The Unreal and the Real - Vol 1 - Where On Earth

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Later on Gideon told me what the weight is. It is all the people who are dying. A lot of them are children, little, hollow, empty children. Some of them are old people, very light, hollow, old men and women. They don’t weigh much separately, but there are so many of them. The old people lie across his legs. The children are in a great heap on his chest, across his breastbone. It makes it hard for him to breathe.

  Today he only asked me to help him get out and go where he has to go. When he speaks of that he cries. I always hated for him to cry when we were children, it made me cry, too, even when I was thirteen or fourteen. He only cried for real griefs. The doctor says that what he has is an acute depression, and it should be cured with chemicals. But Gideon is not depressed. I think what he has is grief. Why can’t he be allowed to grieve? Would it destroy the rest of us, his grief? It’s the people who don’t grieve who are destroying us, it seems to me.

  “Here’s your clothes. You’ll have to get up and get dressed, Gideon. If you want to come away with me. I didn’t get permission. I just can’t get through to that doctor, he wants to cure you. If you want to go, you’ll have to get up and walk.”

  “Shall I take up my bed?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Bible.”

  “For God’s sake don’t go religious now. If you do I’ll bring you right back here. Hurry up. Here’s your pants.”

  “Please get off me just for a minute,” he said to the dying children and old men and women.

  “Oof, how thin you are. Let me button that. All right. Can you manage? Hang on. No! hang onto me. You haven’t been eating, you’re dizzy.”

  “Dizzy Giddy.”

  “Do shut up! Try to look ordinary.”

  “We are ordinary.”

  They walked out of the room and down the hall arm in arm, an ordinary middle-aged couple. They walked past the old woman in the wheel-chair nursing her doll, and past the room of the young man who stared. They walked past the receptionist’s desk. Anna smiled and said in a peculiar voice at the receptionist, “Going out for a walk in the garden.” The receptionist smiled and said, “Lovely weather.” They walked out onto the brick front path of the rest home, and down it, between lawns, to the iron gate. They walked through the gate and turned left. Anna’s car was parked halfway down the block, under elm trees.

  “Oh, oh, if I have a heart attack it’s all your fault. Wait. I’m so shaky I can’t get the key in. You all right?”

  “Sure. Where are we going?”

  “To the lake.”

  “He went out with his sister, doctor. For a walk. About half an hour ago.”

  “A walk, my God,” the doctor said. “Where to?”

  I am Anna. I am Gideon. I am Gideanna. I am sister’s brother, brother’s sister. I am Gideon who am dying, but it is your death I die, not mine. I am Anna who am not mad, but I am your brother, who is mad. Take my hand, brother, from the dark! Reich’ mir das Hand, mein Leben, komm’ in mein Schloss mit mir. O, but that castle I do not want to enter, brother mine; that is the castle I do not want to enter. It has a dark tower. Who do you think I am, Childe Roland? A Roland to your Oliver? No, look, we know this place, this is the old place, where we were children. Let’s dance here, on the lakeshore, by the water. You be the tower, I will be the lake. You will dance in me reflected, I will be full of you, of the wave-broken shimmering stones. Lie lightly on me, tower, brother, see, if you lie lightly we are one. But we have always been one, sisterbrother. We have always danced alone. I am Gideon who dances in your soul, and I am dying. I can’t dance any longer. I am borne down, borne down, borne down. I cannot lie, I cannot dance. All the reflections are dissolved. I cannot dance. I cannot breathe. They lie on me, they lie in me. How can the starving be so heavy, Anna?

  Gideon, is it our fault? It can’t be your fault. You never harmed a living soul.

  But I am the fault, you know, The fault in my soul and yours, the fault itself. The line on which the ground moves. So the earthquake comes, and the people die, the little puzzled children, and the young men with guns, and the women pausing shopping bag in hand in the dissolving supermarket, and the old people who crouch down and reach out with wrinkled fingers to the faltering earth. I have betrayed them all. I did not give them enough food to eat.

  How could you have? You’re not God!

  Oh yes I am. We are.

  We are?

  Yes, we are. Indeed we are. If I weren’t God how should I be dying now? God is what dies. God is bereavement. We all die for each other.

  If I am God I am the Woman-God, and I shall be reborn. Out of my own body I shall bear my birth.

  Surely you will, but only if I die; and I am you. Or do you deny me, at the grave’s edge, after fifty years?

  No, no, no. I don’t deny you, though I’ve often wanted to. But that’s not a grave’s edge, my young darkness, my terror, my little brother soul. It’s only a lakeshore, see?

  There is no other shore.

  There must be.

  No; all seas have one shore only. How could they have more?

  Well, there’s only one way to find out.

  I’m cold. It’s cold, the water’s cold.

  Look: there they are. So many of them, so many. The children float because they’re hollow, swollen up with air. The older people swim, for a while. Look how that old man holds a clod of earth in his hand, the piece of the world he held to when the earthquake came. A little island, not quite big enough. Look how she holds her baby up above the water. I must help her, I must go to her!

  If I touch one, they will take hold of me. They will clutch me with the grip of the drowning and drag me down with them. I’m not that good a swimmer. If I touch them, I’ll drown.

  Look there, I know that face. Isn’t that Hansen? He’s holding onto a rock, poor soul, a plank would serve him better.

  There’s Kate. There’s Kate’s ex-husband. And there’s Lin. Lin’s a good swimmer, always was, I’m not worried about Lin. But Kate’s in trouble. She needs help. Kate! Don’t wear yourself out, honey, don’t kick so hard. The water’s very wide. Save your strength, swim slowly, sweetheart, Kate my child!

  There’s young Chew. And look there, there’s the doctor, in right over his head. And the receptionist. And the old woman with the doll. But there are so many more, so many. If I reach out my hand to one, a hundred will reach for it, a thousand, a thousand million, and pull me down and drown me. I can’t save one child, one single child. I can’t save myself.

  Then let it be so. Take my hand, child! stranger in the darkness, in the deep waters, take my hand. Swim with me, while we can. Let us be drowned together, for it’s certain we shall not be saved alone.

  It’s silent, out here in the deep waters. I can’t see the faces any more.

  Dorothea, there’s someone following us. Don’t look back.

  I’m not Lot’s wife, Louis, I’m Gideon’s wife. I can look back, and still not turn to salt. Besides, my blood was never salt enough. It’s you who shouldn’t look back.

  Do you take me for Orpheus? I was a good pianist, but not that good. But I admit, it scares me to look back. I don’t really want to.

  I just did. There’s two of them. A woman and a man.

  I was afraid of that.

  Do you think it’s them?

  Who else would follow us?

  Yes, it’s them, our husband and our wife. Go back! Go back! This is no place for you!

  This is the place for everyone, Dorothea.

  Yes, but not yet, not yet. O Gideon, go back! He doesn’t hear me. I can’t speak clearly any more. Louis, you call to them.

  Go back! Don’t follow us! They can’t hear us, Dorothea. Look how they come, as if the sand were water. Don’t they know there’s no water here?

  I don’t know what they know, Louis. I have forgotten. Gideon, O Gideon, take my hand!

  Anna, take my hand!

  Can they hear us? Can they touch us?

  I don’t know. I have forgotten.
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br />   It’s cold, I’m cold. It’s too deep, too far to go. I have reached out my hand, and reached out my hand into the darkness, but I couldn’t tell what good it did; if I held up some child for a while, or if some shadow hand reached back to me, I don’t know. I can’t tell the way. Back on the dry land they were right. They told me not to grieve. They told me not to look. They told me to forget. They told me eat my lunch and take my pills that end in zil and ine. And they were right. They told me to be quiet, not to shout, not to cry out aloud. Be quiet now, be good. And they were right. What’s the good in shouting? What’s the good in shouting Help me, help, I’m drowning! when all the rest of them are drowning too? I heard them crying Help me, help me, please. But now I hear nothing. I hear the sound of the deep waters only. O take my hand, my love, I’m cold, cold, cold.

  The water is wide, I cannot get over,

  And neither have I wings to fly.

  Give me a boat that will carry two,

  And both shall row, my love and I.

  There is, oh, there is another shore! Look at the light, the light of morning on the rocks, the light on the shores of morning. I am light. The weight’s gone. I am light.

  But it is the same shore, Gideanna.

  Then we have come home. We rowed all night in darkness, in the cold, and we came home: the home where we have never been before, the home we never left. Take my hand, and step ashore with me, my sister life, my brother death. Look: it is the beginning place. Here we begin, here by the flood that parts us.

  The Lost Children

  He lifted the silver pipe to his lips and played. In his patchwork jacket and multistripe pants and two-tone shoes, he walked the city streets piping a tune. What tune? They turned and listened, passersby, businessmen, shoppers, secretaries, smokers, tourists, bag ladies, beggars. As the piper went past they cocked their heads, straining their ears, with an inward look in their eyes. Did they hear the tune? Yes—No—? Some of them followed him a little way, trying to hear what he was playing on his pipe. A bag lady shook her shopping cart in rage and shouted obscenities after him. A Japanese visitor ran to get ahead of him to take his photograph, but lost him in the crowds. A lawyer fell into step beside him, trying to hear the sound of the pipe, which surely was very high and sweet; but he could catch only the faintest sound on the very edge of hearing, and he turned off at Broadway. Three boys ran shoving and yelling past the piper through the crowds, their canvas and plastic shoes gaudier than his jacket. A woman coming out of a clothing store stopped, her back stooped, her lips parted, and gazed after him. Her little daughter tugged at her hand, impatient. “Mama, I want to go home, let’s go to the bus stop, mama!” Inside the mother, inside each of the women and the men he passed, a child jumped up crying in a high voice, “I hear it! I hear it! Listen!” But she could not hear, and her daughter paid no attention, did not listen, tugged at her hand, and she followed, obedient. Children shot past running or on skateboards or rollerblades. Men and women strolled or hurried on, turned to their business with a shrug or a comment about street musicians, continued their conversation about municipal bonds, the football game, the price of halibut, the trial, the election, the breakdown. Some of the men, some of the women felt a little flutter of the breath, a kind of gasp or a slight pang at the breastbone, and others felt nothing at all, when the child inside them broke out, broke free, and ran invisibly after the piper, inaudibly crying, “Wait! Wait for me!” as the gaudy, nimble figure passed on through the throngs, threading the traffic at the crossings, always playing his silver pipe. Among the crowds these escaped children passed quick and slight as dust motes or wisps of steam, more and more of them, a cloud, a comet-tail of immaterial children following the piper, skipping, capering, dancing to the tune he played, dancing right out of the city, through the suburbs, across the superhighways, till they came at last to the malls and the fast food strip. Did the piper go on past the malls towards the hidden country or did he slip away from the children among the endless aisles of the vast, windowless buildings? Did the children catch up to him or did they lose him, distracted by the signs and the goods, the toy stores, the candy stores? They dispersed quite suddenly, all the escaped children, wandering off into the shops and theaters and arcades to enter into electronic games, jumping and shooting and destroying one another in puffs of sparks, to enter into videos of isneyland and whizneyland and busineyland, running through towers and castles of smiling machinery and tunnels and orbits of machinery screaming. There the lost children are. When they are hungry they feed on the sweet greasy smoke from the grills where hamburger meat is fried forever, while the loudspeakers forever play the piper’s tune.

  Texts

  Messages came, Johanna thought, usually years too late, or years before one could crack their code or had even learned the language they were in. Yet they came increasingly often and were so urgent, so compelling in their demand that she read them, that she do something, as to force her at last to take refuge from them. She rented, for the month of January, a little house with no telephone in a seaside town that had no mail delivery. She had stayed in Klatsand several times in summer; winter, as she had hoped, was even quieter than summer. A whole day would go by without her hearing or speaking a word. She did not buy the paper or turn on the television, and the one morning she thought she ought to find some news on the radio she got a program in Finnish from Astoria. But the messages still came. Words were everywhere.

  Literate clothing was no real problem. She remembered the first print dress she had ever seen, years ago, a genuine print dress with typography involved in the design—green on white, suitcases and hibiscus and the names Riviera and Capri and Paris occurring rather blobbily from shoulder seam to hem, sometimes right side up, sometimes upside down. Then it had been, as the saleswoman said, very unusual. Now it was hard to find a T-shirt that did not urge political action, or quote lengthily from a dead physicist, or at least mention the town it was for sale in. All this she had coped with, she had even worn.

  But too many things were becoming legible.

  She had noticed in earlier years that the lines of foam left by waves on the sand after stormy weather lay sometimes in curves that looked like handwriting, cursive lines broken by spaces, as if in words; but it was not until she had been alone for over a fortnight and had walked many times down to Wreck Point and back that she found she could read the writing. It was a mild day, nearly windless, so that she did not have to march briskly but could mosey along between the foam-lines and the water’s edge where the sand reflected the sky. Every now and then a quiet winter breaker driving up and up the beach would drive her and a few gulls ahead of it onto the drier sand; then as the wave receded she and the gulls would follow it back. There was not another soul on the long beach. The sand lay as firm and even as a pad of pale brown paper, and on it a recent wave at its high mark had left a complicated series of curves and bits of foam. The ribbons and loops and lengths of white looked so much like handwriting in chalk that she stopped, the way she would stop, half willingly, to read what people scratched in the sand in summer. Usually it was “Jason + Karen” or paired initials in a heart; once, mysteriously and memorably, three initials and the dates 1973–1984, the only such inscription that spoke of a promise not made but broken. Whatever those eleven years had been, the length of a marriage? a child’s life? they were gone, and the letters and numbers also were gone when she came back by where they had been, with the tide rising. She had wondered then if the person who wrote them, had written them to be erased. But these foam words lying on the brown sand now had been written by the erasing sea itself. If she could read them they might tell her a wisdom a good deal deeper and bitterer than she could possibly swallow. Do I want to know what the sea writes? she thought, but at the same time she was already reading the foam, which though in vaguely cuneiform blobs rather than letters of any alphabet was perfectly legible as she walked along beside it. “Yes,” it read, “esse hes hetu tokye to’ ossusess ekyes. Seham hute’ u.
” (When she wrote it down later she used the apostrophe to represent a kind of stop or click like the last sound in “Yep!”) As she read it over, backing up some yards to do so, it continued to say the same thing, so she walked up and down it several times and memorized it. Presently, as bubbles burst and the blobs began to shrink, it changed here and there to read, “Yes, e hes etu kye to’ ossusess kye. ham te u.” She felt that this was not significant change but mere loss, and kept the original text in mind. The water of the foam sank into the sand and the bubbles dried away till the marks and lines lessened into a faint lacework of dots and scraps, half legible. It looked enough like delicate bits of fancywork that she wondered if one could also read lace or crochet.

  When she got home she wrote down the foam words so that she would not have to keep repeating them to remember them, and then she looked at the machine-made Quaker lace tablecloth on the little round dining table. It was not hard to read but was, as one might expect, rather dull. She made out the first line inside the border as “pith wot pith wot pith wot” interminably, with a “dub” every thirty stitches where the border pattern interrupted.