Into the Sun

by Deni Ellis Béchard

  Each night, two dozen young spotters gathered at the bunkhouse to smoke pot and drink beer, but she preferred to sit alone on the shore. Some of the group slept in the dormitory, and others fell asleep on the rocks as they waited for the sky to darken enough for the faint green blur of the aurora borealis to become visible. If the bear alarm rang, they ran inside or stood in the doorways with their spray. Alexandra wore earplugs and slept better than she had in years.

  Each morning at 6 a.m., she returned to her station. Michel, a young man with straw-colored hair and an olive complexion, was at the next one along the coast. Evenings, he joined her where the ATV driver picked them up. They said little to each other. He dressed like a scarecrow: loose corduroy pants belted around his narrow waist, threadbare shirts. He seemed fragile, his body a sign of pacifism and weakness. But one morning he came out of the showers in just a towel, his torso and arms thin but finely muscled.

  Every few hours, during the long, bright days, the walkie-talkies crackled in harmony as everyone checked in with their group leader. Michel had brought with him a yellowed anthology of French poetry, and when he found a verse about the sea, he read it to them at their stations along the coast.

  Valéry, he said.

  The sea, the sea, always resumed,

  Oh, such a reward after a thought

  To gaze so long on the calm of the gods!

  The hiss of the wind behind his voice echoed in the static and made her scalp tingle.

  On another afternoon, he read Mallarmé.

  The flesh is sad, alas! and I have read all the books.

  Flee! Flee to that place! I sense that the birds are drunk

  Between the immeasurable waves and the skies!

  He never read poetry more than once a day, and not every day. The rarity of his reading pleased her. His recitations felt meditative, a reflection of his spirit rather than a need for attention.

  Rimbaud, he murmured late one morning, after a night when a storm had hammered the coast, rain and wind sieving through their dormitory. Now, the waves were quiet and their crashing did not mask the grinding of the small stones and shells moved by the tide.

  At times, martyr weary of poles and zones,

  The ocean whose sob was my gentle roll

  Lifted flowers of shadow with yellow suckers,

  And I stayed, like a woman on her knees …

  Later that afternoon, he pressed the walkie-talkie button to speak again. It wasn’t time for a check-in, and she was surprised to hear his voice twice in the same day.

  Alexandra, a friend of yours just dropped by.

  Did he say his name?

  No. I have no idea how he got here. He’s a handsome guy. I sent him your way.

  All right.

  Let me know if you need anything.

  She scanned the coast, where a few wiry bushes trembled in the wind. She put her bear spray in her pocket, drew her knees up, and waited.

  His silhouette was immediately familiar, shimmering in the heat lines. He still walked with his entire body, tipping his shoulders, a rangy determination in his stride, like a man crossing a desert.

  She stayed sitting on the ridge above the coast. He stopped below her, lifted his hands and showed her his palms, a gesture of reassurance that she imagined he’d picked up while deployed. He had four small purple scars on the right side of his face.

  Hesitantly, he neared and sat a few feet from her, on the stone, looking out. The tide was low, breaking far away and gliding in, meshing with the sand so that, briefly, the ocean was edged with a band of silver and the sunlight flashed in the air.

  I’m sorry, he said.

  She shot a sidelong glance his way.

  I know, she told him.

  He took a short, sharp breath as a wave glided in and dissolved.

  What’s this job?

  I keep a record of wildlife.

  He almost smiled.

  It’s not so different from what we used to do. Watching. It’s what I mostly do too.

  A falcon rode the breeze far above, adjusting its wings as it scanned the coast.

  Thank you for the letters, she said. They helped.

  I guess I wrote some strange stuff in them.

  It was honest.

  The way they sat reminded her of how they’d most often been: in silence, reading or observing the world. She had no idea what to say and was grateful when he spoke.

  On my way here, he told her, I saw an old boat washed up just across that point.

  Show me. She shouldered her knapsack. She wasn’t afraid. Whatever he’d been — roving and untamed — had found an anchor. His body conveyed discipline in how he moved, the feral boy reappearing only in glimpses. The hissing of wind-blown sand against coastal weeds muted their footsteps, making them sound far away.

  At a promontory, they climbed the stone carved from the landscape by the last glacier and worn smooth by the ocean. The watery horizon spread out, fuller than a half circle, curving away in all directions. Seabirds planed, and the sun was so low in the northwest that even this slight increase in altitude gave the impression that its light shone up at them, grazing the sea.

  Down the coast, against a sandbar thirty feet out, the iron hulk of a ship was lodged almost upright, the remains of its collapsed cabin on top.

  Maybe the storm last night blew it in, she told him. It wasn’t there a few days ago.

  They climbed down the other side of the rock and walked closer. The rusted hull had lost its paint and any trace of a name or insignia.

  It’s some kind of fishing trawler, he said. We should swim out to it.

  With the day’s mild wind, the sun felt warmer than usual, but her team had been warned that even in the height of summer, swimming could bring on hypothermia within minutes. The exceptions were a few shallow areas where wide sandbars shut out the currents and allowed the sun to warm the water. Her team had visited one such area near the camp, and even there, the cold had left her breathless. Here, the water was deeper, almost black where a current ran through.

  She tilted her head, still not ready to look directly at him.

  We can do it, he said. He shrugged off his motorcycle jacket and pulled his gray hoodie over his head and then a pale olive T-shirt with Infidel printed on it — the Arabic script for the word below. There were more purple scars on his shoulder. He had two tattoos: the cross on his forearm and a rifle with a key instead of a muzzle, over his heart.

  She undressed to her T-shirt, and then, reluctantly, when he removed his shoes and pants and stepped into the water in his underwear, to her black sports bra. He went in up to his ankles and called back, Hurry up. It’s fucking freezing.

  She didn’t know why they were doing this, but seeing him like a little muscular boy and the pattern of vulnerability in his scars made her feel safe. She entered the water, and her feet were instantly numb.

  Go! he shouted. They ran, a line of cold in her shinbones, and then lunged and paddled. The green water became black, and she struggled to draw a full breath. Her arms felt wooden, and her muscles burned. The gloom beneath them turned to green, then yellow, and they half-crawled, half-ran onto the sandbar. He began doing jumping jacks, and she did the same, facing away. She wrung out her hair and used her hands to skim the water off her arms and legs.

  He turned, grabbed the edge of the hull, and pulled himself up. Barnacles covered the metal. Above her, it curved, faintly ragged against the sky.

  There’s not much up here, he said. The boat’s been underwater a long time.

  Gingerly now, he lowered himself. He had scrapes on his knees, blood between his fingers. He crossed his arms, his hands in fists, as if to hide his cuts. The sun was too weak to warm them against the minor wind. There was gooseflesh on his arms, and he began to shiver, careful even now to preserve the distance between them.
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br />   Let’s swim back, she said.

  He inhaled a few times, expanding his lungs against the inevitable contractions. They ran, splashing onto their bellies. She took short, frantic breaths, biting the air. At the dark interval between the sandbar and the beach, the heat of her body drew toward her core. Her limbs flailed, and she clambered onto the sand, gasping.

  There were faint blue lines on his knees and palms where his skin was too cold to bleed. He did jumping jacks again, and she picked up her clothes and walked toward the promontory. On the other side, she took off her underwear, dressed, and pulled her fleece hat over her wet hair. She went up to the rocks and sat. He climbed up next to her, and they warmed their palms against the stone.

  How did you find me? she asked.

  I googled you. You were on a list of volunteers up here, so I bought a motorcycle. I took the highway from the south and then the ferries. That was the shortest route. It felt good to ride and not worry about anything. I was missing open spaces.

  The sun drifted toward the north, gradually descending. Silently, they took in the landscape purged by the intensity of its winters.

  I should head back, he told her. My leave is almost over.

  They got up and briefly — turning her shoulder in, the world adjusting around her like a compass — she finally looked into his eyes. They seemed metallic, steady, resigned.

  He walked away, fading back into the familiar silhouette. She bit her lip and tasted salt.

  summer passed slowly in the white silence of the beach. The calm was broken only by the storms that blew in more frequently toward the end of the season. Beaches melted away, leaving shelves of stone, and new spits of sand appeared. The ship vanished.

  One morning in her last week, after the ATV driver dropped off her and Michel, they began to speak. She asked him about his book of poems, whether he’d finished it, and he told her he’d read it several times and knew the poems he loved by heart. She asked him to recite his favorites, and they sat in the sand as he did: Baudelaire’s “Albatross,” Rimbaud’s “Sleeper in the Valley,” Nerval’s “El Desdichado.” Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m’as consolé — In the night of the Tomb, you who consoled me. He wondered if Baudelaire, in his visions of distant indolent tropical islands, had envisioned a place like this one, so perfect and yet inhospitable.

  The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul

  In the infinite unrolling of its swell,

  And your spirit is not an abyss less bitter.

  As he recited the poem, she kissed him. She grabbed his jacket and pulled him against her, and then pushed the jacket back off his shoulders. They kissed and yanked at each other’s clothes.

  They made love, and afterward they lay together under their jackets, not talking. A scrim of clouds crossed the sky like a raft. She put her head on his shoulder and thought of the land around them, grateful for the isolation. They made love again, longer this time. Before meeting the ATV driver, they jotted on their checklists so that the pages were consistent with the days before.

  She awoke the next morning, ran to the ATV, and got on behind Michel. As soon as they were alone, they found a large smooth rock and undressed. In breaks between lovemaking, they called out the names of the species they saw. Michel told her about Eastern mystics who didn’t orgasm during intercourse so they could retain the strength and desire necessary to achieve enlightenment — who cultivated desire with detachment so they could direct their desire to the path of enlightenment without craving enlightenment.

  That’s the paradox of liberation, he explained. You need to have the strength to achieve it, and that requires desire, but if you desire with attachment, you trap yourself in suffering.

  He told her that those who died with attachment became hungry ghosts who roamed the earth but, because they lacked bodies, couldn’t experience the objects of their desire.

  In one of his letters, Sam had written that he’d read Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, curious about the limits and powers of the mind, about individuals who could understand the universe without science: I concluded that the wisest holy people were seeing only patterns like those created by wind on water, and knew nothing — knowing they knew nothing — about the dark ocean below.

  Her last day, she and Michel made love slowly, touching, exploring.

  Later, at the camp, they lay in their separate bunks. She couldn’t sleep, wanting the summer to continue. She knew that once they were back in the city her attraction to him would fade. In the emptiness of this landscape, she could forget that he wasn’t what she craved.

  Suddenly, she felt sick with anger, hardly able to contain it — her resentment at poverty and neglect, that she and Sam had been alone, that he’d become so desperate for acceptance he’d sold her for forty fucking dollars, the price of four squirrels. She’d built a life that would protect her and had judged herself for it. She’d chosen a career that gave her the courage she’d been born with and lost. She’d denied herself so much.

  Maybe Sam had suggested they swim to the boat because it would be easier than speaking — or because it was a reminder of the childhood they’d shared.

  Tears gathered and ran down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth. Nature had scoured her body, left it hard and lean, her lungs purified, her skin tanned and tight. She felt sad and enraged and desperate for life. She touched her tongue to her lips, expecting the taste of salt, of the ocean’s brine, not this cleanness, this feeling of youth.

  Part 8

  Kabul: February/June 2012

  }

  美智子

  I was in a taxi from the airport, back from my trip to the US, and on my way to see Frank. Two days before, Tam had emailed to say she’d finished her embed and had begun researching Justin and Alexandra for an article about the deaths of expats during the civilian surge. The piece would ask why those serving in various roles during the surge — funded as part of the American strategy — were not viewed as a kind of soldier. Her angle was provocative, sure to offend and spark debate.

  I didn’t answer her, and a day later she wrote to say that Frank had told her I’d been doing my own story and had taken a letter to Justin’s family. Are you the one who messed with Alexandra’s computer? She wanted to know what I’d been working on. I thought you were writing a novel. I was no longer sure what I’d call the form into which I’d written all that I’d learned. But the story was incomplete. I had to try one more time to ask Frank about Idris.

  I rang the buzzer until the taxi driver got out and banged on the door for me. Frank finally opened it, his eyebrows rising when he saw me.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I was already going deaf when I got out of the military. Artillery did that to me.”

  I thought he’d be interested to hear about Justin’s family, but he simply complained about finances. The car bomb had cursed the school, turning it into a dicey venture for donors. He asked if I knew any rich people in Japan.

  “I need to rebrand,” he said. “All the money’s going to girls’ schools. I don’t know why I didn’t start one to begin with. The problem with boys is they want respect without earning it. They’ve grown up seeing people cheat the system …”

  Ignoring his rant, I lifted my hand, palm facing forward, feeling like a student myself. I asked if he could recall any details about Idris he might not have mentioned.

  “There’s nothing,” he told me. “He had no real friends. The signs were there, that he was involved in something bad. He went through a period when he became someone else. It was the difference between a feral creature and one raised on the love of people. Toward the end, he got this dead stare. It was menacing. All he needed was patience and humility.”

  He sat, elbows on the armrests of his weathered office chair, hands slack on his knees, the veins sinking in the backs of them, as if his pulse were fading.

  “You know,” he said,
“I saw what was left of the car they were in. I’d been envious of them. They’d stepped off a plane and not long after had gotten to watch a rocket hit Kabul’s premier hotel. I remember thinking, ‘A decade, and I haven’t seen a thing.’ I’m not here to rubberneck, but I know the Afghans so well, and it would be good to experience what they’ve been up against. So when I heard the car bomb, I had a taxi take me there. I looked at the blasted Corolla without even realizing it was mine.”

  Frank hesitated. This was as vulnerable as I’d ever seen him, and the moment didn’t last long.

  Only Clay, I would later learn, had gotten under his skin. He’d visited twice, the first time alone, when Justin was out with Alexandra. The second when Alexandra was there, when he’d cemented his agreement with Frank concerning Idris.

  The first time, Clay had called and asked to see the school. He told Frank he’d met Idris and wanted to hire him, with Frank’s permission, of course. He showed up with a fifth of Wild Turkey and poured it into coffee mugs, but after five minutes of Frank’s pontification, Clay’s face went sour.

  Whoa now. Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you were always old.

  Frank’s eyes stopped like two marbles rolled into sand.

  That’s a brilliant observation, son.

  I mean, quit preaching. You used to chase them and fuck them as good as the next guy.

  Frank didn’t smile. I’m not denying it.

  You were in the army.

  I was.

  So you know. That’s the thing I hate about old men. They speak like they weren’t their dick’s henchmen for forty years.

  No, it’s true. I have stories to back it up.