Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living

by Sam Smith

  Sririsl helped. It was still too early in the season for her to start grafting or sowing seeds. Using the Knowledge, referring back to Rufena at home, my days with Sririsl were usually more productive.

  Sririsl was particularly helpful in the finding of root vegetables. These required a recognition of a probable location, a lifetime's semi-conscious experience. Then we had to scratch away leaves, often still frozen near the ground; and later dig with trowels into the spring sludge.

  Unguided by Sririsl I had one success, found a whole colony of a particularly valuable medicinal fungi. (Sririsl had to return with me next day, learn the location for the Knowledge.)

  Some days, feet clogged with mud, having lost myself several times, I felt like I'd walked the whole forest. Even then, tired, I'd find myself trudging in the wrong direction; and, almost weeping, legs raw with cold and wet, I'd have to go back over the same ground. It was here that I had impressed on me the physical weariness of the hybrids. No wonder, I belatedly realized, Rufena had needed to go home during her first months with me.

  I was glad of the days it rained, when I couldn't go to work.

  By this time Rufena was so large that she was having difficulty leaving the house. Even going across to Sririsl's house was a struggle; and she liked to go there to look at my forest painting.

  On coming home she'd touch my forehead, hold my fingers, tell me I was so clever to have found the truth. Which praise came quickly to frustrate me.

  My pictorial realization of the hybrid lack of hope, my diagnosis and depiction of hybrid life, was all agreed with. But that agreement changed nothing, took us no further.

  "True," Rufena said.

  "True," Sririsl said. And meanwhile there was work to be done. What else did we do?

  77

  Rufena was so large that she couldn't find a comfortable position. Chairs were too narrow; standing hurt her back, hurt her knees; if she lay in bed too long her skin became tender...

  I could offer only small words of comfort, could offer only a few words of interest. Unlike hers my life was beyond my own body. Nevertheless, when asked, I was happy to feel the movements of our baby under her skin. But, as yet, it was only her skin that I was feeling. The pregnancy, not the baby, was what was real for me.

  I smoothed oil over Rufena's belly, kneaded it into her expanded buttocks, palmed it over her milk-inflated breasts... Massaging bits of her like that it would seem that all that was left of the Rufena I'd fallen in love were her small head, small hands, small feet.

  All of us waiting on the day she was to give birth there was little more to be said about the anticipated event. We'd said it all so many times before.

  Asking if she'd mind, I painted; but in our house now. Sririsl had no unpainted walls left. So I went back to square one, overpainted the poem wall in our bedroom.

  I began at the top with a line of overlapping jungle leaves. With my new painting materials these leaves were large glossy things, difficult and slow to paint. Wet days I added another line of leaves, slightly larger, slightly overlapping the line before.

  I told myself that this was not another search through art for meaning, that I simply wanted to give a pleasant outlook to our bedroom. (Although I was prepared to be surprised by a discovery.) To alleviate the dense jungle green I added highly coloured imaginary fruit and flowers.

  I also started sketching on the pad given me. But I soon found the page too confining, too immediately fixed, left no space for experiment. A whole wall, however, allowed me to paint a line in a single armstroke, to — at my leisure — embellish it, and — in a moment of inspired discontent — overpaint it. And enjoy doing it.

  Decoration the jungle wall may have been, but it soon came to engross me; and I resented the dawning of a dry day, an afternoon wind that came warm and took me away from my wall, out to walk bow-headed searching for phallic fungi.

  78

  I had been so long awaiting the birth that I had given up waiting for it: the pregnancy had become a permanent state in my mind. Thus I went to sleep night after night beside the mound of Rufena expecting to wake beside that same mound in the morning.

  The first I knew of the impending birth was being woken by Sririsl's dry voice in the middle of the night.

  With pillows behind her, some from our bed, some from Sririsl's, Rufena was propped against the wall, legs spread, knees apart, belly between. Under her were laid sheets of some sterile material. Sririsl was knelt beside her, had a box of equipment open.

  I came awake.

  "How do you know what to do?" I demanded of Sririsl. Her old hands were dithering over the box's sharp contents.

  Rufena, her face shining with sweat, busy panting, made — for the first time between us — the hand behind the face gesture.

  "What if something goes wrong?" I was up beside Rufena.

  Out of her pain Rufena fumbled for my hand, squeezed my fingers.

  "Nothing will go wrong," Sririsl told me across her. "Contractions are quicker now."

  I watched a convulsion within Rufena's stomach. She let loose a huge sigh as the pain passed.

  "Why didn't you wake me?"

  "Nothing for you to do," Rufena said, "but watch and worry."

  She lifted the back of her hand to my cheek. I took the hand and kissed her palm.

  "Now," she said to Sririsl.

  Legs drawn up Rufena pushed and groaned, pushed and gasped. Then came a head.

  Sririsl felt around the neck. Rufena pushed. Out the baby slipped. Rufena laughed, shouted.

  "Girl!" Sririsl said, scooped up the slimy thing and placed her in Rufena's arms, umbilical cord still trailing from her to inside Rufena.

  Sririsl got busy with clips and swabs.

  The baby's mouth was cleaned out. She breathed, a soft mewl.

  "Hold her," Sririsl pushed the baby out of Rufena's arms to me. She fitted my hands. I glanced up from her to Rufena's huge happy smile. I was weeping.

  "Push!" Sririsl told her; and I watched her check the lace-veined placenta against the Knowledge's encyclopedia of gynaecology.

  "She's healthy," Sririsl allowed herself a smile. "What are you going to call her?"

  The naming of this our daughter was not easy.

  With a lexicon as vast as the Knowledge, of my human side, every single name of my known female ancestors seemed to have a sinister connotation. Which left us to invent names — take any number of letters, use as anagrams. And no sooner did I come up with one I liked than I'd be told that another hybrid already had that name. After seven days we agreed upon Tutomei. (I apologize here daughter mine.)

  79

  For whole evenings I found myself staring at that little thing called Tutomei, wondering at the miracle of her being. To think that flawed me had helped produce such a perfect thing.

  Rufena wore the same look, watching her watched by me, while Sririsl smiling watched the three of us.

  Breastfeeding, out and about active again, Rufena soon shrank back to her original size. Snuggled up in bed to my slim Rufena of old I asked her if she was yet in contact with Tutomei.

  "Not yet. Her physical brain is yet undeveloped. I get flashes though."

  "Is that what my dreams could have been? Flashes?"

  Rufena shrugged.

  I'd regained my Rufena of old beyond the bed as well. Her movements again were graceful, lithe, even with Tutomei at her breast.

  O happy days.

  Even when I had to go trudging off in search of smelly fungi, dig in dark musky soil for anaemic roots, I knew all the while that Rufena and Tutomei were awaiting my return. Often I'd find myself, having come to a stop on a forest path, gazing into the no-distance with a smile on my face.

  O happy days.

  * * * * *

  One of those happy days I heard Rufena calling me in the forest. Her voice didn't sound alarmed. I called back. So we sought each other, homing in on our own names.

  We caught sight of one another at either end of a long deer
path.

  "Where's Tutomei?" I shouted.

  "With Sririsl."

  It was good to see Rufena unencumbered again: no big belly, no carrying pouch. Dropping my bags I flung wide my arms and, like a big bird, I started on a side to side soaring run towards her. She dodged behind one tree, ran crouching to another, jumped out before me. To be grabbed up and laughing swung in a circle.

  Giddy we held on to each other.

  "Why are you here?"

  "I forgot to tell you." (Common that between hybrid and human) "The men have come to add Tutomei's room. But they don't want to hurt your painting."

  Both men insisted on shaking my hand, celebrity that I was, and giving me their names. Both were in awe of the paintings.

  "They don't matter now," I told them: "It was the doing them that was important. An experiment, that's all."

  With minimum fuss they removed the wall, attached another with a door. The outer walls too came prefabricated. From inside I watched them go up, admired the simple cleverness of the construction.

  Wandering outside, Tutomei in my arms — she liked to see the light coming down through the forest leaves — I saw that they had made the outside of this new room — the conifer's boughs, though big, not being big enough to cover it — look like a large old boulder. The room's window was up under a ledge.

  While impressed by its ingenuity, how the 'rock' had been made to look like others around the lake, while thanking the two genial men for their efforts, something in me was dismayed by the addition of this new room.

  Why?

  Because it was a manifestation of my permanence on Arbora? The irrevocableness of Tutomei? A symbolic ending, hollow gravestone, of the old me?

  I pondered my reaction to the new room when I went collecting that afternoon, trowel in hand.

  Easier, with the spring coming, to spot the root vegetables as they put up their first growth. And, as no-one had been collecting roots in our part of the forest, I didn't have to go far before I had dug up a sizeable few to take to our underground store.

  I even paused in the chill of the store to try to pin down what it was about the new room that had so taken the light out of my day.

  Rufena assumed that my low mood was due to one of my paintings having been removed. We had finished eating.

  "No. No it's not that. Truth be told I was tired of looking at it. And I haven't finished the jungle one yet."

  Truth was I felt under no compulsion to complete it. The painting of those single leaves wasn't going to change me.

  "Still," she kissed the top of my head, "now you've got three brand new walls you can paint."

  I didn't respond. Tutomei was stirring: Rufena was on her way to change her.

  "I'd rather paint that false rock." I heard myself say; and I knew why I'd been dismayed.

  Rufena gave me her sad smile,

  "You can't."

  And I knew, in the instant of seeing that resigned smile, the actual cause of the suicides. And I knew, at the moment Rufena touched her fingertips to Tutomei's plump round cheeks, the cure for the suicides.

  All was so clear to me. So clear.

  Turning on my chair I calmly told Rufena and Tutomei,

  "The time has come for us to stop hiding."

  Tutomei, of course, didn't understand; but Rufena looked at me with the round eyes of shock and the flat face of the Knowledge.

  I nodded and smiled at all the other hybrids through her; and I wasn't in the least surprised when, but seconds later, Sririsl came anxiously through the door.

  My brain was up and sparking.

  I was up and walking, talking.

  "Why should we hide?" I asked first Sririsl, then Rufena, "Why should we hide?"

  "The Leander Chronicle will have told you this," Sririsl spoke for them both.

  "The Leander Chronicle told me why you went into hiding. Why now do you still hide?"

  "Humankind is dangerous to us. The Nautili are dangerous to us."

  "They were. Once. Now you are dangerous to you. You are killing yourselves."

  This was where I'd stopped so many times before, unable to proceed. Now I knew where I had to go. (All problems are simple once broken down into their component parts. First identify the parts.)

  "What else have you learnt from me?" I asked Sririsl.

  "Loneliness," Rufena replied; and I saw the worry and the tears in her eyes.

  "Oh my love," I rushed to kneel beside her, gently took both her hands, remembered my jealous absences. And jealous of what? Rufena's hadn't been secrets, just things she hadn't yet told me.

  "Oh my love," I held her hands to my chest. "Never again. That, this, is the lesson."

  I looked up to Sririsl. Both women were concerned by my sudden state of high excitation.

  "The lesson, I showed you, is the need for physical contact. People need to be together. People need to be with their own kind. So now tell me why we all lead such separate lives? And I say 'we' because I am now one of you. There's no going back for me. I am Rufena. Rufena is me. I am Tutomei. Tutomei is me. Even you and I Sririsl are now part of each other. This does not need the Knowledge. So why," I asked them, "do so many of our people live so far apart?"

  They waited.

  "Define movement," I changed tack; stood again, walked again. "Movement equals freedom. Define freedom. Freedom equals movement. Define camouflage."

  I waited.

  They were not going to answer.

  "To be still is to be camouflaged," I informed them. "And like all your camouflages you have passively deceived yourselves. For you to touch there must be movement."

  They weren't with me yet.

  "The Knowledge," I said: "I was so busy looking at the Knowledge that I didn't see the people. You are so busy looking into the Knowledge that you aren't seeing the people. I was overcome by the very idea of a Knowledge. It's a people that I should have been looking at. And I know now that it is not what the Knowledge has done to you, but what you have done to yourselves in the name of the Knowledge."

  I smiled at them both.

  "People are more important than the Knowledge. Yet what does the Knowledge make you as a people do? It makes you live in isolation so that the ellipses can be maintained, so that you can have instanteity. And why do you need instanteity? To protect the Knowledge. Another circle."

  I was laughing now. Odd ideas I'd voiced to myself before this night were now all coming centre stage in my mind. Now, I knew, I had the answer within reach.

  "There was nothing specific for me to find out here. Only the more I didn't know the more I could never know. We can all look too hard for meanings. Not everything is related. So what," I paused before them, "was the second lesson of my being here?"

  Neither answered.

  "It was through my forest painting," I walked, "I learnt it too. It is the human need for hope. A way out of the present. The Knowledge has denied you that."

  "How?" Sririsl asked.

  "Because you have put the keeping of the Knowledge above the lives of the people holding it. And the Knowledge, let me tell you again, is not more important than those people."

  "You don't understand," Rufena gave me the sad smile that I once thought I had taught her. "Without the Knowledge we are nothing."

  "Yes you are!" I shouted.

  Rufena flinched.

  I didn't apologize.

  "You are Tutomei's mother. You are Sririsl's daughter. That is nothing?"

  Rufena, shocked and frightened by my shouting, made a half-disagreeing shrugging motion.

  "You are Rufena," I said softly. "You are the most beautiful creature in my universe. You live inside me. Just the thought of you..." I was about to make myself weep, "You are nothing without the Knowledge?"

  I turned away. Turned back,

  "'The Knowledge is more important," I quoted from The Leander Chronicle, "than any individual hybrid. Any individual is important only in what he or she contributes to the Knowledge' Wrong!" I told Rufena,
"You are far more important than that. You are important now to Tutomei. You are important now to me. Our pairing has changed all that. That is the past. The time has come to stop hiding."

  "You are only one man," someone said through Sririsl.

  "Like each suicide I am a symptom."

  "Even so..."

  "The Leander Chronicle said that you wanted your own place in the universe. This isn't it. The time has come to claim it. And you can't claim it while in hiding."

  "The Knowledge is our protection," Sririsl uttered the definitive justification for the primacy of the Knowledge.

  "You are its protection!" I snapped at her, calmed myself. "You have to ask yourself this — Does it serve you or are you serving it? Because look what it has done to you... You, Sririsl, even had to be reminded of the pleasures of singing."

  Staring at Sririsl I talked angrily to the Knowledge, to every living hybrid, told them what had happened that very day, that a new room on my house had had to be built disguised as a rock.

  "No people can live in fear," I continued: "No people can live as if ashamed of their very presence on a planet. Where is your self-respect? No wonder so many of you have given up hope. What hope can there be when you must always live in hiding, in fear?"

  I drew breath.

  "In a safe life what is there left to do?" I asked of Rufena, my brave Rufena who had chosen to love human me.

  "What do the safe do?" I asked her as she came out of the Knowledge.

  She had no answer.

  "Like everyone else," I said, "they die."

  Rufena knew, smiled at me, us brave unsafe pair.

  "What is camouflage?" I turned to Sririsl, "Camouflage is the art of being unnoticed. That life of camouflage might be acceptable to a preyed-upon Nautili. Humankind though has a different psychological composition. Humankind demands self-respect. And you are all now more human than you are fish. That is your choice. The time has come therefore for you to take a pride in yourselves. To not hide. Hiding implies shame. The time has come to relinquish the huge secrecy of yourselves. The time has come, for the first time in your history, for you to be openly yourselves. For you to grow."