The 14th Day

by K. C. Frederick

  Out on the street that leads to his apartment complex he passes the water treatment plant and other more recently built developments on the edge of town. He passes under the shade of the highway that circles town, the highway he can see from his window, and he’s on the border of his own apartment complex when a car slows down beside him.

  “Excuse me,” the driver calls, and asks Vaniok how he can get to the university.

  “That way,” he points. “It’s not far.” The man thanks him and drives off. Vaniok laughs to himself as he watches the car move in the direction he indicated. Yes, I’m not a stranger here. In the midst of his delight he thinks of Jory, who will always be a stranger here, Jory with his jar of soil and his memories. Maybe the priest can help him in some way. Maybe someone can help him.

  Jory and Ila are on the lake at last. He can’t explain why he resisted her suggestion for so long—maybe it’s what Vaniok told him about those barking dogs. But out here in the sunshine the world seems friendly. Maybe this is just what he’s needed.

  It doesn’t take him long to find his rhythm with the oars: he leans forward, he drives them into the water and they become heavy. His back and arms tighten, the muscles in his chest stretch as he pulls. When he completes the arc the oars go light and he lifts them, already bending forward, beginning his motion again. His breath comes in harsh gusts, the oarlocks creak, there’s a muffled splash; the flat wood slices into the surface of the lake, pulling the boat farther from the dock. “You’re quite a boatman,” Ila says. He makes no response but continues rowing with the fury of a man pursued. At last when they’re a fair distance from the shore he raises the oars like wings. Hunched forward, he listens to the sound of the boat gliding on its own momentum: rushing water gurgles along its sides; it quiets and he can hear a plane’s faint drone. No dogs. Ila too listens as the boat’s motion slows. In a moment, when it starts to drift, Jory resumes his rowing at a more leisurely pace.

  “You were going so fast,” Ila says with a sly smile. “Where did you think you could take us?”

  Something in her teasing expression reminds him of the town they visited on their trip to the ocean, the flat, empty landscape, the bearded tree, the old abandoned house. How long ago it seems. “Maybe I thought we could get to the moon,” he offers.

  He watches a dragonfly hover above the glistening oar, then dart away. “But we’ve already been there,” she answers.

  It sounds like a reproach. “Don’t they allow return trips then?” He’s aware of an edge to his voice that he didn’t intend. Already his spirits have slipped.

  “Well,” she says noncommittally, “we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

  “I’ll just keep rowing. Who knows what we’ll find?” He tries for a jaunty air but he’s angry with himself for getting upset like that. This morning he resolved that he wasn’t going to let anything intrude on their outing, he was going to look ahead, not behind; and now he drives the oars into the lake with sharp, regular strokes, as if to leave the past on the receding shore. The mechanical bending and pulling, the resistance of the water, the hypnotic repetition, allow him to drop into a dreamlike state. If only he could row forever. Splash, stroke, lift, splash: peace. And yet he can’t put his mind to sleep entirely: under the creak of oarlocks and the splash of water he can hear the sound of Carl’s voice, full of hatred. That encounter a few days ago upset him, made him lose his balance—for a while he didn’t know what he was going to have to do. Though it’s hard to believe, he’d actually imagined himself packing and leaving, a half dozen times he looked at the phone number that could get him into contact with Fotor; he’d been on the point of dialing it more than once. Now he resumes his rowing, hard, determined. In wonderment, he thinks: If I’d have dialed that number, met that man, I might already be gone, I might even be on that island. Was I really thinking of leaving this place?

  As he rows on he glances toward the shore, suddenly curious about where the basketball arena is in relation to this lake. It was there that he came very close to exploding in those few seconds at the bottom of the hill beside the overturned wheelbarrow. And yet, even now he isn’t sure exactly what it was that Carl said to him then; though the words themselves didn’t matter; something about that encounter disturbed Jory; it was as if the man had been transformed before his eyes into the shaggy creature of his childhood nightmares. Afterward he could almost convince himself that, like an inquisitor armed with evidence, his fellow worker could have named, if he’d wanted to, the precise intersection in the cold country where Jory knocked the man down and stood over him in the snow. “Where did you get that cut on your arm? What happened at the corner of Prince and Crown? Who helped you get out of that place?” The Carl of his imagination wouldn’t have surprised him by telling him whether that man up north lived or died. Jory feels the breeze against his skin, the boat beneath him turns slightly with an adjustment of the oars. The wooded shoreline gives him no clue to where the campus is.

  “I may have to change my mind.” Ila’s words break the silence and he looks at her: she’s shading her eyes with her hand as if she’s also been looking for the basketball arena. “The way you’re rowing, we may get to the the moon yet.” She’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a stripe of shadow covers her eyes but her mouth is in the sunlight, a musing quality about the lips.

  Jory swings his head around but the lake’s curve blocks his vision of where it ends. From around a bend a red canoe emerges. With smooth, efficient strokes, a shirtless young man brings the paddle into the water and the boat glides by in the shade near the shore. “This is good,” Jory says. He can even feel his wrist healing in the sun. He’s grateful for the warmth, the distraction of rowing.

  “Mmm,” Ila croons quietly to herself, her head turned toward the canoe, and something in the sound of her voice unsettles him, like music heard behind a closed door. Jory stands beside that door, suddenly without hope. He isn’t thinking about Carl anymore. Carl’s antagonism is no more to him than the buzzing of a mosquito. All at once there’s a harsh, familiar taste in his mouth, the certainty that he’s destined to know Ila only to lose her. On this sunlit expanse of water the two of them face each other in the small boat, close enough for touching; yet in her soft, unguarded humming he heard the distance that’s come between them. Even when he holds her in the dark these days he’s felt it, what he realized so strongly on the night of the riot, that though there may still be chapters to come, the end of their story has already been written. And I’ll be abandoned. Again. He rows on in a silence become heavy. There are things they ought to talk about, things he’s talked about with her only in the imaginary conversations he’s had on nights when he hasn’t been able to sleep.

  But he says nothing. He continues to row, the boat moves steadily toward the lake’s other shore, hidden from him as he pulls on the oars. Across from him Ila is silent again—for all he knows she’s thinking the same things. His heartbeat quickened when he saw her coming down the corridor of the inn that stormy day, her white apron moving with her hips. And then there was the Constitution Day outing, the policeman, their visit to the mysterious town, the ocean itself. So short a time and already a history, already for him a sense of impending loss.

  Just now she’s leaning toward the dark green shoreline where the canoe went by. “What do you see there?” he asks. “Indians?” She says nothing.

  He squeezes the wood in his hands, he pulls against the resisting medium, he lifts the oars and pushes them through the thinner air, a dance of silver following their path, then he drives the blades into the lake, drawing them through the water once more. The boat rushes across its surface as he tries to keep his hold on the moment he inhabits, this place, this instant; the smooth curved shape of the oar handle presses against his palm. What chain of events brought him to this lake? Who could have foreseen it as he and his uncle stood before the older man’s house in Archbishop Street, the jar of soil in Jory’s hands, a breakfast of eggs sitting uneasily on his stomach
, his eyes brimming with tears. It was the chilly hour before dawn. Keslar, a burly man who worked for the family, was at the wheel of the rain-pocked black car and Jory couldn’t help wondering what was going through his mind. After all, it was his country too. But Keslar’s dark, round face was expressionless as he waited. He was going to drive Jory to a place near the border where arrangements had been made. “Don’t be a fool,” his uncle told Jory. “Get out while you can. We’ve lost this battle but somebody has to remember.” Thunder rumbled sluggishly in the distance. “Go now,” his uncle said, his voice breaking for the first time. There was an embrace, the crinkle of his raincoat, the smell of whiskey. “Keslar, go.”

  Jory’s emotions are astir, he has to force himself to be attentive to the splash of the oars and the creak of the oarlocks. The water, roiled by recent storms, looks like brown taffeta. Am I always leaving? Like the ringing of a distant bell, the question sounds, then fades as he takes the boat further onto the lake. On the receding shore the building where they rented the boat is disappearing into the foliage; the dock has retracted. He swings his head around. At last he can see where the lake bends. In the distance is a glimpse of the other shore: it’s unremarkable, a low hill with an unpainted barn, a cover of green on the water that must be lily pads—most definitely not the moon; but at least he’s managed to push himself away from the house on Archbishop Street: there’s only this boat on this lake, only the moments measured by the stroke of the oars.

  “Stop.” Ila’s voice disrupts his rhythm. When he lifts the oars and the boat slows, the feel of the breeze on his skin softens, the sun’s warmth increases. “Let me row for a while,” she suggests. “You forget I practically grew up on a lake. I can’t let you have all the fun.”

  He smiles. “Of course.” And they carefully exchange positions.

  “No, don’t sit,” she instructs him. “You’ve worked hard. Lie back.”

  He nods. “If you insist.” With the boat drifting slowly he can feel the full power of the sun. He unbuttons his shirt and lies back, his head resting on his clasped hands. A trickle of sweat runs past his ear. This is good. All his problems are on the shore; here on the water he’s immune: this lake is an enchanted zone. Ila is right: he’s worked hard and deserves a rest. It pleases him to think that somebody watching from shore would think the two of them are just a man and a woman from around here relaxing on a Saturday afternoon outing. He hears the slow, uneven splash of the oars: Ila isn’t rowing any place in particular, just directing the drift. When he closes his eyes the sun beats red on his eyelids and he takes out his handkerchief, dips it into the water, then lays it across his eyes. In the cool darkness he smells the boat’s wood, the fishy water, a gust lifts the heat for a moment, then it’s gone and the sun’s touch returns. He feels its warmth reaching deeper into him. It’s only after a while that he becomes aware of Ila’s silence.

  “Are we making any progress toward the moon?” he asks lazily. When she doesn’t answer he asks, “Ila, where are you?”

  Once again he hears her humming beneath the syncopated splash of the oars. “Oh,” she says distantly, “I don’t know, I’m still here, in this boat, on this lake.” He waits for more and after a time she adds, “I was thinking that this is the moment I prayed for back there.”

  “Back there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” At last he understands what she means. He’s heard her story of how she lay under the hay, listening to the sounds of the soldiers’ heavy boots moving closer. “I’d breathe very quietly,” she said, “and they still hadn’t found me. This is my last moment, I told myself, I’d lived one more moment. I’d wet my pants and I was afraid they’d smell it and find me. So as the footsteps came nearer I tried to remember everything about what I thought was going to be my last moment: what I could feel in my hands, the taste in my mouth, what I smelled, the closeness of the air. Hay was scratching my face and tickled my nose, I couldn’t breathe naturally, my pants were damp and cold, I couldn’t see anything and I was more frightened than I’d ever been, even as a little girl. Still I kept hoarding those last moments, one by one. I was greedy, I wanted one more, another moment more. I already knew what had happened to my family, there was nothing for me to live for and still I wanted to live.”

  Remembering, Jory is there in that barn with her: how close that must have come to actually being her last moment. In the darkness he feels protective toward the frightened young woman who believed in her heart that she’d never leave that place alive. The warmth of his feeling for her brings a sense of connection. The Thirteen Days, their common experience: even on this lake so far away the two of them have been brought back to the homeland. “I for one,” he says, “thank God your prayers were answered.”

  “I believed so completely,” she says, as if she hasn’t heard him, “that this was the end. I really believed I’d never leave that barn. I kept praying but without any hope.” Her voice is tense, expectant, like someone walking barefoot through a dark passage full of broken glass—it’s clear she’s re-experiencing that moment now. And yet Jory hears something else in her voice as well: she’s experiencing this moment alone. For all his feeling, he can’t reach her, protect her, connect with her. In the silence that follows Jory feels shut out of her reminiscence. Once again he’s standing before a closed door. During all this time he’s lying there beneath his blindfold, knowing that the two of them are together in this boat, almost touching—he could affirm it with a thrust of his hand. He listens to the irregular sound of the oars, he feels the boat move in one direction, then another, drifting. They’re here together but it was only she who lay in that barn, under the hay, the soldiers calling hoarsely to each other. Even in the mild warmth the hair on the back of his neck stiffens.

  When she speaks again he can’t even be certain she’s talking to him. “God wasn’t very generous,” she says and in his mind’s eye he sees her shaking her head. “So many people’s prayers weren’t answered. All those people are dead, people I loved—” She cuts herself off abruptly, then says, “And still I want to live. What happened there makes this—what we have here—all the more precious.”

  The sound of the oars stops and all at once her voice is closer, more urgent, the boat rocks gently beneath him. “Whatever happens,” she says, “we have this moment. Remember that.” Whatever happens. The words cast their own shadow, sharp, jagged, ominous. He’s still trying to grapple with their meaning when he feels something, a sudden violation of his privacy, a shock that’s recognizable as the faint touch of her fingers on his relaxed wrist, and he pulls the handkerchief from his eyes.

  “Yes,” he says. Her face is before him, her eyes wet with tears.

  “Remember that,” she repeats. Her voice is thick, hungry. After she’s spoken no sounds come from the boat, only the faint ripple of water against its side. “You and I are alive and so many others are dead,” she continues. “We’ll never know the reason why.” She kisses him suddenly—it’s quick, desperate, as if she’s trying to snatch away his breath, a tear from her eyes wets his. Before he can reach out to her she’s resumed her position at the oars. When he moves toward her she motions him back to his former place.

  “Close your eyes again,” she says and he puts the handkerchief back: it’s no longer as cool as it used to be. “Do you realize how beautiful this moment is?” Ila asks.

  “Yes,” he answers, moved by the powerful, complex emotion he saw in her face. It wasn’t just beauty that provoked those tears.

  “Then let’s both just live in it,” she says. Her voice is suddenly brighter. “I give you permission to go off duty, I’ll watch over your destiny for you.”

  He nods though his eyes feel the sting of tears, whether hers or his he can’t say. He wants to believe what she’s telling him. He experiences a rush of excitement at the idea of handing over his destiny to her, of just enjoying this place, this moment. The warm darkness is peaceful, it enfolds him. Destiny. The word is suddenly strange, for
eign, it suggests a physical property, a heaviness that can slip off like water from a swimmer’s back when he pulls himself out of a pool. Maybe it’s even possible for him: far from his country, unknown and unheard of, he might simply live his life, his own life that has nothing to do with his ancestors, his family and his history: Keslar, Uncle Jory, Helani. Here, today, on this lake he might be an ordinary man out for a Saturday boat ride with a marvelous woman. To be forgotten. The idea hovers in the darkness, a momentary suspension of his heartbeat; but Jory doesn’t resist it, he lets himself entertain the thought: to forget and be forgotten, not to be burdened by what happened to those who are no longer here, just to live, breathe. Would it be so bad?

  “Jory, Jory,” Ila says. “You and I have come so far.” Her soft, musical voice conveys the exciting way she moves, the light in her eyes that can always lift his spirits. And yet today more than ever he hears something else in it, a desperate hunger, the unspoken words of someone who’s hiding in the hay, holding her breath, certain she’ll be dead in seconds.

  “Yes,” he answers from far off. If only he could shut off his mind, his memory. If they could stay here on the water forever.