I Live With You (18 page)

At supper the men are looking. Not out the window but at us. They know one of us did it. I make a small slight man, lost in my too-big man’s hat. I should have kept my bonnet. And I never took off my feather. Luminous blue. It must be like a beacon.

But only that angry man really saw my face. The others weren’t watching when he came after me. They didn’t see that he did it to himself. They only saw the blood afterwards. Maybe they think I lashed out at him on purpose.

Do they discuss things? Or do they just know what to do? As: find the woman in a man’s hat.

But I see him. I see the hands first and then I look up into the eyes. He’s looking right at me. He knows.

Love will make you want to please the beloved. Love will make you want to know the name of the beloved and where the beloved came from
.

Above our village I saw beavers mating. I saw birds, the same. They say we mustn’t think the word “love.” We are not to think more of one of us than of another, anymore than we should value one thing more than another, as why love one spoon better than another spoon.

But it is known though nothing is ever said about it, that one does fall in love even with spoons and cups. Has one’s favorites even from among one’s socks.

But now… right now, if my eyes could speak out without saying a word. If I could…. If my eyes could speak….

(Come with me. Up into the mountains. We’ll have our own wild mountain children. We’ll have each other. Or come with me, even down into the evil of the town. Surely there’s a place for us somewhere.)

He looks. His eyes give messages I can’t fathom. I can no more guess what my eyes might be saying to him than I can guess at his to me. Mine must be full of yearning.

He looks down and begins to eat. They all do, as if his eating is a signal. Perhaps the signal that I have been found.

Is he our leader? Did I fall in love with exactly the worst one? Or best?

Is escape possible? I stand up and step off the bench, kicking my neighbors in my haste. All those in men’s hats get up, too. All those in bonnets sit but stop eating.

There’s no sense in running with all those men ready to chase me. I will speak instead of running. I stand up on the bench. That surprises them.

I don’t know how I got the courage… except that everything is lost anyway.

What I want to say is, I didn’t mean to hurt, but….

Words have never made anyone understand anything. Words obfuscate. Confuse. Conceal. Form alibis that sound reasonable, but are just excuses
.

I don’t suppose my reasons… my alibi will sound plausible … that I didn’t mean to do it. Everyone would say that. If I’m going to use words they’ll have to be something different.

“Because I love,” I say.

I’m trembling. My voice is shaky.

“Because I love. Because I look out the window and watch the bushes in the breeze. Because I have a feather. Because I watch the birds. Let me go. I’ll do my loving someplace else. I confess I’ve always loved. Even from the beginning. I loved the small bone spoon. I loved the china cup. The apples. Even the beans. Even so, I obeyed.”

Everyone watches. They’ve never seen anything like it… like me. Like doing this. They’re too stunned to move. If I had run they’d have known what to do. I feel safe as long as I can keep talking. Though I suppose that’s not really true. They’ll tire of talk.

Then I find myself making excuses. I say, “He ran towards me with his hands out. I was scared. I held out the first thing I could grab. I would never harm another creature. I never have. He looked as if he was going to choke me.”

I say, “But I know there are no excuses. I know I am his keeper.”

Where does all this talk come from? As if I’d been waiting all these years for just this chance. My voice is more powerful every minute. I’ve stopped trembling.

I say. “I see that one must see.” I wave my arms. I must look as if I’m trying to fly. I say, “There are important things to see.”

All eyes are on me.

“Eyes for instance. Are they not worth seeing? Look at each other. At your eyes.”

But they don’t. They keep looking at me.

“Am I, then, so worth seeing that you stare. After all these years it’s only me you see. Look out the window. Your first view should be of clouds.”

And there are clouds. It’s as if I’ve called them forth, but everybody still looks at me.

He also. His hands still hold his tin cup. His have got to be musician’s hands though there’s never any music here.

“I’ve had enough of feet and floors. I speak. Why not? I look up. I look out the window. I see the lilacs blowing even now.”

We are not put on this earth to enjoy. Neither are we put here to feel pain and loss. We renounce them both so as to live empty of all feelings. We learn to control these impulses so as to see the world calmly
.

But why are we here?

I say it, “Why are we here?”

I stop talking and wait. They wait, too. Nobody knows what to do.

Before, when someone broke, it was with screaming and crying. That person would be carried off. Nobody knows what happens afterwards. I didn’t anyway, though somebody must. But my case is different. I didn’t break, I just fell in love. I just began to pay attention.

Then that man … the very one … comes to me. Holds out his hand to help me from the bench. I take it. It’s rough from hard work but warm. I’m holding the long fingers. I can feel his strength.

I step down. I’ll do whatever he thinks best.

He leads me away. Perhaps to where they put the people who go crazy. Now I’ll find out.

It’s just the two of us.

“You looked at me. Remember? After that I began to see.”

He says, “We are not put on this earth to enjoy. Nor are we put here to feel pain and loss.”

“I want a moment of pleasure. Just a moment of it.”

“And after that there’s nothing but pain and loss.”

“I don’t mean a great joy. I mean a moment with both of us, you and I, up the hill, both of us looking out over the valley. Is that too much to ask?”

“All pleasure ties one to this world so that leaving it is a calamity. We live here empty of desire.”

“I thought, from your eyes, that you’d be different.”

“Do not think.”

“But your face…. It’s kind.”

“Give thanks that we have but little.”

He takes me to the man I hurt. His hands and arms are bandaged. He’s resting quietly until he sees me. Then he looks as if he’d like to try and grab me by the neck again.

My man says, “Life at all is life enough.”

I’m wondering which of us he’s thinking of. Clearly this man will not die.

“What will happen? To me? Does one have one last wish?”

He begins to lead me up beyond the paths. Where in the world are we going? But I’m happy. How could I not be, I’m beside him, and I’m walking away from the village.

He can see how I feel. He says, “Avoid joy or nothing will ever be enough.”

The spot where he takes me is hard to get to. Part of the way it’s a scary path on the side of a cliff. He has me go first while he holds the back of my pants to keep me safe.

Beyond the cliff there’s a good view. We sit under a tree. His tree. He headed right for it.

We look out. The view is better than the one from my tree. You can see our whole village.

“You also. You haven’t kept your vows. You shouldn’t bring me here.”

I unpin my feather. I want to give it to him but I see a warning in his eyes. He won’t take it. I put it on the ground. I say, “There’s plenty more if one is willing to look.”

We sit.

“How good it is to look,” I say.

We sit.

I ask again. “What will happen? To me?”

We sit.

“I know we can’t have those like me in the village. I will remind people of exactly what they don’t want to be reminded of. And I hurt one of us. What will the punishment be?”

“We all die.”

Is that a clue to what will happen?

“You could leave me here in the mountains.”

He turns and looks at me, eye to eye just like that first time. We stare as we did. Again I wonder, how does one read someone else’s stare?

“Was the mating I was scheduled for to be with you?”

He stares.

“If with you I’d not have minded.”

But I’ve said too much.

He squints. He frowns. Then suddenly he grabs. Kisses. Hard. Holds me too tight. It’s scary. I’ve never…. I don’t know what to do. What if that, “We all die,” was about what will happen to me in the next few minutes? What if they told him to take me up and get rid of me? What if he thinks to give me one last pleasure?

If that is what this is. It seems done more for himself than for me. He’s rough and hasty. Our clothes are bulky, old, and weak. They tear. What then when we go back? If? Will there be enough untorn to outfit one person?

I see him without his hat. Black hair streaked with gray, though not as gray as his beard. I see his hairy body. Sweaty. Strong. Most of his chest hair is gray.

I’m naked and ashamed. I don’t know what I look like, to him or even to myself.

“Isn’t this against our rules?”

I hope I look all right. I hope I can give pleasure. But he’s in a hurry.

And after a moment’s rest he does it again.

Am I the dead one so it doesn’t matter about me? Except this second time it seems with a little more feeling.

After, do I see something new in his eyes? I’m not sure.

He gets up and tries to piece our clothes into one decent outfit. He leaves me the rags. Says, “Stay here.”

Then, just as he goes, he turn and he says, “I lost my child. I lost my wife.”

I call after him what he said to me, “We all die.”

Is this the first time he’s said anything that’s not part of our doctrine? I didn’t know he could.

Have I had my moment? My last request? Was that it?

I put on the rags. Tying and pinning until I’m more or less decent. I won’t stay here. I’ll go up higher. Except I’m so hungry. First I’ll go on down to eat. I could get my bonnet from its hiding place. They’re looking for a small women in a much too large man’s hat. They’d not notice me in my bonnet, and he won’t expect me to have crossed the scary cliff by myself.

But perhaps he was going to bring me clothes. Perhaps even food. He should have said so. Though I suppose one can’t expect talk. We’re not used to that.

I cross the scary part. Creep into the village to where the men were working. It’s late. There’s no one there. I find my bonnet and go in to eat. Ragged as I am, nobody notices.

I will not sleep down in the village. I head back to his tree. It’s getting dark. I don’t dare cross the cliff section of the path. But then I do it anyway … start to … and I stop right in the middle of the scariest part. I don’t deserve to be comfortable. I want to punish myself. I’ll sleep here on the edge, a stone for a pillow. It makes me think this is why we shouldn’t feel too much. We’re all on the edge of a cliff. I’ll sleep here as a lesson to myself.

Life is brutal. Life is pain. Life is full cruelty
.

Didn’t we always say that? And if one loses a child and a wife….

I dream I slash out at everybody with a saw. I dream I killed the man I didn’t kill.

I wake up before dawn. I’m yelling. I turn into one of those women who screamed and screamed and had to be led away. But nobody hears me from here. I go on and on until I’m all screamed out. Then I sit on the scary edge, my feet hanging over. I don’t feel fear. I don’t care if I fall off the cliff or not. I understand, for the first time, what our creed really means … has meant all this time. As good as dead. All of us. There’s nothing to fear. What could there possibly be to fear?

There are no happy endings. All life ends the same way. Better to live with the knowledge of the end. Every day a preparation for what will, inevitably, be
.

Except…. Except….

The sun is rising. There’s all different reds on the hills beyond. Below, the village is still in shadow. I watch the brightness come, little by little, across the valley floor.

Soon after, I see a black figure, like an ant creeping up the path toward me. It’ll take him an hour to get up here.

He looks surprised to find me on the ledge with my feet hanging over. Or maybe surprised to see me in my bonnet. To see my clothes all pinned up. He sits beside me. We don’t speak. Of course we don’t speak.

He has a bundle with him. Black. After all this sunrise, I’m tired of black. Anything, anything, not to see black and not to be all in black.

He takes out a small package and then puts the bundle beside us. He opens out a little packet and there’s bread and lemonade.

I say, “Thank you.”

He flinches as if my Thank you surprises him, but keeps silent.

I say, “I’ve been down home.” Though I know he knows that from my bonnet. I say, “I had supper.”

No answer.

I say, “But I spent the night right here. There’s my stone pillow.”

He ought at least to say some of our creed words.

I want to shake him up. To get him to talk I say, “What happened to your wife and child?”

He frowns.

“Tell me.”

“Life without words is peaceful. There are no disagreements.” And then, “Some words should never be said.”

Of course he’s right, but I want words.

“What’s going to happen now? I suppose you’ll take me back.”

No answer.

“If we should fall in love, then no end to it.”

“There are no happy endings.”

“I suppose you want to end it before the end comes.”

Nothing.

“So as to know the end.”

Not even a nod.

“Speak!”

He’s squinting out at our valley. I can’t stand the thought of going back.

How easy it would be … him squatting there, reaching to get more lemonade for me.

“I won’t go back.”

Of course no answer.

I push him. Off he tumbles, down the cliff. He doesn’t make a sound. Of course he doesn’t. I look over. I see the black shape below. There’s no way he can still be alive. Besides, what would he do with me? Just take me back.

I wait. I watch a long time for movement, but there’s none. Though what could I do if there was some? I don’t know how I’d get myself down there.