reach the road and I can swing them. Ten plus ten twenty, I cheer, and from the second-story window someone empties a chamber pot of wastewater on us and yells: People are trying to sleep!
I get up and stand next to the teacher. We are both wet and shamefaced, as though caught in a foolish prison escape. The teacher looks suddenly small and shriveled like a baby. If only I could touch, I would take him in my arms and rock him and hum until he fell asleep. Instead I open my notebook, and in the most official voice I can muster, I ask him for details.
ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:
The questioners persist:
And has it no fissures?
No cracks
or crevices?
No.
And can you
touch it?
It has no touch.
But tell us: Is it full or
hollow, this great fact
of your life? Is it slack
or taut?
No, no,
I respond awkwardly, it’s
here!
But you’ve already said that!
Yes, it’s odd how little
I have to say
on the matter. Surprising
and disappointing, I know,
but it, namely that,
meaning the death
of my son, of Michael,
twenty-six years ago
in a foolish accident
(a prank gone awry,
a bathtub, a razor,
veins slashed
in the course of a game),
it seemingly swallows up
the words and the wisdom,
all the keys.
Only one thing remains
steadfast:
it is here.
Whether I come or go,
whether rise or lie—
it is here.
When I am alone
or sitting in the square,
or teaching a class—
it is here,
filling me up entirely
until nothing is left and
there is no room,
sometimes, for myself.
Yes, that is certainly something I wanted
to say (and perhaps it should be noted):
that I have no room
for myself. Or just
for a breath. Yes,
that’s the thing:
one
good
breath,
a deep
breath,
whole
and pure,
without the convulsion
of horror
in its depths—
But of the thing itself
(as I have said)—
nothing,
not one word.
WALKING MAN:
When I have a flash of memory—
you sitting over your homework in the kitchen,
or smiling on the beach, in an old photograph,
or just asleep in bed—
I instantly awaken
what came the moment before.
Or what will come the moment after.
Before my memory caught you;
after the photographer froze you.
Then I knead you:
so your features broaden
into a smile,
then slowly focus
in contemplation.
So your eyes light up suddenly,
change colors
in the light,
brim with fury
or amazement
or intrigue.
Thus you shall walk in your room,
this way and that, in the cool of the day,
small waves
of grace,
naïveté and youth
move beneath your skin,
your fair hair skips
on your forehead.
And now you will turn to me and say:
But, Dad, you don
’t understand—
Or in your sleep, beneath a sheet,
your chest will rise and fall,
rise,
and fall,
and rise again.
(Ah,
I have asked too much.
I will be punished.)
And yet,
my son,
you do move,
you do move
in me.
CENTAUR:
Sometimes I play games
on it, the goddamn it,
activities: “Death is
deathful.” I wink at it,
like it’s a little game
we play: “Death will deathify,
or is it deathened? Deatherized?
Deathered?” I patiently recite,
Over and over, rephrasing, finessing:
“We were deathened, you will be
deatherized, they will be
deathed.”
What else can I do—
neither write
nor live. At least
language
remains, at least
it is still
somewhat free,
unraveled.
TOWN CHRONICLER: Tell me about the cradle.
CENTAUR: What’s that? What did you say?
TOWN CHRONICLER: The cradle. In the big pile, behind you.
CENTAUR: I hope with all my heart, you miserable clerk, that my ears deceive me.
TOWN CHRONICLER: It has two ducks painted on the side.
CENTAUR: It’s a real shame, clerk. You’ve ruined the moment.
TOWN CHRONICLER: His shoulders start to swell. His cheeks, too. My gamble has failed. He struggles to move himself away from the desk and stand up. I have to get out of here, quickly. I’ve never seen him not behind his desk. In fact, until this moment I have not seen him stand. I remember what I read about him in the town archives. This is the time to flee, but my legs disobey me. He grows larger and larger in front of me. He will get up, that is clear, get up and uproot the house with him and split the roof. The toys and the clothes and the other remnants of childhood will crumble to dust and scatter every which way. It’s a shame. Such a shame. I was almost beginning to like him. He groans; his face trembles. I hear, from there inside with him, in the room, loud taps and a strange creak, like a large, sharp fingernail scratching a tile. I close my eyes and tell myself it’s only the desk; it’s just the desk making that sound. A thought flies through my mind: He will get up from his chair and pluck me into his room and devour me. And another thought: That desk has hooves.
CENTAUR: Damn, damn! Not even stand up? Shit. Shit!
TOWN CHRONICLER: His head plunges onto his chest and he weeps. I swear, he weeps. I’d best be gone. Otherwise I will embarrass him. I will wait one more moment and then leave. His shoulders heave. Quick, truncated shudders. He covers his face with his hands. I count the cracks and grooves in the sidewalk. Correct a few mistakes in the notebook. Then, having no choice, I begin to listen to the different layers of his sobbing until I hear one I know well. If I were to cry, this is likely how I would cry. I listen. From the minute the thing happened to my daughter, I forbade myself any self-pity whatsoever. This requires, of course, a certain degree of self-control and constant guardedness. At night, too. I cannot forbid the centaur to cry, however. That is his private affair, even if for some reason he insists on weeping in my voice. I try to guess what my wife would do in this situation. I rise up on my tiptoes. My hand hovers over his head. This is a hand that has no right to touch a person. Pathetic, impure, the hand of a coward. I take a deep breath and shut my eyes and caress his curls. “There, there,” I say.
He falls silent. Silence descends on the whole town. I dare not move. Thus, with my hand resting on the centaur’s head, I suddenly hear, very close, right in the place where my hand touches the large, sweaty head, the voice of the man who walks the hills.
WALKING MAN:
In the first year
after, alone at home,
I sometimes called your name,
your childhood
nickname.
With strength I did not possess,
in madness, with dauntless
peril to body and soul,
I would imbue that short,
yearned-for
word
with magic dust:
domesticity,
serenity,
routine.
Then utter a calculated, casual:
“Uwi?”
If I said it just right, I hoped
(I dreamed, I schemed),
you could not refrain
from responding
to the simplicity,
which transcends
worlds and borders—
I would say “Uwi” and you would
slide down and come true
in a blink, the echo
of my call,
a minor tide
trickling from the there
into the here. And that would be
your answer,
natural and practical,
as exhalation
answers inhalation,
a tribute
to the miracle of
powerful routine.
Oh, I would say to you,
watch a game with me? Or
shall we take a walk
together now?
How did it happen, my child,
that of all my words,
there is one
that will never,
ever
be answered?
TOWN CHRONICLER: “But where is there?” asks my wife the next day as we take our evening walk—she down the street, me following her, hidden by the shadows. “Where is this there he’s going to? Who even believes that such a place exists?”
As she ambles, she throws these words into the air. I feel almost weak-kneed from the surprise. I look around to see if anyone has heard her, but fortunately it is only she and I on the street at this hour.
“Maybe there has been here all this time?” she continues, and the matter-of-fact cadence of her voice unsettles me even more: she might as well be conversing casually in our kitchen.
“And maybe we’ve been there, too, just a bit, since it happened to us?” She straightens up and a new momentum seems to drive her steps. “Maybe there has always been here, and we just didn’t know it?”
A cool breeze blows. She wraps a scarf around her neck, leaving her beautiful shoulders bare. She does that for me. Today is my birthday, Your Highness, and she knows how much I love her shoulders.
“And if that is the case”—she takes a deep breath—“then maybe, maybe she is here with us, every single moment?”
The powerful stab of the words makes us both stop.
“Just imagine,” she whispers.
We keep walking. She up front, I in the shadows of houses and through darkened yards, shaken.
ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:
“A father should not outlive his child.”
The clear-eyed logic of this rule
is rooted not only
in human life, but also,
as we know,
in the science of optics, where
(in the spirit of the great Spinoza,
the lens grinder)
we find an extremely daring
axiom: “The object
(‘the life of the son’)
must never be located
in the universe
at a distance
from which the father
(‘the observing subject’)
may encompass all of him
with one gaze
from beginning to end.”
For otherwise
(and here I interject),
the observing subject
would become
at once
a lump
of lignite
(known also as:
coal).
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Now, from day to day, the wayfarer’s walk grows more vigorous. At times it seems, Your Highness, that a nameless power hovers over the town, envelops it, and—like a person sucking an egg through a hole in the shell—it draws these people and others toward it, from kitchens and squares and wharves and beds. (And—if there is truth to the shocking, dizzying rumors, Your Highness—even from palace rooms?)
The woman atop the belfry—once in a while I look up and see her there among the clouds, her silver hair unbraided, flying—she, too, must sometimes cling to the spire with both arms or else be swept up in the invisible storm. Now, for instance, her mouth is agape, and I do not know whether she is shouting out in the silence or eagerly swallowing words as they float past.
WALKING MAN:
Like a fetus hatching
from its mother’s womb and body,
his death made me the father
I had never been—
it bored
a hole in me, a wound,
a space, but also filled me
with his ubiety,
which churns in me now
with an affluence
of being I have never
felt before.
His death
has qualified me
to conceive him.
His death
makes me
an empty slough
of father—and of
mother: it bares
my breast for
no one there to suckle.
And on the walls
of my womb,
which on that day was hewn,
his death—with fleeing captive’s fingernails—
notches off the score of days
without him.
Thus, with lucent chisel,
his death
engraves its news on me:
the bereaved
will always
woman be.
TOWN CHRONICLER: The next night, my wife and I take our daily walk again. Between the houses we catch an occasional glimpse of the small procession ambling over the hilltops on the horizon.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE: In recent days I think I see, over their heads, in the air, some sort of reddish flicker, a chain of embers hovering above …
TOWN CHRONICLER: As usual, she sets our pace. When she pauses, I stop, too. Sometimes, when she is lost in thought, I must enter a yard and huddle behind a fence, praying I won’t encounter a dog. At this moment she watches the strange embers at length, and I, as always, watch her. The faint moonlight falls on her face. She was so beautiful once. She is now, too.
When we finally arrive at her home, she opens the door. But tonight she lingers at the doorway, turns, and looks straight into the dark, as though guessing exactly where I am hiding. I feel the home current wafting toward me, warm and fragrant. She hugs her body and sighs softly. I may be wrong, but perhaps it is her way of telling me that she would like to fall upon me now, screaming, teeth bared, and beat me furiously with her fists, tear my skin off with her nails.