Conjunctions 64: Natural Causes

by Natural Causes- The Nature Issue (retail) (epub)

  “Nobody came through the gate, the fire just appeared, no warning!” shouted a uniformed guard wielding a lit flashlight.

  “Really sad to see your workplace just gutted,” commented a squat, bald man either cradling or smothering his infant.

  “Senseless, senseless,” commiserated a random woman lugging plastic bags.

  “These terrorists have hijacked the whole movement,” explained somebody wearing a tweed suit and gold watch, but nothing else was said of the ecoterrorists, whether they had been captured or spotted or escaped undetected, and then the program cut to commercial, a flashy advertisement for a racing championship, cars whizzing around in meaningless circles.

  I had no way to get ahold of Peter, would have to wait for him to get ahold of me. I was worried, but not really. He knew how to take care of himself; he had never been caught before.

  I wandered down to the beach, nibbling chocolate. The motorboats and seaplanes were all moored for the night in the harbor. I could smell the harvest in my backpack, a pungent, ripe smell. The moon was ripe too, hanging full and gold above the beach, glinting off the crests of waves, the wet stones. The tide was all the way out.

  I was about to head home when I saw somebody was standing out at the point, perched on the boulder. Ash was. Gazing at the ocean, her hair rippling in the wind like kelp in a wave, her anorak billowing around her.

  I wandered down to the point, went and stood at the boulder, still nibbling chocolate.

  Her hair was damp, like the night we had met, and her moccasins lay abandoned in the sand. Her fingernails and her toenails were painted saffron orange. Her nostrils were flared.

  “Sorry, giant,” she murmured.

  She glanced at me, then hopped from the boulder into the sand.

  “I overslept,” she said.

  We sat on the boulder together, as waves crashed quietly onto the far-off tidal shoreline. I offered her chocolate, which she refused. (“Is that dumpster chocolate?” she asked suspiciously. She pinched the bar between a pair of fingers, flipping it this way, flipping it that way, squinting, scrutinizing. “It looks normal,” she said, less suspiciously. She tucked her hair behind her ears, and bent over the chocolate, sniffing tentatively. “It smells normal,” she said, even less suspiciously. She grimaced, like somebody bracing for a leap from a cliff. She raised the chocolate to her mouth. She cracked her lips—just barely. She parted her teeth—just barely. Eyes shut, she leaned in toward the chocolate—then shoved the bar back at me, and bleghed, saying, “No, no, it’s still just too gross.”) Clouds drifted across the moon. As the moonlight vanished, the bright glints on the waves and the stones vanished, everything vanished, the world was reduced to sounds and smells, the touch of the wind, the temperature of the boulder, the texture of the sand. I glanced toward her, but couldn’t see her, only hear. She had begun to ask me a question, I don’t remember what, ∵ before she could finish, the clouds drifted beyond the moon, moonlight lit the landscape, and her voice caught.

  Staring off toward the ocean, her mouth opened and shut, opened and shut, opened and shut, like the mouth of a fish in a net.

  I followed her gaze, turning to the shoreline, then dropped the chocolate.

  In the shallows there, among the waves, something gigantic was splashing toward shore.

  The thing was approximately the size of a dump truck. Breakers broke against it, spattering foamy water. Moonlight hit a wheeling fin.

  “Bloodsucker,” Ash whispered.

  Then clouds drifted across the moon again, and the beach went dark.

  I now understand why descriptions of monsters are always so imprecise, unreliable, contradictory. ∵ when you find a monster—even if you’re looking for a monster—you don’t actually look. You run.

  We hurried along the beach, stumbling over driftwood, slipping over stones.

  She whispered, “We saw it.”

  She whispered, “We’re hall of famers.”

  And, anxiously, “It won’t want anybody to know.”

  We hurried down the boardwalk together, passed the harbor, headed into town toward the glowing windows of the restaurants and the neon signage of the taverns.

  At some point I became aware that we were being followed. Something was following us. Silhouettes. Merging, separating. Sometimes forming a single six-armed silhouette, sometimes breaking apart into triplet silhouettes with a pair of arms apiece. As the silhouettes marched across the street, a street lamp illuminated their bodies. Three people wearing black jackets. The people were large—bigger even than me.

  Ash saw.

  “Did the monster turn into those people?” she whispered.

  The silhouettes had crossed back into darkness, merged back into a single shadow.

  “Turn into?” I whispered.

  Ash clutched my sweater, pointed at the harbor, where silhouettes were marching in off a dock.

  “Are those other monsters?” she whispered.

  We stopped, under a street lamp, as the six-armed silhouette continued drawing closer.

  “You’re panicking,” I whispered.

  Silhouettes poured from an alleyway.

  “I think sometimes the best thing is to panic,” she whispered.

  If the monsters could mimic us, that would have an obvious logic, evolutionarily.

  If the monsters came for us, it would be logical to come at night.

  In the diner, people were shaking pepper shakers, squirting ketchup, singing along to country songs. In the taverns, people were ducking darts, shaking hands, spilling foamy beers across the bar top. In the café, people were sipping from paper cups, were sipping from plastic cups, as outside monsters overran the streets. In the morning, newscasters would report a slaughtered town. Hotel rooms, littered with overturned room-service carts, overturned room-service trays, twisted sheets, twisted bodies. Hospital hallways, littered with overturned wastebaskets, overturned wheelchairs, spilled gurneys, spilled bodies. Schoolyard playgrounds, littered with shredded raincoats, shredded backpacks, bodies. Misshapen, skinless, bloody. Carcasses stripped to the bone.

  The six-armed silhouette broke apart, merged again, broke apart, rushing toward us.

  “Can we run, please?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  But as we ran, we ran apart from each other, she vaulted the steps and yanked open the door and didn’t realize until she was in the diner with those other people that I wasn’t there, that I wasn’t with her, that she had gone somewhere I couldn’t follow, ∵ I was already running through the roundabout toward home, my boots pounding against the pavement, my backpack thumping against my back, and then up the hill, where what ensued probably seems ridiculous given the circumstances, but on the hill there just wasn’t help for me, only heated houses with shining windows, and my survival instinct was telling me to knock on a door to hide in a house, but my core idea was overruling that ∵ if heat escaped from the houses then the houses would have to consume additional energy to heat additional air, so I kept running without looking back, but as I ran beneath a street lamp I found myself facing a mammoth cloud of hovering gnats, and my survival instinct told me just to bat the gnats aside ∵ stopping might mean dying, but my core idea overruled that ∵ if the gnats got batted the gnats might be harmed, so I stopped, and paced, squinting, from curb to curb, until I found, finally, a passage through the gnats, but as I ran through and scrambled over a fence and rounded the corner I found myself facing a monstrous garden of budding herbs, each labeled with a handwritten tag, and my survival instinct told me just to cut through the garden, but my core idea overruled that ∵ if the herbs were trampled, the herbs might die, and then whoever had planted the herbs would have to buy herbs instead, in a plastic bag, which would take three hundred years to decompose, and those packages of store-bought herbs always come with way too much, so that the bulk of the herbs is wast
ed, so I didn’t cut through the garden, but instead looped around, and felt weak, and felt dizzy, and felt hungry, and had to stop to pick up a plastic spork, and a stray hound was barking at whatever was behind me.

  The house, of course, was pitch-dark. I flew down the driveway through moonlight and shadows, bounded up the rusted staircase bolted to the house siding. From the balcony, I glanced back at the driveway, but didn’t see anything following. Still, as I threw open the door, I reached for the lamp, ∵ with a lamp lit, I wouldn’t be as frightened. But, as I stood there in the doorway, staring at the lamp in the moonlight, my hand on the switch, I felt another sort of terror, ∵ when I looked at the lamp, I saw the cord, and when I looked at the cord, I saw the outlet, and when I looked at the outlet, I saw, beyond the outlet, the whole twisting chain of power (the electricity at the outlet, there, and beyond, wriggling along its wires through the walls of the house, from the attic into the unlit den below into a wallpapered bedroom into a carpeted closet twisting past the darkened stairway into the empty pantry past the kitchen alcoves into the sunroom and without warning plunging sickeningly into the circuit breaker in the basement workshop now, and outside, shooting through the electric meter with its spinning dials, leaping through the sky to the transformer on its pole, swooping from pole to pole with the power lines, above the roads, over vehicles with headlights, past a lake of wailing loons, and over the barbwire fence and through the switch tower and into the substation, flailing through the distribution bus and the capacitor banks and the regulator banks there, and then leaping with the power lines over the barbwire fence into the sky again, swooping from pylon to pylon, above the pines, over a farm, above the pines, across a deserted highway, above the pines, past a burning building, above the pines, alongside a flock of scattering bats, above the pines, toward in the distance what looks like another burning building, but isn’t, it’s not, it’s home, the birthplace, the power plant, and as you head toward the billowing smokestacks, against the flow of all of that newborn electricity, you can sense that neonatal fear in the power lines there, the terrified humming, the electricity there existential, already haunted by dreamlike visions, prenatal memories, of the generator’s whirring rotor, the turbine’s whirling blades, and, beyond everything, that monstrous womb, the fiery furnace of burning coal).

  I propped a chair against the door. I sat in the dark, on the mattress, under a heap of blankets, watching the window in the door for signs of movement.

  I wasn’t there long before I began hearing noises. Gravel skittering in the driveway; the rusted staircase creaking on its bolts, creaking again, again; the balcony groaning. A blurry form crossed the window. Stood there.

  I kept still.

  The doorknob squeaked. I stopped breathing. The doorknob squeaked again. The chair scraped; the door thudded; the chair toppled, clattering to the floorboards.

  The form stepped through the door.

  “Hello,” it whispered.

  Like a lisp, but not.

  “How did you find this place?” I whispered.

  “I guess once when I was stalking you,” she whispered.

  She shut the door.

  “It’s freezing.”

  “The heat’s off,” I whispered.

  “Have you got any cocoa?”

  “There’s an old tin in the cupboard,” I whispered.

  “I’ll make some then.”

  She sniffed the kettle, cranked the faucet, stuck the kettle under the faucet, dug for the lid (the faucet running, the kettle overflowing, water spilling wasted into the drain), stopped the faucet, poured some water from the kettle (glugging wasted into the drain), wiped the kettle with the cuff of her anorak, capped the kettle with the lid, lit a burner. Beads of water gathered mass on the sides of the kettle, zigzagged abruptly toward the burner, hissed to steam. The whistle on the kettle is broken. Instead, when the water boils, the kettle rumbles. I never use the stove.

  She sat on the mattress, hugging her knees like somebody protecting frightened children, as the water heated.

  “You live like this?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Your brain is awful to you,” she whispered.

  She scooted toward me, under the blankets, her anorak rustling against my sweater. The pale light of the burner flickered across half her face. Her eyelashes were clumped with mascara.

  “Is there a lock on the door?” she whispered.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Will the monsters find us here?” she whispered.

  “Maybe,” I whispered.

  She whispered, “The bloodsuck—”

  Midword, midsentence, mideverything, she grabbed my sweater, kissing me. Her lips to my lips. Her nose to my nose. Her eyes, unshut, at my eyes. She stared at me. I stared at her. She yanked the zipper of her anorak, wriggled out, kissed me again, gripped my shoulders, kissed me again, yanked the zipper of her jeans, wriggled out, kissed me again, straddled me, her sweatshirt swaying, our hands battling, mine trying to block hers, forcing them away as they clutched at my chest, forcing them away as they clutched at my hips, forcing them away as her fingers clawed across my jeans and slipped between my legs and squeezed me there, the kettle was rumbling, my hands pinned her hands, she stopped kissing me.

  “Stop thinking,” she said.

  “I shouldn’t,” I whispered.

  “Stop thinking,” she said.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I whispered.

  “Stop thinking,” she said.

  “The stove is still on,” I whispered.

  “Please, please, please, please, please,” she said.

  Then her fingers found my button, my zipper, everything underneath, she eased herself onto me with a whimper, and as she sat on me, all of my logic broke down, verums toppled, falsums flipped, negations couldn’t negate, conjunctions were disjunctions and disjunctions were conjunctions, tautologies weren’t, contradictions weren’t, things nonexistent were existent, and the truth is that I cried while she moved on me, ∵ she was touching my skin everywhere, and the electrified fence didn’t kill her, ∵ she was electric too.

  May 22nd

  In the morning we ate breakfast together, on the mattress, huddled under the blankets—pears for me, peanut butter for her, dollops spooned from the jar—and she had her cocoa, finally. Something made her laugh, I don’t remember what, and she almost spit a mouthful of cocoa across my chest, which, after she swallowed the cocoa, only made her laugh more. We split a glass of water, brushed our teeth (the baking soda scared her, but her breath horrified her, so she had no choice), and got dressed. She claimed my sweater, so I had to dig out my spare from the box under the sink. Now there was daylight, I wasn’t as worried about monsters, but, honestly, I was still worried—until, before leaving, I glanced through the lattice attic window at the beach below—saw just how simple the truth was. I laughed then too.

  I didn’t have to work today. We left the house, wandered down through town together, past other couples out for strolls (some probably those silhouettes we saw last night), toward the harbor. A warm, calm weekend morning. There weren’t any bodies littering the playgrounds. There weren’t any bodies littering the streets. The only new body was at the beach.

  A crowd had gathered—a crowd of people milling about the black sand, a crowd of birds hovering in the bright sky—circling the body. The gigantic carcass of a dead whale. Its fins scraped, its fluke crushed, its baleen in tatters. The tide had swept the body in, then receded, leaving the carcass beached not all that far from the boulder. People were snapping pictures. Children crouched in the yawning mouth. Peter was there (jeans, plaid shirt, leather loafers, bright-red woolen hat), had driven Grandpa Uyaquq down to see the body. (We’ve just sent Peter back for Mr. Nome.)

  “We aren’t hall of famers,” Ash said sadly, standing alongside the body, running her fing
ers across the barnacled skin above the lid of a shut eye.

  It’s not proof. But it’s the closest thing to a footprint, a sighting, our town has ever had. The monsters have never, ever killed something of this magnitude before. Grandpa Uyaquq can’t stop grinning. He lived to see something this town will be talking about for centuries.

  Ash clenched her fists, and set her jaw, and cackled, just once.

  “Then that means we’ve still got work to do,” she said.

  We’ve got Grandpa Uyaquq settled on the boulder now, where he has a good view of the whale, the birds eating from the blubber. I’m lying against the boulder, in the sand, reading from the novel, writing in my diary. Ash is napping, her head propped on my legs, her hair rayed across my lap. The final chapter opens, “Bankruptcy is your inheritance. —Veuillot Al-Ada, Nuncupative Testaments.” After the accidental destruction of the volcanic city, the novel relocates (still yet again) back to the home of the debtor soldier, a city that, like all of the world’s cities now, is in ruins. As the mythical cities were being destroyed, off page, across the planet, all of the world’s cities were being destroyed. Windstorms, sandstorms, hailstorms, floods. The soldier’s debts are wiped clean. Humanity’s debts are wiped clean. The planet is a wasteland. Among the ruins of his family’s estate, somebody, a stranger, is throwing a party. Women in dirty gowns mill about the rubble. A man with an ashy face climbs a staircase to nowhere. Children topple from crumbling pillars clutching glass bottles. It’s only after the soldier has begun drinking that somebody mentions what’s in the bottles. What everybody’s drinking. Hemlock.

  It’s a contradiction, but, nevertheless, the novel was simultaneously the best and the worst that I’ve ever read.

  Listen the Birds

  A Trailer

  China Miéville

  0:00–0:03

  Two tiny birds fight in the dirt. There is no sound.

  0:04–0:05

  A man in his thirties, P, stands in undergrowth. He holds a microphone. He stares.