Amateur Barbarians

by Robert Cohen

  “Yeah, I heard.” She turned to Oren. “You poor man. We pity you. You must have terrible karma.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “Yeah, right. I wasted like three years of my life in that dump. And I learned, oh, let’s see…nothing?” The dog came up and trailed worshipfully behind her. She ignored him. She plucked a banana from the fruit bowl, then immediately put it back. “You used to be so cool too. My friends all had these huge crushes.”

  “Were you in my class? I can’t remember.”

  “You had my friend Julie, the year you came. I had Gromlich, the evil troll. Julie said you were nice. At least you had a pulse, not like the others. She said you’d never last out the year though.”

  “I wasn’t so sure myself.” He snuck a look at Gail, who was examining her daughter with the pursed, preoccupied expression of a tailor. “In fact I’ve been thinking I might take a little time off one of these days.”

  “Oh?” Gail asked coolly, her eyes still fixed on her daughter. “Is that a fact?”

  “This might be my last school year for a while, in fact. I’ve got some irons in the fire. Various options I’m exploring. We’ll have to see.” He willed himself not to use the words in fact again, or ever. He too made a point of addressing himself to Mimi now. “So how was the play?”

  “Sucked. I left at intermission.”

  “And how was Jeremy?” her mother asked.

  Mimi rolled her eyes.

  “Have something real to eat. You must be starving. And why are you going out without a jacket?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Honey, you know—”

  “I’m fine.”

  Bruno, having given up on soliciting any demonstrations of affection from this particular gathering, settled on the floor with a sigh.

  “Okay, well, maybe I’ll see you guys later,” Oren said. “Thanks for everything.”

  No answer. It would have been easy to despise himself at this moment, but instead he chose to believe that neither of the Hastings women had heard him, occupied as they were with glaring at each other from opposite sides of the counter. The clench of their jaws, the angle at which their necks rode their shoulders, made them seem like one irritable woman arguing with her own reflection, from which there was no possibility of escape.

  Oren, all one of him, slipped out the back door unattended. Isolato.

  The night sky was busy, full of the comings and goings of fugitive stars. He walked around the house and then down the driveway to his car. His feelings were a mystery to him. Sometimes there seemed no distinction between preserving your feelings and not having them, between spreading yourself thin and erasing yourself completely.

  As he pulled away, he saw Bruno standing at the front door, his bad breath fogging up the glass. The dog, he recalled, was half-blind with cataracts, so no doubt he couldn’t see Oren very well, and that was why he never barked out a good-bye.

  14

  Afar

  So here he was: no-man’s-land.

  All morning they’d hoofed it around Lake Afrera, through the funnel of the Rift, and then descended single file into the inferno of the depression. It was among the lowest places on earth. Teddy’s mule, stumbling over the rocks, made high squealing noises of excitement or complaint. The ground was cratered and dark; it seemed never to have known trees. The sun bore down like an anvil. A hot wind from Aden, like a dog with a chew toy, worked over his face.

  With the grit in his mouth Teddy looked out over this moonscape of lumps and stones—the volcanoes towering in the west, top-heavy and jagged; the dry rubbled chasms that ran between the peaks like the ghosts of old rivers; the buzzards picking over their suppers, tearing off strips of leathery flesh from mummified carcasses of dik-diks and goats (the withered, shrunken heads grinned eerily in rictus, as if they’d died laughing). Well, he thought, if this was not an absolute then nothing was. A nakedness too harsh for volunteers…

  Out here only the dead things seemed alive. The obsidian rocks that flew through the air. The dirt devils that staggered drunkenly across the plains. The canyons, gashed and scored by ancient floods, that yawned open hotly, like the ravaged throat-linings of primordial beasts. His mule plodded along in his own shadow, scrabbling over cacti and the egg-shaped stones they came upon everywhere, marked by fine, scalloped impressions that might have been fossils. The geologists loved it out here in the Rift: all the discoveries were right on the surface.

  Teddy loved it too. Though the feelings were not unmixed. For one thing he was delirious. He’d come down with a fever their second day out. His face itched, his butt was riddled with suppurating sores, the blood blisters on his palms were puffy and pliant as whoopee cushions, and with every pitch and roll of his mule the meniscus in his knees crinkled up like tinfoil. Not that he was complaining. Heat and glare, sand in his mouth, sulfurous gases that came hissing up from the bowels of the earth—all this was what he’d come for. Even the fever. At first he’d tried to manage the fever with pills, but it kept flaring up again, a flame fed by an unseen draft. Now he submitted to it. He let it have its way. That was what you did out in the desert, he thought. You submitted.

  Dr. Dave had been called back to Addis…how many days ago now? Four? Five? He remembered watching him zip up the medical bag—the instruments bulging against the leather—in his cramped office at the leprosarium. Here was a man with real battles to fight, against real enemies; why waste any more time squiring around this idle, doughy tourist, accommodating his personal whims?

  Teddy too was sick of the personal. Sick from the personal. He longed to get beyond the self, beyond all selves, as Philip had. Maybe it was unintelligent to model your behavior on that of a corpse. But you had to start somewhere. And surely the dead should not be exempted from the only sphere still theirs to travel.

  His brother’s invisibility had long since become his own. He could conceive no separation from it. He understood that this was what had driven him to the desert. This twitch in the blood. This infected wound.

  The doctor’s clinical radar must have registered this as well, for he’d gone ahead and arranged passage for Teddy with one of the salt caravans headed to Afar. A jeep would take him from Awash to Serdo; from there he’d travel the rest of the way in the traditional style, by camel and mule. “I should warn you,” Dave said, shaking hands by the leprosarium gate, “the Danakil isn’t for everyone. It’s a pretty extreme environment.”

  “Come now. It can’t be any more extreme than what you showed me yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Those kids we saw, with their necks all swollen up like beach balls? Jesus, you’ve spent so much time in that godforsaken clinic of yours, they don’t even register anymore.”

  “Oh, they register, believe me. And you’re right, they’re forsaken. But I doubt the nuns would agree with you that He’s the one to blame.”

  “And you?” Teddy said. “Who do you blame? The government? The poverty? The ignorance?”

  “I don’t have time for blame. I’ve got a two-year-old girl down at Mother Teresa’s I need to go see tomorrow, she’s got a choroidal tumor that’s metastasized. In other words, her eyeball’s exploding.” He sounded, as he always did speaking of the worst cases, almost chipper; like an athlete facing a nasty opponent, it lifted his game. “Anyway it’s not your problem. You’re off on your own adventure, right?”

  “Right.” But Teddy thought he could hear below the words a soft gong of indictment.

  “Just be careful. You’re looking at about a week of hard mule travel back and forth. And the Danakil isn’t set up for tourists. Very few amenities, even by desert standards.”

  “Listen, I’ve had plenty of amenities. More than my share. I can make do without.”

  “Famous last words,” the doctor said drily. It was his version of a joke. He turned to Idris. “What do you think, my friend? Will you two be all right on your own?”

  Idris was Dave’s third-in-command at the le
per clinic, a bald, hollow-cheeked Harari with a scrubby beard and an expression at once mournful and put-upon, like Job’s. He puffed away at a hand-rolled cigarette from a discreet distance, waiting for them to conclude their business. To the doctor’s question he gave no reply. An educated man, with twelve years of training, he was a former burn nurse in the one good hospital in Addis. If he resented in any way being assigned to chauffeur and babysit this antic, overgrown white person, he kept it to himself.

  “You’ll want to watch out for earthquakes too, naturally. There’s a lot of geothermic activity up there. They say the Rift is sinking. Bottoming out. It should be pretty interesting. It’s not every day you get to see a new ocean being born.”

  “I wish you could come with me,” Teddy said. “You’re like the only friend I’ve got.” In response to which naked declaration, the doctor looked down at his running shoes uncomfortably. “But, hey, I understand. You’re needed elsewhere, God knows.”

  “And you think you’re not?”

  “Honestly, Doc, I can hardly remember at this point.”

  “Well, maybe it will come back to you up there.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  They shook hands impersonally. Teddy was hoping for a big, manly, backslapping embrace—his eyes in a sudden access of emotion had misted up like storm windows—but they had both reached the age where good-byes were difficult. The world of men was a lonely place. Idris looked on without expression. He was accustomed to visitors breaking down in Africa. Why else would they come?

  “You’ll want to watch out for the soldiers and the bandits. Djibouti’s a mess these days. Eritrea’s worse. Somalia of course is off the charts. Not such a great time to go wandering by yourself, even with an American passport. Especially with an American passport. Right, my friend?”

  Idris sniffed aristocratically, elevating his eyebrows to indicate agreement.

  “Stay close to Idris. He’s not very chatty, but he gets along with the nomads and he knows the territory. I’d hate to have to call Danny and tell her that her father’s lost out in the desert somewhere. Ishi?” The doctor had addressed this last remark to Idris. Now he turned to Teddy. “She thinks you’re serious, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About that school you told her you’re going to build. She believes you.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Dave gave a noncommittal shrug. “Me, I’ve seen a lot of people come over here and get all fired up to do things. What actually gets done in the end is another story.”

  “Listen, it’s a done deal. Take my word. You just put me in touch with the donors, I’ll take care of the rest. I’ve got it all planned out in my head.” Teddy scratched some bug bites through his shirt, trying not to tear off the scabs—his shirts were streaky with dried blood as it was. “By the way, how do you feel about solar panels? I’m thinking with this infrastructure, renewables may be the way to go.”

  “Just some pencils and paper would be fine. Books. Blackboards. Teachers. Best to start simple. Farenjis have this way of always aiming too high. Then when things go wrong, they blame the Africans and go home.” Dave smiled absently, patting his pockets to find his car keys. “One last thing? I’d hide that camera when the Danakil are around. They can be touchy, and they already think Allah’s angry with them as it is. The ground’s shaking below their feet. Even if that whole testicle-around-the-neck business is just a myth, it makes sense to be wary.”

  Teddy nodded agreeably, cinching up his bag and then hefting it over his shoulder. “Hang on. What testicle-around-the-neck business?”

  “Traditionally, a Danakil warrior will cut off the genitals of his enemy and hang them around his neck. Otherwise he’s thought to be an unsuitable husband.”

  “Funny how they left that out of the guidebooks.”

  “Not to worry. The Afaris are mostly just salt traders and farmers now. It’s sad in a way. They’ve been nomadic since the birth of Christ. Right, Idris?”

  Idris nodded sleepily. He’d guided enough foreign visitors around over the years, all those NGO people and Midwestern donors with their fanny packs and water bottles and endless questions, to keep his answers brief. “Heathens,” he said, and spat on the ground.

  “It’s the way of things now,” Dave said. “The kids either go radical religious or they go start up IT companies. Either way the real action’s in the cities.”

  “Yeah, how you gonna keep them down on the farm. We get that where I live too,” Teddy said. “Anyway, no worries. I’ll keep a low profile, I promise. I’m done with antagonizing people. I’m done with even noticing people.”

  But apparently he wasn’t. Because even as he stepped forward and, the hell with it, caught the little guy in a bear hug after all—and they did both smell pretty beasty at this point, pretty far gone—his gaze floated up like a weather balloon over the doctor’s shoulder, where the lepers had gathered, their faces unreadable behind the half-closed shutters, looking down. Teddy waved and smiled. A rush of air went through his mouth. He must have been gritting his teeth: the crown over his molar had splintered at last, and given way for good.

  So far, thank God, they’d met zero bandits. And only a handful of soldiers, peacekeepers actually, in a blue-and-white UN van, jouncing and swerving down the atrocious road from Didhay. As it rattled past with its salt-crusted chassis, the soldiers in back nodded somnolently. They were the first white people Teddy had seen in days, and the sight was not encouraging. Their faces were like masks, waxen and gluey in the heat. He was glad to see them go. He’d begun to feel oddly protective of the caravan, its quiet ways and monotonous rhythms. The hollow thump of hooves, the wind whistling through mountain passes, the musical chitchat of the nomads: these were now the sound track of his days.

  The nomads of course ignored him. They were lean, proud men with long noses and abysmal teeth. Every so often their leader, Zelalem, would pivot in his saddle and level a cold, hawklike gaze over his shoulder, confirming that the stranger was still sweatily slumping at the back of the line on his wheezy hardbacked mule. Then he’d kick up the pace. Teddy’s presence among them had been bought and paid for; nonetheless he knew himself to be a source of embarrassment. Idris rarely spoke to him, preoccupied as he was with his own afflictions. The poor man was allergic to his mule. He pulled his headdress high on his face, covering everything but his eyes, the pupils, black as berries, stranded behind the red chicken-wire of the veins.

  Teddy’s own face lay bare. Below his patchy beard his cheeks were burnt, the skin flaking off his lips. On the good side however his love handles were gone. The flesh in his thighs no longer wobbled; great slabs of fat had dropped from his hips. He was down to a subsistence diet: one flat disk of bread, a few dates and almonds, some charred stringy slivers of barbecued goat. This desert regimen agreed with him. But then so had most regimens in his life—his job, his marriage, his exercise workouts…he was a regimental type. He’d have made a good legionnaire. High atop his mule, his shoulders burnished bronze, his faded denim shirt wrapped on his head like a burka, tracing an unmarked path through the sand and the dust, he felt like Hannibal on his elephant, like Lawrence on his camel—the last of a noble lineage of lonely and intrepid men.

  He thought of stoic Ishmael, banished to the wilderness, and for what? A little roughhouse with his kid brother. But then all the old patriarchs were capricious fathers, as capricious as God himself. Stony, half-blind, they bestowed their blessings on the younger, weaker, cannier siblings—the Isaacs, the Jacobs, the Josephs, the Philips—and sent off the big boys to fend for themselves.

  But these were old grievances; why dwell on them now? His parents were gone; his kid brother was gone. Arguably he too was gone—off the rails, off the charts, off the grid. Out here the sun burnt the past off your shoulders; it blistered and flaked away.

  All the manufactured materials of his life—his house, his car, his insulated basement with its treadmill and weights—seemed petty and unreal to hi
m now, discardable, like the used household goods at the Dire Dawa Mercado. That too was a desert, that labyrinth of junk. He’d been wandering it for years without even knowing. Looking for a way out. But he wasn’t out yet.

  There were only two ways out of the desert, he thought. One of course was death. The other he didn’t know.

  His map was bleached and torn, frayed along the folds. His watch was lost. He had no radio. There was no one to talk to but Idris, and Idris did not like to talk. Hence he felt obligated to live through his senses. It seemed punishment and blessing both. For all the hardships, or else because of them, his body tingled and thrummed. The desert had sharpened his nerve endings, filed them down to fine points, as the bedouins did their teeth. Every loss seemed a gain, every deprivation an enhancement. The narrower the funnel, the more precious and distilled what dripped through it. The taste of fresh water at the end of the day; the brilliance of the stars; the cool, dewy dawns; the scent of tamarisk and wormwood on an invisible breeze.

  His mind, bored, had silently unhitched itself; it floated off to watch from a distance, jotting occasional notes in an invisible book. There was too much in the desert to process. Too much or too little. Even the low things he came to savor, the ugly things. The odors of the working animals, their infested manes, their steaming ropes of piss, the nonchalant and untroubled way they rid themselves of waste as they plodded mechanically across the sand.

  It was as if a window had shattered; the world in all its particularity rushed in. For too long he’d lived locked up inside himself like a ship in a bottle. All those hours buried in the basement, groaning over dumbbells, running nowhere on the treadmill. Why? He was an outdoor person—a mover, a builder, a Land Rover. That was his nature. Best to start simple was the doctor’s prescription. What could be more simple than this? Plodding on dumbly like an animal. Onward was his only direction. So he rode on. That was what you did out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. You rode on.