The Flame Alphabet

by Ben Marcus

  Among the many shames was that I focused so much on the interior fluid, overlooking what should have been obvious all along.

  The discovery came by accident. One of my subjects, strapped to an old bottled respirator, so large it dwarfed his little face, began the rapid breathing one never likes to see in a small person. Too often it foreshadows the unproductive kind of stillness. At the end of this boy’s fit, after I’d removed the respirator and cooled off his head with towels, I noticed, while cleaning up, a residue in the boot of the respirator bottle. A powder.

  It was impossible to account for the powder. I’d not medicated the supply of oxygen. It must have come not from me but from the boy, inside him.

  I scraped it free with a knife, dumped some into a spoon, and lowered the spoon over my flame.

  A clear smoke wobbled over the spoon. It filled the hut, stung my eyes. Into the air came a smell of berries, but within minutes, after my lungs had soaked it in, I collapsed on the cot. Not out of any physical distress. From what I could tell I felt fine. I collapsed because I had suddenly, with the arrival of this child smoke, been hit with a deep, unspeakable gloom.

  The hut was colorless, my body in it a burden. The child on the floor looked to be squirming in mechanical postures designed to trigger a reaction.

  I noted the repetition of his gyrations, the unimaginative way he thrashed.

  I observed my mood, diagnosed it as incidental, then forced myself out to the murmur line. One might as well test the effects of every dosage, even an accidental one like this.

  It was a warm day and I was flushed and sweating. Even in the sunshine my mood did not ease. It pulled at my breath, drew my sight into a darkened hole. It was a wordless despair I felt, a final sense of certainty that one’s maneuverings were all tethered to some vector of, not even folly, but something far worse. Something much more terrible than folly.

  At the shallow row of stones, I crossed the murmur line easily and kept walking into toxic territory. The fairy tales boomed from the speakers with perfect clarity and I did not stop. The recording was crisp and lucid and finally, when I determined that I could listen without detriment, I sat down on the path.

  I was fine. The language floated above me, entered my body, and I held my own, swallowing it whole.

  The serum was working.

  On the path I heard, from the loudspeaker, the old tale of the blindfolded bird who must search for his mother by sound alone. I had not heard this one since I was young. I am no fan of stories, perhaps because they seem more like problems that will never be solved, and this was among my least favorite.

  The bird is alone and scared. Because of the blindfold it cannot do the one thing it was made to do: fly. And its mother, though always nearby, learns to keep perfect silence when the little bird is on the verge of finding her. She keeps herself artfully concealed from him, hops away whenever he approaches. All the older birds do, so the little bird thinks he’s the last bird left on earth. He calls out and no one answers. The mother holds her breath as her own little bird is so close that he can smell her. He knows it’s her, right there. He doesn’t need to see to sense his mother there. She holds her breath and stands perfectly still, a statue. He circles her, moves in, then finally cries out, at which point she leaps into the air and flies off.

  When she returns later that day, laughing, with a lesson to share, he refuses to be comforted, will not acknowledge his mother, will not go near the older birds. He even insists on keeping the blindfold on his little head. Days go by and the bird won’t take off the blindfold. He learns to get where he needs to go. He doesn’t fly, but he can walk places. He gets around okay. Everyone thinks the little bird is sulking, taking himself so seriously. But it’s not true. The bird is in darkness under that blindfold and that is what he has come to prefer. He is not sulking. He is happy. The blindfold becomes a part of him. Even though he will not speak to his mother again, or to anyone else, he is grateful to them. Every day he silently thanks them for their gift.

  The story puts it differently, of course. Stories always do.

  More stories followed from the great loudspeaker, filling the woods with sound. I spent some of the afternoon enjoying the broadcast of tales down beyond the murmur line. The smoke I’d inhaled was a mostly thorough shield, though with certain words I felt mild convulsions, suggesting a partial immunity, which would need to be addressed.

  If the tales themselves did not please me, the voice they arrived in did, and it was this that I wanted to hear more of. I’d not been spoken to in years and the effect was luscious. I had taken this pleasure for granted. The stories were read by a child with a scratchy voice. They’d found a child who herself did not seem to understand the stories, because always at the moment of crisis, of conflict, the child’s voice only became sweeter, as if she were entirely innocent of what she was reading. What an enormous gift that would be.

  Or else to this girl these terrible moments were the good parts, the ones that gave her a thrill.

  Finally my shivers came on more strongly, the stories cutting into my head with a cold pain, and my daylight began to spoil.

  I walked home to see how my subject was doing. I’d need more of his breath in order to generate a true inhibitor, and I’d want to diversify beyond this boy. I’d need to establish that this extraction was not a fluke. It was the air of children I wanted, a fine-grained powder that rode out on their breath and offered to us a transformative medicine.

  The discovery, in the end, was a simple one. I should have made it months ago. From hyperventilation of a child—ideally, one later learned, a child in agitated fright, surging with adrenaline—comes a residue in the lungs. Coughed up out of fear. And when this residue is refined of impurities, enforced with certain salts, then subjected to heat, it forms the foundation of our immunity. Child’s Play. It lets the words back in, if briefly.

  Whether such a reversal should be sanctioned is another matter.

  55

  Once I’d perfected the serum, and could endure without sickness the full range of Aesop’s broadcasts below the murmur line, I sat down in the hut with the cherished contraband I’d smuggled from Forsythe: the voice tapes of my daughter, Esther.

  A language archive of the girl. Paper and tapes, a broad syllabus of topics, a spectrum of moods. Our viral girl, fourteen years old, singing, laughing, yelling, whispering, arguing, speaking sotto voce, making up words. Reciting letters, numbers, crying out in pain.

  I do not tire of these tapes. I will not. I have done the awful math enough times to determine that my inhibitor work is worth it to hear this girl speak. The work of gathering immunity, and the cost of such. Etcetera, fucking etcetera. The exchange, I believe, is fair.

  It makes it safe to hear the girl’s voice, and for that I would do anything.

  I am ready to debate this matter. My arguments are strong. This is the last of my daughter’s voice. You will be at a sad disadvantage if you challenge me on this point.

  56

  Last night I was stranded in darkness, out waiting for a child who never came. If one had appeared, and if I had secured possession, I would have led him to the extraction shed, applied the bottle to his face, and produced, if I could, a scenario that would lead to fright, which would lead to adrenaline, and, if I was lucky, my subject would hyperventilate, in those fast rabbit breaths, enough for me to collect a thimble of his powder.

  A fairly standard bit of smallwork. I’d burn it down and bottle the smoke, which I could gust over Esther as she lay prone in the bed. If I’d done my job properly, the smoke would sink over her and she’d have no choice but to breathe it in.

  This would be the last use of assets, just for this, so Esther could see something.

  If it worked, if Esther sat up and passed the various little tests I could subject her to, to affirm her immunity—the shortest, smallest words I could say, offered in a sequence deliberately free of meaning so as not to disturb her—I would hand her the letter her mother wro
te to her.

  I’ve kept the letter safe since the day we left home. It is crushed and filthy, that is true, but I have not opened it. It is not for me. There were many times, under the protection of the serum, that I could have read it, but I didn’t. It is for Esther, her mother’s words of departure. I would let her read it alone. She could take all day with it in the hut. I would walk out to the clearing to give her time. I would wait as long as she needed me to.

  When Esther finished reading the letter she could join me outside, if she wanted to, and I would not ask her what was said. I would never ask her.

  But this was not to be. The day ended without a sighting, and my asset supply would have to remain low.

  This morning the daylight finally soaked through the woods, forest sounds hissing up as I slept in the mud. Certain creaking reported in the trees, a whisper blew from the sturdier insects, roared over my wet resting place.

  I slept well in the soupy muck. I was ready to return to Esther, and not make such a mistake again.

  I wished only that I could better see the world in front of me.

  A point of light appeared, then throbbed, stretching into a dime-size window, through which I could see just enough to fight my way back to my woodpile, then up the slope north and along that last crumbling ledge to the clearing where my hut stands and everything, from what I could tell, seemed to be exactly as I had left it.

  Except that when I went inside the hut Esther was not behind the cloth. Her cot was neatly arranged, the blankets folded as if another houseguest might be coming. She’d made the bed, stacked her dishes on the doorstep, even swept the daily soot from our sill.

  At the hammered vent in the wall a fresh blast of heat rushed in, suggesting a newly fed fire outside.

  I pictured Esther taking advantage of my absence to tidy the hut, arrange everything neatly, then gather her things and leave. What a hurry she must have been in, thinking that at any minute I’d be home.

  She must have stopped to look from the glassless window, hoping I’d not come groping up the path. How relieved she must have been when she could finally leave with no sign of me and night coming on so strong.

  I went outside. My field of vision was still limited. Around me hung a brownness, so cloudy I felt I should be able to rub it away. I pitched my head through every contortion to be sure I wasn’t overlooking Esther somewhere, slid my vision over the property and yard, because maybe she was bundled under a blanket on a log, enjoying the late morning hum, waiting for me to return so I could brew us some tea.

  It was time for her to have healed, bounced out of bed, taking to the air so she could see where she’d been recuperating these last few weeks.

  I told myself there was no reason to be concerned, but since when did I believe my own reassurances?

  She must have only gone off on a short errand, perhaps a walk to stretch her legs. She would need to return soon, because she was not well, and she was not familiar with these woods. It was unwise for her to hike alone in an area where whole patches of ground can suddenly give way to a lava of salt. She would know that. She would be the first to be aware of how risky it was for her to travel abroad from me when she was so weak like this.

  I sat down, held my breath, listened. This silence was for the best. If Esther was nearby, if she could hear me, such a sound, even the pretty sound of her name in the air, would not have been well received. Her name yelled out by me would have hurt her, stopped her progress through the woods. I withheld it from the air.

  I heard nobody crawling, walking, running. I heard no one hiding behind a tree, breathing. When I tilted my head, all I could see, very high above me, was a bird. At least I think that’s what it was. It was hairless, its face so plain. What troubled me was that I could see the details of its wings too clearly, better than usual, and then I realized it was because the wings weren’t flapping, weren’t even moving. The bird, far aloft, was perfectly still, falling through the air.

  Perhaps it had received a fright, high up in the air. Perhaps it saw something, suffered a shock, lost its powers, and started to fall.

  I shut my eyes, waiting for the sound of impact.

  57

  I spent the morning outside the hut waiting for Esther to return. I could have ventured after her, but there were too many directions she could have taken and it seemed safer to wait, since she would be back soon, I was sure.

  When the afternoon dimmed and grew cold, when I heard nothing stumbling out of the woods, I took a pull from my last remaining stash of assets, then risked everything and whispered her name. The word Esther was so cold in my mouth. I whispered it, then spoke it, but my mouth was too dry and I’m sure I said it wrong. If Esther was still out there she would have heard only a low moaning, something senseless from far away. Whatever I said was not her name. I should have practiced more. I should have been ready for this.

  Now in the advancing darkness I can only wait for Esther to return. One does not simply leave a father when there are still so many terrible uncertainties to master.

  I would have served as an escort on her outing. Had Esther desired, I would have even hung back so she would not have needed to see me. I do wish she had availed herself of my experience. It is very possible that I could have helped. Yet I understand that Esther must do things herself, always, on her own terms, and that gains made in my presence, with my help, to her do not look like gains at all. I understand this.

  To be Esther’s father is to try with all my might not to get caught being her father. I can be that person for her. I will be.

  When Esther returns, healthy and strong again, ready to take her place as my daughter, together we can sit at the hole in our hut and listen as one family, the two of us bending together into the old hole that might deliver our missing piece.

  We will listen for the footsteps of Esther’s mother, who could be here soon. It is a difficult trip, but not impossible. If I could find my way here from Forsythe, groping along the orange cable, then so can Claire. She is stronger, smarter than I ever was, and she can zero in on us even blinded, even ill. She will find us here, it is really just a question of when. When Esther returns to me, we will wait for her mother together, as a family.

  It may take days or weeks, but it will not matter, we will wait. And when Claire climbs through the hole, exhausted from her travels, caked in the filth of the tunnels, Esther and I will lead her to the outdoor shower, boil extra water for the cleansing. We’ll ready a little mountain of soft towels, and Esther will go inside to choose from the bright new clothes we pulled from the shelves in town.

  While Claire showers, Esther and I will smile at each other, look down, draw nonsense signs in the dirt with a stick. We will be excited, but we will wait, give Claire her time.

  When my family is together again I will not need to speak, to read, to write. What is there, anyway, to say? The three of us require no speech. We are fine in our silence. This is the world we prefer.

  It will be enough to walk out, the three of us, along the high, scary ledge that lords over the creek and cuts up past the shadow of the Monastery into the wide-open field. We will not need to speak. Under our feet will be the vast, shifting salt deposits, just a residue of everything that’s ever been said. That’s all that’s left. We will walk through it into the clearing. We can have a quiet lunch on the rocks, then stretch out to rest in the sun.

  I will wait for them here in my hut, and when Claire and Esther return, this is what we’ll do, as a family.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For guidance and close reading I am grateful to Marty Asher, Heidi Julavits, Deb Olin Unferth, Sam Lipsyte, Denise Shannon, Andrew Carlson, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Lethem.

  Thanks to Ruchika Tomar and Sunil Yapa for research assistance.

  For their generous support I am indebted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Creative Capital Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  B
en Marcus is the author of The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women. His stories have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and Conjunctions. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and awards from the Creative Capital Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York, where he is on the faculty at Columbia University.

  ALSO BY BEN MARCUS

  The Age of Wire and String

  Notable American Women