The Traitor

by Michael Cisco

  I sit still and my mind always races. When I lie down to sleep my mind runs off until it exhausts itself, it runs itself to sleep, into the ground. My mind is always running and I am always distracted, so I neglect everything, I never do anything with my complete attention. I didn’t neglect Wite. He had my complete attention. I didn’t neglect Tzdze. She had my complete attention. I never neglected either of them, and they never failed to command my complete attention. My mind never stopped running but I never neglected them, or failed to give them my complete attention. Wite and Tzdze turned into the terrain that my mind was running through, and that hasn’t changed. Now I can barely keep my head up, I can barely raise it over the page, and sometimes I don’t bother, I let my head lie to one side and my hand, which already knows these pages, goes on by itself, and the lines do not stray or scribble over each other, the words are all still distinct. But I want to watch my hand write, because, when my head is lying to one side, and I’m not seeing the words, then I see past the edges of my memory. I know I will be there soon. I know I will be past all memory soon. I can barely keep my head up, but my mind races faster than ever, faster than it ever did before, but without tearing everything to pieces, through terrain that is all Wite and Tzdze. When I die, I will go to ground in terrain that is all Wite and Tzdze. I’ll have only Wite and Tzdze, entirely surrounding me. When I look past my memories I am looking for Wite, and for Tzdze, and that is my only present temptation. I get paralyzed looking for them there, this is the only thing that stops my hand writing. When I remember Wite and Tzdze, I want to do justice to them, and so I don’t let go, I redirect my eyes, so to speak, and set them on the paper again. Who is reading me? I won’t ask that seriously yet. I prefer this way, not knowing what I’m doing, not giving shape to things or refusing to.

  When I came in, I saw Tzdze right away. She was teaching Xchte, and didn’t notice me. She looked fresh. I’d never seen her looking as fresh. If she had seen my face then, she might have seen everything there, but she was distracted with Xchte and I was able to take my face away. I didn’t want to imagine what my news would do to Tzdze. I had been told to thank her. The moment I came in and saw her, I was certain I wouldn’t thank her. Then it occurred to me that Wite might decide to thank her personally, and I had second thoughts. I avoided her and waited, because I couldn’t make a decision. And then all at once I told her. I told her too abruptly—one moment it was not in my mind to do it, the next moment it was decided that I would tell her at once. I brought her onto the balcony because I had decided, all at once, that I would tell her only there, on the balcony overlooking the courtyard, where I had first seen her. Although we were barely speaking to each other, still hardly able to speak normally, in an everyday fashion, with each other, I was able to bring Tzdze out with me onto the balcony. Together, we were only standing and listening on the balcony. The woods were quiet, I remember they were humid. I had no idea what it would do to Tzdze. I was with her, with my news, and all at once I told her, exactly as I had told her about the crypt when Wite had robbed it. I told her and when I looked I saw the lights reflected in Wite’s glasses everywhere in between the trees, and in the fold in the mountain where the cave was, in all the dark that was there, I could see the reflections and Tzdze saw them—all the color left her face. Tzdze shrank back somehow, not quickly, dwindled and shrank back. When I looked again, Wite’s glasses were gone. Tzdze was barely visible. I told her that Wite said “thank you.”

  Tzdze swayed once. I could hardly see her, though she still gleamed in the dark. Her fresh face was gone. I left Tzdze there. I saw her only once more, when I was leaving. I mean in my entire life I saw Tzdze only one more time after delivering Wite’s “thank you” on the balcony. The servants were repainting rooms downstairs, the downstairs was full of servants and paint. Tzdze was sitting in one of the rooms off the hall, in supervision, watching some of her servants whitewashing the walls, I suppose. Tzdze was sitting in the middle of the room, not expecting me to pass by, and when I did as I went to leave, Tzdze only glared out the door at me from where she sat. I stood in the doorway, Tzdze sat and glared at me. She did not move, she seemed outraged, as though she were furious; Tzdze glared at me and I stopped in the doorway and for a moment I couldn’t move. Tzdze turned her eyes away then, without changing her expression—she didn’t see me anymore. Tzdze looked away; I couldn’t move. Then I went into the room anyway and stumbled over the doorjam as I came in, I fell a little from the doorway into the room and ended up on my knees by Tzdze’s chair. I called to Tzdze without getting up, I touched her hand, a statue’s hand, and Tzdze didn’t see me any more than a statue would have seen me, kneeling at her feet. Even at her feet Tzdze ignored me, like I wasn’t there, although her face hadn’t changed. While I was kneeling there I started crying, and while I was crying Tzdze never moved and her face stayed frozen the way it was. She glared at the wall where the servants were still doing their painting. I begged Tzdze to look at me and cried, I forget how I left the room but I know she was always sitting fixed in her chair with her eyes turned away, even when I turned I could feel across my back that Tzdze hadn’t moved—she never spoke, I never knew what Tzdze was thinking. I stood in the hall and Tzdze had glared at me, I tried to see inside her glare in my memory, for nothing, I stood there and my good sense had told me to leave right away. I don’t trust my hateful good sense. I forced myself to go to Tzdze regardless of my good sense. I had already decided to leave right away but I didn’t want to stop trying yet, I had to leave on Wite’s instructions but I wanted to stay and stand or kneel in front of Tzdze until she did something, but Wite had wanted me to leave right away. I didn’t want to leave. If I never saw Tzdze again—how could I have left her like that? I didn’t have a choice. I left and I never saw Tzdze again. I never knew anything more about her or what she was thinking about me, except that Wite never molested her.

  Tzdze must forgive me. I know that it’s impossible for Tzdze to hate me. Do you understand that I must believe Tzdze will forgive me sooner or later, and that Tzdze can’t hate me, it must be impossible or else I’m already dead, the fact that I’m still alive is my guarantee: as long as I live, I work, as long as I work I will earn Tzdze’s forgiveness even if I have to chase after her soul forever from the moment I die until doomsday, I’ll do whatever I have to do and pay absolutely any price until she forgives me. Tzdze will forgive me and must forgive me, and Tzdze can’t hate me. This is where this ends.

  My uncle Heckler tortured me as part of my apostate education. He tortured me with the eyedrops to inoculate me against torture. The preparation for torture is to be lovingly tortured by your teachers, full of remorse. They shock to inoculate against sterner shocks, full of remorse all the while. I brought Tzdze onto the balcony and unknowingly gave her that stark shock, that amounts to showing her how things stood then, better that than allow Wite to come to her directly. I took Tzdze out onto the balcony without any reservation. In the room off the hall where Tzdze had sat to supervise the servants, Tzdze taught me my lesson, showed me how things stood with her then, and it was my turn to be tortured. My uncle Heckler tortured me. Torture can only teach you how to be tortured. The torture that comes later is a test and a reminder. There’s no civilization without this well-meaning torture, it is the cornerstone of civilization, I will never accept it, I will never be reconciled to it, to hell with it! I ignored my hateful good sense and fell down in front of Tzdze’s chair and begged her with tears in my eyes not to refuse to see me precisely in order to make the torture worse, to show Tzdze more suffering than she wanted to cause, or to satisfy her—not enough. Even Tzdze wasn’t above reckoning whether or not I was suffering enough, and of course everyone reckons the suffering they endure and the suffering they mete out like this, they can’t help but be unfair; there’s no getting away from transactions of suffering like this, people reckon how much they suffer and how much suffering they mete out in a secretive little economy where each new smart loses its peculiar chara
cter and joins the rest in a completely vague succession of injuries; no one actually reckons up debits and credits in suffering, but at every new smart a legion of old tortures are resurrected and their shades go out to meet it and compound it, give us a feeling we have a debt to discharge. Each new smart loses its peculiar character and discharges itself on some other undeserving person, and so on and on like money. I can only hope that Tzdze will remember what I did and see clearly how I was tortured, and finally forgive me. Tzdze is the only one whose forgiveness I want. Only Tzdze could understand, and Tzdze is the only one whose understanding I want. Tzdze will never read this. I will find her soul when I’m dead. This is idle talk. This is only idle talk. My uncle Heckler thought he tortured me for my own good, this was his way of being a “good Alak.” The Alaks especially torture their subjects with a sad face, full of remorse, they sincerely torture their subjects. They overran the world with open arms. They buried and prayed over each one they killed, with tears. My guards here are apologetic, they wanted me to move to the infirmary and when I refused they said they would “honor my wishes.” My two guards nurse me with more concern than I ever had from my family. I’ve never had so much attention. If I wasn’t dying they would certainly have hanged me by now, but even so with unpretended grief and a funeral. What will my guards do without me? Certainly find a new sick old man. No one gets past them. If I asked them to despise me, they might, out of respect. I’m glad to know that my so-called countrymen and some others here want me executed right away, out in the street, but there is no doubt at all that there is not one Alak among them, and that not one Alak or Alak representative would listen to them. The Alaks are as if all of one mind; there’s no hate in them, but they are indestructibly hard. They are ruthless especially when they are respectful. Ruthless respect is the Alak’s secret weapon.

  I was ruthless from the start, but my uncle Heckler and the Alaks made me more ruthless. Wite and Tzdze both were and are utterly ruthless as am I within my limitations. From the start I loved ruthlessness, my uncle Heckler’s ruthlessness of thought was overpowering—I learned to think that way with real joy, stark and rigorous as Wite and Tzdze. I didn’t want to fail them. My wife was ruthless within her limitations, she was like me. I feel nothing but impatience and despair when I’m surrounded by flaccid helpless city people. Shapeless confused lives of flaccid helpless city people carrying on flaccid every day, every day as shapeless and confused as the next and that will last from day to day forever to the grave and beyond with, at the very best, a moment or two that had accidentally taken some shape.

  I can be driven to desperation by the soft press of those shapeless confused lives, I’ve been driven out of every city in the world by the soft press of helpless confused flaccid city people. I’ve been driven out or worn out or pushed all around in every city in history—I pushed myself out of that living human quicksand. I did everything in my power to escape and undo the living human quicksand of the cities. My eyes were only for looking at spirits, my uncle Heckler had trained them specifically to see through human quicksand.

  I left Tzdze, rose to my feet all at once and left the house for the last time, directly. When I came out from the hedges I was struck by the full light of the sun for the first time in days. For the first time in days the sky was clear, the shadow cast by the hedge had a sharp edge—I knew exactly when I passed out of it and the full light of the sun fell on me, directly in view of the mountain and cave and the stone outbuilding and in full view of Wite when I emerged from the hedges, leaving Tzdze’s house for the last time. I didn’t know where I was going yet, Wite was waiting to tell me. I left without knowing where I was going and rode toward the trees through the clearing. The horse was only walking—this weird happiness came into me, with something like a click I was euphoric from out of confusion and fluttering everywhere inside me there was weird happiness that made the world shake and grow thin. The world looked as if it were stretched thin over something bright. There’s no way to make you understand this, my head was all empty except for this weird happiness that had pushed out everything else. Even in full view of the house, mountain, cave, the stone outbuilding, in full view really of Wite and Tzdze, whom I had just left forever, this euphoria overcame me out of nothing. I don’t want to make a mystery out of something simple—all I mean is that this sudden feeling made my head swim, even what I’d just been through with Tzdze, that scene, seemed charming and small from where I was standing, all at once I was elevated even on level ground and I seemed to see the whole story in one piece as easy to grasp as anything directly in front of me would be, like a ball tossed into my hand. I didn’t see anything, nothing I couldn’t have seen or remembered normally, there was nothing new except a sense that I was spread out in connection to every moment and you could say “touching everything.” I was directly touching everything there all at once. The weird happiness was a kind of world-lighting feeling but I know my head was only swimming, no one can see anything that isn’t there, there’s no depth to look further into, my head was swimming, I felt euphoria attached to whatever occurred to me, it was the light I looked with. What I want to say is that there was nothing else in that weird happiness, it didn’t go anywhere, there was no miracle. Wite wasn’t causing anything to happen inside me.

  Going out for him, knowing that I was going to do what he told me to do, that was what caused it. It wasn’t mysterious, it was confusing. I left Tzdze’s house in full view of them both and the woods closed around me—that finished it.

  Chapter Ten

  If Wite hadn’t come back what difference would it have made, Tzdze and I saw him and knew Wite had come back, Wite had never left, but even if Wite hadn’t been there to be seen Tzdze and I would have seen him, Tzdze and I couldn’t fail to see him everywhere because he was in our eyes already, Wite was branded into our eyes so that even if Wite wasn’t there to be seen we would still be seeing Wite. Our memories would have supplied Wite to our senses lacking Wite as an object; we were not accustomed to seeing Wite, no one could have accustomed himself to seeing Wite, he didn’t persist for us out of habit, he came at Tzdze and came at me at will, out of Tzdze’s memory and my memory, without any remembering. Wite was not dead for Tzdze and me, Wite was not dead to the world or to himself. Genuinely dead, lost, people of whom we say “our dead,” will endure in living memory; Wite was not dead or lost, not confined to living memory, Tzdze and I did not strictly speaking remember him, Wite was something else entirely, he was no phantom memory, he was no phantom supposition like a living acquaintance either, Wite was not properly presented to our senses but he was no plain memory no dream no delirium Wite was not a “mental state” Wite was no “mental process,” Wite is here immediately. Wite is immediately at my side—he is at my side, not in my head he is at my side. Almost nothing has changed since Wite “died.” I have changed more than Wite.

  The first people I came across I watched for days without letting on that I was there, I was content to be their bogeyman and spy on them or simply watch them without probing. I watched them go to and fro, every day to and fro, where they lived all together by a half-buried flat boulder in a clearing with a well and a big barn and a two hundred pound bell on a wooden scaffold. They hit the bell with a mallet to parse out the day, it was far too heavy to ring with a cord, its bronze was three inches thick. I watched them for days and I had no idea what I was looking at: they were creatures, I didn’t understand anything they did. I watched them for days without knowing what they were, nothing they were doing made sense. For days I watched them and I never once could make sense of them or find anything to say about them, except that they went to and fro, worked, ate, and rang the bell. Days passed, I continued to hide in the woods and watch them mystified.

  I was mystified by them. They fascinated me. I was disturbed and mystified, ready to be content with them if I could only settle somewhere on who they were, ready to be content simply with watching them; but I had to tell them about Wite. Wite had instructed
me to tell people about him, and I was going to do it. They were so incomprehensible, these creature people I mean, I couldn’t even begin to rack my brains about a way to tell them about Wite—that was a question that couldn’t be asked. They came and went, and I watched them and learned nothing, I watched them thoughtlessly. They delved in the ground during the day and busied themselves around the barn at night, and rang the bell. Wherever they went they would all go together, they were always bunched together like a gaggle of geese. Once I did look around the barn, when they were all out in the field. I went through some of their things, a huge pile of incomprehensible things. Long before the bell rang them in from the field I had hidden myself away again. The bell would ring them in from the field, they rambled back in a knot as always, with the big farmer in the center. No matter what, the big farmer was always in the midst of them, he was the first I could single out from them. The second was his unmarried sister-in-law—I hadn’t noticed at first but she never went with them, she had to stay behind and ring the bell.

  She was invisible, she vanished the moment they left and appeared only to ring the bell. The moment that knot of them returned she disappeared in their midst. I never could figure out where she went. When I knew their habits I could get closer to them. The big farmer’s unmarried sister-in-law vanished on her own before I dared go down to look at their incomprehensible piles of goods. I learned all their patterns of coming and going and little else until I got close enough. There was next to nothing to know since they went in the morning and came in the evening every day without stopping, without variation, forever the same business filling every day, and eventually I could get closer to them, while they were working. They were always oblivious to anything but each other and their work, they never went past each other and their work. I got close enough to hear them speak and make out their words. I didn’t understand, it dawned on me that I didn’t know their language, it dawned on me with tremendous relief that we wouldn’t be able to speak to each other, that they wouldn’t be able to speak their work-every-day-the-same language at me, and I wouldn’t be forced to listen to them speak out of their work-every-day-the-same lives. All of a sudden it was easy, I waited for them in the road. I left my things by the flat boulder in the clearing and waited. The bell rang behind me, soon I could see the knot coming toward me. They rushed forward when they saw me and came up around me, they knotted me in with them and stared at me, ever since I met Wite I’ve looked especially horrible. More and more like a walking cadaver every day, and these earthy people were knotted in on all sides of me without speaking—I looked from one face to another. One by one I turned around and looked from one face to another, I wanted to make some gesture to them but I couldn’t even raise my arms along my body without shoving against them—some invisible gesture from the big farmer towering over us all set the knot moving and I was borne along with it. I had room to move and I began gesturing at them; for nothing, because they were all staring at me but staring without actually paying attention, or paying me the worst kind of attention, not the sort of attention one gives to a person, even a stranger is a recognizable person. They stared while I waved my arms at them, I was trying to get them to look back down the road, toward Wite’s mountain just visible over the trees. They waved back at me and smiled, pointing down the road in imitation of me, staring at me without stopping. We arrived in the clearing by the bell and they stopped around me, staring and smiling and mimicking my gestures, thrusting their malicious smiling stares right in my face and imitating me while I tried to get the big farmer’s attention. No one spoke. The big farmer’s unmarried sister-in-law came around the bell and joined her smiling staring face to the others’ and she imitated their imitations. The big farmer was the only one who hadn’t imitated me or smiled at me.