“I have to get out, Anna.”
“You’re not well yet.”
“I am not a patient. I am impatient. Help me get out. Please.”
“Why, Gid? What for?”
“They won’t let me go where I have to go.”
“Where do you have to go?”
“Mad.”
Dear Lin,
They continue to let me visit Gideon every afternoon from five to six, because I am his only relative, the widower’s widowed sister, and I just sort of barge in. I don’t think the doctor approves of my visits, I think he thinks I leave the patient disturbed, but he hasn’t the authority to keep me out, I guess, until Gideon is committed. I guess he doesn’t really have any authority, in a private rest home like this, but he makes me feel guilty. I never did understand when to obey people. He is supposed to be the best man here for nervous breakdowns. He has been disapproving lately and says Gideon is deteriorating, ceasing to respond, but all he gives him to respond to is drugs. What is he supposed to say to them? He hasn’t eaten for four days. He responds to me, when nobody else is there, or anyhow he talks, and I respond.He asked me about you kids yesterday. I told him about Kate’s divorce. It made him sad. “Everybody is divorcing everybody else,” he said. I was sad too and I said, “Well, we didn’t. You and Dorothea, me and Louis. Death us did part. Which is preferable, I wonder?” He said, “It comes out much the same. Fission, fusion. The human race is one great Nuclear Family.” I wondered if the doctor would think that’s the way an insane person talks. Maybe he would think that’s the way two insane people talk.
Later on Gideon told me what the weight is. It is all the people who are dying. A lot of them are children, little, hollow, empty children. Some of them are old people, very light, hollow, old men and women. They don’t weigh much separately, but there are so many of them. The old people lie across his legs. The children are in a great heap on his chest, across his breastbone. It makes it hard for him to breathe.
Today he only asked me to help him get out and go where he has to go. When he speaks of that he cries. I always hated for him to cry when we were children, it made me cry too, even when I was thirteen or fourteen. He only cried for real griefs. The doctor says that what he has is an acute depression, and it should be cured with chemicals. But Gideon is not depressed. I think what he has is grief. Why can’t he be allowed to grieve? Would it destroy the rest of us, his grief? It’s the people who don’t grieve who are destroying us, it seems to me.
“Here’s your clothes. You’ll have to get up and get dressed, Gideon. If you want to come away with me. I didn’t get permission. I just can’t get through to that doctor, he wants to cure you. If you want to go, you’ll have to get up and walk.”
“Shall I take up my bed?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Bible.”
“For God’s sake don’t go religious now. If you do I’ll bring you right back here. Hurry up. Here’s your pants.”
‘‘Please get off me just for a minute,” he said to the dying children and old men and women.
“Oof, how thin you are. Let me button that. All right. Can you manage? Hang on. No! hang onto me. You haven’t been eating, you’re dizzy.”
“Dizzy Giddy.”
“Do shut up! Try to look ordinary.”
“We are ordinary.”
They walked out of the room and down the hall arm in arm, an ordinary middle-aged couple. They" walked past the old woman in the wheelchair nursing her doll, and past the room of the young man who stared. They walked past the receptionist’s desk. Anna smiled and said in a peculiar voice at the receptionist, “Going out for a walk in the garden.” The receptionist smiled and said, “Lovely weather.” They walked out onto the brick front path of the rest home, and down it, between lawns, to the iron gate. They walked through the gate and turned left. Anna’s car was parked halfway down the block, under elm trees.
“Oh, oh, if I have a heart attack it’s all your fault. Wait. I’m so shaky I can’t get the key in. You all right?”
“Sure. Where are we going?”
“To the lake.”
“He went out with his sister, doctor. For a walk. About half an hour ago.”
“A walk, my God,” the doctor said. “Where to?”
I am Anna. I am Gideon. I am Gideanna. I am sister’s brother, brother’s sister. I am Gideon who am dying, but it is your death I die, not mine. I am Anna who am not mad, but I am your brother, who is mad. Take my hand, brother, from the dark! Reich’ mir das Hand, mein Leben, komm’ in mein Schloss mit mir. Oh, but that castle I do not want to enter, brother mine; that is the castle I do not want to enter. It has a dark tower. Who do you think I am, Childe Roland? A Roland to your Oliver? No, look, we know this place, this is the old place, where we were children. Let’s dance here, on the lakeshore, by the water. You be the tower, I will be the lake. You will dance in me reflected, I will be full of you, of the wave-broken shimmering stones. Lie lightly on me, tower, brother, see, if you lie lightly we are one. But we have always been one, sisterbrother. We have always danced alone. I am Gideon who dances in your soul, and I am dying. I can’t dance any longer. I am borne down, borne down, borne down. I cannot lie, I cannot dance. All the reflections are dissolved. I cannot dance. I cannot breathe. They lie on me, they lie in me. How can the starving be so heavy, Anna?
Gideon, is it our fault? It can’t be your fault. You never harmed a living soul.
But I am the fault, you know. The fault in my soul and yours, the fault itself. The line on which the ground moves. So the earthquake comes, and the people die, the little puzzled children, and the young men with guns, and the women pausing shopping bag in hand in the dissolving supermarket, and the old people who crouch down and reach out with wrinkled fingers to the faltering earth. I have betrayed them all. I did not give them enough food to eat.
How could you have? You’re not God!
Oh yes I am. We are.
We are?
Yes, we are. Indeed we are. If I weren’t God how should I be dying now? God is what dies. God is bereavement. We all die for each other.
If I am God I am the Woman-God, and I shall be reborn. Out of my own body I shall bear my birth.
Surely you will, but only if I die; and I am you. Or do you deny me, at the grave’s edge, after fifty years?
No, no, no. I don’t deny you, though I’ve often wanted to. But that’s not a grave’s edge, my young darkness, my terror, my little brother soul. It’s only a lakeshore, see?
There is no other shore.
There must be.
No; all seas have one shore only. How could they have more?
Well, there’s only one way to find out.
I’m cold. It’s cold, the water’s cold.
Look: there they are. So many of them, so many. The children float because they’re hollow, swollen up with air. The older people swim, for a while. Look how that old man holds a clod of earth in his hand, the piece of the world he held to when the earthquake came. A little island, not quite big enough. Look how she holds her baby up above the water. I must help her, I must go to her!
If I touch one, they will take hold of me. They will clutch me with the grip of the drowning and drag me down with them. I’m not that good a swimmer. If I touch them, I’ll drown.
Look there, I know that face. Isn’t that Hansen? He’s holding onto a rock, poor soul, a plank would serve him better.
There’s Kate. There’s Kate’s ex-husband. And there’s Lin. Lin’s a good swimmer, always was, I’m not worried about Lin. But Kate’s in trouble. She needs help. Kate! Don’t wear yourself out, honey, don’t kick so hard. The water’s very wide. Save your strength, swim slowly, sweetheart, Kate my child!
There’s young Chew. And look there, there’s the doctor, in right over his head. And the receptionist. And the old woman with the doll. But there are so many more, so many. If I reach out my hand to one, a hundred will reach for it, a thousand, a thousand million, and p
ull me down and drown me. I can’t save one child, one single child. I can’t save myself.
Then let it be so. Take my hand, child! stranger in the darkness, in the deep waters, take my hand. Swim with me, while we can. Let us be drowned together, for it’s certain we shall not be saved alone.
It’s silent, out here in the deep waters. I can’t see the faces any more.
Dorothea, there’s someone following us. Don’t look back.
I’m not Lot’s wife, Louis, I’m Gideon’s wife. I can look back, and still not turn to salt. Besides, my blood was never salt enough. It’s you who shouldn’t look back.
Do you take me for Orpheus? I was a good pianist, but not that good. But I admit, it scares me to look back. I don’t really want to.
I just did. There’s two of them. A woman and a man.
I was afraid of that.
Do you think it’s them?
Who else would follow us?
Yes, it’s them, our husband and our wife. Go back! Go back! This is no place for you!
This is the place for everyone, Dorothea.
Yes, but not yet, not yet. O Gideon, go back! He doesn’t hear me. I can’t speak clearly any more. Louis, you call to them.
Go back! Don’t follow us! They can’t hear us, Dorothea. Look how they come, as if the sand were water. Don’t they know there’s no water here?
I don’t know what they know, Louis. I have forgotten. Gideon, O Gideon, take my hand!
Anna, take my hand!
Can they hear us? Can they touch us?
I don’t know. I have forgotten.
It’s cold, I’m cold. It’s too deep, too far to go. I have reached out my hand, and reached out my hand into the darkness, but I couldn’t tell what good it did; if I held up some child for a while, or if some shadow hand reached back to me, I don’t know. I can’t tell the way. Back on the dry land they were right. They told me not to grieve. They told me not to look. They told me to forget. They told me eat my lunch and take my pills that end in zil and ine. And they were right. They told me to be quiet, not to shout, not to cry out aloud. Be quiet now, be good. And they were right. What’s the good in shouting? What’s the good in shouting Help me, help, I’m drowning! when all the rest of them are drowning too? I heard them crying Help me, help me, please. But now I hear nothing. I hear the sound of the deep waters only. O take my hand, my love, I’m cold, cold, cold.
The water is wide, I cannot get over,
And neither have I wings to fly.
Give me a boat that will carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
There is, oh, there is another shore! Look at the light, the light of morning on the rocks, the light on the shores of morning. I am light. The weight’s gone. I am light.
But it is the same shore, Gideanna.
Then we have come home. We rowed all night in darkness, in the cold, and we came home: the home where we have never been before, the home we never left. Take my hand, and step ashore with me, my sister life, my brother death. Look: it is the beginning place. Here we begin, here by the flood that parts us.
The Wife’s Tale
He was a good husband, a good father. I don’t understand it. I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe that it happened. I saw it happen but it isn’t true. It can’t be. He was always gentle. If you’d have seen him playing with the children, anybody who saw him with the children would have known that there wasn’t any bad in him, not one mean bone. When I first met him he was still living with his mother, over near Spring Lake, and I used to see them together, the mother and the sons, and think that any young fellow that was that nice with his family must be one worth knowing. Then one time when I was walking in the woods I met him by himself coming back from a hunting trip. He hadn’t got any game at all, not so much as a field mouse, but he wasn’t cast down about it. He was just larking along enjoying the morning air. That’s one of the things I first loved about him. He didn’t take things hard, he didn’t grouch and whine when things didn’t go his way. So we got to talking that day. And I guess things moved right dong after that, because pretty soon he was over here pretty near all the time. And my sister said—see, my parents had moved out the year before and gone south, leaving us the place—my sister said, kind of teasing but serious, “Well! If he’s going to be here every day and half the night, I guess there isn’t room for me!” And she moved out—just down the way. We’ve always been real close, her and me. That’s the sort of thing doesn’t ever change. I couldn’t ever have got through this bad time without my sis.
Well, so he come to live here. And all I can say is, it was the happy year of my life. He was just purely good to me. A hard worker and never lazy, and so big and fine-looking. Everybody looked up to him, you know, young as he was. Lodge Meeting nights, more and more often they had him to lead the singing. He had such a beautiful voice, and he’d lead off strong, and the others following and joining in, high voices and low. It brings the shivers on me now to think of it, hearing it, nights when I’d stayed home from meeting when the children was babies—the singing coming up through the trees there, and the moonlight, summer nights, the full moon shining. I’ll never hear anything so beautiful. I’ll never know a joy like that again.
It was the moon, that’s what they say. It’s the moon’s fault, and the blood. It was in his father’s blood. I never knew his father, and now I wonder what become of him. He was from up Whitewater way, and had no kin around here. I always thought he went back there, but now I don’t know. There was some talk about him, tales, that come out after what happened to my husband. It’s something runs in the blood, they say, and it may never come out, but if it does, it’s the change of the moon that does it. Always it happens in the dark of the moon. When everybody’s home and asleep. Something comes over the one that’s got the curse in his blood, they say, and he gets up because he can’t sleep, and goes out into the glaring sun, and goes off all alone—drawn to find those like him.
And it may be so, because my husband would do that. I’d half rouse and say, “Where you going to?” and he’d say, “Oh, hunting, be back this evening,” and it wasn’t like him, even his voice was different. But I’d be so sleepy, and not wanting to wake the kids, and he was so good and responsible, it was no call of mine to go asking “Why?” and “Where?” and all like that.
So it happened that way maybe three times or four. He’d come back late, and worn out, and pretty near cross for one so sweet-tempered—not wanting to talk about it. I figured everybody got to bust out now and then, and nagging never helped anything. But it did begin to worry me. Not so much that he went, but that he come back so tired and strange. Even, he smelled strange. It made my hair stand up on end. I could not endure it and I said, “What is that—those smells on you? All over you!” And he said, “I don’t know,” real short, and made like he was sleeping. But he went down when he thought I wasn’t noticing, and washed and washed himself. But those smells stayed in his hair, and in our bed, for days.
And then the awful thing. I don’t find it easy to tell about this. I want to cry when I have to bring it to my mind. Our youngest, the little one, my baby, she turned from her father. Just overnight. He come in and she got scared-looking, stiff, with her eyes wide, and then she begun to cry and try to hide behind me. She didn’t yet talk plain but she was saying over and over, “Make it go away! Make it go away!”
The look in his eyes, just for one moment, when he heard that. That’s what I don’t want ever to remember. That’s what I can’t forget. The look in his eyes looking at his own child.
I said to the child, “Shame on you, what’s got into you!”—scolding, but keeping her right up close to me at the same time, because I was frightened too. Frightened to shaking.
He looked away then and said something like, “Guess she just waked up dreaming,” and passed it off that way. Or tried to. And so did I. And I got real mad with my baby when she kept on acting crazy scared of her own dad. But she couldn’t he
lp it and I couldn’t change it.
He kept away that whole day. Because he knew, I guess. It was just beginning dark of the moon.
It was hot and close inside, and dark, and we’d all been asleep some while, when something woke me up. He wasn’t there beside me. I heard a little stir in the passage, when I listened. So I got up, because I could bear it no longer. I went out into the passage, and it was light there,hard sunlight coming in from the door. And I saw him standing just outside, in the tall grass by the entrance. His head was hanging. Presently he sat down, like he felt weary, and looked down at his feet. I held still, inside, and watched—I didn’t know what for.
And I saw what he saw. I saw the changing. In his feet, it was, first. They got long, each foot got longer, stretching out, the toes stretching out and the foot getting long, and fleshy, and white. And no hair on them.
The hair begun to come away all over his body. It was like his hair fried away in the sunlight and was gone. He was white all over then, like a worm’s skin. And he turned his face. It was changing while I looked. It got flatter and flatter, the mouth flat and wide, and the teeth grinning flat and dull, and the nose just a knob of flesh with nostril holes, and the ears gone, and the eyes gone blue—blue, with white rims around the blue—staring at me out of that flat, soft, white face.
He stood up then on two legs.
I saw him, I had to see him, my own dear love, turned into the hateful one.
I couldn’t move, but as I crouched there in the passage staring out into the day I was trembling and shaking with a growl that burst out into a crazy, awful howling. A grief howl and a terror howl and a calling howl. And the others heard it, even sleeping, and woke up.
It stared and peered, that thing my husband had turned into, and shoved its face up to the entrance of our house. I was still bound by mortal fear, but behind me the children had waked up, and the baby was whimpering. The mother anger come into me then, and I snarled and crept forward.
The Compass Rose Page 23