Night Soil

by Dale Peck

  And so, apprehensive but determined, the novices push toward the parable’s climax.

  They ask first how the man failed to recognize his own footsteps. The master tells them that the man’s trail was long enough that he could not see its end: he saw one set of footsteps behind him, which he recognized as his own because they terminated at his feet, and another set before him, which stretched off in either direction farther than he could see. Thus there was no visible evidence linking the path behind him with the one before him. And, since he believed he had been walking in a straight line, no logical evidence either.

  The novices nod. They cannot disagree with the man’s assessment, based on the facts as he understood them.

  The novices ask why the man did not go in the direction from which the steps came rather than the direction in which they led. Someone from his village could have ventured out in the snow—perhaps to look for him? The master tells them that the man knew no one would have left the encampment while the snow was so deep, and certainly not in a northerly direction, or to look for someone who almost surely had perished in the storm. Further, the wind was picking up and the light was fading. The beginning of the trail was already starting to be obscured, and would likely disappear before the man would have reached its origin. Thus his best bet was to try to catch up to the person who had made the trail.

  The novices look at one another. Yes, they agree. They would have done the same thing, given the circumstances. Indeed, they could have done nothing else.

  The novices ask how the man did not realize he was walking in a circle, and the master reminds them: the wind was picking up, the light fading. The snow had obscured any landmarks. By the time the man had circled back to where he first intersected his own trail, the older fork, if it was still there, was no longer visible. Initially the man was confused by the deepening path in the snow, the presence of not one but several sets of footprints. Then he realized he must be getting closer to his or another tribe’s encampment. Indeed, it appeared as though dozens of people had walked this trail, and all in the same direction, and the man came to believe that he had crossed the trail of some tribe or other heading south in response to the snowstorm. Plus the deepening trench protected him from the wind, and the packed snow made walking less arduous, so that he felt he could go on longer. The sky was clearing, the moon rising. The man told himself he could go all night if he needed to.

  Yes, the novices agree. The man could go all night. He could go forever, and still get nowhere.

  Finally the novices ask how the man discovered he was walking in a circle. The master tells them that at some point during the night the man heard voices ahead of him in the trench. Among them he heard his wife’s voice, bemoaning his loss, begging to be allowed to look for her husband, and he called out to tell her that he was right behind. But the voice that answered was his uncle’s, and he knew then that the sounds he was hearing did not emanate from human mouths, but from the spirit world. His uncle told the man that it was not far now. That if he pushed on he would find what he was looking for, which was not fire, shelter, food, but his tribe. Death was inevitable, his uncle reminded him, whether it happened today or twenty years from now. But if the man continued to push on he would not die like an animal. The man got up when he heard these words. He did not remember falling. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and stabbed it into the wall of the trench. He left this mark not for himself—he did not yet suspect he was walking in a circle—but for those who would come after. He wanted them to know he had made it this far. It was not his lucky arrow, obviously—his lucky arrow had cleared his smoke hole, saving him from suffocating—and as the man walked on a part of him could not help but think of the second arrow as unlucky. And so, in a way, it was, because after he left it behind it fell to the ground and the man walked over it who knew how many times as he continued to wear his trench deeper and deeper in the snow. By now the voice the man was following was that of his unborn child. He had not known his wife was pregnant until his daughter’s voice came to him to thank him for the gift of life, and to comfort him with the knowledge that the tribe would take responsibility for her as he had taken responsibility for her mother when his uncle died. They were one tribe, she reminded him. They would provide for her and teach her to provide for her children, and she would teach them to provide for themselves. His daughter told him: it was not his arrow that was lucky. He had made his own luck, she told him, by crafting the arrow of the finest materials and taking extra care when using it and above all by trusting the arrow with a piece of his spirit. It was his spirit that came back to him, even when the arrow did not.

  The man felt something snap beneath his boot. He bent over, felt around in the darkness. He came up with his arrow, broken in two pieces.

  And here one novice always jumps to his feet:

  Q:Which arrow?

  A:Which arrow?

  Q:Was it the arrow he had stabbed in the side of the trench? Or was it his lucky arrow?

  A:Why does it matter?

  Q:If it was his lucky arrow, it could be a sign.

  A:A sign of?

  The novice falls silent. He cannot bring himself to invoke providence.

  A:It was not his lucky arrow.

  The novices heave a collective sigh. All of them know the next question, but none of them wants to ask it.

  Q:Did the man keep walking, or did he surrender to the snow?

  A:What do you think?

  The novices look at each other. Is this the end of the parable? Or have they not reached it yet?

  Q:Does it matter what we think?

  A:What you think has determined the course of the parable.

  The novices ponder the master’s words. A light flickers somewhere in their minds, so dimly that they are not even sure what sparks it. They perceive this light as understanding, yet it feels more like hope.

  Q:Are you saying that the parable isn’t the same for every group?

  A:Given the virtual impossibility of two groups of novices asking exactly the same questions in exactly the same order, let alone every group of novices asking exactly the same questions in exactly the same order, the functional answer to your question is no, it’s not. But that does not preclude the possibility that two or more groups of novices may explore the parable in exactly the same way, assuming the master gives exactly the same answers to their questions.

  Q:Then is the parable dependent on the questions put to the master? If, for example, we had never asked about the device the man used to clean his smoke hole, would his lucky arrow have been mentioned?

  A:To the first question, the answer is yes. To the second, no.

  Q:Are the events of the parable the same at every telling, regardless of the order in which they are revealed?

  A:No.

  Q:Is the master required to give the same answers to the same questions every time he tells the parable?

  A:No.

  Q:By what criteria does the master choose what answers he gives?

  A:The master gives the answers the novices’ questions presuppose.

  Q:So you created the parable—the man—in our image?

  A:No. You did.

  Q:So the parable’s final question is not what would the man do but . . . what would we do?

  Q:Or, rather, what have we already done?

  Q:What couldn’t we stop ourselves from doing? What were we destined to do?

  This, almost always, from the novice who had invoked the divine.

  A:Imagine a wall of bricks made of ice, each of which contains a light that turns on when a pebble of coal strikes it. It is nighttime. Nothing is visible. You throw a pebble. A light comes on. When you throw the next pebble you aim as close to the first as possible. Another light comes on. You throw handfuls of pebbles in an effort to speed the process, but here’s the rub: hit a brick once and its l
ight turns on. Hit it again and the light goes off. Working one pebble at a time, you light up brick after brick. A shape begins to reveal itself. It is a curve. You cast your pebbles wider in an attempt to determine the scale of the object. It is bigger than it at first appeared. Very big, in fact. In fact, it surrounds you on all sides. It is a circle. You throw more parables—pebbles, I mean—seeking to fill in the dark places. The distance between you and the wall is great, your aim less than perfect. As a result some bricks remain dark for a long time, even though they are surrounded by light, and some that are lit go dark again when you hit them a second time. You fritter away time and energy trying to illuminate isolated bricks even though all the evidence suggests they are nothing more than stretchers in the third or fourth or fortieth course of the wall that surrounds you. As you work your way up the wall you notice that it curves in at the top. Indeed, it seems to form a dome, the top of which is at the farthest edge of your range. The shape is clear now. You understand that all you are doing is illuminating something whose name you already know.

  Say it. Say the word out loud. Say: “iglu.”

  Now: ask yourself why you threw that first pebble.