Coming back from the Long Pack Trip to Stevens Mountain weary and dirty, thirsty and in bliss, coming down from the high places, in line, Sue jogging just in front of her and Ev half asleep behind her, some sound or motion caught and turned Norah’s head to look across the alpine field. On the far side under dark firs a line of horses, mounted and with packs—“Look!”
Ev snorted, Sue flicked her ears and stopped. Norah halted in line behind her, stretching her neck to see. She saw her sister going first in the distant line, the small head proudly borne. She was walking lightfoot and easy, fresh, just starting up to the high passes of the mountain. On her back a young man sat erect, his fine, fair head turned a little aside, to the forest. One hand was on his thigh, the other on the reins, guiding her. Norah called out and then broke from the line, going to Sal, calling out to her. “No, no, no, no!” she called. Behind her Ev and then Sue called to her, “Nor! Nor!”
Sal did not hear or heed. Going straight ahead, the color of ivory, distant in the clear, dry light, she stepped into the shadow of the trees. The others and their riders followed, jogging one after the other till the last was gone.
Norah had stopped in the middle of the meadow, and stood in grass in sunlight. Flies hummed.
She tossed her head, turned, and trotted back to the line. She went along it from one to the next, teasing, chivying, Kimmy yelling at her to get back in line, till Sue broke out of line to chase her and she ran, and then Ev began to run, whinnying shrill, and then Cass, and Philly, and all the rest, the whole bunch, cantering first and then running flat out, running wild, racing, heading for Horse Camp and the Long Pasture, for Meredy and the long evening standing in the fenced field, in the sweet dry grass, in the fetlock-shallow water of the home creek.
The Water Is Wide
“You here?”
“To see you.”
After a while he said, “Where’s here?” He was lying flat, so could not have much in view but ceiling and the top third of Anna; in any case his eyes looked unfocussed.
“Hospital.”
Another pause. He said something like, “Is it me that’s here?” The words were slurred. He added clearly enough, “It’s not you. You look all right.”
“I am. You’re here. And I’m here. To see you.”
This made him smile. The smile of an adult lying flat on his back resembles the smile of an infant, in that gravity works with it, not against it.
“Can I be told,” he said, “or will the knowledge kill me?”
“If knowledge could kill you, you’d have been dead for years.”
“Am I sick?”
“Do you feel well?”
He turned his head away, the first bodily movement he had made. “I feel ill.” The words were slurred. “Full of drugs, some kind drugs.” The head moved again, restless. “Don’t like it,” he said. He looked straight at her now. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “Anna, I’m cold. I feel cold.” Tears filled the eyes and ran down from them into the greying hair. This happens in cases of human suffering, when the sufferer is lying face up and is middleaged.
Anna said his name and took his hand. Her hand was somewhat smaller than his, several degrees warmer, and very similar in structure and texture; even the shape of the nails was similar. She held his hand. He held her hand. After some time his hand began to relax.
“Kind drugs,” he said. The eyes were shut now.
He spoke once more; he said either “Wait,” or “Weight.” Anna answered the first, saying, “I will.” Then she thought he had spoken of a weight that lay upon him. She could see the weight in the way he breathed, asleep.
“It’s the drugs,” she said, “he’s asked every time if you could stop giving him the drugs. Could you decrease the dose?”
The doctor said, “Chemotherapy,” and other words, some of which were the names of drugs, ending in zil and ine.
“He says that he can’t sleep, but he can’t wake up either. I think he needs to sleep. And to wake up.”
The doctor said many other words. He said them in so rapid, distinct, and fluent a manner, and with such assurance, that Anna believed them all for at least three hours.
“Is this a loony bin?” Gideon inquired with perfect clarity.
“Mhm.” Anna knitted.
“Thought wards.”
“Oh, it’s all private rooms here. It’s a nice private sort of place. Rest home. Polite. Expensive.”
“Senile, incont . . . incontinent. Can’t talk. Anna.”
“Mhm?”
“Stroke?”
“No, no.” She put her knitting down on her knee. “You got overtired.”
“Tumor?”
“No. You’re sound as a bell. Only a little cracked. You got tired. You acted funny.”
“What’d I do?” he asked, his eyes brightening.
“Made an awful fool of yourself.”
“Did?”
“Well, you washed all the blackboards. At the Institute. With soap and water.”
“That all?”
“You said it was time to start all over. You made the Dean fetch the soap and buckets.” They both jolted softly with laughter at the same time. “Never mind the rest. You had them all quite busy, believe me.”
They all understood now that his much publicised New Year’s Day letter to the Times, which he had defended with uncharacteristic vehemence, had been a symptom. This was a relief to many people, who had uncomfortably been thinking of the letter as a moral statement. Looking back, everyone at the Institute could now see that Gideon had not been himself for some months. Indeed the change could be traced back three years, to the death of his wife Dorothea of leukemia. He had borne his loss well, of course, but had he not remained somewhat withdrawn—increasingly withdrawn? Only no one had noticed it, because he had been so busy. He had ceased to take vacations at the family cabin up at the lake, and had done a good deal of public speaking in connection with the peace organisation of which he was co-chairman. He had been working much too hard. It was all clear now. Unfortunately it had not become clear until the evening in April when he began a public lecture on the Question of Ethics in Science by gazing at the audience in silence for 35 seconds (approx.: one of the mathematical philosophers present in the audience had begun to time the silence at the point when it became painful, though not yet unendurable), and then, in a slow, soft, rough voice which no one who heard it could forget, announced, “The quantification of Death is now the major problem facing theoretical physicists in the latter half of the Western Hemisphere.” He had then closed his mouth and stood gazing at them.
Hansen, who had introduced his talk and sat on the speakers’ platform, was a large man and a quick-witted one. He had without much trouble induced Gideon to come backstage with him, to one of the seminar rooms. It was there that Gideon had insisted that they wash all the blackboards perfectly clean. He had not become violent, though his behavior had been what Hansen termed “extraordinarily wilful.” Later on, in private, Hansen wondered whether Gideon’s behavior had not always been wilful, in that it had always been self-directed, and whether he should not have used, instead, the word “irrational.” That would have been the expectable word. But its expectability led him to wonder if Gideon’s behavior (as a theoretical physicist) had ever been rational; and, in fact, if his own behavior (as a theoretical physicist, or otherwise) had ever been adequately describable by the term “rational.” He said nothing, however, of these speculations, and worked very hard for several weekends at building a rock garden at the side of his house.
Though he offered no violence to others or himself, Gideon had attempted escape. At a certain moment he appeared to understand suddenly that medical aid had been summoned. He acted with decision. He told the Dean, Dr. Hansen, Dr. Mehta, and the student Mr. Chew, all of whom were with him (several other memb
ers of the audience or of the Institute were busy keeping busybodies and reporters out), “You finish the blackboards in here, I’ll do Room 40,” and taking up a bucket and a sponge went rapidly across the hall into a vacant classroom, where Chew and Hansen, following him at once, prevented him from opening a window. The room was on the ground floor, and his intention was made clear by his saying, “Let me get out, please, help me get out.” Chew and Hansen were compelled to restrain his arms by force. He struggled briefly to free himself; failing, he became silent and apparently thoughtful. Shortly before the medical personnel arrived he suggested in a low voice to Chew, “If we sat down on the floor here they might not see us.” When the medical personnel entered the room and came close to him he said loudly, “All right, have it your way,” and at once began to yell wordlessly, or scream. The graduate student Chew, a brilliant young biophysicist who had not had much experience of human suffering, let go of his arm and broke into tears. The medical personnel, having had perhaps excessive experience of human suffering, promptly administered a quick-acting sedative or tranquilliser by hypodermic. Within 35 seconds (approx.) the patient fell silent and became tractable, accepting the straitjacket without resistance, and with only a slight expression (facial, not verbal) of bewilderment, or, possibly, curiosity.
“I have to get out of here.”
“Oh, Gid, not yet, you need to rest. It’s a decent place. They’ve eased up on the drugs. I can see the difference.”
“I have to get out, Anna.”
“You’re not well yet.”
“I am not a patient. I am impatient. Help me get out. Please.”
“Why, Gid? What for?”
“They won’t let me go where I have to go.”
“Where do you have to go?”
“Mad.”
Dear Lin,
They continue to let me visit Gideon every afternoon from five to six, because I am his only relative, the widower’s widowed sister, and I just sort of barge in. I don’t think the doctor approves of my visits, I think he thinks I leave the patient disturbed, but he hasn’t the authority to keep me out, I guess, until Gideon is committed. I guess he doesn’t really have any authority, in a private rest home like this, but he makes me feel guilty. I never did understand when to obey people. He is supposed to be the best man here for nervous breakdowns. He has been disapproving lately and says Gideon is deteriorating, ceasing to respond, but all he gives him to respond to is drugs. What is he supposed to say to them? He hasn’t eaten for four days. He responds to me, when nobody else is there, or anyhow he talks, and I respond. He asked me about you kids yesterday. I told him about Kate’s divorce. It made him sad. “Everybody is divorcing everybody else,” he said. I was sad, too, and I said, “Well, we didn’t. You and Dorothea, me and Louis. Death us did part. Which is preferable, I wonder?” He said, “It comes out much the same. Fission, fusion. The human race is one great Nuclear Family.” I wondered if the doctor would think that’s the way an insane person talks. Maybe he would think that’s the way two insane people talk
Later on Gideon told me what the weight is. It is all the people who are dying. A lot of them are children, little, hollow, empty children. Some of them are old people, very light, hollow, old men and women. They don’t weigh much separately, but there are so many of them. The old people lie across his legs. The children are in a great heap on his chest, across his breastbone. It makes it hard for him to breathe.
Today he only asked me to help him get out and go where he has to go. When he speaks of that he cries. I always hated for him to cry when we were children, it made me cry, too, even when I was thirteen or fourteen. He only cried for real griefs. The doctor says that what he has is an acute depression, and it should be cured with chemicals. But Gideon is not depressed. I think what he has is grief. Why can’t he be allowed to grieve? Would it destroy the rest of us, his grief? It’s the people who don’t grieve who are destroying us, it seems to me.
“Here’s your clothes. You’ll have to get up and get dressed, Gideon. If you want to come away with me. I didn’t get permission. I just can’t get through to that doctor, he wants to cure you. If you want to go, you’ll have to get up and walk.”
“Shall I take up my bed?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Bible.”
“For God’s sake don’t go religious now. If you do I’ll bring you right back here. Hurry up. Here’s your pants.”
“Please get off me just for a minute,” he said to the dying children and old men and women.
“Oof, how thin you are. Let me button that. All right. Can you manage? Hang on. No! hang onto me. You haven’t been eating, you’re dizzy.”
“Dizzy Giddy.”
“Do shut up! Try to look ordinary.”
“We are ordinary.”
They walked out of the room and down the hall arm in arm, an ordinary middle-aged couple. They walked past the old woman in the wheel-chair nursing her doll, and past the room of the young man who stared. They walked past the receptionist’s desk. Anna smiled and said in a peculiar voice at the receptionist, “Going out for a walk in the garden.” The receptionist smiled and said, “Lovely weather.” They walked out onto the brick front path of the rest home, and down it, between lawns, to the iron gate. They walked through the gate and turned left. Anna’s car was parked halfway down the block, under elm trees.
“Oh, oh, if I have a heart attack it’s all your fault. Wait. I’m so shaky I can’t get the key in. You all right?”
“Sure. Where are we going?”
“To the lake.”
“He went out with his sister, doctor. For a walk. About half an hour ago.”
“A walk, my God,” the doctor said. “Where to?”
I am Anna. I am Gideon. I am Gideanna. I am sister’s brother, brother’s sister. I am Gideon who am dying, but it is your death I die, not mine. I am Anna who am not mad, but I am your brother, who is mad. Take my hand, brother, from the dark! Reich’ mir das Hand, mein Leben, komm’ in mein Schloss mit mir. O, but that castle I do not want to enter, brother mine; that is the castle I do not want to enter. It has a dark tower. Who do you think I am, Childe Roland? A Roland to your Oliver? No, look, we know this place, this is the old place, where we were children. Let’s dance here, on the lakeshore, by the water. You be the tower, I will be the lake. You will dance in me reflected, I will be full of you, of the wave-broken shimmering stones. Lie lightly on me, tower, brother, see, if you lie lightly we are one. But we have always been one, sisterbrother. We have always danced alone. I am Gideon who dances in your soul, and I am dying. I can’t dance any longer. I am borne down, borne down, borne down. I cannot lie, I cannot dance. All the reflections are dissolved. I cannot dance. I cannot breathe. They lie on me, they lie in me. How can the starving be so heavy, Anna?
Gideon, is it our fault? It can’t be your fault. You never harmed a living soul.
But I am the fault, you know, The fault in my soul and yours, the fault itself. The line on which the ground moves. So the earthquake comes, and the people die, the little puzzled children, and the young men with guns, and the women pausing shopping bag in hand in the dissolving supermarket, and the old people who crouch down and reach out with wrinkled fingers to the faltering earth. I have betrayed them all. I did not give them enough food to eat.
How could you have? You’re not God!
Oh yes I am. We are.
We are?
Yes, we are. Indeed we are. If I weren’t God how should I be dying now? God is what dies. God is bereavement. We all die for each other.
If I am God I am the Woman-God, and I shall be reborn. Out of my own body I shall bear my birth.
Surely you will, but only if I die; and I am you. Or do you deny me, at the grave’s edge, after fifty years?
No, no, no. I don’t deny you, though I’ve often want
ed to. But that’s not a grave’s edge, my young darkness, my terror, my little brother soul. It’s only a lakeshore, see?
There is no other shore.
There must be.
No; all seas have one shore only. How could they have more?
Well, there’s only one way to find out.
I’m cold. It’s cold, the water’s cold.
Look: there they are. So many of them, so many. The children float because they’re hollow, swollen up with air. The older people swim, for a while. Look how that old man holds a clod of earth in his hand, the piece of the world he held to when the earthquake came. A little island, not quite big enough. Look how she holds her baby up above the water. I must help her, I must go to her!
If I touch one, they will take hold of me. They will clutch me with the grip of the drowning and drag me down with them. I’m not that good a swimmer. If I touch them, I’ll drown.
Look there, I know that face. Isn’t that Hansen? He’s holding onto a rock, poor soul, a plank would serve him better.
The Unreal and the Real, Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin Volume 1: Where on Earth Page 20