Songs of the Dead (10 page)

The third time on the toilet, she sees a way out. On the floor, to her left, sticking up behind a canister of bleach and a bottle of vinegar, she sees the handle of a hammer. She pictures herself reaching down—calmly, calmly now—for the roll of toilet paper, then in a flash reaching over the top of the roll and the cleaning supplies to grasp the hammer and in one movement brings it up to smash his face. She sees blood and a broken cheekbone. She sees him stagger, stumble, hit the door jam on his way to the floor. She sees herself on top of him, hitting and hitting and hitting until there is nothing left of him. She pictures this over and over. She figures the distance, the angles. Can she do it?

“Hurry up,” she hears him say.

She reaches for the toilet paper. Her hands linger as she makes up her mind. She is scared. She is too scared. If she tries and fails he will hurt her worse that he already has—if that is at all possible. She will only get one chance. So, she decides, she will prepare herself, watch it again and again in her mind, and next time she will do it.

Allison says, “I remember the moment I realized what an amazing experience it would be to walk out into the world as a male and see the other half of the human species as composed of those you actually welcomed and wanted in your life. Not only were they not a threat (well, not physically anyway), they were desirable. Life and the world was like a playground, something good, something you really wanted to participate in. The contrast was so stark, so shocking, I had to stop thinking about it. My anger was so great, I felt so betrayed by life, by the earth, by god, by everything and everyone, I wanted to disappear. I didn't want the rage and the hate, I wanted to love, but all women had been betrayed by the very thing that gives life (I mistakenly thought), and their love had been used against them to destroy them. That feeling remained with me for years. It was and is a terrible, horrible, sickening way to live. I have no words to describe it.”

I apologize to her, insofar as you can apologize for nothing you have done personally, but for things done by a group of which you're a member. She knows of my childhood, of my own rapes by my father, of the terror he inflicted, but we both know it isn't the same.

It's different in part because her own father was kind. She often says without a trace of irony that the greatest failing of her childhood was that nothing in it prepared her for the existence of bad men, and for the violence they would later visit upon her. From early on she knew an intimate safety I only discovered after my father left when I was about ten.

On the other hand, I had little to fear from the world at large, which was a far friendlier place than my own home.

Nika realizes there will never be a next time, and she wishes she could go back and do it again, only this time do things differently.

She is not on the table. She is walking along an abandoned road with Osip. It is late at night. The moon is full. It is early spring. Her hand clasps his in the warmth of his coat pocket. She stops and looks down at the shadow of a naked branch as it reaches across the road, sharp, strong, delicate. He stops with her. She can feel his hand. They have never made love. She has never made love with anyone. They walk on. She stops again. It rained earlier, and she can see the moon reflected in a puddle. She looks up through a light haze and sees four stars cradling the moon. “Osip,” she says, and he moves closer, kisses her. She presses her body against his. Their kiss ends. It is late.

“I'll take you home,” he says.

She nods, does not take her eyes from his face. In the distance she hears the first tentative frogs of spring.

“I'll take you home,” he says again.

They walk, her hand holding tight to his, deep in his pocket.

“Ja hochu idti domoy,” she says.

Jack looks at her.

“Ja hochu idti domoy.”

“Speak English.”

“I want to go home.”

She'd realized when he'd walked into the basement that he wasn't going to uncuff her, that she would never get that chance to hit him with the hammer. She's not sure how she'd known, but she'd known almost immediately. It might have been the slightly slower pace she'd heard coming down the stairs, or later, when he'd stood over her, the slightly tighter grip he'd held on his knife. His shoulders were more set, and he'd looked at her in a way she did not understand, and at the same time understood too well.

It's all over.

“I want to go home,” she says.

“Did you ever have a dream,” he says, “where one person kills another, and another, and another? And the killer could be anyone, anyone at all, because everyone is a killer? As the dream wears on you become more and more afraid that you'll be the next to die, because there are fewer and fewer victims left. The victims tell each other to be quiet so they won't be noticed by the killer, but it never seems to do any good, because he finds them, one by one. The numbers keep dwindling until there are only four of you left. You know who the killer must be, because one of them is a woman, and you know she isn't doing it, and the other is crippled, and you know he isn't doing it. So you go to confront the killer, to stop him forever, but when you get there he is dead. So you know it must be the man who is crippled, and you stand over him, accusing him as he cowers, and you get bigger and bigger and he gets smaller and smaller until you're standing over him with a knife in your hand and he tries to crawl away but you stab him with the knife and he keeps crawling and you stab him with the knife and finally he doesn't crawl anymore. And you know he lives with his wife, and you know she lives downstairs, and so you take your knife and you walk downstairs. Did you ever have a dream like that, Nika?

“And so you wake up from the dream, but when you wake up you find you're walking down the stairs and there is a knife in your hand, and so you wake up from
that
dream and you're still walking down those stairs and you're still covered with blood.

“And it's not a dream, Nika. It's all there is. This is the whole world and every other world. This is everything.

“We're not who we are, Nika. That is the central fact of life. We are who we carry. I have a glimpse into whole other worlds. You do, too. And those worlds are filled with so many just like me, so many who stab and slice and cut and chop and pull who don't even know what they're doing. Oh, I know what I'm doing. I know exactly what I'm doing. And I know what I need and I know what I need to do. I know what the problem is.

“Bodies. Bodies. Women. Bodies. We don't live here. Don't you see, Nika? This is not where we live. Even when we dream this isn't where we live. These bodies are filth, Nika. Our bodies. Your body. My body. They're not our bodies. They are filth. Nothing but nothing.

“Did you ever have one of those dreams, Nika, where someone was in your body but when you woke up it wasn't you and it wasn't your body? Whose body? Whose filth? Who are you?

“I know it sounds like I'm still dreaming, Nika. I know you think I'm speaking dream nonsense, but dreams are nonsense, Nika, and I am being very precise. I mean every word I say. Who is dreaming their way into us, and when we dream, who uses our bodies and why do they come here? What do they want and why do they hate us so? Why, Nika? Why do they hate our bodies? But it's not just our bodies. That is the thing we must always keep in mind, that they are in our minds, Nika, which are just as bad as our bodies. It's all filth and I want to be clean and I want for it to all end in one clean bright white light. But it won't and that's what scares me and that's why I have to kill you. They have to kill you for a different reason, because you have a body. If I kill you it will be to find out where you go. Because when I wake up I'm still in this body, and I'm still in this dream, and then another dream and another. I don't know who's in control, Nika, and that's what sets me apart from every other man, every other man who paid to put himself inside of you. I didn't do that, and the reason I'm different than all the others is that I know I don't know who's in control. I know that. Other men don't. That's the difference. Do you see? Don't you see any of it? I don't know who's in control. And I'm scared.

“Doesn't it scare you that we have bodies? They decay. They don't last. They're not firm. Do you get it yet? Do you see what they are saying through me?

“I am scared. I just want to be loved, that's all I ever wanted. And for the love to never end. Never. I want something permanent, something that no matter if our bodies rot—
when
our bodies rot— will still be here. Our bodies are the problem. Our bodies are
one
problem.
They
are another. And I don't know who they are. And I'm scared. Did I tell you I'm scared?

“I'm scared of what comes after. After the dream. The next one. What's on the other side? That's why I'm going to kill you, so you can tell me what's on the other side. But that's me. That's just me. But I'm not in charge. And they're going to kill you because you have a body. Do you finally get it?

“I am a scientist and I am a Christian. I am both. I am being precise. Both of those are who I am. But I am dreaming and I am going to wake up and I will still be in this dream.

“It may seem like I hate you but I don't. They do, but that's because you have a body and they don't. But I don't hate you. I do hate you for being weak, for being passive, for standing by, for not saving me from them and from everyone. I do. You have to understand how much I hate you for that.

“But I don't really hate
you
. We both just think I hate you. But the ones I really hate are the ones who do this. And I hate
them
, of course, but that's not who I'm talking about. Because at least I know who's in charge. I hate the ones in charge and I hate the ones who—no, I can't say it. Not to you. Not to me. I know things. I know things you don't know. But I have to know things I don't know, too, because if I knew them I wouldn't be who I am. And I don't
know
who I am. I am being very precise, Nika, more precise than you know.”

“Now, do you love me?”

Nika just looks at him.

“Say it. I need you to love me.”

But she can't do it. She can't do any of it anymore. After Vilnius, Amsterdam, New York, Spokane, after Linas, Viktor, Jack, and the thousands of other men, she can't do it. She can't pretend anymore. She has nothing left. “No, Jack, I don't.”

He leans over her.

“I used to hate you,” she says, “and part of me still does, but I just don't care anymore. I want to go home and I will never get to go home. I should have seen that all along.”

He moves his face closer to hers, “You don't love me?” He is trembling, she can tell, with anger.

“No, I don't.”

nine

falling through time

We're in the truck, driving home. We never did get any firewood. I don't see the forest anymore. I see clearcuts. I'm glad to be back in my body, but I hate what I see outside.

The return was gradual at first, with me sitting against the cedar, Allison sometimes talking to me and sometimes silent, and me seeing first the forest, and then the forest being overlaid by a blurry, indistinct clearcut that slowly grew sharper while the living forest faded. Then the forest returned the same way—reimposing itself over the clearcut—and I saw animals walking unafraid, as they do when we the civilized aren't around. I watched them, wide-eyed, until they began again to fade, to be replaced by the relative sterility and monotony of the clearcut.

The whole time I couldn't think. The whole time I clung tight to the thread—thread of what?—that connected me back to the world I knew. The whole time I feared this shift in perspective— beautiful as the forest was—would be permanent.

It wasn't. In time the waves where I saw and experienced myself in the clearcut became stronger, longer, until at last they flooded out the forest entirely. And then I slept. When I woke I was back to normal, only a little shaky. Allison helped me to the truck, helped me in.

And now she's driving. I'm looking out the window. I've already told her what I saw, what I experienced.

She asks questions. I expand.

Then a silence, until she says, “I'm glad you're back.”

Then a silence, “Me, too.”

Another silence.

“But it was beautiful. The forest was beautiful.”

It happens again. This time I'm not so scared, since I know that last time I came back. That knowledge, however, doesn't keep me from continuing to cling to the existential thread reaching back to everything I know.

This time I'm sitting next to Hangman Creek. I hear the Pullman Highway not far behind me. Ahead of me, across the stream and across a field, I see a cluster of newly-built luxury houses that abut a golf course. Hangman Creek is maybe fifteen feet wide and eight inches deep. Once it ran strong. No longer.

I'm thinking about what it would take for the stream to recover—the removal of upstream houses, golf courses, and farms would be a good start, as would the removal of downstream dams that impede fish passage—when it begins again. It starts with the highway. The sounds fade. At first I think it's just a lull in traffic, but it goes on long enough that I start to
hear
: insects, birds, some scurrying in the underbrush. I look up, across the stream, and the houses are gone. Pine trees stand in their place. I close my eyes, and when I open them again the houses are back, the trees gone. I'm not so scared this time, only confused.

I close my eyes and as I do I hear a thrashing in the water in front of me. I open my eyes and see that the stream is full of water, a couple of feet deep, and the bottom has turned from the light color of cobbles to a dark gray. Fish. The river is filled with fish. If I stepped into the water I would step on a salmon.