Songs of the Dead (27 page)

“Absolutely. But a few months later we broke up anyway.”

It is in the nature of memories, if they live, to grow and spread like plants. They can be fed and watered by, among many other things, tangible reminders. This is true of pleasant and unpleasant memories, memories we'd rather see flourish and memories we wish would die. It is true of personal memories, and it is true of memories who live among us collectively. Like plants, like humans, memories wish to stay alive, unless they don't. And like so many others, they are hitchhikers: they live in humans, in rocks, in trees, in air, in the spaces between all these.

I have not always understood this. I remember when I was an early teen, the husband of one family friend was caught cheating with the wife of another family friend in the former's bed. Both marriages ended, and the aggrieved woman threw away her bed. That made no sense to my thirteen-year-old junior scientist mind. The bed hadn't done anything. And it was just a bed. But I did not understand the nature of memories, how each time she saw that bed would feed and water that memory, how the memory would live not only in her but in her bed, too.

Memories can spread from place to place, spawn connection after connection. I knew a man whose girlfriend cheated on him in the ski resort of Vail, Colorado with a man named Mike. For the rest of the time they were together, the town of Vail carried that memory, as did skiing, and as, oddly enough, did the Chicago Cubs when he discovered the name of one of their outfielders: Mike Vail.

It's easy enough to laugh at the absurdity of someone skipping the sports pages so he won't be reminded of something he's trying to forget, but we all do that all the time. For a while I taught writing at a prison, and I was always careful not to talk to my students—unless they asked—about sex, walks in the forest, or anything else they would never again get to do. Many of the guards would intentionally stand near prisoners and talk loudly among themselves about what they were going to do with their families over holidays, thus feeding, always feeding, the memory of where the prisoners were and what they could not do. On the other hand, I once saw a prison librarian apologize profusely for accidentally mentioning to a prisoner that she was going to spend Christmas with her family.

Now, I know that what's past is past, and I know it's not supposed to bother Allison that I told her about making love next to a cemetery—I still don't understand that, by the way, because I'd still swear that was her, although of course there is precisely zero chance of me raising the issue again to clarify—and I know I'm not supposed to attach mental tags to anything Allison says about an ex either. But I know what I experience, and I know what Allison tells me about her experience, and I know what at least some of my friends tell me.

I had one friend who was normally as tight-lipped as either Allison or me, who in two consecutive relationships was talked into giving details he soon regretted. In one, his girlfriend asked him if the first time he made love was planned or spontaneous. He said he wasn't going to tell her. She begged. He said it didn't matter: it was a long time ago. She pleaded. No. She pouted. No. She swore it wouldn't make her feel bad. He told her that it had been planned for a couple of months, that they'd made an event of it. She burst into tears. He asked why. She said she felt bad because the first time
they'd
been together hadn't been planned, so it obviously had not been as special. Then the next woman he dated, a couple of years later, insisted that in order to get to know him better she wanted to know his past. “I won't be threatened at all. I just want to know you, and that means knowing all about you. Why don't you bring out your pictures and we'll talk about your history?” The idea seemed bad, but she was persistent. He brought out the pictures—“No,
all
the pictures, not just the ones of you by yourself”—and they had what he said was a very frank and intimate discussion.
That wasn't so bad
, he thought. That's what he continued to think until the next time he told her he didn't want to do something with her—she wanted him to go swimming, if I recollect—when she said, “You used to do that with Stephanie, and now you won't do it with me? You must have liked her better than you like me.”

I don't want to make it seem like not talking about exes is some sort of religious stricture that Allison and I have to follow for fear of eternal damnation. Of course we talk about exes when necessary. But the key—and this applies not only to talking about exes, but to everything—is always asking the questions asked by my big sister: How will my making this comment or asking this question or performing this action affect the other person? How will it affect the relationship?

Of course asking these last two questions applies not only to one's lover, but to all relationships, including one's relationship with the land.

It's all pretty simple, but not many people do it. Almost no one within this culture asks these questions about their relationship to the land.

The point is not to avoid all unpleasant memories. The point is to ask yourself whether the planting or feeding of a memory is what you want to do.

There are those whose avoidance of unpleasant memories causes great harm. One reason my father abused us was that by simply being happy and free children, we reminded him of who and how he was before his parents destroyed him by abusing him. Because he did not wish for that memory—of who he was and what they did to him—to grow (although of course in this case it had already grown to overshadow his whole life, and ours, too) he had to destroy that which reminded him of it, that which fed the memory. Us. That's one reason God similarly must destroy all life: it reminds Him that He has no body, and that bodies bring great joy, two things He tries desperately to forget. And why do you think so many
wétikos
spend so much time and so much energy destroying non-
wétikos
? So they, too, won't remember. And why was I so afraid of lying naked on the ground? What memories was I trying to not allow to come up? What was I afraid I would learn if I asked the forest what it was like to be a forest, and what was I afraid I would learn if I asked the forest what it is like to face down the wétikos?

Perhaps I would learn some of those answers at the river.

We go to the park where I saw the man die. I drive. Allison rides. I know I'm not going to fall through time on the way there. We stop, get out, walk the overgrown road toward the river, come to a small overlook with a ten-foot drop-off. This seems as good a place as any. We sit, feet dangling over the edge. The river makes soft sounds: gloops and laps and hisses. I don't know how to read them. I don't know what I'm supposed to read. I don't know what I'm supposed to learn. Is it the old Heraclitus line about how you can't step into the same river twice, because it's not the same river, and you're not the same person? Maybe the forest is trying to say that a forest is a process, like a river, like any other being.

I see gnats hovering. I see a fish jump. I see swallows flying low over the water. I see one open its mouth, maybe take a drink. I wonder if I'm supposed to learn that a river is not just water but insects, fish, birds, and that a forest, too, is not just trees.

I was expecting something more dramatic.

I turn to Allison. She raises her eyebrows.

“Nothing,” I say.

I look at the river, lean back a little, rest my weight on my hands, slightly behind me and to the side, arms straight, elbows locked. I close my eyes.

When I open them it's dark. I see very little. There's no moon, and the only light is from the city. I can't imagine I fell asleep so suddenly. I've never done that before. I say, “Allison.”

No response.

I say it again.

Still no response.

I don't think she left me while I was sleeping. I don't know why she would. But she's not there.

I hear a vehicle behind me and I scramble off to the side. Bushes scratch my arms. I see headlights. After the dark they blind me. The vehicle stops. The lights go out. The door opens. There is no dome light. Someone—I think a man—gets out, turns on a flashlight, walks to the overlook, shines the flashlight down. Apparently satisfied, he moves to the rear of the vehicle. It's a truck. He opens the tailgate, pulls out something heavy, carries it to the edge, sets it down, rolls it over. I hear a splash. I creep out to look. He again shines his flashlight on the river. I see a woman in the water, her long hair spread like a fan. The man returns to his truck, gets in, starts it, drives away.

I close my eyes.

When I open them it's bright. I blink, can't see anything. Finally I see I'm standing near where I was sitting before. Allison still sits. She looks at me, concerned. I tell her what I saw.

“Was it Nika?” she asks.

“No, her hair was different.”

“Was it the same man?”

“I think so.”

“How do we stop him?”

“I don't know.” I stay standing, stare at the river. There's too much death. I don't know what to do.

After a time, I begin to wonder what this has to do with what it's like to be a forest. I still don't understand.

I close my eyes.

When I open them it's dark. I hear the river. A truck is parked close by, and even closer is the man with the flashlight. His breath is heavy from exertion. He plays the light over the water, and I look for bodies. I see none. He turns off the light. He's still breathing heavily. I don't want to move, for fear of him noticing me. I some- how know that if he notices me, even the slightest, I'm dead. I shift. My foot feels something slightly soft. I think I know what it is.

Finally the man's breathing slows. I don't know what he's going to do. I sense him look up, and I look up, too. I see a few stars, beyond the trees, beyond the refracted lights of the city. He looks back down. Something's going to happen.

He turns on the flashlight, points it toward the ground.

There is not one body there. There are two. They are on their backs. I see their faces. Suddenly I know what it is like to be a forest, what it is like to be a forest faced with this culture. One of the bodies is Allison's. The other one is mine.

twenty

hell

We're at home. We're sitting on the couch. I haven't told Allison what I saw. The only words I've said to her are, “We need to go.” I said this the moment I got back to the daylight, with me blinking in the brightness, barely seeing the figure of Allison sitting on the overlook. She stood, took my arm, turned me toward the vehicle, led me up the path. She asked a couple of times what I saw that made me so pale, that made my whole body a mask, that made me unsteady on my feet.

I shook my head. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even think.

Allison drove. I sat. She was silent. I tried to think, tried to clear my mind.

First I tried to convince myself I had not seen what I had seen. But I had. I knew that. I have seen Allison's and my own faces enough to know them, even cut and bruised as they were. Or rather, cut and bruised as they will be, when this comes to pass. Cut and bruised as we will be.

We're sitting on the couch. Allison is crying. She is holding my hand. She squeezes. I haven't told her anything. I can't. I won't. I don't want to plant those memories inside of her. I don't want them to grow as they're already growing and twisting and climbing and reaching out inside of me. I don't want for her to be able to picture the mutilations, the disfigurements, the pulpy, bloody masses where before were flesh and organs.

She squeezes again, says, “What did you see?”

Silence.

We're sitting on the couch. I wish I'd never gone to the river. I wish I'd never asked what it's like to be a forest in the face of this culture. A river. A mountain. An ocean. A nonhuman. A human being. I no longer want to know. I want to go back to the way I was before: ignorant, dead to the world. I wish I had never fallen through time. I wish I could pretend none of this was happening. I wish I could pretend I was not going to be tortured and murdered.

There is a difference between death and death. I feel like a fool for even asking that question. The question is theoretical, abstract, absurd, the sort that could be asked only by someone who does not live in the real, physical, world, who is not paying attention to the meaninglessness—the absolute meaninglessness—of the suffering and death—the utterly needless suffering and death—caused by this
wétiko
culture and by individual
wétikos
. It could only be asked by someone who has no experience of the real world. It could only be asked by someone who is hiding from the real world. I wish I were still hiding. I wish I had no experience. I wish I could still ask that question.

We're sitting on the couch. Allison asks again, “What did you see?”

Silence. “We need to leave.”

“Why?”

I won't tell her more. I won't plant those memories.

She asks, “Leave this house?”

“This area,” I say. “Far away.”

Silence. She's not squeezing my hand. She's thinking. I see she is starting to understand. She is anything but stupid. Finally she says, “You saw another body…”

I look straight ahead.

“Another woman.”

I feel my teeth press against each other.

“It was me, wasn't it? You saw me.”

“We need to leave.”

It's odd. You'd think that, faced with our own torture and murder, we would immediately flee. But we don't. After the initial shock wears off, we pretty much go about our lives, now wearing a cloak of dread. I've read that many Jews in Nazi Germany did the same thing, going about their business as though if they ignored the threats diligently enough, the dreadful would never overtake them, as though pretending that nothing was wrong would exempt them from the consequences of their inaction. And it wasn't just Jews. Many German officers knew the war was lost—and long before that, they knew it was wrong—yet they lacked the nerve to join the resistance. Inertia, cowardice, and short-term self-interest so often trump everything, from morality to sanity to realistic self-preservation.