Soldiers of Paradise

by Paul Park

  This is a story from the Song of Angkhdt. As we listened, standing near the fire with our mouths open, people said they saw the statue move, and some claimed that the lines of symbols on its swollen penis seemed to glow. I know nothing about that. But as stupid as it sounds, my lords, I did hear a voice out of its stone head, for the music had stopped suddenly, and the vision had disappeared. It was a curious, airless kind of voice, and either the language was unknown to me or else I was too far away to understand. But I understood the biter. He was speaking too. “Listen to God’s laws,” he said. “Love freedom. Love freedom more than death. Be kind to one another,” things like that, laws and hateful rules. That biter was a crazy man. So much loneliness, so much gnawing on his biter’s heart had made him mad. He was searching for a god to make him king, to force us to follow after him, yet how could he have thought that we would stand still and listen to that kind of song? In fact, he must have quickly realized his mistake, for all around, people were moving and touching themselves, the magic broken. In front of me, the girl had turned away and put her fingers to her head.

  I was bored and angry, but not for long, because the biter started to sing again. In his voice I saw the god lying in darkness, in a wooden cage. It was empty night in the barbarian city, and I saw him raise his silver head just as a dog would have, for towards him over the flagstones flowed a rivulet of water—down one street, down another, out into the open square. He was waiting for it. And as it came, a gentle wind ran through the city, starting out of nothing, then subsiding. The god yawned, and passed his hand along the bars of his cage. He rubbed it slowly, rhythmically, coaxing some greenness back into the dead wood; slowly at first, imperceptibly, he sealed the wounded bark, he rubbed it whole. Under the cage the flagstones split apart as roots spread down. And in the iron joints the first leaves appeared, one, and then more, tiny and weak at first, but gathering strength and number until the cage had disappeared and Angkhdt lay as if in a leafy thicket or a wood, a gentle wind stirring the branches, while in the house women woke next to their sleeping mates, and shook themselves awake and looked around.

  Again the vision broke. I heard the statue speak again, louder this time, and this time I could understand, for I was looking for the magic, and so was everybody else. That way it claimed our minds. It said: “You are my chosen people. Free men and women, free as fire. Like the fire you will grow and spread. For I have chosen a way . . .” It went on for a long time, telling us to take our things and leave our town, telling us to follow this biter and make war with him. In the crowd, some stood without listening, warming their hands, but others shouted angrily, and one climbed up into the open cart. He grabbed the biter from behind, one arm across his stomach, the other on his throat. He lifted him up off his feet, lifted him up kicking, and dropped him over the side of the cart into the crowd. Then there was quiet. My brother was in the cart, standing up alone. We were used to him, watching him dance, so we just stood there, watching. He raised his arms above his head and clenched his fists, and leaped the distance from the cart onto the tabletop. He kicked the dog-headed statue in the chest, and it turned on its base and fell heavily to the ground, legs in the air. The biter cried out and struggled forward through the crowd, but nobody looked at him because my brother, limping and twisting on one foot, had raised his hands above his head and started to dance. It was tentative and slow, a dance we all knew, a dance which belonged to us, part of all of us. All of us could dance it in our different ways. It was the song of freedom, of namelessness, the triumph of our race, and so poignant, too, to see him dancing with his broken foot, it gave each step a special transience. My brother danced, and the crowd spread out away from him, because this was the kind of dance that tells you not to stand together in a group, thinking the same thoughts.

  My brother pulled a knife out from his clothes and danced with it, and now from the crowd came up a kind of music, hesitant at first, but stronger and stronger as it became clear to us what he was going to do. Our voices, young and old, rough and smooth, searched for a common music, making it out of nothing, and some had carried their instruments with them, and some ran to fetch theirs, and all clapped their hands and sang—we didn’t know this music. But like the dance it came together as we sang, more sure with every motion, every note. It sang of freedom, sang of emptiness, and it came together as if out of our own empty hearts. My brother danced a long time. And in the end, everybody knew it; we forced him with our voices, we built him to a climax, and at the end of it he drew the knife around his neck, once, twice, in perfect rhythm to the dance, a scarlet string around his neck—too tight, for he tried to sing then and couldn’t, for his mouth was full of blood. He spit it out, and summoning his strength, he sang a song that was not like singing nor like anything.

  And as he sang, a shadow rose, and it got dark. The sun was hidden in a cloud of frozen dust, remains of the volcano we had seen the night before. Sticks and pieces of dirt fell from the sky. Horses cried out and kicked their stalls. People gathered together, cursing in the filthy dark. We ran inside out of the storm, and then the biter spoke again, and said in plain language that he was running south with others of his kind, to bring some war into the cities there. He said the storm was some barbarian god. He said it was a sign. People clustered around him, desperate and afraid, but more prepared to go off by themselves, according to our custom of leaving and never coming back. They prepared to ride out north, perhaps, alone. They had no maps. They prepared to ride out into the unbroken snow. For some it was as if they had found a sudden reason to do as they had always wanted. The mud lay inches thick on all the beds. It seemed pointless to clear it all away.

  * * *

  My lords, a child’s mind is not to be relied on. If I thought that you were interested in the truth, I suppose I would keep silent. Yet I have carried these images with me, and now I unpack them, some for the first time. And always I am tempted to describe my life as if to an empty room, as if the words could simply disappear. Tempted and not tempted, for the bitterness is that I have changed and not just gotten older. Here in your sad city I have let a world collect around me, opinions, objects, thoughts; I have found a name. Nor can I claim compulsion. I have made myself a slave, and now I look around me through a slave’s eyes, that’s all. Therefore I have become very fine in my distinctions, and I think I was mistaken. I think now the volcano and the mudstorm came some other time. Reason tells me now there must have been a period when people came to their own conclusions and rode out, too hungry to stay, but how could we measure time in that blank winter, with our blank minds? When my mothers and fathers were growing up, there were still seasons in the lives of animals, but in that last phase of winter, when I was a child, there were no more fawns, no cubs, no colts, no pups, no calves, no goslings, no sweet lambs, and after that the hills were empty. We went hungry. Why would people stand for it, who had a choice?

  I remember a full town and an empty one. And there was a mudstorm, yes. The sky was black; stones fell from the sky. I huddled in my muddy bed. People yelled and ran. And I remember waking up one morning to new snow. New snow was falling. I walked out to the open space in front of my house. The stone table was there, and the dog-headed statue on its back in the new snow. Our town was empty. Or rather, the children were left. Those who hadn’t had the strength to go. They came out one by one, my brothers and my sisters, with white, muddy faces. There was not a sound.

  I walked over to the gate. Broken instruments littered the ground, sifted over with snow. Departing during the storm, people had stood shouting over the noise of the wind, their baggage around them in fat bags, the horses kicking and stamping in the frozen mud. One by one, men and women had pulled on their knapsacks and swung themselves up into their saddles, leaving what they could not carry. And as they walked their horses through the tower gate, their instruments in their hands, some would bend down and break them on the stone gatepost, and others would stand up in the stirrups and break them on the arch above their h
eads. I kicked through fretboards, mutes, and reeds.

  Some older children had been able to seize the strength to go, and women had taken the youngest ones, their own or someone else’s, for tangled reasons. Those left behind were of the age which no one loves, and I was one of these.

  We took our blankets from the abandoned halls and all moved into one, except for a few of the proudest. But these soon took horses and rode out, not knowing where, I suppose, or where else but to their deaths. The rest of us lived together in one hall, and kept a fire burning. For nothing reduces people to barbarity quicker than hunger. We developed barbarous habits. We sat together and discussed things. Looking back, that seems like the worst part. Then, the worst part was going to bed hungry, was the interminable waiting to grow up.

  There was a girl with yellow hair, as tall as I. How can I describe my feelings? They were a source of shame to me. She lit a fire in the hall and danced for us a little. I scraped the mud away from part of the floor and built a pile of pillows next to her bed. I should have stayed away in the farthest corner. She was not musical or strong, a great hunter or a great dancer. But I wanted her, even though I knew that wanting is a trick of the mind. It is like stooping to believe a lie. For days I would go off alone, hunting in the snow, fishing, yet at night I would sit and watch her shake her hair loose down her bare back. She had a face—how shall I say—unmarked by pride. That is our flaw, in general, the way barbarians are hairy, with rotten teeth and foul breath. Our men and women had proud faces, and if they laughed it was for a reason: because after a cold day they had brought a buck down with one shot. Or because another had missed. Or because in the midst of day they could hear nothing but their own music. Yet this girl would laugh about nothing. She saw no stain in kindness, and perhaps she was adapting to new circumstances, but I thought rather it was something true to her. The men and women of our race have hungry bodies—clean-limbed and hard—but already hers was made for giving. She had full breasts, wide hips, round arms and legs.

  The snow went on forever, and then a new season came, a dark, false season. It was the Paradise thaw, the last phase of winter, though how could we have known? The sun barely shone. The snow melted, for a while. The grass grew white and yellow, but it did grow, and in a biter’s house we had found a store of corn. The taste was poisonous, but I was glad to be alive, because the world was strangely beautiful during the thaw. The trees never recovered their leaves. In the valleys, in the white grass, they stood up dead with naked arms. And it was always dark, for at this time the sun crept blood-red along the horizon all day, rising and setting between the jagged peaks, the colored clouds like sunset all the morning and midday, the shadows long and heavy. At night it was almost brighter—you could ride all night, because during the thaw a new planet appeared, Paradise, you call it, another world, and it burned with a dead light above our heads. That first night it took up half the sky. The dogs howled and cried out. Barbarians worship Paradise, but I knew nothing of that yet. At first I was afraid.

  The air was still. There was not a breath of wind. There was no rain, although the ground was wet with stagnant water everywhere. No dogs gave birth. Plants grew, yes, but the stalks had lost their stiffness—they grew flat and tangled on the ground like the hair on a man’s head. The air seemed hard to breathe and full of queasy echoing. There was no nourishment in it. Noises close at hand seemed far away. And in the high pastures our ears buzzed and rang; we walked our horses and held onto their manes. It was a different kind of living. People slept all day, and even awake they were part asleep.

  It is easy to describe these things as if the world had died overnight. But soon we remembered nothing different. These changes, though they sound tremendous, came subtly and gradually. I thought I was growing up. My body had changed more than the air. And though every day I was filled with sleepy awe, though in everything I saw the promise of my death—the stark trees, the plants twisting along the ground—I was more concerned with hunger, and more concerned with sleeping next to that girl every night. I wanted there to be a way of touching her, but it was impossible. I would sit awake, looking at the heap of blankets next to me. Perhaps she would have responded to my touch. Yet I was afraid I was not capable. I had seen it often enough. And barbarians can copulate like animals, but I thought I was not yet quite enough of a barbarian for that. There were physical differences, I had heard. Besides, what should I do? Should I say . . . something, should I reach out my hand? Men and women drank to frenzy before they could surrender to desire. They drank a wine we had, and then they dreamed a numb, erotic dream. In the morning they remembered nothing and could look at each other without shame. Women had no men, children no fathers. The slavery would have been intolerable, for in this act of loving there is always slave and master, victory and defeat. We were too proud for that—too proud for love, for tenderness.

  But the temptation made me bitter, and I saw her sweating like a pig that season, her and a few others, planting and digging. I told myself she had surrendered to a biter’s foresight, finding a biter’s comfort in the dirt, the sweat, the feeble grain. It was not food for human beings. But with a biter’s caution, she saw that soon we would be so hungry we would be eating dogs and horse meat. She had found a taste for choices. She took corn and ground it to a pulp, and mixed it with hot water—edible, perhaps, but deadly to the heart. We blamed her for it. We would slink up to the pot and put our hands in it, angry and sullen because we found ourselves grateful, I suppose. We would have starved on what human food we had. Or we would have had to kill our animals. Horses, always docile, had learned to eat grass, though it made them sick and listless. But our dogs had higher stomachs. Already they fought one another and devoured the carcasses, and in this we might have seen a wild premonition of ourselves, had not my sister showed us we were more like horses.

  And in time I came to admire her for her serenity, her way of laughing at our sulkiness. Besides, I had begun to notice biting tendencies in myself. I discovered the importance of things I never would have noticed. One of the younger children was very sick. He had started to die. He was a sniveling little boy, with a sniveling weak face, but it was as if I found a strange compulsion to memorize everything about him, every sickness, every change. I could feel I was robbing him of his own death, for it was as if I had clenched my hands around his spirit, and as if his spirit was escaping not from another room, not from some private place, but from between my fingers. But finally he escaped me.

  That day the sun shone blood-red on the pale grass, and I was walking with my horse among some trees. I will describe the place. Among dead trees a brook widened into a clear pool, a small thing, water coiling on a cold rock. I found a single, leather, child’s boot. A boot like many others, but with the biter’s part of my mind I recognized it. It had belonged to the little boy.

  In winter, a field of snow stretches unblemished to the horizon, but you have only to look behind you to see your own trampled mark, ephemeral and confused, a dream in the pure wilderness of sleep. I thought, what difference can it make to me where the child is? If he were dead, then he was on that hillside where the snow never broke beneath his feet, not in front of him, not behind. He had become part of the world’s intolerable beauty. Where was the sadness in that thought? Where was the sadness in death? Yet I was not happy, because no matter how hard you try to be free—and when I was a child we did try—people have dark in them as well as light. They have deep, biting instincts in their heart of hearts. They are like the dark world with Paradise around it.

  I reached for the boot. It was a good one, fur-lined, but with the remnants of some decoration. I held it in my hand, trying to forget, until above me on the hillside, a boy came running down. Dogs were with him, barking and excited. He carried dead animals from the end of a long pole, and now he swung the pole up over their heads and kicked them as they snarled and jumped. He capered down the hillside out of breath, the dogs around him. And when he passed me, he stopped and swung the pole
above my head.

  I saw the naked tail hang down from one of them. “Rabbits,” I said.

  “Rabbits,” he repeated proudly.

  “Look what I have,” I said.