All of Us (30 page)

Through the open window he could see a flock of ducks

with their young. Waddling and stumbling, they were hurrying

down the road, apparently on their way to the pond. One

duckling picked up a piece of gut that was lying on

the ground, tried to swallow it, choked

on it and raised an alarmed squeaking. Another

duckling ran up, pulled the gut out of its beak and choked on

the thing too.… At some distance from the fence,

in the lacy shadow cast on the grass by the young lindens,

the cook Darya was wandering about, picking sorrel

for a vegetable soup.

Her brain is an attic where things

were stored over the years.

From time to time her face appears

in the little windows near the top of the house.

The sad face of someone who has been locked up

and forgotten about.

His name was Tug. Hers, Margo.

Until people, seeing what was happening,

began calling her Cargo.

Tug and Cargo. He had drive,

they said. Lots of hair on his face

and arms. A big guy. Commanding

voice. She was more laid-back. A blond.

Dreamy. (Sweet and dreamy.) She broke

loose, finally. Sailed away

under her own power. Went to places

pictured in books, and some

not in any book, or even on the map.

Places she, being a girl, and cargo,

never dreamed of getting to.

Not on her own, anyway.

It’s 1974 again, and he’s back once more. Smirking,

a pair of coveralls over a white tee-shirt,

no shoes. His hair, long and blond, falls

to his shoulders like his mother’s did

back then, and like one of those young Greek

heroes I was just reading about. But

there the resemblance ends. On his face

the contemptuous expression of the wise guy,

the petty tyrant. I’d know that look anywhere.

It burns in my memory like acid. It’s

the look I never hoped I’d live to see

again. I want to forget that boy

in the picture—that jerk, that bully!

What’s for supper, mother dear? Snap to!

Hey, old lady, jump, why don’t you? Speak

when spoken to. I think I’ll put you in

a headlock to see how you like it. I like

it. I want to keep you on

your toes. Dance for me now. Go ahead,

bag, dance. I’ll show you a step or two.

Let me twist your arm. Beg me to stop, beg me

to be nice. Want a black eye? You got it!

Oh, son, in those days I wanted you dead

a hundred—no, a thousand—different times.

I thought all that was behind us. Who in hell

took this picture, and

why’d it turn up now,

just as I was beginning to forget?

I look at your picture and my stomach cramps.

I find myself clamping my jaws, teeth on edge, and

once more I’m filled with despair and anger.

Honestly, I feel like reaching for a drink.

That’s a measure of your strength and power, the fear

and confusion you still inspire. That’s

how mighty you once were. Hey, I hate this

photograph. I hate what became of us all.

I don’t want this artifact in my house another hour!

Maybe I’ll send it to your mother, assuming

she’s still alive somewhere and the post can reach

her this side of the grave. If so, she’ll have

a different reaction to it, I know. Your youth and

beauty, that’s all she’ll see and exclaim over.

My handsome son, she’ll say. My boy wonder.

She’ll study the picture, searching for her likeness

in the features, and mine. (She’ll find them, too.)

Maybe she’ll weep, if there are any tears left.

Maybe—who knows?—she’ll even wish for those days

back again! Who knows anything anymore?

But wishes don’t come true, and it’s a good thing.

Still, she’s bound to keep your picture out

on the table for a while and make over you

for a time. Then, soon, you’ll go

into the big family album along with the other crazies —

herself, her daughter and me, her former husband. You’ll be

safe in there, cheek to jowl with all your victims. But don’t

worry, my boy—the pages turn, my son. We all

do better in the future.

As he passed his father’s room, he glanced in at the door.

Yevgraf Ivanovitch, who had not taken off his clothes or gone

to bed, was standing by the window, drumming on the panes.

“Goodbye, I am going,” said his son.

“Goodbye … the money is on the round table,” his father

answered without turning around.

A cold, hateful rain was falling as the laborer drove him

to the station.… The grass seemed darker than ever.

—
ANTON CHEKHOV
“Difficult People”

To sleep and forget everything for a few
hours…

To wake to the sound of the foghorn in July.

To look out the window with a heavy heart and see fog

hanging in the pear trees, fog clogging the intersection,

shrouding the neighborhood like a disease invading a healthy

body. To go on living when she has stopped
living…

    A car eases by with its lights on, and the clock is

turned back to five days ago, the ringing and ringing that brought me

back to this world and news of her death, she who’d simply been

away, whose return had been anticipated with baskets

of raspberries from the market. (Starting from this day

forward, I intend to live my life differently. For one thing,

I won’t ever answer the phone again at five in the morning. I knew

better, too, but still I picked up the receiver and said that fateful

word, “Hello.” The next time I’ll simply let it ring.)

First, though, I have her funeral to get through. It’s today, in a

matter of hours. But the idea of a cortege creeping through this fog

to the cemetery is unnerving, and ridiculous, everyone in the town

with their lights on anyway, even the tourists.…

    
May this fog lift and burn off before three this afternoon! Let us

be able, at least, to bury her under sunny skies, she who worshiped

the sun. Everyone knows she is taking part

in this dark masque today only because she has no choice.

She has lost the power of choice! How she’d

hate this! She who loved in April
deciding

to plant the sweetpeas and who staked them before

they could climb.

    I light my first cigarette of the day and turn away from

the window with a shudder. The foghorn sounds again, filling me

with apprehension, and then, then stupendous

grief.

Suppose I say
summer
,

write the word “hummingbird,”

put it in an envelope,

take it down the hill

to the box. When you open

my letter you will recall

those days and how much,

just how much, I love you.

Out of the black mouth of the big king

salmon comes pouring the severed heads of herring,

cut on the bias, slant-wise —

near perfect handiwork of the true

salmon fisherman, him and his slick, sharp bait knife.

Body of the cut herring affixed then eighteen inches behind

a flashing silver spoon, heads tossed over

the side, to sink and turn

in the mottled water. How they managed it, those heads,

to reappear so in our boat—most amazingly!—pouring forth

from the torn mouth, this skewed version, misshapen chunks

of a bad fairy tale, but one where no wishes will be

granted, no bargains struck nor promises kept.

We counted nine of those heads, as if to count was already

to tell it later. “Jesus,” you said, “Jesus,” before

tossing them back overboard where they belonged.

I started the motor and again we dropped our plugged herring-baited

hooks into the water. You’d been telling stories

about logging for Mormons on Prince of Wales Island (no booze,

no swearing, no women. Just
no
, except for work

and a paycheck). Then you fell quiet, wiped the knife

on your pants and stared toward Canada, and beyond.

All morning you’d wanted to tell me something and now you

began to tell me; how

your wife wants you out of her life, wants

you gone
, wants you to just disappear.

Why don’t you disappear and just don’t ever

come back?
she’d said. “Can you beat it? I think she hopes

a spar will take me out.” Just then there’s one hell of a strike.

The water boils as line goes out. It keeps

going out.

At noon we have rain, which washes away the snow,

and at dusk, when I stand on the river bank and watch

the approaching boat contend with the current,

a mixture of rain and snow comes down.… We go downstream,

keeping close to a thicket of purple willow shrubs. The men

at the oars tell us that only ten minutes ago a boy in a cart

saved himself from drowning by catching hold of

a willow shrub; his team went under.…

The bare willow shrubs bend toward the water with

a rustling sound, the river suddenly grows dark.… If

there is a storm we shall have to spend the night among

the willows and in the end get drowned, so why not go on?

We put the matter to a vote and decide to row on.

Toward evening the wind changes. Boats

still out on the bay

head for shore. A man with one arm

sits on the keel of a rotting-away

vessel, working on a glimmering net.

He raises his eyes. Pulls at something

with his teeth, and bites hard.

I go past without a word.

Reduced to confusion

by the variableness of this weather,

the importunities of my heart. I keep

going. When I turn back to look

I’m far enough away

to see that man caught in a net.

The two brothers, Sleep and Death, they unblinkingly called

themselves, arrived at our house around nine in the evening,

               just as

the light was fading. They unloaded all their paraphernalia

in the driveway, what they’d need for killing bees, hornets —

               yellow-

jackets as well. A “dusky” job, one had said on the phone. Those

invaders, we told ourselves, had become such a nuisance.

Frightening, too. An end to it! And
them
, we decided: we’ll write

finish
to their short-lived career as pollen-gatherers, honey-

makers. Not a decision taken lightly, or easily. Annihilation

               on such

an undreamt-of scale, a foreign thing to us. We moved

to the window to look down to the drive where the men,

               one older,

one younger, stood smoking, watching a few late stragglers find

their way to the hole under the eave. Those bees trying to

beat the sun as it tipped over the horizon, the air turning

               colder now,

the light gradually fainter. We raised our eyes and, through the

glass, could see a dozen, two dozen, a tiny fist

of them, waiting in a swirl their turn to enter their newfound

city. We could hear rustling, like scales, like wings chaffing

behind the wall, up near the ceiling. Then the sun disappeared

entirely, it was dark. All bees inside. One of the brothers, Sleep, it

must have been, he was the younger, positioned the ladder

in the drive, under the southwest corner. A few words we couldn’t

catch were exchanged, then Death pulled on his oversized

               gloves and

began his climb up the ladder, slowly, balancing on his back

a heavy cannister held papoose-like by a kind of harness. In

               one hand

was a hose, for killing. He passed our lighted window on his

               way up,

glancing briefly, incuriously, into the living room. Then he stopped,

about even with our heads, only his boots showing where he

               stood on

a rung of the ladder. We tried to act as if nothing out of

the ordinary were happening. You picked up a book, sat in your

favorite chair, pretended to concentrate. I put on a record. It was

dark out, darker, as I’ve said, but there remained a saffron flush in

the western sky, like blood just under the skin. Saffron, that

               hoarded

spice you said drove the harvesters in Kashmir nearly mad, the

fields ripe with the smell of it. An ecstasy, you said. You turned a

page, as if you’d read a page. The record played and

played. Then came the hiss-hiss of spray as Death pressed

the trigger of his device again and again and again. From the drive

below, Sleep called up, “Give it to them some more, those

bastards.” And then, “That’s good. That ought to do it, by God.

               Come

down now.” Pretty soon they left, those slicker-coated men, and we