Unquenchable Fire

by Rachel Pollack

  Jennie climbed the ladder and stepped out onto the platform. Even with goggles she had to squint against the roar of sun coming off the steel face. As she hurried through her routine she thought how she’d soon be travelling with Allan Lightstorm, nice and safe inside the Picture, packed in with all her neighbours. She shook her head. The idea didn’t seem real.

  Jennie’s next service took her all the way to Well-of-Hope Junction, a small collection of houses, offices, some garden apartments, and a small shopping mall southeast of Poughkeepsie. In the centre of the village stood the well, a deep pool of yellow oil. Once a year people gathered at dawn in Poughkeepsie and marched behind a group of Tellers to this pool, where a black metal fence prevented people from falling or jumping in. Along the way they drenched their clothes—special head-to-toe outfits of absorbent paper—in a pink liquid meant to contain all the past year’s guilt, fear, and despair. When the exhausted crowd reached the well they all ripped off their paper suits and threw them in the oil which digested the paper but left the miseries bubbling on the surface.

  It didn’t work. Not any more. Some people managed to drop a few obsessions or annoyances, but most left their basic catalogue of unhappiness intact. In the Time of Fanatics people had stripped off not only their fears but even their memories, and sometimes their entire personalities. They had to pay people to drive them back to town and teach them who they were supposed to be.

  The people who lived in Hope in those days after the Revolution would sometimes, on windy days, find themselves coated in other people’s emotions, causing them to run up and down the street acting out long-gone crises. Even today, it took a certain kind of person to live in Hope, despite the money made from tourists who came to photograph or take part in the ceremony. They enjoyed suddenly getting enraged at someone they’d never met, or mourning the end of a love affair they’d never experienced.

  Jennie finished her service and left Well-of-Hope as quickly as possible. The next service took her back to Poughkeepsie, to the guardian living on the roof of the county offices building on Market Street. Though the building was closed for the Recital (Jennie had her own key) a large crowd had gathered in the small plaza in front of the lobby. Mostly out-of-towners who would later go on to recitals at Wappingers Falls and Beacon, they had come to visit Poughkeepsie’s holiest site, the Founder’s Urinal.

  Originally a fountain decorating the old lifeless building, the Urinal marked the spot where the Army of the Saints had gathered after their boat ride to Poughkeepsie. Ecstatic at the victory, the water in the fountain had leaped into the air, drenching a flock of geese, a pair of crows, and a pilotless helicopter, all of which had come to witness the liberation. Either to celebrate, or because their bladders had pressured all at the same time, the Founders, men and women alike, had pissed together on the dry concrete, filling the basin with a bright light and a wonderful smell, noticeable on the other side of the river. You could also see, if you put on dark glasses and looked closely, a few drops of blood from one of the Founders whose prostate had sold out to the enemy. Over the years, instead of drying up or even subsiding, the liquid continued to bubble and hiss and give off its fragrance (the light had sadly dimmed from dilution with the inferior urine of the local Tellers.)

  Poets and artists, especially those with creative blocks, came from all over the country to sip from the sacred water. The night before, in a televised ceremony, Allan Lightstorm had added his own stream to the pool, and now so many pilgrims were lined up with their tiny cups (on sale at a kiosk beside the building) that Jennie had to shove to get to the door. She smiled, thinking of Maria booming through the crowds on the Mount. On the way out she saw the police carrying off some man who’d attempted to add his own profane urine to the holy liquid. According to the crowd the police had slapped his penis away just in time, causing it to bathe some scrawny dog who was now trying to shake himself dry. Laughing, Jennie made her way back to the car.

  She sat a moment, watching the crowds from across the street. She still loved such things—relics, shrines. She’d studied True History because of them, thinking of the subject as a sort of grown-up Lives of The Founders. She leaned back in her seat. Maybe today would lift her out of her depression after all. Maybe Lightstorm would dissolve all the layers in a spray of story more powerful than the Founders’ piss. Anyway, if she didn’t get the damn car going she’d boil away. She started up the engine and drove up the empty street, heading towards her last stop.

  As she reached the highway and swung north towards Hide Park Jennie thought about the changes she could make in her life if Allan Lightstorm reconnected her to existence. She could go back to school. She could go and see her mother, throw so much love at Beverley she’d have to love Jennie in return. She could even try to start things up with Mike, arrange to meet him all over again. God, she thought, all I can think of is the past. No plans, no ideas, not even any hopes. Just an idiotic desire to revive a dead life.

  The last husk on her list stood on top of a hill instead of a tower or a rooftop. One of Jennie’s favourites, the guardian watched over the complex of buildings that formed the Poughkeepsie Bird of Light factory. She parked the car in the small space reserved for Servers and stepped onto the grass to stare up at the husk, one of the largest in the area. Sometimes she could feel the power buzzing all around her. She made a face. Not today apparently. Today she just felt—tired. She squeezed shut her eyes, then opened them wide. Just a few minutes more and then she could go to the Recital.

  From the top of the hill she looked down at the factory. Officially started by Rebecca Rainbow, the Founder who’d restored the economy after the Revolution, the Poughkeepsie Bird of Light Corporation displayed in all its centres a lifesize statue of the great Teller. Staring down at it Jennie could see, at the bottom, one of Rainbow’s quotations, something about financial life based on spiritual truth.

  God, she was tired. She just wanted to lie on the grass. She leaned against the husk a moment, then took out her cleaning equipment and tables of alignments. When she’d done the service she had to sit down and catch her breath.

  How could she drive like this? It was crazy, unfair. She’d done her work, she was free, there was even a spot waiting for her, and now she was so exhausted…

  Jennie could see the dream coming even before she actually fell asleep. Like some huge creature it lumbered up the hill towards her, blotting out the factory, the trees, the river. ‘Get away,’ Jennie said. She ran to her car. ‘Leave me alone. I’m going to the Recital.’

  The car door stayed shut. ‘You see,’ the dashboard crowed. ‘I told you you were taking a journey.’

  ‘Please,’ Jennie whined, ‘Open up.’ She slid down against the door. There she lay, in a thick lump, her head a smaller lump propped against one of the wheels. Her eyes closed and the dream leaped on her.

  She was crying—walking along the riverside down by Lower Main Street, and she was crying because she knew she was dreaming, and even though the ceremony didn’t start for another two hours, she knew, with dream certainty, that she wouldn’t get there, she wouldn’t get to hear Allan Lightstorm after all.

  As she walked she began to notice things lying on the ground, first money, peculiar coins embossed with masked faces instead of queens and presidents, then little statues of animals, or sticks of wood with feathers attached to them, or dog whistles. Whatever she found she picked up and stuck in voluminous pockets that soon bulged out in front of her.

  On the yellowed grass along the water’s edge people lined up to stare at her. She could hear them talking, telling jokes by the tone and the looks. But she couldn’t make out the words, just bits of words, broken syllables. They began to laugh. The sound puckered Jennie’s skin and made her itch, like insect bites.

  The water leaped up at the grass. The lines of people moved closer, their jokes and gulping laughter getting louder and louder. They began to clap and snap their fingers, and then to stamp their feet and whistle, until Jennie sc
reamed at them to leave her alone. ‘It’s not me you want,’ she shouted, her hands cupped before her mouth because that was the way they did it in the mystery plays when they announced the birth of the Great Stories. ‘It’s not me, it’s my daughter. My daughter.’ No one heard, and childless Jennie wondered, even in the dream, why she should have said that.

  She pushed aside two laughing women, each with a breast cut off, like the Living Mothers in their underground refuges outside Cincinnati. She wanted to run and jump in the river. But when she reached the little metal railing that kept sleeping pilgrims from sliding into the water she stopped and stared. A huge gathering of fish swam before her, all sizes and shapes, from a great flatbellied thing with fanged teeth and hard bumps all along its back, to a tiny finback with pointed teeth, to a short stubby creature with a triple chin and layers and layers of scales sharp enough to slice bread. At first she thought the fish all roaring with colour, but when she squatted down to get closer to the water, she saw that they had all turned a dreary grey. Something had sucked the colour from them, had drained it away over years and years until nothing was left. They knew it. They swam aimlessly, avoiding each other’s touch, many of them ramming the rocks that stuck out from the surface of the water. Jennie began to cry and looked around for a handkerchief, as if the Parks Commission would set them out in case someone needed to blow her nose.

  Just then a new fish swam among the others. Long and thin, almost eel-like except for its small tail and flippers, it glistened black. Its tiny mouth, human-shaped, opened and closed. Jennie realized it was speaking to the other fish, who swam around it in concentric circles. They reminded Jennie of the mandala ballets held on Enactment Days. And then, as the black fish told her stories, the colour returned or came awake in all the others.

  They gave off so many greens and golds and purples and yellows and magentas, some with every scale in three different tones, so many colours that the excess of light changed into sound, music getting louder and louder, great chimes and gongs and whistles and thundering booms, flying out of the water and into the air where they bounced off the trees and buildings and turned back into colour to fall on Jennie like a sudden flood. Dripping with orange and red and gold and auburn, Jennie turned around, just in time to see the crowd of people rising into the air, some with their eyes rolling around, others flapping their arms, as if they refused to admit that the rain of colour had released them from the Earth, and pretended instead that they flew under their own power. Jennie too tried to fly, giving little hops along the riverside. She only twisted her ankle. She sat down to rub it, moaning through the pain, ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair. She’s my daughter, isn’t she?’

  She was walking through her mother’s house, plodding in her tattered green bathrobe past rows of locked doors. She entered a room and found herself in ancient Persia. Someone was running a street organ, a girl in a black turban was slitting open a snake, someone else was announcing a free fuck, any position you liked, with the hidden Imam. Somewhere behind the carnival stalls, the Persian baseball team was getting set for the All-star game. Jennie thought they looked pretty bad, even for foreigners. She’d heard that the royal team of Kush could beat them easily.

  Jennie was hungry, she hadn’t eaten in fifty years. ‘You’re too picky,’ Mike used to tell her, and she had to agree, every stall she passed here in the Persian carnival looked great from a distance but when she came close—to the baklava and whipped cream, or the yakmeat hamburgers, or the kosher hotdogs coated in candied sesame—they all looked overdone, or melted, or much too peppery. ‘You always want something perfect,’ Mike said, deepfrying what looked like a long cucumber. ‘But only the Living World is perfect. As long as you’ve got a body you’ve got to stick things in it.’

  She began to walk faster, hoping to reach the end of the stalls and hide in the forest she could see beyond the street. Above and behind the stalls, on rickety wooden balconies, people in hooded nightgowns shouted at her. ‘I don’t understand Persian,’ she shouted back. No one listened. She had almost reached the end when an old legless woman came rolling up on a motorised carpet to block Jennie’s way. The people on the balconies laughed and applauded as Jennie tried to dodge past her.

  Jennie could see the animals running through the forest. The small ones, the rabbits and the monkeys, rode on the backs of the jaguars, the zebras, the elephants. Overhead the birds flew, directed by the beetles and the cockroaches pinching and tugging on their wingtips. Jennie wanted to run with them. She wanted to rip away her clothes and let the wind dry the sweat on her breasts and thighs. But every time she tried to reach them the old lady cut her off. ‘What do you want?’ Jennie pleaded.

  The woman said something in Persian and held out a tube-shaped silver box about ten inches long. Jennie shook her head and backed off; the woman rushed forward, shrieking at her, nearly jabbing her in the belly. Jennie looked at the animals, saw the rows thinning out, and in the sky only a couple of hawks and sparrows.

  ‘We’re hungry,’ the woman said. ‘Eat.’ Behind her someone jumped up and down on a trampoline. Jennie grabbed the box and opened it to find another box, all of gold so soft she could stretch it out to twice its original length just by rubbing it. Inside she found a third box, of white satin, and on and on, until she held a perfectly shaped pine-wood coffin about three quarters of an inch long. She pried it open with her fingernail. A seed of some sort lay inside. It looked like a fur-covered lima bean. She picked it up between her thumb and second finger.

  There was something disgusting about it, the way the fur waved or maybe a sliminess at the tips. But Jennie was hungry, and she wanted to get out of Persia and join the animals. She popped the seed in her mouth, then spun around, afraid everyone would laugh at her.

  Instead, they all sighed, a sound like a monstrous organ, and lay down on top of the stalls to go to sleep. ‘How am I supposed to go home?’ Jennie said. ‘It’s not fair. It wasn’t me you wanted anyway.’ She tried to run back and wake them but the ground had turned to ooze, thick and hot, with black steam coming off it. With every step she sank almost to her ankles and had to pull herself loose with a loud plop that made her blush. In her belly she could feel the seed taking root, growing, sending out its tendrils like telephone wires.

  In one of the stalls a sleepy snake charmer kicked over his rubber box—‘Macy’s’ the cover said. All the snakes tumbled out, right in front of Jennie; she tried to jump sideways and fell in the mud. Instantly it slurped her up, despite all her frantic flailing.

  But when she finally got herself turned over she was lying in a desert of baked mud. Everything about her had got larger, thicker, clumsier, her feet like tree stumps, her thighs like standing stones, her breasts like the concrete lumps gangsters tie to their partners when they throw them in the river. A long time she lay there, tired and sad, while the Sun got hotter and hotter. The Sun didn’t want to hurt her, she knew. It just couldn’t help itself. Her skin dried and dried until suddenly she cracked open, ten, twenty places up and down her body. Great rivers of milk flowed out of her breasts to soften the brown earth.

  Joy lifted her head. She saw all the animals, and the Persian baseball team, and the legless lady and the people from the river, all of them with their faces deep in the milk, making great slurping noises. From her groin the fish swam forth, all their colours releasing rainbows of light into the thirsty sky.

  Jennie laughed and lay down again. There wasn’t much left of her now. She tried to close her eyes but the half-eroded lids only cut the sky in half. She opened them again. She saw a flock of artbirds from the Poughkeepsie factory. They were circling down, coming to lift away that small unbreakable thing, hard and bright, that lay forever hidden in the base of the heart. The dream Jennie smiled and went to sleep.

  She woke up wet. Her shorts and T-shirt, her tiger panties, even her plastic sandals, hung heavy with sweat. She groaned and lay down again, dizzy. Above her the setting Sun gave an orange glow to the hood of her ca
r. She sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes and forehead, wondering if she had time to go home and change her clothes before the Recital. Suddenly she turned her head so fast towards the west she heard a sharp crack and winced in pain. The Sun was setting. She could see it settling itself among the mountains across the river. ‘Goddamn it,’ she said. ‘Oh shit.’ She’d missed Allan Lightstorm.

  A Version of the Tale of First Teller, Found in the Ancient Empire and brought to the New World by Ha’Ari Lionmouth, hero of the One True Revolution.

  It was the time before time before time.

  It was the time before day. It was the time before night. This was the time before light and dark, before colour and sound, form and shape. It was the time before memory, before the losing and the finding.

  First Teller.

  First Teller.

  First Teller awoke.

  No man. No woman. Man and woman. More than man and woman, First Teller began to touch her body. He touched himself. He touched the arms, he touched the thighs, she bent the fingernails and pressed the eyes. First Teller pulled and rubbed the nest of genitals. He separated the parts and she brought them together. Light and darkness escaped from First Teller’s groin to begin their endless somersault.

  First Teller said, ‘This is not enough.’

  She said, ‘This is not enough.’

  He said, ‘This is not enough.’

  She said, ‘I will imagine something. Something hard. And huge.’ A mountain appeared. First Teller began to climb.