“Allusion. He wants us to think of that story.”
“Because?”
No one said anything. Then one young woman with dark skin and eyes quietly asked someone to pass the syrup.
The blonde woman asked, “What do we learn from the author’s description of his customary aches and pains?”
“That he’s a hack,” said the same young man who had spoken earlier. “He drinks. He writes so much every day that his wrists ache. If you write that much, you can’t be thinking about what you’re writing.”
“He doesn’t have to be a hack,” said a thin young woman who hadn’t touched her pancakes.
“He isn’t a hack,” said a young man with a wispy beard. “He drinks red wine. A hack would drink beer or whisky.”
“Both,” said another student. “Whisky and a beer chaser.”
“What?” scoffed the young man who thought the author was a hack. “You don’t think that writers of trashy novels might drink red wine?”
“Not in fiction,” said the thin woman. “In fiction every detail is a signifier.”
“I wish there wasn’t any alcohol at all,” said the dark-eyed woman. “You don’t have to drink to write. I’m a writer, and I don’t drink.”
The young man who thought the author must be a hack raised his eyebrows. “Published anything?”
She glared. “What’s your point?”
“We’re drifting a bit from the matter at hand,” said the gray-haired man. “The author is said to have become an abstraction. What kind of abstraction?”
“Point of view.”
“Omniscient point of view.”
“No,” said the young man who talked the most. “Limited omniscient. He sees inside of Crystal’s head, but not Larry’s.”
“That’s just because there’s not much in Larry’s head to report,” said the dark-eyed woman.
“Well, wait a minute,” said the young man with the beard. “The author characterizes Larry’s motivation. ‘What Larry wanted was much simpler, particularly at the moment.’ That reports Larry’s subjective experience. Omniscient.”
“But this supposedly omniscient point of view,” said the dark-eyed woman, “didn’t see us sitting here in the author’s dining room. Not initially.”
The thin woman said, “I don’t think it matters what kind of abstraction. I think the point—”
“Where is the author now?” said a student who hadn’t spoken before. “He was right here in the beginning, and now we haven’t heard from him. Is he even in the story any more?”
They looked around.
The thin woman who still hadn’t touched her pancakes began to stack plates, preparing to clear the table.
The gray-haired man looked at his watch, then looked meaningfully at the blonde woman.
“Right, then,” she said. “That’s it for today. For next time, bring us one paragraph on what you think is the principal purpose of this story.”
“Double-spaced,” he reminded them.
He looked at her. She at him. And they took it as a confirmation of their dreams and good intentions when, at the end of the hour, the students stood up and stretched their young bodies.
IV. Tales
The Djinn Who Lives Between Night and Day
THE DJINN AL-FAQ LIVED in the crack between night and day. He rarely ventured out into the worlds of his fellow djinn, much less into the world of mortal men. No one but God and Al-faq himself knew whether or not he was a faithful djinn, so the obedient sprits and disobedient alike thought of him as one of their own. Djinn of both kinds visited Al-faq to tell him their stories.
Tayab, the djinn of ashes, came to the crack between night and day. Laughing, he called out, “Cousin! I have such a story to tell you!”
“What have you done now, Tayab?”
The djinn of ashes only laughed some more, so Al-faq said, “Well, come in, cousin, and have some tea. You must tell me your tale from the beginning.”
When the tea was brewed, Tayab said, “Do you know the people of the red desert? The ones who live along the river?”
Al-faq gave no answer but nodded for Tayab to continue.
“The plague came to them,” said the djinn of ashes. “Every house had its dead. You never heard such wailing! That was what drew me, cousin. The anguish of the living. All those lamentations carried on the wind…I know an opportunity when I hear one!”
Al-faq said, “Go on.”
“From one house, I heard shrieks more terrible than all the rest. There a woman was tearing at her clothes, pulling out her hair. Her husband tried to hold her hands at her sides. He was crying, too, but not like her. His face was wet, but he was silent. Her arms and his were bloodied where she had scratched them. And her keening! Oh, I have seldom heard grief like hers. It was delicious,” Tayab said, “because I was sure I could make something of it.”
“Some mischief,” said Al-faq. He sipped his tea.
“Better than mere mischief,” said Tayab. “Now, listen. I sniffed around their house, and in seven places I found the shadow of the dark angel. Seven times during the plague he had entered and taken a soul. Children, I guessed. This woman had borne seven children, and now all of them were dead. When she was too spent to cry out, she whispered their names.” He told Al-faq what the names of the children had been. “Her husband tried to comfort her. Useless. He said her name, and she would not answer. When he tried to meet her gaze, she turned away.”
“His grief must have been as great.”
“Perhaps, perhaps. Who can tell when they aren’t loud like her, when they don’t rend their clothes? So I waited until he was asleep. Her eyes were still wide open, though it was too dark for her to see. I knelt over her and I whispered, ‘Mortal woman, I am the angel of the gate, and I have heard your prayers.’”
“The angel of the gate?” said Al-faq.
“It’s nothing. I made it up. But I said to her, ‘I will return your children to life if you will but keep faith with me.’”
“And if an angel hears of this?”
“But I didn’t take the name of any angel, cousin. Didn’t I just say that I made it up? I said to the woman, ‘Get up. Go out. Walk west. Go until you can go no farther. I will give you a sign that your children have returned, but you must stay there by the sea, alone, with nothing. You must never speak again. You must never seek your children, for if you find one then all seven must die.’”
“And she agreed to this bargain?”
“She did! She got up without waking her husband. She took only the clothes she wore, and she walked! Day and night she walked! Out of the desert and over the mountains, all the way to the sea!”
“And you? Did you return her children to life?”
Tayab laughed. “Return them to life?” He held his sides and laughed some more. “Well, I did what I could, cousin. I did all that it was in my power to do. I came to her in the night and told her to look to the eastern sky. Stars fell from the heavens, and as each one fell, I gave it the name of one of her children.”
“She believed you.”
“Far better than believed me, cousin, and that is the sugar in the tea! I left her. And when I returned the next night, there she was within sight of the waves, sheltering in a cave in the cliffs! I said, ‘Now, listen, mortal woman. I am no angel. I am a djinn. As for you, I have never met a greater fool, for I can no more restore your children to life that I can make the sun rise in the west. You don’t need to stay here and starve beside the sea. Go home, now. Go home!’”
“And did she?”
“That’s the wonder!” The djinn of ashes laughed once more. “She would not answer me, for I had told her that she must not speak. And she would not believe me, for I had told her that she must keep faith with the angel of the gate. So there she stayed, wordless, friendless, with only a cave for shelter, steady in her faith in a divine servant that does not exist!”
“But you exist, cousin.”
“I do, to be sure,” said
Tayab with a grin.
“And did she starve?”
“Villagers by the sea found her. They bring her food. They think she is a holy woman.” He laughed again.
“And what of her husband?”
“That’s not my story, cousin. He still lives, I suppose, if he has not died yet.”
“I wonder about him.”
Tayab waved the thought away. “But what do you think? I took everything from her, even more than I intended! And now even if I try to return what I stole, she won’t take it! Have you ever heard of thievery such as mine?”
Al-faq stroked his face with his long fingers and gave no answer. Perhaps Tayab expected none.
When the djinn of ashes had gone, Al-faq left his home in the crack between night and day. He went to the world of mortal men. It took him a long time to find the red desert and even longer to find the house with seven now fading shadows. The fields next to the house was overgrown. The man who lived there was hollow-eyed and thin.
Al-faq waited for nightfall. When at last the man fell into his bed, he moaned his wife’s name. Al-faq leaned close in the darkness and said, “Mortal man, I am the angel of the gate, and I have heard your prayers. As you feared, your wife, like your children, is dead. I will return them all to life if you will but keep faith with me.”
“Yes?” said the man. “You can do this?”
“Get up,” said Al-faq. “Go out. Walk south. Walk until you can go no farther. I will give you a sign that your wife and children have returned to life, but you must stay there by the sea, alone, with nothing. You must never speak again. You must never seek the ones you love, for if you find one, then all eight must die.”
The man got up. He threw on his clothes. He took up his walking stick and set out at once. Through the night he walked. He walked through the next day. In time, he crossed the desert. In time, he crossed the plains. Al-faq, invisible, came behind him. When the man had walked all the way to the sea, the djinn waited for nightfall and then showed him eight falling stars in the northern sky. To each falling star, Al-faq gave a name.
“Remember,” said the djinn. “Never speak. Never look for them.”
The man’s face was wet with tears. He nodded.
“Keep faith with me always, no matter what.”
The man nodded again and smiled wearily. He made a gesture of gratitude, of blessing.
“No, do not bless me,” said Al-faq. “I am not worthy.”
At the nearest village, the djinn went from house to house and whispered in the ears of many sleepers: “There is a holy man beside the sea. Find him. Care for him.”
Then the djinn Al-faq, who perhaps is a faithful djinn and perhaps is not, returned to the crack between night and day. And if the world has not yet ended, he lives there still.
Listening, Listening
ANYONE WHO SANG OUT sweet and high over the waters of the lake might bring up the monster if the light and air were right, but none of the men living in those rough cabins were willing to sing out in a voice like a woman’s, and they weren’t about to let their women do it, either. No, they would say, whatever is meant to be seen will appear of its own accord and will rise when it is meant to rise. What lies in our keeping is the fruit of our traplines: the fox, the hare, the mink. If our roofs were beneath the lake, our traps would be there, too. We will not disturb the sleep of anything we don’t mean to kill.
So the women met by night, slipping from the sides of sleeping husbands when moon and mists were as they had to be. They gathered on the rock that rose, shiplike, from the farthest shore, and they held their breaths to hear the sound of coils unwinding underneath the waves. Then some one of them would softly sing a note as clear as water, and another voice would join hers, and another after that. The men, still asleep in their beds, would dream of masts and sirens.
Sometimes a shadow would glide beneath the surface. Sometimes not. Sometimes the waves would clash with ripples that rose up from below. Sometimes not. And then on some rare nights, the monster, dripping water from its nostrils, would raise its head into the glowing mist to listen to the one-note song.
And then the giant head would slip back beneath the waves. The steady song would slip back into silence. The women, silently, would slip between black trees, back to their cabins, back beside their husbands.
Among themselves again in daylight, the women would exchange no glance, speak no secret word about what passed in the night, even after the men, with traps and chains rattling from their shoulders, had made their way into the shadows of the trees.
Once a man who dreamed of sirens reached for his wife and, not finding her, woke up. He rose, naked, and followed the sound, the one high note in many voices, until he came to the water’s edge. Out across the lake, he saw the women singing, saw the water ripple underneath the moon.
The moonlight shone whitely on his body, and he let the cold air in through his nose and out through his mouth. And then, without meaning to, he lifted up his voice, singing with the voice of a woman from the body of a man.
The water did not froth in the center of the lake. The great head did not rise into the mist. At last, one by one, the women fell silent, until the man was the last one singing. He stayed there on the rocky shore, sending his voice out over the water long after the women, even his wife, had made their way back to their beds. When he stopped singing, he crouched beside the water, unable to go home. When the eastern sky began to pink, his nakedness drove him back.
His wife was waiting up. She had a fire in the stove, and she looked at him strangely when he came in.
He stood confounded for a moment, and then he lowered his brow. “What was that nonsense you were up to last night?” he demanded. Then he put on his clothes. “I can’t look at you, woman,” he said. “I’m ashamed of the things you do. I am so ashamed.”
He never spoke of it to her again, but some nights he would wake to the sound of singing. He would not stretch out to feel the bed empty beside him, but would lie very still and angry, imagining what it looked like, the massive head held high above the water, listening, listening.
The Rower
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a young woman who meant to drown herself. So many sorrows had come to her that she decided her grief was too much to bear. The day had not yet come that was the right day for drowning. But it would come. So she stayed in a hut in a village by the sea. She waited.
A storm came up on the shortest day of the year. She had seen great storms before, but this one was different. The rain struck the houses like arrows shooting between the timbers. Again and again, the wind blew open doors and windows that had been lashed shut. Roofs peeled away. In the village, people shivered under their beds, cold and wet and waiting for the storm to end as light faded from the day.
The woman in the hut by the edge of the sea was not under her bed. She had gone down to the water, where the waves smashed themselves upon the rocks. Her head was bent low against the rain and spume. She was listening. She was smelling the cold air. Yet it wasn’t sound or smell that told her what her heart knew. Something about this storm was different from all the other storms she had ever known. There was sorrow in this dark wind. In the heart of the storm was a pain like her own.
The boats were tied down beyond the reach of the storm tide, but she freed one and dragged it to the water. The waves nearly broke the boat against the rocks, but the woman got her oars into the locks and rowed into the dark, pulling against both wind and wave. Bit by bit, she rowed away from the shore.
As she rowed, the storm grew even more violent. The waves were as tall as haystacks on either side of her, but still she rowed. At length, the waves diminished. The wind settled, then suddenly died. The sky overhead cleared, though she saw the stars glow red, as if through smoke. In the center of this stillness was a green light the like of which she had never seen before. She rowed toward it.
She paused to rest and to look at what she was rowing for. She could make out a lantern bobbing on the w
aves, and then the boat on which the lantern hung. It was a rowboat.
She rowed closer and looked again. She’d never seen a boat like this one before, fashioned with curls and knobs and flourishes of carving. The wood gleamed black in the lamp’s strange light, and a figure pulled at the oars, following the coast as the storm had done.
When she lifted her oars again they creaked in the locks, and the figure froze. He stood up. He watched her.
She rowed closer. Her heart pounded, but she reminded herself that she had come to die. What could she fear?
His garments were tattered. His skin was gray, and stretched over his ribs as if he’d been nourished by nothing but rain drops for a long, long time. In the lantern’s green glare, his eyes shone red as if with a light of their own.
“You are not him,” he said in a voice that rolled in her ears like wind. “You are not the one I seek.”
Her grief had long since made her bold. “Who are you?” she asked him.
“I am the one he made when the world was new.”
“Who do you seek?”
“The one who made the world.”
She asked him why.
He told her that when God had made the world, He had seen at once that sorrow was part of it. Indeed, pain had made the world as much as light had made the world. To make a world was to both begin and end with sadness. Oh, there was love, too. There was beauty. But love and beauty did not diminish sorrow. Sometimes, they increased the pain. And God did not desire to take all knowledge of this upon himself.
“So he made me,” said the Rower. “As you, child, are made in God’s image, I am made in the image of his pain. I will endure until the end of time, unless I can find him, unless I can make him take me back into himself. But though he is everywhere, he is never where I seek.”
Her boat drifted so near that she could look into his eyes as she might look into a lover’s. He held her gaze, unblinking. She dared to hold his gaze in return. The red glow of his eyes was the fire of stars burning through all time.
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