First you dream and then you die, says Laforche.
I see clues: a smear in the dust between the rocks, a footprint pressing down the gravel. I am sure I am beginning to read the traces of the desert.
The voices, the sound of the beetles, fade into the great bell of silence. It seems that hour after hour I walk and the dunes are always the same distance ahead of me. Only the sky is changing: turning the colour of ash, tinged with the sickly yellow of the sun dying on the horizon, smelling of salt and smoke and dead flesh.
I am walking through a region of broken bones and crushed shells. The ground is growing lighter; the black rocks crumbling into grit are flecked by white and pink slivers of bone. I see a crab’s claw, the chafed mosaic of a turtle’s shell, cradled in camel skulls. Splinters of bone are caught between my toes.
I sit down to take off my sandal. The distance rustles as though a giant bush is being shaken. A yellow cloud detaches from the sickly sun and wheels back and forth across the sky. It turns towards me and blots out the light. The rustling grows into an endless whirring, the beating of a million tiny wings, the winds catching in barbed joints and searching antennae. The dark mass flies straight at me. A hot wind hits me, I feel drained and withered. I crouch on the ground, pulling the hood of the robe as far over my face as I can.
The whirring grows louder. It is a beating inside my head; my eardrums vibrate. Under the hood, the light has almost disappeared. Thunder booms. I peer through the dark grey light. The sky is the colour of coal seamed by silver; lightning flashes like the blinking of an eye. The ground is lit up and ahead, where the dunes rise like sculpted red waves, I see her walking away from me.
I release the backpack and stand up and the locusts hit me. I am knocked sideways, hurled along the ground, half dragged half pushed. My hood is no protection: the creatures fly in, scratching at my eyes, my cheeks, trying to climb into my mouth, my ears. They are climbing up my legs, under the sleeves of my robe, down my neck. The whirring is unbearably loud. I fling off the robe and run, naked, my hands over my face, into the dunes. When I feel real sand, not just grit, I hurl myself down and start digging. The booming increases behind me and there is the sound of a giant wave rising and rising. I grab handfuls of sand and pour them over me, I reach deep into the ground and pull myself forward. I dive into the sand.
I am in darkness. I roll and roll, corkscrewing into the sand, crushing the insects. The scratching and rustling on my body stops. Far away there is the sound of dogs barking then they too stop; the hammer blows of thunder recede. It is very quiet. I press my watch to illuminate it but when the light comes on, the panels are grey. I press and press. The panel flickers, the light goes out. I take the watch off and push it away from me. The silence and the sand fill my ears.
When I climb out of the sand, the sun is a spreading stain on the grey sky. Dunes rise on either side of me; it is as if an entire landscape has been created in moments. The crushed and stony ground is completely covered in sand.
My sandals have gone but I find my robe nearby. The book is still in the pocket, and something which jabs me between my fingers. It is the wooden hair comb. I am tempted to throw it away but I shove it back.
I walk in circles, digging in, trying to feel with my feet. I walk and dig but I know the backpack is gone.
When I climb to the top of the next dune, I am sure I will see Abu N’af but there is nothing: no plateau, no Kabir Massif, no blue mountains. Just endless sand stretching through the vast empty to Algeria.
I don’t know how long I have been walking. The desert stretches ahead of me. I walk and all I can think is, I am so angry.
The sandy mist envelops me, red clouds roll over me, the dunes rear up shadowless, constantly shifting in the wind which wraps my robe around me. I do not know if I am walking up hills or down. My feet sink into the sand. The glazed and crumbling fragments of clay jars are scattered between rusting cutlasses, useless pistols, abandoned compasses, empty water bottles. Occasionally I think I see monks on the horizon moving slowly in a centipede line under a hunch-backed and pockmarked yellow moon. Sometimes I see lions, sometimes wolves. Sometimes a hot breath snorts behind me, there is a shuddering on the back of my neck. Objects which glint metal, statuettes made of mud, float around me, their sharp edges dissolving in the gritty air. I ignore them all. The huge silence cloaks me. I plod on.
The wind comes again. It is a lupine wind. Wolves howl within it. The sky dogs. My skin hurts but I no longer feel thirsty or tired. Images from my past keep appearing and disappearing, rolling away like the white crests turning over in rough seas against the shore.
I can remember saying to her, What you do to your body is insane.
The light seeps away. I see windmills dark in a landscape of tormented rocks and boulders. Lacking water, lacking hope. Lacking the ability to cry, she had said to me.
In the wasted light, the earth falls away from all the other stars into silence. Day is reversed. I see the dying gardens of the star isle. Night slides into me; the breath from the moon’s gaping mouth trails across the black sky.
Time goes by, the stars wheel across the sky. I am on my knees in the sand. Dark birds circle overhead. I know this barren landscape, I have been here for years. I know those serrated peaks, those curtains of clouds that hum in the air, that lightning which looks like flares over a battlefield, which turns the smallest plant into the huge shadows of monsters moving between the stubby peaks and the milky blue boulders. Wings beat above me and in the next lightning flash I see a bird in flames, spiralling into the dark clouds.
A grain of sand hits my cheek. I kneel and look for a footprint. There is nothing but a pool of black water.
I don’t want to see but I must. There is a shape there. I am hoping beyond hope that it is her face – just to see her one last time. But of course it is not. I think, I am so angry.
I lean forward. I see my reflection.
I surrender, I say. I know you are indifferent to me. Borneo taught me that. You are beautiful in your sheer awful indifference, in your unattainability.
I take off my mask.
I am nothing now but sand and water.
Reveal the hard implacable truth to me, I say.
In the black pool the man who is me reaches out and writes a name in the water. Her name. And then he turns his back on me and walks away into a light which is so bright that it blinds me and the world turns to black.
I am on my back, drowning in light. The hovering birds beat their wings above me. A shadow moves across me, rain falls on me. There is a voice filled with silence and with light saying my name.
Listen, I say to the shape above me, we’re lost.
We’re not lost, she says.
I dig my hand into the sand, find a long curving piece of shell. I bring it to my wrist, begin to dig in. I cut downwards, following the vein, opening up the artery. The sky dogs howl, the book of the desert begins to close.
Listen, I say, save yourself. Open my veins. Let the blood out. There is water in blood. Drink it.
I press the sharp point of the shell in. There is pain then nothing. The shell goes in.
I hear all the other small voices of silence now. How can I not have heard them before? The voice of pure winds, the voice of the prince of rain.
I put my hands up to cup the rain and the stars.
There are books snowing from my hands, letters and words falling from my fingers.
If only you knew all I wished to say.
There is a long silence. I am looking out into the void and it is as I think.
I raise the shell to cut again and she says, You are the poem being written.
She is holding me, my head against her heart. I feel rain falling on me but it must be the touch of her hair against my cheek.
I am finding it hard to open my eyes against the white light but I do. The sun has burned a white hole in the sky. It is the moon.
She is lit up by light, the way light fills a hand with light. Th
e way light fills the face in a certain position. The way that, in a certain position, a certain time, I would see moonlight fall into her shoulder.
Her eyes are blank, glassy. She might be blinded. Her lips move, she is tracing in the air with one hand. I make out the rhythms of the notes, hear the echoes of a tune.
She makes the same gesture I had seen her make in the sick bay at Abu N’af. Her tracings had been a silent symphony. She had been conducting in the air, to the words she was thinking.
I say to her, What is that song you are singing?
She looks down at me.
Is that a poem?
It isn’t a poem.
What is it?
She hesitates.
I raise my hand to touch her face and see the bandage around my wrist.
She says, You are my lucky star, you glow for me from afar. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
A nursery rhyme.
Yes.
For some reason I think of Sister Antony.
I say, The Sister –
Her face hardens. She pushes me away.
She says, We have to go.
She helps me to my feet, gives me more water from her backpack. My legs tremble, my heart is shaking but I am upright. I stare at the water bottle.
So it was water then, I say. Not rain. Not tears.
No, she says, turning away. It wasn’t tears. I don’t cry.
I catch her by the shoulder, bring her closer. She doesn’t resist. She stares at me with her furious blue gaze. The welts on her face seem faded, reduced.
It was never as bad as it looked, she says. Sister Antony got something, monk’s bane, from a Moroccan woman who knows about these things.
More poison, I say. This is a story about poisonings.
No, she says. This is a story about families.
She turns and walks away, into the desert. She doesn’t look back. I think she doesn’t care if I follow her or not.
I follow.
A wind whistles nearby, cold air wraps around me. I don’t know it if it is real or some reaction to the poison. Or fear. The light grows brighter. The landscape is bleached. I see only the shadows skipping between the dunes and her figure an unyielding silhouette ahead of me. I am being blinded by light. Soon there will be only her. Unless she leaves me.
I say, We danced. My voice is insubstantial, making faint black marks in the white air.
I say, louder, We danced together at the party in the glass house.
There is a pause. I wondered if she is so far ahead that she can’t hear me.
No, she says. She had been deciding whether to answer.
Yes, I say. When I was watching you from outside the house. I came up out of the darkness, out of my cave, out of my well. I took your hand.
The ground feels hotter under my bare feet. Sand cuts between my toes. I say, At first we were awkward together. I said to you, Christ it’s a waltz. I can’t waltz. And you said, Neither can I. But can’t we try together?
There is a rustling in the distance. The locusts returning. My feet flinch at the heat.
I never said that, she says. I already knew you couldn’t be trusted.
I go on, And I held you and you said one two three and we moved off but in different directions and I said Oh, for fuck’s sake and you laughed. You made some small step and somehow we synchronised, effortlessly turning. Your dress was emerald water in my hands and we turned through the cool air and we danced on wordlessly and I felt I was in a trance.
There is a very long silence. I hear wings beating above me again. My feet are burning. Something is falling on my face: powdery, hot. I press a finger against my cheek. Ash.
Silence. I think she has left me.
Eventually, when I have given up hope, she says, You should have told me.
The light goes completely. I am blinded. I fall to my knees. The rustling is closer. I cover my ears. Something: wings, nails, brushes my forehead.
I want to shout but I don’t want to open my mouth.
I feel her hands in my hair, tilting my head, pulling my arms away. Liquid falls into my eyes; I smell lavender. A black mist covers my face. She is tying black silk over my eyes.
You’re sand-blinded, she says. Keep your eyes closed.
She says, Hold onto this. She gives me one end of a rope. I feel her leave me. The rope tugs at me to follow her.
I touch the silk. I say, Just when I was trying to take off my masks. My mask of anger.
Your mask of power, she says.
My mask of weakness, I say.
The rope becomes slack. She has stopped. She says, I saw you as all-powerful. I felt manipulated by you. How can you think I would not?
No. It was you who had all the power.
All I had was silence.
No, that was me.
She says, We never connected right from the start. There is a great weariness in her voice. She says, When I see you it is the opening of a wound.
The sky presses into my eyes. I refuse to think it might be too late. A wave of the old anger washes up me. I thrust my fist into the pocket of my robe and hear a sharp crack. I have broken one of the comb’s wooden teeth. I feel the splintered end with my finger, force the sharp tip under my nail. I remember the bone points filled with charcoal jabbing in under my skin in Borneo.
I say, I’ll never stop looking for you.
The rope tightens.
We walk. My feet sink into the hot sand. Through the silk, I see a halo around a low moon. I see the sand lifting up in eddies which turn into shapes. I see animals pacing.
I see lions, I say. The rope slackens. I put my hand up to remove the silk blindfold but she says, Not yet.
She takes my wrist and leads me across ground which seems firmer. I dig my toes into the sand and meet stone. A rock looms: I feel a small outcrop covered in chalky earth and clotted sand. I pass from pure light into shadow. Just as the merciless glare recedes, I look back and see a lion, kneeling, its nose to the ground, digging into the stony earth.
She leads me deeper. It is cooler here. There is no wind. The air is heavy with salt and the sloping ground feels strange. After a moment it comes to me. The earth is damp.
Leave the blindfold on for a little longer, she says. She lifts my wrist until my finger touches rock. She says, Keep this wall on your right even when the path splits. It’s part of a network of caves. It takes you back to Abu N’af.
And the other way?
She lets go of my wrist. She says, It runs through to Kabir Massif. It’s the old watercourse that still feeds the well. She says, All of this was once a giant sea.
I pull off the blindfold. She edges away from me. With the light from the fissure behind her, I find it hard to make out her face, the expression in her eyes.
I say, Aren’t you coming with me?
No, she says. Because all I want to do is hurt you. She reaches into her backpack. I see a black spine, a circle of light. An old camera.
I move towards her, slowly.
Don’t, she says.
I put my hands up, palms towards her. I say, Why did your message say that five people you loved had died? There was your brother, Pietr, Anna –
And you, she says. It was only ever you.
But who is the fifth?
I lost you twice, she says. In the caves.
Her hands tighten on the darkness in her hands.
There is a glint of light. I say, Sister Antony lied –
Stars stream from her hands. As she swings the camera at my temple, I shout, I’ll never stop.
When I wake it is dark. I am back lying on the path outside my father’s house, sweating alcohol, raising my head, hearing the shouts inside, the breaking glass.
I sit up. My temple and throat are wet. I mop at both with my robe. My pockets feel heavy: she has left me a water bottle and a candle and matches. I can’t feel the book and the wooden comb. I dig deeper; they have slipped to the bottom.
I haul myself up and walk, my right hand on the j
agged wall. I leave it up to fate whether I find the entrance or keep going, walking endlessly under the dead sea.
I don’t bother to use the candle. My eyes adjust to the darkness. I sense light in the tiny metal gleams in the wall. The ground is nearly smooth, compacted by the weight of water. Or maybe by many feet carrying heavy burdens.
I feel dampness under my sole. There is still water trapped somewhere below. Water in the Sahara. Man only settles the frontiers for business. The desert would become a strip mall. Then I remember the sand lifting in spirals, the locusts. Even Las Vegas didn’t have locusts.
I am sick suddenly, throwing up into the darkness. My bandaged hand is cramped, the side of my face spasms. Tremors wrack my body.
I dump sand in the direction of my illness and keep going. Surprisingly I feel better. It is as though my body is euphoric after expelling the poison. I am convinced that she hasn’t left me, that she is ahead of me, watching out for me. The logical man that I had been would have said there is no evidence for this but I believe it. I am happy.
I say to the woman, I found you.
I say her name over and over again.
Finally, she says, and her voice is as weary as the wind trapped against the rocks, Yes, you found me.
The path slopes more steeply. The ground is grittier, my feet curl against sharper rocks. I feel the roof opening above my head, an eddying of air. I am still walking quite quickly when I hear the rustling. I stop, jam my back against the wall, pull up my hood.
I wait. The darkness swells.
I feel sound. I light the candle and hold it above my head.
The flame moves across the stirring, shifting bodies like light moving across the night sea. The black furry bodies sway, the hanging heads nod. Here and there a wing is half extended, an eye blinks red in the light. Bats.
I have just blown out the candle, the smoke hanging grey in the air, when another light flares on the opposite side of the cave. A figure in a robe waves at me. The light recedes. There is a stirring above me, a ripple across a pond. I press my face to the wall and edge sideways, trying not to make a sound. The rustlings and whisperings grow louder. I am sure the whole nest will come alive. I wait, rigid. The darkness pulses. The cave settles into silence.
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