You’re going down a hall. A glance behind you. No one’s there. You turn down an ill-lit corridor, carrying your bucket and rags. You wander around corners, chasing green arrows, yellow ones, red, in no kind of order. Eventually all the arrows are black. And when you get deep enough, there are no arrows. Sometimes a small light blinks in the darkness. That’s frightening, because it might be an alarm. There are places so dark you can only guess at their shape by the sound of your footsteps and the taste—either dry, or foul and suffocating—of the air. These abandoned caverns and tunnels became my playground. Of course I couldn’t go where people were—after the white arrows, for example, into the busy halls, toward Gabriel. But I grew bolder and bolder in the tunnels. I even took out my torch. The light jumped around because my hand was trembling. But there were marvels down there. Hundreds of doors that wouldn’t open. Some had windows. I’d shine my torch in and see shapes standing in the dust. Things that looked like consoles and stoves. There were rows of empty cages. It made me remember that a good portion of the Castle was once the Ark. I saw beds in some of the rooms. I thought of people traveling through space, praying and singing. Unser Zug geht durch die Wüste. Hisboch hoy, des yebelachew, igziabeherin amesginu! It made me feel close to something. We have a history, Agar, after all.
Well, it happened. I came out of the tunnels into a dim gray hall. I switched off the torch. I thought I was back among the blue arrows, or at least green. But no. There were no arrows at all. The walls were blank. It gave me a queasy feeling. There were lighted panels set into all the doors. I’d never seen anything like it. I made to turn back, but I heard a sound. Somebody was shouting. I went along the hall and listened at all the doors. My hands were sweating inside my gloves. When I found the door with the shouting behind it I pressed the panel and the door slid open.
There was a man inside. He was on a bed. The thing I remember most about him is the blackness of his nostrils. His nostrils were full of dried black blood. His face looked very white. He stared at me, panting, and I knew he was an Earthman.
His name was Moan. Lugran Moan, he said, though he didn’t tell me that right away. Instead he asked for water. When I entered the room and set down my bucket, the door closed behind me and a light came on, so bright I thought I was caught. I froze for a moment, but not long. I was too angry to be scared. There was a cup with a lid on a sink and I brought it to him. His wrists and ankles were strapped to the bed. One of his wrists was bandaged too. I helped him sit up and drink, and that’s how it started. That’s how I came to be writing this letter now. Moan smelled funny. He smelled human like piss and alien like hay. His hair was like black feathers. He was shaking. Some kind of animal. He didn’t know how long he’d been in that place, he said.
It was long enough to know our language, even though he spoke it kind of funny. Don’t, he said, when I started undoing the straps on his wrists. He said it was no good without a plan. He needed a map, he told me. A map to his ship. It was somewhere in the Castle.
Writing this I’m afraid you won’t understand. You’ll think I’ve run away after a man or just for fun, as if on a dare. It’s not true. The light in the room was white. There was a tautness to it. The tautness of Moan’s throat as he swallowed. After he had drunk he lay down quietly like a child. Who are you? he asked. His voice was hoarse. I told him my name. He repeated it several times, as if to fix it in his memory. Later he told me he was afraid of losing his mind. Since I couldn’t undo his straps I just knelt there with my hand on his arm. I’d taken my gloves off. He lay with his head turned on the pillow and looked at me. How was it possible? He told me that every day the bishop came in and talked to him about the path of Christ. The walls had a strange gleam, like silver paper. Moan said he was being treated for something, but he didn’t know what. Was it the adjustment to our planet that made his body so tired, or was it, as the bishop said, the state of his soul? Every day he was given sermons and injections. They said they would let him go when he was well enough. If he accepted Christ he would be given a job in the Castle. If he remained stiff-necked he would be shunned. Shunned means killed, I told him. I know, he said. He was afraid we would kill him anyway, no matter what he did. He was afraid we were lying to him, using him for something. His blood had been bottled. With a thin instrument, a nurse had scraped the inside of his mouth. When he said that I put my head down on his chest. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I listened to his heart. The walls were strangely silver like the walls of the church decorated for Easter with the silver birds we made in Miss Snowfall’s class. Do you remember those silver birds? They hung near the ceiling, glittering. There was a feeling of enchantment. A smell of oranges. Each of us got an orange after church, fresh from the grottoes. The flesh was sweet, the rind bitter as gall, delicious. Moan’s heart beat underneath my cheek. His breath was in my hair. Help me, he said. If you could take the magic of a childhood Easter, and put it together with all the sorrow we have learned since then—then, Agar, you might understand how I felt. All I can tell you is that I was born again. Was it his face, his mask-like face with the black nostrils? Was it his tender throat? His heart? He was talking because he didn’t understand that already I had crossed over to his side, that I was going to save him. He told me that he was a transporter. He carried materials between the cities—cities, he said, that orbited a dead planet. He had never been to Earth, but his father was born there. Sometimes he picked up Earth materials and transported them from one city to another. Only the bravest transporters visited Earth, which was on fire. He was not one of the bravest. He was lost. He told me that space was full of pathways, and sliding through one of these pathways he had been cast into the galaxy of Fallow. Then he had noticed the Castle and stopped, curious. He had not known that there were human beings so far from the cities. And now he was strapped to a bed. But if I would help him to find his ship he would take me anywhere. He would let me look at his collection of Earth things. I will show you a piece of amber, he said. I will show you a beetle’s shell. But for these things, Agar, I would never leave you. Nor would I leave you for Moan himself. But a falling star means space is real. A fallen angel means there is a Heaven.
Do you remember the story Miss Snowfall told about the two old people? The ones who tried to get medical help at the Castle. The brother was dying and his sister was carrying him around. You liked it so much, and I thought it was garbage. I hated that it was supposed to be sweet and maybe even comforting but the old people couldn’t find anybody to help them. There was a long middle part about the sister going from room to room getting turned away. It should have been just boring but it was worse. Well I have been that unhappy sister. I went looking for Moan’s ship through the Castle. It’s so bewildering, so big. An impossible place. Twice I got caught in the wrong halls. The second time it was Elias from school who caught me—he works in security now. I was lucky it was him because he wrote off my second offense. He didn’t report it. If he had, they would have suspended me for two weeks. On the third offense they kick you out. Thank you so much, Elias, I said, beaming at him, this schoolyard bully, this thug. He still has that way of looking you up and down slowly, that hateful grin. He beats Lia, you know. She told me he beat her for leaving his shirts on the line. After smiling at him in that winning way I wanted to wash my face in solution. I knew I couldn’t afford to keep getting caught. Then one week we had a big job. Drain the tanks, take them apart, clean each individual piece, put them back together. It was an urgent job and because we didn’t finish on Friday we had to spend the weekend in the Castle. That was when I knew it could be done. There was a room full of cots where we slept. Cupboards with dried food you could eat after adding water. Of course I left in the night. I ran to Moan. The halls were weirdly empty and dark. I went much faster, with no bucket, my torch alight. I had trouble finding him though, because I always got turned around in the tunnels. There was always a moment when I thought: I can’t do this. I’m lost. Or I’d come into the gray halls but not find h
is room. That was worse because I was so afraid he had been moved or shunned. I was afraid I’d never find him again. Running along the gray corridor, flashing my light, slamming the door panels, shouting. I didn’t care about being caught then. The sister in Miss Snowfall’s story was lucky, she got to carry her brother on her back. If only I could have carried Moan. Then, very faintly, I’d hear his cry. I ran to him. I never found anyone else in the gray halls. Earthmen must not come to us very often. That’s why I’m grateful—awed by grace. That’s why I consider myself blessed.
I found him on Friday night and again on Saturday. On Sunday I went looking for his ship. I didn’t find it that night. The Castle’s too big. So many silent halls. Strange places. The labs. A ghostly room full of empty cribs. I failed, but I began to find excuses to stay at the Castle. Unfinished work. Sometimes I broke things, nothing serious but enough to let me stay. And I found the ship. I saw it through a window. There are other ships too, abandoned in the distance, half buried in sand. Some are half ruined, broken apart, pieces scattered around them, as if people have been mining them for parts. Moan’s ship is the newest one, still whole. He laughed when I told him, his eyes bright. He guesses we’ve been trying to get in, but only he can open the door. Only he knows the code. He told me the other things I needed to find, the suits we have to wear, the door to get out. That door, I am sure, doesn’t have a secret code. It won’t be locked. Why would anybody want to get onto the surface? But I can feel vertigo pulling me. It’s pulling me outside. It’s pulling me toward the moment when I will set the prisoner free. To unbuckle the straps on his wrists, his legs. To see him stand up and walk. The flesh unbound. Everything feels alien to me, but also very beautiful. Oh Agar. The most I can say is that I love you and I am sorry. But I have always been a stranger in this place. At least now I will be a stranger without the pain of having failed to belong. For as the hymn says, this world is not my home.
Temar
Do you remember the way to the Castle? Its door glimmers above the village, pale and opalescent like a sun. I have realized of late that the Castle door is, even more than the church, the center of our life. That radiant disc beams down on us with a soft, embracing gaze, overseeing everything: the wedding processions going to the church, the coffins borne toward the grottoes on carts, the gossip in the dispensary line, the small battles, bargains, kindnesses, and contracts. Without it we should be worms. A door is so precious, even if one never steps through. I think of this, walking with Ezera and Sheba after church: how the presence of that door subtly brightens the atmosphere of the village, making us feel humble, yes, and ignorant, but also protected, saved. I sit at the table in Ezera and Sheba’s kitchen, surrounded by their irrepressible children, who call me Aunt Hat. They snatch the rolls from the central bowl; Sheba dispenses scoldings and flicks the eldest son, her favorite, with a napkin. Eventually the children run outside, calling each other in the raw air. They play a game called “cows,” using corncobs for hoofs. They swing on the gate, singing a nonsense song. “Deedy-daddy-doe,” over and over. We are the saved. We have survived.
I lost my sister, I lost my teacher, we all lost the Young Evangelists, the openness and vibrancy of their ideas, but we still have this: our survival. Ezera and Sheba take care of me. Sunday afternoon is mine; I never have to worry that Sheba’s sister Naomi will stop by. Naomi and I have not been close since she married Selemon, and though I am no longer angry, our meetings are unnatural and stiff. But Naomi and Selemon never visit her sister after church, and in this way they take care of me, too. At four o’clock Sheba walks me out to the road. “Good grief!” she exclaims every time she realizes she’s still wearing her apron. This is when she tells me about her struggles with the children and even with Ezera. In the green afternoon, with coils of hair escaping from her cap, she looks just as she did at school. There is no end to writing, I think, no end to the project of rescue. I realize that Sheba, too, is illuminated. She too deserves to be saved from oblivion, this quiet friend whose face, though lined, always looks burnished as if rubbed with butter. I have left so much out of these pages. I ought to have mentioned Sheba’s kiss at the crossroads, her vigorous hug that almost knocks me over, the jar of pickles she gives me for Lia, whose house I will pass on the way, a jar miraculously concealed until the last moment. I ought to have mentioned Lia’s smile, her capacity for delight, the way she insists I sit down and try some pickles, goes to the coolbox for eggs, and prepares a dish for Elias who, since his accident in a Castle fire, lies immobile in the bedroom. It’s always the same plate, painted by Lia herself with tiny buds. I ought to have mentioned their daughter, with her halo of dense black hair, a child beloved by all the village and already nicknamed the Spark, who sits on my knee and sings while Lia feeds Elias pieces of egg. I ought to have mentioned the burst of dazzling harmony on the road outside, young people singing their way to Bible study. They are preparing for the Christmas service. I ought to have mentioned “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming.” I ought to have mentioned that we are happy.
When, in moments of anxiety, I scratch the underside of whatever I happen to be sitting on with a fingernail, I know that I am engaged in a process of grounding, which, it seems to me, is similar to the process of writing. In this manner I hold myself down and remind myself where I am. Walking from Lia’s to the old place, I think of gravity. When our ancestors chanced upon Fallow, this bleak and poisonous piece of rock, it had almost nothing to recommend it but its gravity, near kin to that of Earth. I think of how, in our displacements throughout history, we have always tried, with a poignant doggedness, to replicate what we have lost. So the hills of Pennsylvania replaced the lost hills of Germany and the wheat fields of Saskatchewan those of Russia. Now, on Fallow, our grain corridor holds yellow-green fields of teff. We are that heart-breaking paradox: wandering farmers. I walk to the pasture, knowing that Yonas will still be with the cows; he has inherited our father’s affinity for them, and also—thank God—our mother’s cheerfulness. And there he is, putting the cattle into the corral. I approach him through the rich, mellow air of the pasture. He is worried about the ventilation and immediately begins talking about it as he settles the animals for the night. I have always been afraid of cows, but my brother moves among them with ease, often laying a hand casually on a flank—perhaps his form of grounding. Once he told me, in a moment of uncharacteristic pensiveness, that to look into a cow’s eyes is to look on paradise.
He is probably right, I think, as we leave the pasture for the dust. The kitchen light is shining from the house. This house has belonged to Yonas since our father died, while I moved to the Henhouse and, after some years, our mother went into Elderly Housing. Mother will be home now, as she always visits Yonas on Sundays, teaching her grandchildren to play cat’s cradle. Her years and even her sufferings have endowed her with the dignified grace one sees in so many elderly people of Fallow. This grace manifests in an almost physical way, like a shining underneath the skin. I kiss her cheek. Do you see what I am trying to say? I am saying that for some of us there are only three choices—fade, fester, or run—but others have a fourth choice: to endure. I am saying that our father could not bear the loss of Temar, his heart went out like a blown match, while our mother took control of all the funeral preparations, even unscrewing the door herself to make room for the coffin. Which of them yielded? I kiss her cheek, I pat my niece’s back, I look up as my nephew tugs my arm, wanting me to toss a ball with him, this boy of nearly eleven years old, handsome and tall like my father, who still sleeps in his parents’ bed because he’s afraid of the dark. I am saying we live a life defined by the loss of paradise, structured spiritually by the Castle in the sky. Each of us must decide how to respond to the idea—the comfort, the torment—that there is another world.
And these figures that have passed so close to me without touching—what do they mean? I am speaking of the Earthmen. What does it mean for our survival that others have also survived, that we are not the only souls pluck
ed from the flames? Sometimes at night their names run through my head. Earth, Patient, Keep. Moan. No, I will not reopen the Separation Debates. I see the Earthmen rather as signs that appeared and then dissolved, like communications from Gabriel or writing on a wall. They came to say: Not yet. Earth is not yet for you. Keep patient. And I do keep patient, but I can’t help moaning. I moan like any exile, full of longing for the lost homeland. By the dustyard of Fallow I sit down and weep. For there is another world. There is a world of apples and flowering trees, a world where the fig tree putteth forth green figs. There is a world where goats appear from Mount Gilead, where flocks of sheep come up from the washing, each one bearing twins. Please accept these pages. Accept, this time, my submission to the archives. Accept my absolute submission. If I have written of shame and sadness, I have done so out of reverence for the story we fight to preserve with every breath. I have done so in the spirit of one who endures, in the spirit of those who built the Ark, who set off knowing that, for them, the waters would never subside, who took on self-preservation as a duty and a vocation, who survived for the sake of the sacred human story. For there is another world, a future Earth. There is a land called Canaan. There is a land flowing with milk and honey. There is a country of turtledoves, a garden of pomegranates, of saffron, of camphire, of myrrh. And we will never go there.
Tender : Stories Page 26