by Lucia Ashta
14
The Unwinding of the Last Bend
The woman led him much as she had at the beginning, when he first traded his version of civilization for hers. She took his hand, smaller and frailer than hers now, and walked next to him. Soon enough, he would realize where she was taking him.
He didn’t fear the rainforest’s animals and plants anymore. He understood them, much like she did. He knew the rolling levels of the forest ground, with its heavy protruding roots and twisting vines, by memory.
She led him because she wanted to, because it would be the last time.
They walked in the silent companionship that was so common to them. Today, their silence was substantial; within it fluttered all that could be said, but was not. None of it mattered.
The man still didn’t understand much, but it was possible that he never would before the final breath escaped his body. Even given an eternity of chances, he might not comprehend all the implications of what she had told him. In this life that was unwinding its last bend, unfolding before its great final disappearing act, he still knew more about limitations than freedoms, even with the life he had led in the jungle with this woman.
The woman understood everything that he did not. But there were certain things that words weren’t meant to convey, and most of what the woman knew were these kinds of things.
The man would die with limited understanding, and both the man and the woman would accept this. It was within their natures, within who and what they were.
Walking with her, with his great love, the man didn’t tire as much as he thought he would. He made it to the waterfall almost as easily as he used to, before age voiced its final say over his body.
Every time they arrived at the waterfall, it was as if it were the first. The water roared and frothed with undeniable power. When the man stood still, or even if he moved, he could sense the power of all of nature funneled into that one ferocious roar. The water was king of the jungle, pummeling anything in its path while it raced to plummet deep within the earth.
The Amazon River flowed lazily toward this spot, where it opened into a wide circle. And then the water had no choice but to crash to the rock bottom hundreds of feet below. That was its nature, and it transformed a circle of life temporarily into a circle of death.
The woman took a firmer grip on his hand and showed him to their place by the waterfall. It was the place to which they always came. She walked more slowly than usual while she waited for him to duck under the rock overhang and take steady steps across the moss-covered stone to the back of the shallow cave. It took longer for him to crouch down to the stone, but once he did, he sat in the same spot he had chosen since the beginning. He allowed his head to curve backward and lay on the rock; it cradled his neck with comfortable familiarity.
The man would miss everything about his life in the jungle with her. He would miss more than just her. He would miss all of it, the abundant life and variety that had become as much a part of him as he thought it could.
She squeezed his hand. She hadn’t let go of it. She didn’t want to let go of it ever again.
Yet she knew that she had to. That was why she’d brought him here.
They never spoke when they sat behind the waterfall, watching the water plunge in front of them in great big, crystalline sheets. It was like magic to him. Water, divided into droplets, held little power. Yet when the droplets combined almost infinitely as they did here, their power rumbled through him, vibrating all the way to his old aching bones.
The man didn’t expect anything more than their usual routine, even though he knew today was different. She had said so.
He allowed himself to relax. He had learned long ago that it was futile to resist the water of this land. It was everywhere. It was meant to be everywhere, and it would be there long after he was gone.
He closed his eyes and didn’t open them at the surprise of hearing her voice, powerful over the deafening pounding of the water. He didn’t know how it was possible, but his lover’s voice rose above the water easily. He heard no strain in it. It was as if she were whispering to him, impervious to the obstacles of earthly life.
He still didn’t realize the obvious. That which was not hidden was hardest for him to see. It was within the wilds of the farthest reaches of the imagination, within the swirling rush of madness where the water finally plunged down to meet its horizon, where the possibilities of real truth could be grasped. Sometimes, the reality of impossibility lay beyond madness and beyond thought.
“I have loved you always. And I will love you again.” Her voice trailed across the tired features of his face as if they were the slithering caresses of a newborn snake. He smiled. He had to. If these were indeed some of his last moments, then he would let the world know that he enjoyed them.
She scooted closer to him so as to leave no space between them. Skin pressed against skin, leaving no visible barrier. Brown against brown. Their long hair tangled together, intertwining, black and gray melding, different shades of the same color. Browns, blacks, grays, these were the colors of the earth. He opened his eyes to see how plain it was to him then: He was from the earth. He could see it; he was made up of the rich dirt and tree bark of his home.
“I will love you always.” He spoke with the power left to him; it wasn’t enough to rise above the thunderous claps of water. An ordinary person could not have heard his words, no matter how close his lips were to her ears. But she was not an ordinary person. So he continued, while the tears he thought he might not shed proved otherwise. “All the life within me is bound to you. You will always have my love, wherever I might go after I leave this body behind.”
Even then, he didn’t realize how deep the truth of his words ran. All the life within me is bound to you.
She nodded her confirmation. He didn’t see it. He didn’t need to.
“You are more handsome this time than you were the last.” She raised her hand to draw it down the side of his face. This part was always the most difficult for her. She thought perhaps it would get easier next time, but it never did. Her human heart wrenched to know she would never touch that skin again. She would touch different skin, not this one.
Each representation of life was unique and would never repeat itself, not exactly. She knew this better than anyone else. It was a source of motherly pride, a human trait, just like the love that tore at her heart.
He found the richness of her brown eyes. “Last time?”
“Yes. We have loved each other many times before.”
Tears ran down his face. Perhaps they wanted to join the waterfall. No one could blame them, to want to be part of something greater.
He smiled big and broad. His old cheeks seemed to split open, shiny and wet, making his face seem younger than it was even as his skin creaked. “We have loved each other before?”
“Oh yes. We have loved each other so much, so very much. Have you not felt that?”
“Yes, I believe I have. I must have. The love I hold for you seems to be the love of more than one lifetime, it is so great.”
He felt as if he could spiral into the depths of her eyes, all the way down, anticipating the great loss that was coming, so palpably that he could feel it, his heart aflutter despite itself. He couldn’t imagine a time when he couldn’t stare into these eyes, when they wouldn’t be there to mirror his reflection.
“Will you find me again? When I come into another body?”
“Yes. Of course I will. I always do. I always find you. I sense the moment you are born. And from then on I watch you until you become a man, until you and I can become lovers and share life and love once more.”
His heart settled some. Could he dare hope that he would see her again?
“Do I remember you?”
She shook her head. A hint of sorrow foreshadowed her answer. “You never do. We start over every time.”
“Have there been many times?”
“Yes. I have loved different versions of you hundr
eds of times, since it was decided that man should come to earth. I have loved you since your creation. You are man. I am woman and mother. We are destined to be together. I will continue to find you until the end.”
“I won’t forget you. Not this time. I promise.”
“That is a promise you cannot keep.”
“There is no way I will forget you. How could I? You fill me. You are a part of me. You are me.” He spoke with a renewed spark of vitality. He was as sure of this as he was of himself.
She ran a hand along the other side of his face. “You always say something like that. And you always forget me.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Neither did she. The waterfall said it all for them, roaring loudly enough for the both of them, sounding out his pain and frustration more theatrically than he could. He was too old for theatrics.
He felt the last of his life waning. He had numbered words left to speak.
He had come to a point in his life when many things became finite, only to allow him to open to the infinite that was ripe within him, ready to flower.
He realized too late that last words didn’t matter much when he had led the life he had with this woman. He wouldn’t have a chance to speak them anyway. Not like he thought he would.
But then, nothing was like he thought it would be. It hadn’t been for a very long time, if it had ever been at all.
15
The Unthinkable
The woman had intended to finish it here, this human entanglement she insisted on diving into every time. Then, at the last moment, she feared the man would fall on the slippery stones if she left him there, alone with his inevitable sorrow. Death was coming for him soon, but she must allow death the opportunity to take his body as it meant to and not to have to salvage it from the pits of turmoil beneath the waterfall.
She helped him up without a word, and supported his arm while he stepped carefully. The roar of the water was enough to endanger his precarious stability.
She held him tightly. She was not about to watch him die now. She could not. She learned that hundreds of years before. Watching him die was no longer an option for her. Had her heart been able to break, watching him die would have broken it.
It had to be this way. She had to leave him. It was how she had done it since that one horrible time.
She could not be with him when he died. She had to be far away from the temptations that resulted from knowing she had the power to save him. It was something she would not allow herself to do, so why deal with the torment that came from understanding that the possibility still existed, intertwined with his last, rasping breaths?
They didn’t have far to travel for him to be safe. At least, he would be safe enough. She always worried of what he would do once he watched her go. But that was his choice. It was always his choice. Despite who she was and who he was, she had never taken any of his choices away from him. She wouldn’t start now.
They stood in familiar togetherness at the edge of the waterfall, at the edge of that great, thunderous bowl. There, the rocks were dry. She turned her back to the water and took both his hands. Even with the white, foaming water rushing behind her as a backdrop, his eyes focused easily on her. She was the most important thing to him. She had been even before he met her.
She looked into his eyes with an intensity that brought on immediate panic in him. She hadn’t yet said a word. But it was written all over her face. She intended to leave him now.
All at once, his breathing grew rapid and he gripped her hands with all the strength left to his old body. He tried to pull her toward him as he had so many times before.
This time she didn’t budge. She was decided and resigned. There was no sense in prolonging the inescapable.
She knew he thought there was more they needed to resolve first. But she also knew it would never be enough. They would never be ready for the finality of her next step and of his that would follow soon after.
By sunset that evening, death would come and go from this part of the jungle. He had only hours left. She knew exactly what color the sky would hold when breath rose from his body for the final time.
The color would be resplendent. Orange and red and violet, bright and brilliant, just as if it were his light on its journey home, moving toward the sun, a ball of flame that purified everything, even the intangibility of human life.
He wouldn’t have long to mourn her, and he would need that time to settle himself for his transition. The passage from life into death was one meant to be traveled alone. It was the only way. Not even she could hold his hand from one to the next. She had tried and failed before.
She had tested so many different ways with him. There had been so many chances, so many lives. But after all her trying, it all came back to this.
His eyes jumped with useless movements. His eyeballs shook, looking for a way out of what he felt she was about to do.
She was about to walk off into the jungle. He already knew that if she left him and didn’t want to be found, he would never find her, especially not now that he was old, but not even in his youth. She was the more powerful of the two.
Still, at the threshold of death, he didn’t realize how powerful she was.
He stared into her eyes one final time, taking in all the depth of that warm, rich brown. And he did not see all there was to see. He looked into her eyes, not yet knowing who she was.
She expected this, though a small sliver of hope always existed, wondering if perhaps this lifetime he would recognize her for who she was.
He cracked his lips to speak some closing words—it was possible that any words would do, anything to forestall the inevitable. His parted lips trembled.
Desperation and loss froze him in place. They rooted him to the ground while he clung desperately to her hands.
She breached the contact between them. All the flesh he touched was that of fingers and palms. He wanted more. He yearned for more, for all that he had before, for all that he knew she couldn’t give him anymore.
He thought to speak again, but this time she shook her head.
There was no need for any more words, for any more anything. The moment had arrived.
For the first time that he could remember, he resisted her guidance. He tried to pull her toward him and speak all at once.
As it turned out, that was the fateful impulse that precipitated her actions instead of delaying them as he’d hoped.
She twisted from him and pulled her hands from his grasp. In seconds, his hands held onto nothing, made all the more unbearable by what they had held instants before.
Horrified, transfixed, he watched as the woman he loved more than life walked toward the edge of the waterfall. She stopped a few feet from the actual drop-off to turn to look at him again. Even he knew what that look meant, but he couldn’t accept what she was about to do.
She had said she would leave him to die alone. She was supposed to walk away. If she wanted, she could walk away without looking back.
But she could not die. He could not allow it. He was very certain it would kill him too if he had to watch what he now realized might happen. Her death would kill him.
He stepped toward her. Her eyes trailed to his feet, and he knew he had done it.
He had pushed her over the edge. She would jump before he could reach her.
With a radiant smile that would haunt him until sunset and death, she turned away from him and tilted her face to the sun. It beamed upon her. She seemed to glow with the richness the sun bestowed upon her, but which, truly, she already possessed.
Then she did the unthinkable.
The man ran to the precipice, clutching at his chest.
16
The Face of the Infinite
The man slipped at the edge, and almost fell. But he did not. Instead, he made it there in time to watch the woman dive into the heart of the waterfall with the same grace she revealed when she dove into his. Her arms trailed next to her body. Her feet pointed up; her
head pointed down. She was only going one direction with that straight body, poised in purposeful flight.
He didn’t breathe while he considered joining her. How easy it would be to jump off the edge as she had.
He watched as the brown body and black hair, small from his high perspective, vanished entirely. The froth foamed particularly violently, rising to meet her, to swallow her, greedily, hungrily.
Then she was gone.
He gulped for air. He clawed at his throat, at his chest, at the air, but nothing could dissipate the agony that ripped him apart.
It just was, simply, as it had to be.
There was no way around it. Nothing and no one would come to his aid. Destiny or the cycle of life—whatever it was—would fully unfold as it had to. Everything within nature knew not to interfere. Just as the woman had known not to interfere with the cycle of his life.
The preservation of balance was of the utmost importance. He didn’t understand that then, and he didn’t care to. What he wanted was to fling it all to hell.
He looked on at the frothing water incapable of shedding tears from the shock. This could not be happening. He refused to allow this to be the way it ended. He couldn’t accept it. He would not.
How could she have died for him? It was so unfair. She had talked of the balance and how they couldn’t upset it, but he couldn’t imagine a greater transgression to nature’s balance than to remove someone so full of life as her from it.
This was not right. It couldn’t be. He stared down into the foam looking for her to pop up to catch her breath. It would be easy to spot her amid the white.
Yet even as he searched for signs of her, for a splash of brown skin or a strand of black hair, he knew her survival was an impossibility. No one could survive that drop, not even her. And less still could anyone survive the pounding that the water drummed on anything that fell into that pool. Her body could not withstand the pounding fists of angry giants. Even if they were made of water, they lacked all the gentleness of the single droplet.