Unquenchable Fire

by Rachel Pollack

  The woman decided the world could not wait for the Revolution. She began to pray, and to chant, and through her desperate devotion she stumbled her way over the boundaries into the deep territories. With clear sight she saw the faces of Maryanna Split Sky, Jonathan Mask of Wisdom, and Li Ku Unquenchable Fire (in beauty and truth live their names forever). And she knew—if she could bring these three to the same place, even to the same city, the Revolution would begin, despite their efforts to postpone it.

  She tried one scheme after another: fake phone calls, trick letters, fraudulent invitations. She hired actors and detectives, she bribed policemen. Nothing worked. The three always slipped from her net. Finally she returned to her devotions, for she realised that even the Founders could not overcome the Living World. If she could touch that power she could force them to give up their concealment. She fasted and prayed, and after many months she understood what had to be done. There were several steps, all to be enacted in the right order and the right way. Three things overrode the rest. The operation would take five days. During that time she must not open the door of her house, she must not touch food, she must not fall asleep.

  She cleaned herself and prayed once more for help. Then she began the operation. On the first day she heard a knocking at the door. A voice cried, ‘Help me!’ and then she heard a thumping noise, and an agonised cry, and the voice called again, more faintly, ‘Help me!’ The woman rose but then she forced herself back to the work. At the end of that day a red light glowed in front of her.

  On the second day she heard a knock and then her mother’s voice. ‘Please let me in,’ the voice said. ‘I’ve given up drinking but I feel so weak. I need you. Please.’ The woman stood up. She ran to the door. But then she remembered all the mothers and fathers who’d died of drink and all the children left alone. She returned to her concentration. That evening a yellow light filled the room.

  On the third day her former lover appeared at the window. ‘How could I ever have left you?’ she said. ‘Let me in. I want to stay with you forever.’ But the woman thought of all the women and men whose lovers had left them. She continued. That evening a blue light filled the house.

  On the fourth day her diseased friend knocked at the door. ‘Please let me in,’ he begged. ‘I want to see you before I die. How can you be so cruel?’ All day he banged on the door. She thought of all the sick people and she stayed where she was. That night a great darkness and a great silence penetrated the house and the land around it.

  On the morning of the fifth day white light filled the world. It shook the houses and pounded in the Earth. All through the day she heard a roar, like a thousand voices shouting with joy.

  In the late afternoon she jumped up and ran to the window. Buildings were shaking and trees ran through the air. About to turn back she heard a soft whimper. She looked down and saw a starving dog lying on the grass. She stood there, looking at the animal while the light surged about the building. She told herself, ‘It’s already started. Nothing can stop it.’ She went outside and lifted the dog. As she carried it into the house, the shouting voices changed to a sigh and then stopped.

  But the light remained. She closed the door and set the dog on the rug. She looked at the bones pushing their way through the folded skin. She lifted it again and carried it to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator but the dog was too weak to take any food. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed to touch it.’ The dog began to cry. She looked around her at the light that looked like it could tear the walls apart. ‘Nothing can stop it,’ she told herself. She reached in for a piece of hamburger meat and gave it to the dog.

  As the animal ate, its body filled out. It became stronger and it grew, taller than the woman. Its jaws hung open as large as a doorway. When it closed them it had swallowed the light. As the dog ran from the house a greyness settled on the walls and the woman and everything around her. ‘I haven’t lost,’ she said. ‘I can still continue. I can start over if I have to.’ But even as she spoke she fell back against the sink, exhausted. Her eyelids began to force themselves shut. ‘Please,’ she wept, ‘don’t do this to me. I didn’t want it for myself. There’s too much pain.’ She fell asleep on the floor in front of the refrigerator.

  In the woman’s dream she saw Li Ku Unquenchable Fire. The Founder wore a red dress and silver shoes. ‘When we come,’ she said, ‘we will not come to end suffering.’

  ‘Then why will you come?’ the woman asked.

  Li Ku said, ‘When we come we will come for something else.’

  When the woman woke up she could no longer remember the three faces.

  The woman’s mother stopped drinking. The woman’s lover returned to her. The woman’s friend recovered from his disease and all her other friends became well and prosperous. But she herself had weakened her body by her efforts to end suffering. Though she lived a happy life she died two years before the Revolution. On the day of her death she once more saw the Founders, all gathered together in a vision. She wrote in her diary, ‘Now I understand. I am the saddest woman who has ever lived.’

  6

  Jennifer’s marriage to Mike Gold ended on a piece of green metal at the exit from Glowwood Hive. A raised circle about five feet in diameter and set in the ground beside the Celestial Guardian, the metal plate was called a ‘soul-map.’ Its surface bore a diagram of the streets interspersed with spirit configurations and the mark of an official blessing from the Mid-Hudson College of Tellers. Officially, all residents stood there every time they left the hive. Officially, contact with the map joined them to the hive’s unity. Officially, they could step on the map and get a jolt that would carry them through a two-week vacation, so that even swimming in a pool in Honolulu they would feel their neighbours floating beside them with every stroke.

  In practice very few people ever bothered to stop their cars to get out and ‘mount’ the map. The few times Jennie had done it she’d never experienced anything more than a slight tickle in her feet.

  On the evening their marriage ended Jennie and Mike were on their way to Shop-Rite for double stamp night. At the exit from the hive they stopped for someone coming up the access road. When Mike stepped on the gas the car stalled. Before he could start it again Jennie said, ‘Mike, why don’t we go stand on the map?’

  ‘What?’ Mike said. ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know, it just seems like—we live here, shouldn’t we do it some times? It’ll only take a second.’

  Mike hesitated, and later Jennie would think how if he’d only started the engine she would have given in and maybe they would have stayed together. But instead Mike said, ‘Oh fuck,’ and got out of the car.

  The two of them stepped onto the map. Jennie tried to take his hand but he jerked it away. Jennie was about to step off when she started to sway. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  Mike had begun to jerk from side to side. ‘Feels like a storm’s coming up,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  But when they looked back at the hive they seemed to stare down at it from the top of a hill. The streets had stretched out. They rolled on and on, they lifted into the sky, a vast criss-cross of black stripes covering the ground. The houses glowed, they shook and danced, like cartoon houses with windows like huge soft eyes, and doors like smiles. From each house, like a paper thrown into the air, the hive members leaped into the sky. They sang to each other and the voices rose to high-pitched squeals, like bats.

  Jennie screamed and Mike shouted, ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Then the two of them rose with their neighbours, plucked in one motion from the flat Earth to an arched sky burning with light. Jennie looked down, she expected to see her and Mike standing there, entranced, but no, the map was empty, their bodies had risen, they were flying, look, they passed a plane, Jennie waved and all the passengers blew kisses at her, now they rose together in a clump, held tight by a syrupy glue of ecstasy.

  Jennie couldn’t remember coming down. She found herself stretched out on the grass
in front of the guardian, a good four feet from the metal plate. Mike lay next to her, moaning. Jennie sat up and rubbed her eyes. ‘Wow,’ she said, and grinned. ‘Wow. Holy shit.’ She giggled. Mike was just starting to get up. ‘Honey?’ she said, and crawled over to touch his arm.

  Mike screamed and rolled away. A moment later he got to his knees and threw up.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Jennie asked, or tried to. Her voice sounded so sluggish. A silly smile crept over her face. She bit her lip. This is serious, she told herself. She began giggling again. Mike looked at her, his face squeezed into some emotion, fear, or hate. He got to his feet and pushed himself a few steps to the car, where he leaned against it with his arms across the roof. ‘Honey?’ Jennie called. ‘Where are you going?’ She saw him breathe deeply a few times, then slide into the seat where he sat with his head back, gasping. She watched him press his fists against his eyes. Only when he actually ignited the engine and she could smell the exhaust did she realise he was leaving. She jumped up; she fell down again, crying. At the same time, she was laughing, as if she still flew round the world with her neighbours.

  Even when Mike’s car was gone it took Jennie over a minute to get up off the ground. She kept thinking she should go and get her own car and follow him. The thought of the two of them skidding round corners, like some cop show on television, set her laughing again. And then she realised she couldn’t go after him. She didn’t know where he’d gone.

  Shakily Jennie stood up. As she walked home she looked nervously at people on the street or in front of their houses. They all looked relaxed and healthy but confused, aware without memory that something had happened. They touched each other, unconsciously, obsessively.

  At home Jennie called the travel agency. No answer. She called Mike’s uncle, then his cousin. Mike wasn’t there.

  That whole night Jennie sat in the kitchen, letting cups of coffee grow cold in front of her. Her mood swung from one state to another without any conscious direction. She would cry, and whisper, ‘I love you, Mike. Please come home.’ A moment later she would close her eyes and remember the hot winds as they flew above the Earth. Or else she would jump up and kick the wall or the refrigerator, enraged that her selfish husband could try to hold her back from a true event.

  In the morning Jennie drove to the travel agency before work. There was no one there. Later, when she called the office, Mike’s assistant, Lorraine Towers, told Jennie that Mike had called her the night before and asked her to run the place for a few days. He hadn’t told her where he was going. Before and after every assignment that day Jennie headed for a phone. She called friends, she called Mike’s uncle again, she called her own house over and over.

  That evening, at seven o’clock, Uncle Jake called. Mike had gone to New York, he said. He said that Mike wanted him to tell her he just needed time to think things out. He’d get in touch with her in a few days. ‘I’m sure he still loves you,’ Uncle Jake said. ‘He just needs a little time.’

  Jennie spent most of the evening on the phone, taking a break only when a fake instinct would tell her Mike was trying to get through. Then she would wait fifteen minutes and start again. She called Sophie, who hadn’t seen Mike but asked Jennie to come and stay with her. Jennie refused, thinking Mike wouldn’t like it when he came home and she wasn’t there. She called all their old friends from the city, she called Mike’s former bosses, anyone who might be hiding him. She considered calling the New York police and reporting Mike’s car stolen, but she couldn’t remember the licence number.

  The next day Jennie drove to the Restoration of Joy Plaza, where Montgomery Wards had recently announced a sale in its spiritual aids department. Jennie bought herself a box of candles, two portraits of Ingrid Burning Snake (patron of lost lovers, as well as marriage), and a small set of sanctified chimes. When the cashier had rung it all up Jennie ran back and added on a ‘squeaky Founder’, a two foot high doll of Burning Snake that sounded a loud bleat when you squeezed its belly.

  At home Jennie arranged her aids and her piece of Li Ku’s skin, first in the living room, then in the basement when she feared Mike might walk out again if he came home and found it all in front of him. She lit all the candles in their plastic holders, she set up the portraits in their cardboard frames to face each other with the chimes between them. In the centre she placed the relic in its brass box. On one side of it she stood the doll, on the other herself. With the offering pin she opened all her fingers and scattered the blood all around the circle. The candles hissed as drops fell on the flames. She bent down to ping the chimes with their little copper hammer.

  Then she closed her eyes. Three times she squeezed the doll, repeating each time, ‘Ingrid Burning Snake, in power and truth lives your name forever, please send me my husband back.’ She promised various penances, a trip to the Virginia caves, a month’s salary to the Poughkeepsie residences, a month of eating nothing but vegetables grown in the sacred greenhouses outside Philadelphia, a journey to the New York College of Tellers, where she would burn her clothes and then slither like a snake under the Arch of Bones. Finally she blew out the candles. She slept for the rest of the afternoon.

  Mike was gone for two weeks. The night he returned, Jennie was watching a rerun of Tragg, a cop show about an SDA investigator in New Chicago. Tragg had just tracked down a lion cult in the Chicago public labyrinth, when the doorbell rang. Jennie turned, and there, on the other side of the screen door, stood her husband. He wore a light blue T-shirt and blue striped seersucker pants, probably the bottom half of a suit. His hair was shorter and he’d lost weight. He looked tired and annoyed.

  ‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Mike, oh honey, honey, you’re back.’ She waited for him to come in. She wanted to cry that he’d rung the bell. ‘Aren’t you going to come in?’ she said. ‘You’ll get all bitten up out there.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘How about opening the fucking screen door?’

  ‘What? Oh!’ She ran and unhooked the lock, laughing. As soon as he’d stepped inside she grabbed him, squeezing as hard as she could, then kissing him all over his face. ‘You’re back. I knew you’d come back. I knew you’d come back. I missed you so much.’

  He pushed her away. ‘Then how come you locked the door?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Just habit. I’m sorry. I didn’t want Gloria or someone barging in on me. It was just habit.’

  He sat down on the couch, then got up and moved to the green chair beside the narrow mirror. He bent forward for his elbows to rest on his knees. ‘How about some coffee?’ he said.

  ‘Coffee coming up,’ she sang. ‘I’m so happy,’ she told him after she’d filled and plugged in the pot. ‘I missed you so much. Where were you? I called everyone I could think of—’

  ‘Shit,’ Mike said.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t make a big thing of it. Really I didn’t. I just asked people if they’d seen you.’

  ‘That’s not making a big thing? What did you say, that you’d misplaced me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She began to cry. ‘I’ll go see if the coffee is ready.’

  ‘Wait a second.’ He stood up. ‘Forget it, Jennie. I don’t really care what you told anyone.’

  ‘I really didn’t make a big thing out of it. Really I didn’t.’

  ‘I said forget it. Can we drop it? All right? Anyway, I stayed in a hotel. Down in the city.’

  ‘Are you hungry? Do you want anything with the coffee? I can mix up some tuna fish.’

  ‘No. I don’t want anything.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’ll only take a minute.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You want more cake?’

  ‘No. Look, Jennie—’ He made a noise. He said, ‘I’m not staying.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not staying. I just—’

  ‘Why? What do you mean, you’re not staying? Why? I missed you so much.’

  ‘I can’t stay.’

  ‘You can’t—You ca
n’t just…’

  ‘Please try to be calm.’

  ‘Calm? Calm? You’re taking my husband away from me.’

  ‘How about that coffee?’

  ‘You just tell me—you come in, you’re gone two weeks—’

  ‘Jennie, please.’ The cracks in his voice stopped her from shouting. ‘I could have just sent a letter but I wanted to tell you in person.’

  ‘A letter?’ Mike sat down again. Jennie said, ‘I’ll get the coffee.’

  In the kitchen she slammed the cups down so hard she almost broke them. She thought, You bastard. Send me a letter? Goddamn you. What did he mean? How could he not stay? Where was he going? Didn’t he know how much she loved him? That bastard. She wanted to run down to the basement and stamp on the portraits of Burningsnake. He’s got to stay, she thought. He can’t mean it. Please make him stay. Help me.

  When they were both sitting with their coffee—like a proper hive couple—Mike said, ‘I did a lot of thinking while I was away. About everything. Everything that’s happened to us.’

  ‘Did you think about how much I loved you?’

  ‘Of course. And how much I love you. I do love you, Jennie. Really I do.’

  ‘Then it’s all right. As long as we love each other—’

  ‘It’s not all right. I can’t take living with you.’

  ‘Living with me? What’s wrong?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Tell me what I’ve done. I’ll change.’

  ‘It’s just—never being sure—waiting all the time.’

  ‘Waiting for what? Please, Mike. If we love each other—’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘Yes it is. Love is always enough.’

  ‘Things happen to you. I can’t take it. I can’t live waiting for the next goddamn event, or transformation, or whatever they’re called. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s like living in the Time of Fanatics.’

  ‘But that was just…you mean the map? Is that what you mean? That was nothing. It was an accident. It won’t happen again. We don’t even have to step on it ever again. No one will know. It won’t happen any more. I promise it won’t.’