After that, the man and I start back down, first through trees, but then the mountain opens out to wide views, all sky with nothing in the way of it. We like the “big sky.” Hard to explain but I like this man for exactly the same reason.
I want the storm to catch us. I want us holed up behind a rock or under a tree so he’ll get to know me. I lag behind and he keeps saying, “For Christ’s sake hurry up. Look at the clouds rolling in.” To slow us down even more, I turn and look and right behind me there’s two perfect stones next to each other, and just room enough for a foot between them. I do it. I step in and twist.
It hurts more than I expected. I did a good job of it, my pants are ripped and my boot is all scratched up, but then I get to have his big warm hands all over my leg and foot. He has everything he needs in his first aid kit. He tapes up my ankle in a sort of figure eight, and as stiff as a cast so it hardly hurts at all. (Luckily we never get the misshapen feet all ballet dancers have.) After that I get to have his big warm arms around me as he carries me to a better place than on this slippery snowy slope.
That’s what he says he’s doing, but he’s got ideas, too, just as much as I have. We don’t make it off the slope. As he carries me, he slips. On purpose. I think on purpose. We slide down a long snowy bank and would have gone over the edge of the cliff if I hadn’t stopped us with a hard lift. He’s so heavy. I don’t know how I had the strength for it, but here we are, stopped right at the edge.
He says, “You’re one of those others.”
“What others?”
“Don’t try to fool me.”
So he does know. I say, “I saved you,” to distract him.
He twists my arm, but not too hard. Just a little warning. He could have broken it with no trouble at all. For sure he likes me.
We ought to move back. I’m too used up to lift again for a while and we might go all the way over and then what? I try to squinch myself back, but he holds me. I love his hug, but I’m scared.
“I’m scared.”
“Tell me who you and that old man are and what you’re up to way out here in the middle of nowhere? What’s he making? What’s all that stuff?”
Nobody ever tells me anything. They never did. From an early age… as soon as they told me I wasn’t them but us, I wanted to understand us and (especially) me. Nobody would answer anything I asked.
Maybe those things all over the place in there aren’t art after all.
“I don’t know who we are. They told me we were us, but they never said what being us was. They’ve kept us secret even from ourselves. All I know is there’s this one thing—this lift. And besides, I can’t do it again until I rest up. We have to move back.”
Finally he lets us. It’s so steep and slippery I have to crawl. He does too. He pulls me along. At the top we crawl sideways to get over on safer ground, completely away from the slope. I have the thought to push him over the cliff. That’s what I should do, knowing that he knows, but I don’t do it.
Safe … a little bit safer, we catch our breath and I get to have his arms around me again. I’m glad I didn’t push him over.
We’re both shaky. We hug and tremble. With me the trembling isn’t from having just escaped and having just used up all my lift, it’s that my face is pushed (I pushed it there on purpose) right into his thick neck. His neck comes straight down from his jaw to beyond his collarbone. He looks like the kind of man who’d say, “Try to choke me,” or, “Hit me in the stomach.” He’d say, “I’ll bet you a hundred dollars you can’t hurt me.” I’d bet him a hundred dollars he’s said both those more than once.
There’s a sudden darkening as if already dusk. There’s wind and snow. Just like that, the storm starts. He carries me yet farther back, and pulls me under a tree whose branches come to the ground on all sides. We sit, hugging. I’m still breathing into his neck. He’s as shaky as I am. Now why would a man who loves storms and all sorts of dangerous things be trembling so?
Now his hand is on my breast. He’s taken off his gloves and reached inside my parka. His hands are large and shapely. I noticed that before. I’ve always liked good hands. And now those very hands are all over me.
“Actually you’re not so different from everybody else.”
I’m worried because our breasts are smaller. I say, “But I am different.” I’m thinking mostly of my breasts.
“I don’t care.”
Maybe breasts don’t matter that much. Maybe he really doesn’t care.
Green pine boughs surround us and beyond them snow comes down. A real white-out. The whole world has turned my favorite color. We’re cozy in here under the branches. His knees are threaded in with mine. Our feet, in our big boots, are clumped up together. I take off my gloves and put my hand on the sweaty back of his neck, under his scarf. He’s damp… radiating….
We kiss. How warm his lips are even now in this snow storm. How soft… soft generous lips. (I noticed them before, too.) You wouldn’t think they’d be so soft with such a hard muscled man.
He needs a shave, but I don’t mind getting scratched up. And I only have a few twinges from my ankle.
“Coo,” I say, a long low, “Coooooooo.”
The storm is making a racket, branches scratch against each other, the wind whistles, but I couldn’t be warmer. I couldn’t be more enfolded, engulfed, enclosed…. While I coo and squeak, he grunts and growls and bellows.
Now how did this happen?
We sleep. His fuzzy chest is still bare and my ear is still right on top of his heartbeat. It sounds out louder than the wind whistling around us.
At first he’s nicely relaxed, but pretty soon he snores and snorts and jerks. The storm does the opposite, it quiets and soon a full moon shines out. It’s even fairly bright in here under our branches. I can even see how long his eyelashes are. I noticed them before. I noticed everything before.
I should be thinking about how to get rid of somebody who knows for sure about us, but how can you do that to a person when you’ve heard his heart beating under your ear all night long?
We can’t marry one of you. That’s unthinkable though I’ve thought of nothing else. There have been times when I pretended I’m one of you—what I’ve wished for since I met this man. When I thought of being you, I flitted down the sidewalk, skipping myself over chewing gum and spit, in a way that could only be us. But we’re a dying breed. If we don’t take care we might be gone altogether.
Those who aren’t careful (those who risk, loving the wrong person) meet with an accident. I mean from our own kind. There’s one of us in charge of that. We don’t know who. Maybe it’s the old man who rescued me. But out here I suppose I’m the one in charge. I should get rid of this man before that old man comes along and kills us both. Or one of us, depending on whether he’s us or you.
We wake at first light. We lie in each other’s arms, listening to snow melting sounds. That is, I do, but he’s been thinking. “What about….” he says, and grunts. I’m hoping he’s going to say, What about the two of us? but he says, “What about all that… stuff? I could tell the pieces will fit together into something huge. Could be a weapon or a whole bunch of them.”
“It’s art.”
(Isn’t it? Does it really fit together into one big dangerous thing? And even if it does, why isn’t that art? Art is more important than some device or other for the end of your kind… or my kind.)
“It’s art!”
But he’s not convinced.
“If you care for me at all, you’ll take my word for it. It’s art.”
“It’s not even beautiful.”
“Nowadays nobody is so….” (I almost say, unsophisticated, but I stop myself in time. He already feels unartistic compared to me.) “Nowadays nobody thinks art has to be beautiful. It’s to make us think. Besides, beauty is learned.”
“Maybe.”
But I want to make him feel good.
“Rescuing is more important than any art could be, though art takes just as
much courage.”
“I’d like to see what those things look like put together.”
“Even if it all fits together why can’t it still be art?”
I want it to be art. Your kind or our kind, I don’t care which. We need more art and fewer weapons. Though, on the other hand, maybe we have too much art. It’s hard to keep track of. Hard to sort through. I’d prefer less. But I would never say that in front of him.
He kisses me. A long wet kiss. For no reason at all.
I say, “Marry me.”
He looks at me—those glittery black eyes—just looks. He could at least have said, Maybe.
We come out from under our tree into a world of shine… white, with blue sky above. I’m so happy. (Except that he didn’t say, Maybe.)
The man looks all around and then looks all around again with his field glasses. He drops on one knee, ducks partly behind our tree, hands the field glasses to me and points. There, behind us, is the old man. He’s sitting on a boulder, looking all around with his field glasses. He has a rifle across his knees. And here comes his dog, right to us. Wagging what’s left of his bandaged tail.
If only I had a clue …. one little real clue as to which this old man is, us or you, and whether all that stuff is art or a weapon. If I should yell to that old man, Don’t shoot, I’m on your side—I want to know which side that would be.
My man (I’m thinking, My man, though I’m not sure if he is or isn’t) says, “Stay here,” but I’m not going to.
He starts up the slope, walking boldly in spite of the rifle across the old man’s knees. My man is fearless. I knew that before.
I scramble along behind him, lifting a little so as to save my sprained ankle.
The old man, looking right at us, yells, “Stop or I’ll shoot.” I don’t know if he means he’ll shoot me, clumping along behind, or my man. Neither of us stop.
My man doesn’t have any weapons. He just has his first aid kit and ropes and things for rescuing people. He wouldn’t care if you were us or you people or a skunk or a mountain lion, he’d rescue you anyway.
“Grab him,” the old man yells. “Push him. Let him fall over the cliff before he destroys my work.”
Now I know which he is.
No I don’t, I just know which of us he wants to get rid of and why.
I yell out, too. “He rescues people! That’s all he does. He’ll rescue you if you need rescuing.”
“Not me. Never one like me.”
“He has no weapons.”
The cold or snow or something (maybe it’s the bowl shape of the mountainside) gives our words an odd hollow sharpness—an extra clarity. Words as if in silhouette. Even my big man’s gravely voice sounds out with purity.
I see my man’s breath as he shouts up the slope. “Don’t shoot. We’ll talk.”
“Push him. He wants to destroy my work.”
He’s right to worry. You always… always do that: throw art off cliffs, roll it into the sea, burn it, knock it to pieces, chop it up, smash it…. You people cut off marble penises and grind them up for aphrodisiacs. You people threw the Mayan statues down their long stairways. You scraped off the faces of kings you didn’t like. You burned codices. Makes me think it must be art for sure if somebody wants to destroy it.
Though on the other hand you people invented all these arts in the first place. We didn’t even invent ballet.
By lifting harder, I’m now up beside my man. He’s still clumping through the snow, but if he could stride, that’s what he’d be doing.
The man shoots, but my man doesn’t go down. Just keeps slogging along. I’m the one yelling, “Don’t shoot,” and everything else I can think to yell. “Stop. Please. Don’t.”
The old man stands up and starts down towards my man. My man walks up to him and then right on past, not paying him any attention. I think to attack the old man myself but I don’t want to leave my man. I get between the old man and my man. The old man points the gun at me but doesn’t shoot, just follows. So here we go, all of us and the dog, back to the shack. And there, just inside the door, my man squats down and takes off his gloves and takes out… is that his little camp stove? And then I see he’s set the place on fire. But he’s a fireman!
I say, “This is burning books. Isn’t this like burning books?”
“It isn’t art!”
He steps away and pulls me with him, to a safe distance. We watch. The old man, too. Everything goes up, poof, like an old Christmas tree. There’s no way to stop it. My man sure knows how to set a good fire.
But now… just like that, my man flops down and I see blood. It’s dripping… more than just dripping, out his sleeves. It’s all over his hands. The dog licks at them.
I lean over him. I can’t believe it. I lean close. I don’t see that mist of breath. I don’t feel it on my cheek. My big rescuing man is dead. How can this be? And his very last words were, “It isn’t art.”
I hear my “Nooooo!” echoing all over this snowy bowl. I turn. I don’t know how I find the strength but I grab that that wiry old man, and push and push and drag—him and his rifle—all the way down the slope and over the cliff. He yells the whole way, but I couldn’t tell you what or even in what language. I can’t hear or understand anything. I don’t care which he is, us or them.
After, I sit with my feet hanging over the edge. Sit and sit and sit, not thinking. Pretty soon I go back to sit by my man. I guess I can say he’s mine now. He can’t say he isn’t. By now the fire has burned itself out some and the sun has gone behind the mountain. I guess I sat there, on the edge of everything, longer than I thought. I’ll have to spend the night here just sitting, but it’s what I want to do.
I push the dog away. I take off my glove and hold my man’s cold, bare hand. How could such a warm furnace of a man? How could?
At first I just sit and don’t think at all and then I do, and hope. If what I hope is true, it’s already too late to keep our purity untainted by you people. But I don’t know what to think anymore. I’ve been so careful. I’ve even danced cautiously, all the time thinking: Stay down. I’m tired of it.
I’ll leave the ballet. Take the tailless dog and leave. I’ll join the circus. It’s good for us to be in the circus, we’re so much safer there. If we lift by mistake, everybody thinks it’s some trick or other. I’ll hang on by my teeth and get raised to the top of the tent. All of us can do that, no trouble at all. Tightrope walker might be nice. I could have a pink parasol.
Except, if I’m pregnant. It’ll be hard when I have to lift for two.
I can’t be sure for a while yet, but I want a little black haired boy with big feet and hands and long eyelashes. I don’t care whether he can lift or not. When he climbs a tree and falls, he’ll come straight down like everybody else does.
It never would have worked. I don’t think he liked art much, anyway.
Form follows function? Beauty? Truth? Those are old notions. Besides, we’ve never lived with much truth. We can’t. We don’t even try. But there’s all kinds of reasons for art.
His very last words were, “It isn’t art.” He never said, I love you. He never even said, Maybe. I wonder what he meant by not saying, Maybe.
THE ASSASSIN
OR
BEING THE LOVED ONE
I HAD BEEN SENT to assassinate the general of the opposition, but I didn’t do it. I had him in my sights, but instead I let him shoot me.
I had promised to do it or die trying. I was dying, but I hadn’t tried. I had looked into his eyes, then looked into the little black hole of his weapon, knowing he was looking into mine. I had even said, Sorry. Suddenly, I was sorry. Then I hadn’t done it. I had the thought there might be something lesser I could do, something appropriate like cut off his trigger finger. Or better yet, cut off his thumbs.
He had a big grey moustache and blue eyes. His face was brown and weathered. He looked exactly like my father even to the squinting eyes. In fact for a moment I thought it was my father, grown
older and come back from death, and somehow switched over to the enemy’s side.
This general was walking in the very mountains where the battles had taken place. I knew these hills as though I’d grown up here, and I’m sure the general did, too.
The war was over—said to be. Treaties had been signed—a whole year ago, but what did that have to do with us? If we didn’t want it to be over, it wasn’t. And we weren’t the only ones. There were many pockets of holdouts. The war had gone on for ten years. We couldn’t figure out why we should stop now. What had changed? We promised each other we’d keep fighting one way or another until we were all dead. But there are few of us so we have to make our killing count. We didn’t want to kill just anybody. We went to the top.
Certainly this general thought it was over or he wouldn’t have been on the trail with his three grandsons. Nor would he have been in mufti. I knew who he was from the posters of victory, and I knew which cabin in the foothills was his summer home. I knew he had three grandsons and that his only son had been killed in the war. He looked so much a civilian, I was surprised he carried a pistol.
I had followed them all morning until the children and their terrier fell well behind and the general was already on the switchbacks. He was going fast. He obviously loved working himself hard. He obviously thought there was no danger to the boys.
I hoped not to kill in front of the children—though it might be a good lesson for them. I thought perhaps I could shock them with the shooting and then capture them for our side. There aren’t many of us left. They were young enough to be convinced to change sides. We were, after all, the side of the upright. (When had we not been? We’d have changed sides if we thought we were wrong.) But if we couldn’t convince them then their thumbs could go, too.
As the general climbed, switching back and forth, I took a shortcut. I ran straight up, turned around at the top and waited for him behind a boulder.
I had not realized he was a small man until he rounded the corner of the trail, came out from behind the cliff, and stood not more than six or eight yards from me. I had not seen his face close up until then.
I Live With You Page 10