No One Is Here Except All of Us

by Ramona Ausubel

  “I know,” Solomon said.

  “We are doing fine,” I said again.

  “I know,” he repeated.

  “We are doing fine,” we said together.

  I laid the baby, asleep now and wrapped in a blanket, on the leafed ground.

  “Let’s look at the stars,” I told Solomon, and we walked out into a treeless place, out into the tall whispers of grass. We tipped our heads back and tried to find ourselves on that map. “Which ones do you know?” I asked.

  “I don’t recognize these,” he said. “These stars are different.”

  Above us, the stars of another season rolled along. What was slapped here was unrecognizable, the work of a different God.

  “Let’s name them then,” I said. “Let’s get to know them.”

  “But they aren’t our stars. Our stars are the ones on the barn.”

  “These are ours too now. This is our temple.”

  We traced a horse constellation, a river, a house. We traced a tree and a leaf. “There’s a rabbit whose job it is to look after the birds,” Solomon said, and I nodded though I did not see.

  “What about this one as a man holding a sack?” I asked.

  “No, not that. It’s a woman holding a sack.”

  “All right, a woman. Where is she going?”

  “She’s going home,” he said. “God will take care of her there.”

  “What if God is busy doing something else and forgets?” He did not take notice of my faithless question. Little believer, unbending. “What does she have in the sack?” I asked.

  “It’s her children in there, asleep. They were tired of walking.”

  “How far do they have?”

  “Not far. They are almost there.”

  I tried to point out a row of stars that reminded me of an arrow but Solomon did not answer me. I tried to show him one that looked like a face but he did not answer.

  “Are you asleep?” I asked him.

  “Of course not. Where did we come from?”

  “We came from our village, Zalischik. We lived in a house near a well. We had two sturdy pots, three stable chairs, a woodstove, beds, more families than we could have hoped for.”

  “What else?”

  “We had your father. He will be back. We will be back.”

  “Tell me about everything,” Solomon said.

  “There was a river where the mud was thick and dark. Willows lived at its edges. In winter it was quiet and cold, in summer it was loud and cold. You had to walk through a field of wheat like this and a field of cabbage to get there. Your grandfather Vlad worked in the cabbage field. He was a very fast picker. He loved us.”

  “Remember the time Father and I discovered a cave on the bank of the river and it was filled with magic foods that replaced themselves whenever we ate one?”

  “Sure, I will remember that.”

  “I want to nurse,” he said, “just a little bit.”

  I opened my dress up, brought him close. I knew the milk would quiet if I did not eat enough, but I let him suck it away, let him drink what belonged to his brother. He drank me down. I felt the mechanism of his swallow against me. I felt the warmth of his cheek against me. I felt a drop of milk slipper down along the curve of my breast and fall off.

  “Remember the time we forgave each other for everything?” I asked. Against my chest, Solomon nodded yes.

  The birds had no idea that it was time to be quiet. They exploded the mornings with their music. They had so much to ask for. I, awake before my boys, waited while a sparrow hopped along, pecking. I waited until it crossed in front of me, but when I went to grab it, it flew. Its wings had it high and safe above me.

  Already, time was losing us. It felt as if we had never had a home and also as if we had left it only in the last moments. It felt as if each sleep lasted weeks, leaving us with colder and colder mornings. Our feet wept with blisters and the corners of our eyes were scabbed with dirt. Our bones, tucked under threadbare blankets of muscle, rattled and shook. Above my sons and me, the stars slid along and the moon returned a new shape each night, and no one came looking for us. No one caught us or saved us. The days did not count themselves off but circled, dizzy and lost. It made sense to keep track of time only if there was a known end to the journey, which there was not. We might have been on day twelve of twelve thousand, or day thirty of one million. I let go of the idea of time, of progress, of beginnings and endings, and tried to pay attention only to one fact: We were alive, we were alive, we were alive. We were alive, and the little red needle kept pointing us onward.

  Not one drop of rain fell from the sky. The earth and the sky and the trees and the stones and the path were dead dry.

  THE BOOK OF HOME

  There was a kind of stillness in the days after my family and I were gone. The villagers washed the dishes in warm water and fed the animals scraped-off leftovers.

  Clouds poured forth and fear curdled all other emotions, but there was bread because the baker made it, there was water because the wives drew it up from wells, and there was meat because the animals were still killable—the animals were drained of blood if someone drained them. There were many things for the villagers to be grateful for.

  Now no one liked to be outside in the day’s revealing light. The street felt as exposed as a sliced-open wound. The man who captured Igor became a giant. The villagers imagined that I was lost now in a hot, dry desert, my flesh burning away. Who knew what was next for the people, what curses remained? Just to press tiles on the ceiling—to eat something each day, to keep track of the dangers and hopes—was almost more than they could bear. They hated to leave the barn.

  Both sets of my parents recounted my birth and childhood, two separate stories. Perl remembered that it was a bright morning when I was born and I had opened my eyes to look around. Kayla remembered that it was a wet, shimmering evening and I had cried so hard my throat must have been torn up.

  “Has she told herself into a better story?” they kept asking.

  The banker’s children reminded the others about their brother Igor and the villagers remembered him, too. “He was an amazing sleeper,” an old man said. No one denied this.

  The wives touched the arms of their husbands and tried to tell them in this way that they were watching. Sunlight through that single bullet hole in the wall of the barn drew a bright, dusty line across the room. The villagers ducked to cross it, as if it might be sharp enough to slice them.

  The baker recruited hands for kneading. In the bakery, the air was yeasty and alive. Did they discuss what they imagined was coming? Did they wonder if it would be better to run or to stay? When they kneaded the bread, and their hands were warmed by the motion of pressing and rolling and the dough was warmed by their hands, were they trying to remember what it was their grandmothers looked like long ago, before any of these people were alive? Before this world existed?

  Vlad took a wheelbarrow and some men with him to where the cabbages were still growing, paler and softer. He wanted to pile up whatever there was and watch over it.

  The villagers said their prayers in their heads, a tiny orchestra, but did not let them get out. Nothing crumbled because of the people’s prayers.

  The stranger’s life was the same as before, except now the jeweler slept next to her, and into each other’s ears in the dark of night, they laughed and they whispered and they pinched. When they were together, their bodies were entirely uncrushable, even by fear, that most invisible—and heaviest—of weights.

  The weather grew colder and still everyone waited for the terrible end. Fat arms of vines scrawled out of the ground and choked trees. They wound themselves into windows like thieves. And then there was the sinking. At first it was dismissible. People felt a little taller than they had, that was all. They had to stoop farther to get through the door. When Vlad smacked his head on the lintel, he knew the house was outshrinking him. Some houses declined faster than others. Some slumped on one side, others descended evenl
y, like ships whose hulls were heavy with bilgewater.

  Buttery morning light brought the stranger out of the barn to find the two best milk cows lying dead on the ground. She examined them and found no wounds. This was not the work of a fox. They were facing each other, as if a pact had been made, as if they had decided to go together to a better place. The stranger petted each on the head. “I understand,” she whispered, wishing she could give the cows her blessing but knowing how much the villagers needed them. “I’m sorry to do this,” she told them as she kneeled down, milk bucket in hand, and pulled at the cool udders until they were empty. She prayed for forgiveness for draining these corpses dry. When she announced the loss to the others, fear of shortage swept through like a sandstorm. Everyone looked at the flock of goats, who backed away, bleated. They were doing what they could. They had no more to give. No one did.

  Instinct told them to condense, to stay close. Without discussion, all the villagers left their capsizing homes and moved into the barn. People brought their favorite sweaters and best pots. They went for their wrenches and fur shawls. Then for their meat tenderizers, their butter churns and, of course, the sacks of coins buried under the rosebushes. They rationed flour, butter, eggs. Everyone wore two words on their lips: Not Enough.

  The villagers remembered sitting down with their children and eating supper, watching the fire in the stove tongue the air dry, discussing one thing or another and even playing a game of marbles on the floor before the husband and wife stood together over their young ones and sang a song to put them away. Their old lives had gone on so regularly it made them feel sick.

  And frost started to form and the earth got its crust of ice. In preparation for the moment when everyone might freeze to death in one solid mass, as now seemed likely, and wanting nothing of their lives left behind, the villagers ventured out to take even the things they had always wished to get rid of. The whole drawerful of broken things—cups, eyeglasses, dolls waiting to be fixed whose eyes rolled around in their sockets, floppy and loose. The constellations on the walls became blocked by towers of objects. No one wanted to let go of anything they used to touch back when touching it meant nothing.

  And the stranger and the jeweler held each other close. They learned—ever so quietly—every ridge, every slope of each other’s bodies. The fact of one ankle held between two calves, four arms like a lock keeping everything good inside. He wanted her to be anything and everything she possibly could be. The biggest wallop of desperation, the brightest sweep of joy. If the stranger were burning hot, the jeweler would have become a lick of fire. If she were freezing cold, he would have become the spear of an icicle. If she was a swamp, he would be algae, growing over the entire surface of her.

  If the people had been put out to sea, would their odd cargo have sustained them? On their lost ark of a world, floating alone, unpulled by the moon, unwarmed by the sun, the people waited to be dragged up onto some dry shore, some island where flowering trees might drop petals into their salty hair, and not long after, globes of waxy fruit.

  THE BOOK OF THE SEA AND THE SUN

  When Igor passed by, the headlines all but walked off the yellowed newspapers and forced him to read them. German troops occupy Hungary. USSR retakes Odessa. Allies invade Rome. Tens of thousands killed on the beaches of France. USSR retakes Minsk. U.S. takes Guam. USSR invades German-occupied Romania. Allies liberate Paris. Soviet troops capture Warsaw. No story appeared about a miniature world discovered in the crook of a wide river. Igor scolded himself for even considering that the newspapers might have meant something. “Stupid Igor, stupid brain,” he said to himself. “Never forget that this is all in your head.”

  For Francesco, there was only one fact of the war that truly scared him: Italy had joined the Allied forces. Technically, he suspected that his prisoner, captured for the now opposing side, ought to have been freed. But his island had been floating on the same deep blue sea for thousands upon thousands of years. It had not only seen empires rise and fall, but witnessed their relics dug up out of the soil and sold to museums. No one on the island labored under the delusion that politics meant anything. It did not matter to them if their sons switched sides, only if they came home alive. Their ability to continue living was the only real stake the island had ever had in this war. So far, no one had questioned the prisoner’s fate, and Francesco planned to enjoy the company as long as it lasted.

  Igor and Francesco went to the sea each morning and swam. They dove under the water so their hair went flying back behind. They stood on rocks and jumped in, judging each other’s dives based on the lack of splash. They learned flips. When they got cold it was to the rocks with them, where the flat heat would leave red rounds on their backs. Even Igor turned a nice toasted brown. He shared bread crumbs with the yellow-legged gulls, who failed at their attempts to appear cold and ungrateful.

  “It still isn’t raining,” Igor said.

  “No, no rain today.”

  “At home it was raining. It was flooding. I wonder if it stopped there, too.”

  Whenever Igor mentioned anything about home, Francesco’s muscles tightened. He tried to change the subject, to draw Igor’s attention back to the spectacular glory of the island. “In the springtime, this whole hillside will be covered in tiny purple flowers,” he said. “It looks like a painting. You will love it so much.”

  Francesco’s mother had them for lunches. They ate all the things she could make. They were filled up with food in such large deposits that it made them stupid for the rest of the day. They looked around fogged and dreamy. So much bean soup and stewed tomatoes and roasted meat that the world seemed practically motionless.

  Full and clean, Igor brought the only part of the newspaper he loved—the advertisements—into bed. Dark-eyed men squinted from underneath crisp straw fedoras.

  “I would wear that hat,” Igor said.

  “It would look great on you.”

  In the evening Igor and Francesco went to the square and played checkers with the other men, drank wine and flirted with the girls who strolled around and around, their arms hooked. The men ate things pulled from the sea and fried. They smoked the thin fingers of cigarettes. They talked halfheartedly about the war and who would win and which dictator was a bigger snake, and how much better it would be if their little island could secede and float peacefully away. Igor thought to himself that this was getting to be a very long dream. He looked forward to telling his family everything he had seen; he also hoped not to wake up just yet.

  Igor shared his bread crusts with the pigeons, who gathered around him as dedicated as pilgrims. The girls came around, made a second of eye contact and then continued on. The checkers jumped one another and piled up. The wine stained everyone’s teeth red, and they all smiled bloody smiles. The men commented on the girls: which one had the nicest eyes, the nicest bosoms, the nicest whatever else. The sea licked and went back, tasted and went back. The pigeons begged for forgiveness and love, promised devotion for the rest of their humble lives.

  “You think anyone is left?” one of the men asked Igor.

  Francesco reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, gripped it hard.

  “Never mind,” the man said, his words a syrup of insincerity. “I’m sure everyone is just fine. I’m sure nothing bad has happened since you left.”

  “Do you know something?” Igor asked the man.

  “We’re perfectly safe here,” Francesco told him. Igor felt stung on his chest. It was a satisfying, hot, spreading pain. That’s how concerned I am for my family, he thought. His body was burning with it. His hand went to the hurt, and crushed a wasp. Igor was flooded with disappointment—he had not felt his heart’s big ache, but an ordinary, earthly bite.

  Waking from a nap, Igor said to Francesco, “Did the soldiers mention anything about where I was?” Francesco opened his eyes and looked at his friend, propped up on his elbow. Francesco shook his head.

  “I was in the temple. We were putting the
constellations up all over, the entire night sky. They didn’t mention that? It was the most beautiful thing.”

  “What was the purpose?”

  “It was the beginning of the world. We were making the heavens for ourselves. Do you remember the beginning of the world?”

  “The Garden of Eden?” Francesco asked.

  “No, that was just a story.” Igor drew the shape of a star on his palm. “It was the best sleep I have ever had in that barn.”

  “And you are a connoisseur.” What Francesco had stolen from Igor—home and family—pulled at his ankles. To love Igor, he had to hurt him. He had to take Igor’s past away to make a place for himself. What a miserable organ the heart was. Francesco said, “When I was young, my brothers were already grown. They pretended to be nice to me, because girls liked boys with cute little brothers, but after they got what they wanted with the girls, they’d be back to throwing sticks at me.”

  “When I got married and my son was born, I felt so exhausted, just the idea of it put me flat on my back. I could hardly stand up. Life is so huge, so impossible-seeming.”

  “I don’t feel lonely now,” Francesco said. Igor still felt tired.

  Igor tried to walk the streets of our home in his mind. He tried to make the turns from one street onto the next. What was that shop there? What was the name of the woman who hulked around, always grumpy? And the petite girl who sewed all the men’s pants? He walked the route to the river, despite the fact that it had been me who most often made the journey there, with my wash and our babies. He walked from his father’s house to his own house over and over, trying to get the number of steps right. Did I never work? he wondered, and panning through his memory it seemed to him that he hardly had. Where did we get the money to survive? Had I nothing to do with that? he wondered.