Mesopotamia Page 28
“Yeah, yeah, we get that part,” his captivated listeners said, “but what about the women? What are the women like in America?”
Bob appeared to have been anticipating this question; he fired off an answer immediately. “The women . . . they’re an interesting bunch,” Bob said. “Naturally, most of them are Surinamese. Or Ethiopian. As is their custom back home, Surinamese women carry water from the river in large clay jugs. They have big families with no men. They only bring men into their homes to conceive. They mostly work in the service industry, eat fruits and herbs, and age quickly but gracefully. Ethiopians . . . now they’re a different matter entirely. They aren’t as tight-knit; they only congregate at church—Ethiopian Christians have built more than a hundred churches in New York alone! They don’t make love with outlanders,” Bob stated in a sad voice. “I tried. They live a long time. It’s pretty easy to meet an Ethiopian woman over the age of ninety—really, there’s nothing to it. Some attribute their longevity to the water they drink, while others attribute it to all the praying they do—but it’s the Japanese women over there that act the strangest,” Bob interrupted himself. “There are some who say that they never fall ill, not ever. They just don’t have time for that nonsense. It is said that they can treat themselves with their own saliva. They all have marble skin and a barely perceptible glow hovering over them—some of them even have two heads.”
Not knowing how to react to what Bob had been pontificating about, they all sat there in silence for a moment. But then Margarita came out of the house, carrying two large plates of fish toward the table, which lightened the mood. Everyone started talking, commenting upon, refuting, or supporting Bob’s bombastic story.
Sasha yelled, “That’s right, Bob. People are the same everywhere, and it doesn’t really matter who you share your hopes and wine with—a Surinamese woman or an Ethiopian one. But an Ethiopian woman would be better.” Maria, speaking quietly, argued that family is the most important thing in life, and it’s better to leave anything going on outside the family to other people. Pasha Chingachgook agreed with her, while Kira shook her head dissentingly and described the acts of betrayal people are prone to, and the oblivion that enters us and fills us up. Alla ran with the part about oblivion, saying that it doesn’t matter how much it fills you up—it’s no match for the exhilaration of new love.
“That’s right,” Luke suddenly added. He’d been sitting there in silence the whole time, listening intently to the others.
Everyone got very quiet all of a sudden, apparently remembering what had brought them together. There was an intimate yet solemn air about the whole gathering. The light coming off the deck was drowning in the leaves and capturing the men’s heavy hands and the women’s reserved faces. Luke sat at the corner of the table; the falling shadows made his features sharp, his wrinkles deep. Bloody drops of wine faded into his beard. John was on his left and Zurab on his right. They were listening to him but not looking at him. Luke waited for complete silence to set in and then continued,
“What you said is absolutely right. Oblivion doesn’t matter. And death doesn’t matter either.”
“Death doesn’t exist!” Sasha Tsoi yelled boldly.
“Death does exist. You can’t even imagine how close to us it is. But that’s not what I’m getting at. Our death, our disappearance, and our passage to the kingdom of the dead don’t have any real significance because they’re all inevitable. After all, it would be silly to reject the lunar cycle, or the natural course of a river. You have to take it as a given and accept it peacefully, like all inexorable forces. The only thing that actually holds any significance is love, both exhilarating new love and the enduring love we keep inside, the love we carry with us, and the love with which we live. You never know how much is allotted to you, how much you have, or how much is yet to come. Finding it brings great happiness; losing it causes great misery and vexation. We all live in this strange city; we all stuck around, we’ll all come back sooner or later. We live, bearing this love like guilt, like our memory that contains all of our experiences and all of our knowledge, and its presence in our breath, on the roofs of our mouths, is what makes life so riveting. Every morning when I wake up, I think of all the women I’ve been blessed to meet and know—all those cheerful and unsettled, carefree and helpless, virginal and pregnant women. I’d say my exchanges with them have always been the most important thing for me, my ability or inability to share love, whether new or enduring, with them. Everything else was a consequence of falling in love, so it had no meaning, no significance on its own. So there’s no sense talking about anything else. That’s all I have to say, now it’s time to go for a swim!”
That’s what everyone did. Our boisterous crew started spilling out into the yard, thanking the host for his words, remarking that they were wise, though perhaps a little overloaded with passion. Somebody grabbed a bottle of wine, some others used their phones as flashlights to guide us down the path toward the riverbank. She got up from the table, too, and started gathering up empty plates.
“Ya coming?”
“You run along with everyone else,” she said, gently waving me off. “I’m gonna help clean up. I’ll be down soon.”
I stood still for a bit, then turned around, set off into the darkness, crossed the street, passed under some trees, and popped out by the river. Clothes and empty bottles were scattered along the bank; from the depths of the evening air, somewhere in that damp black space, I could hear laughing and shrieking, giddy splashing and confident strokes through the current. Women’s bodies shone dimly in the silver moonlight and drunken exclamations made everything warm and cheerful. I recognized them, standing there on the riverbank, calling their names right into the blackness. Their answers came back; they approached me or drifted toward the opposite bank. It sounded as though the river had carried all the voices, all the laughter, and all the songs I knew from the city out here, which steadied me and put me at ease. Everything was right here, just a few steps away. None of this could disappear—it wouldn’t end as long as I stood there, no matter how much time passed.
But they gradually started getting out of the water—some of them quickly snatched their clothes and pulled them over their wet bodies, while the more foresighted among them dried off with the towels they’d brought, and some other swimmers simply polished off the bottles, grabbed some clothes at random, and plodded toward the yard, back into the light. It was getting late. I heard someone saying goodbye to the host and someone else starting to sing; a certain bitterness tinged the voices of the women and a fire ignited in those of the men. Cars pulled away. The voices went silent. It got very quiet. There was more moon; there was more coolness in the air.
I didn’t hear her coming at all. She simply appeared behind me and touched my shoulder gently.
“Well, what are you standing here for?” she asked.
At first, I didn’t know what to say. She slipped out of the jacket she’d borrowed from someone or other, shed her sweater, kicked off her sneakers, and struggled with her overalls for a bit, but eventually got out of them, too. She pulled off her T-shirt, hesitated for a split second, tossed her underwear on top of the warm pile of clothes, and stepped into the water, fearfully groping for the bottom of the river with her toes. Then she squealed giddily, dove into the water, and swam out a little bit.
“Hey,” she yelled from the darkness, “aren’t you comin’?”
“You go ahead and swim,” I answered. “I’ll watch your things.”
“Whatever you say.”
I thought, “It’s so good to finally find myself here, on this bank, by this water, just standing and watching her undress and step into the river, knowing that you can wade into any river forever. You can hang on to the wet air that enfolds you—you can hold on to it forever; you can wait for everyone you have known and loved to return—you can wait forever. The river will bring you all the different inflections you’ve heard, the river will conserve all the warmth you’ve l
eft behind; rivers know how to wait, rivers know how to start anew. Riverbeds abide, currents abide. Nobody can stop this whole mass of damp light, this heap of warmth and cold. All I can do is wait for her, here on the riverbank, and return with her to the city, like the thousands of refugees and migrant workers, sojourners and newcomers, all those crews of manual laborers who roam the earth building towers and prisons, but eventually come here, sooner or later, to these riverbanks, lit by these moon rays.”
I thought about how I’d remember the smell of this water, the smell of clay and grass, the smell of smoke and autumn, the smell of life that hadn’t ended, and the smell of death that hadn’t come yet. “What’s she going to remember about all this? Will she remember the silence that hangs over us? Will she remember her breath expanding in the midst of this silence? After all, it’s up to us—it depends on our desire to remember something. Or our desire not to remember anything at all.”
After she’d come out of the water and I’d grabbed her hand on the bank and helped her find her clothes, and after we’d returned to the house, she said,
“The last train probably left already. Luke has a guestroom, though. Why don’t you stay with me?”
“Well obviously I’m gonna stay.”
We heard some music playing on our way up to the house. Sharp, triumphant sounds from somewhere behind the apple trees. The yard was empty; everyone had gone home. We headed toward the music but stopped under the trees before we reached it. There were some chairs by the table on the grass. The girl nobody knew was still there, for some reason. There she sat, her hair thrown back and her hands calmly resting in her lap. Luke was dancing cheerfully, yet violently, in front of her. Well, dancing may not be the right word. He looked like somebody bouncing on a pogo stick—happy, despairing bounds into the sky—tearing free of the earth’s surface, trying to leap into the darkness. Luke was jumping high, although he was clearly struggling—his shirt was soaked with sweat and the veins in his neck were bulging, yet he continued jumping and throwing his hands into the air, jumping and landing in the wet grass and skipping to the hoarse sounds coming out of his brand-new stereo. It was Patti Smith, his all-time favorite. He’d listen to her whenever he was in a good mood, or whenever he was in a bad mood, for that matter—the one about how Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not hers. Luke kept jumping, seemingly enjoying all of this—he probably didn’t die for my sins and probably not for yours, girl. What sins could you have committed? What do you have to atone for? We’ll pay off all our debts, we’ll make arrangements with all the tax collectors of this world, we’ll pay for every last word and every last breath.
She sat there, looking at him attentively. She listened to him, nodding, agreeing with everything, not addressing him, not stopping him, not looking away, willing to wait for as long as she had to.
Part II: Notes and Addenda
Translated from the Ukrainian by
Virlana Tkacz and
Wanda Phipps
There’s nothing there yet. Green night,
each silence has its own measure.
Knowing how many centuries it took
for the first things to appear,
he speaks her name.
Opening a window into the night,
he anxiously listens for any movement,
expecting something—anything,
but the heavy canvas of nothingness
gently falls into his hands.
From now on everything that happens to them—
ocean currents, icebergs in dead seas,
the daily cycles of the atmosphere,
songs of sperm whales, screams of phantoms,
the awakening of scents and colors,
grass roots and tree leaves,
lake ice and bird whistles,
iron ore and coal’s tired tremors,
the whispers and roars of obedient animals,
the yearnings of vibrant trading towns,
fires that burn ships,
death on dark silk banners,
dying stars hanging high in the firmament,
the silent dead in the summer ground,
blood, like lava in the fallow ridges of veins:
everything that was meant to come will come,
everything that once was will disappear,
like taxes owed for worlds revealed to them,
for a voice with hints of darkness,
for warmth liberated with each new breath.
Knowing everything that awaits them,
he still speaks her name,
woven out of consonants and bitter vowels,
until love’s green current,
a cool shadow of tenderness,
carries him away.
Marat died in his sleep
at the beginning of March,
in spring when the snow melts
and rivers run from their banks,
just as children run from their parents’ homes
after a hard winter.
Marat trained at the Spartacus Club.
He had technique, tried and tested,
his body was in shape, he looked serious,
he was probably the best fighter
in the welterweight class,
and had a tattoo of Fidel on his left leg.
The imam spoke at the funeral:
“The Prophet was never sad,” he said.
“The Prophet knew—evil devours evil.
What shall be, shall be. As far as we know.
Marat will have a different story to tell
about each of his transgressions.
The Prophet invented illnesses like pneumonia
for people like him.”
In the corner, Marat’s mother was silent.
Marat’s brother listened to the harsh words.
Then the imam placed his hand
on his narrow shoulders
and said:
“Everything that disappears, will appear once again.”
The brother answered, “Nothing disappears.
I’ll take up the mouth guard Marat used when he fought.
“I know why he died.
Every morning he fought against his phantoms.
Every day he beat his fists till they bled.
Every night he felt
the stars burn out overhead.
Only the bravest go beyond this boundary.
Anyone who saw him in the ring knows what I am talking
about.
“How can something that still exists disappear?
He who gives us everything, what will he do with it?
Only fear can disappear.
The rest is on us—younger brothers
who break our hearts,
steadfast to the end.”
Then the brother stepped aside.
He was a year younger.
He always considered Marat the leader.
He followed him everywhere.
Now he fell silent and stepped aside,
holding back tears, ashamed in front of us.
When they carried out the body it started to snow.
It fell from the dark sky and landed at our feet.
The imam walked ahead, like an apparition.
Early spring is not the best time to visit a cemetery.
Women started to cry and men could feel
the silent stars above them burn out.
Fights without rules—daily wages of the saints,
the referee yells something, the crowd grows silent.
Young apostles fight
against the locals
they consider foreign.
They wrap Jesus’s hands into fists,
and shove him into the ring, as into a river.
His opponent, a young dockworker, faces him,
but doesn’t offer him his hand.
When Jesus falls on the canvas,
sliding into hell, somewhere near the bottom,
his body becomes brittle, like bread,
and his blood dry as wine.
Then someone shouts, “Come on, get it together!
Remember everything you used to tell us!
Get up or people will hear about this,
everywhere, before you know it.
“Get up and fight, as only you can!
Knock down that scum! Don’t let him walk out of here!
Each victory
brings you closer to the goal!
“No forgiveness for those who hide, not in the river or in the
grass!
No grace from the Lord, no rights!
Come on, you’ve fallen so many times,
fallen and died!
“They’re all traitors and losers!
They don’t have a conscience, only gills,
fins, instead of wings on their backs!
Knock them down, Savior,
bloody your fists on them!
“Knock them down for their weakness and tears!
Knock them down for forgetting everything each night!
For watching their own deaths
like spectators!
“Anyway, they don’t listen to you or to us,
nothing will save them, they don’t give a shit about anything,
destroy them, O Lord, before they
destroy themselves.
“Destroy them for their corruption and laziness,
their treachery in every generation,
their cunning, which they weave
into their prayers!”
. . . and he gets up, spitting black blood,
rises, and falls, then rises again,