Landscape: Memory Read online

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  Land like this must make things different than I've known. I've never seen it so solid and even as here. Weather comes in from a hundred miles away and you know it's coming. Look at it now, coming down out of the west, the blue blown clear of clouds in a straight line across the sky. And you can bet it's cold, dropped clean like a curtain down from that line of blue, a wall of cold coming in like thunder.

  If I stood, say, back of that barn threshing corn and could feel the black earth stretching out from my feet, it laying its face out flat under this endless sky, and each and every season of weather coming in again like war, dumping down on the face of it. And I knew my father and his father and his father, buried here in the wide flat fields and where, exactly, marked by a broken cross and dogs that lived wild in the dry riverbeds come scratching at their dirt, starved to death in the next season of snows. If I knew like that, I'd not know what I know now, what I know from the wet sky coming down out west of these mountains and this sound I have of the salty gray sea.

  They have tables set with linen and silver, each side of the thin aisle, down the length of an entire car. Teddy works there at dinnertime. I had beef with hollandaise sauce and green beans and a potato and seconds on soup because of Teddy. The moon came up as I had peach pie, all pale silver across the snows, showing off the knife-sharp sparkle of ice cut by wind, glazing the white fields as far as you could see in the night.

  18 DECEMBER 1915

  I'm on a war train through Belgium, leaving the front and going back into Germany. We've left Liege in the dead of night and crossed the frontier at Lüttich, bound for Koln with freight loads of dismembered soldiers and corpses. Their moaning is a song, long and low with harmony and counterpoint but no rhythm or meter I can hear. I understand precisely the meaning of their song. There are no words. It sweeps through me in waves of agreement or empathy and then distance. Closeness then distance, a drawing toward then away, being what meaning feels like without words.

  Words have been blown out of me at the front, that is my injury. I haven't any words to speak with or hold thoughts in. I feel sounds directly, with nothing in between. I sit with my back up against the thin rattling wall of the freight car, the soldiers singing around me.

  Duncan rises from among the dead soldiers and walks toward me, looking pale and frightened, and speaking, saying things to me that I can't understand. Words drop from his lips, falling off me like broken sticks. His face is moving closer. His voice is lost among the clattering of the rails. There's nothing. The heavy wooden door sliding open and shut with the lurching of the train. The moonlit snow stretching out away from the train into the blackness.

  He pushes his mouth onto mine and I feel his voice come into me now. It fills my throat and hands, echoing up into my head. It's all inside me like laughter, signing in my bones, warm and wet like breath, rushing all over my body like his rough hands across my tender skin, holding my back in his strong grip, and I come, arching my back, pushing my naked body up against the rough wool blanket of my Pullman bed, and I wake up.

  We get to Chicago today, Teddy says. I'm there just for an afternoon to see a doctor Mother knows. The train leaves again at night and gets to Boston the day after tomorrow. This other man who'll be in Boston is called Mr. Jobsby and will show me Harvard and arrange for me to talk to someone there.

  The sun came up outside my window, rising orange and enormous. It slipped over the lip of the land flat straight east of us so slow you could see it moving. I had thick hot porridge with butter and sugar and cream, and two chewy sticks of salty bacon on a tray in my bed.

  We kept on through flat fields, dipping down to follow a big river. The bare trees, all purple in the mists, had ice frozen fast to their lofty nets of naked limbs, bending the light and hovering over the banks of this wide slow water. The river ran, all scattered with ice and snow.

  A man in a dark vest with his sleeves rolled up above his elbows played checkers with me in the observation car. I lost a number of games and he asked if I were a student and I said no, I was traveling. I thought about my dream some to myself. He filled the time with talk about his business and the opportunity the war had brought to those with initiative. I went to my Pullman and got my drawing kit and did some work by the odd purple light of the afternoon, thinking about Duncan and the dream with him in the train. His name now, here, makes me cry. My Duncan.

  I saw Chicago from far away. It puffed steam into the cold winter sky. Huge stone skyscrapers rose at its center. The city spread out from there, pushing out into the farmlands, gathering along thin roads and rails. The dirty brick buildings tumbled in thicker and higher as we rumbled in. Tracks multiplied till we ran a road ten or fifteen rails wide, rusty metal fences clanking along its full length and the dirtiest streets busy with people, some bundled up in rags. Waves of them rolled into and out of a huge brick building with smokestacks pumping black dust miles up into the heavy clouds, the white snow coming down thick and furious.

  I was to take a car to the address Mother wrote in my book. Dr. Berminderung would see me until dinner, which I could take at any nice restaurant near the station. Our train left again at nine o'clock p.m.

  The car stopped by a big building facing the shore of the lake, which I'm certain is more than a lake, it having waves and no sign of land on the other horizon. I stood near to the water and watched the wind whipping blizzards of white in swirls across the lead-gray water and the snow blowing down against me as well. It piled in drifts higher than my boot tops, all up and down the broken, rocky shore. I thought it must be the worst storm of the new century but Miss Toilet, in the doctor's office, said it was just a light December snow.

  The doctor had me lie down on a couch and I asked if I should strip to my drawers as well but he said no, he was a psychiatrist.

  "Oh," I said, remembering the stories I'd read in The Call.

  "I'm a psychoanalyst," he explained. "I'll just ask questions today and if we decide to continue, you'll come to talk for an hour or so every few days."

  "I'm going to Boston at nine," I said. The couch was very uncomfortable, placed, as it was, in such a way that I had to twist my neck and stretch to see him.

  "Yes, your mother mentioned that. I've a colleague there you could continue with." The afternoon was turning dark already, the snow coming clear now against the dusky background.

  "How do you know Mother?" I asked.

  "She knows of me through the university," he said quite plainly. "I offer a particular service she felt might be of value to you." He scooted slightly forward. "Do lie back. It's perfectly polite here to simply stare out the window."

  I did as he suggested, wondering at the snow blowing up as often as down.

  "Today I'd just like to get a sense of your mood and reactions to a number of things. I know a few facts your mother has told me, and I know the few things you've said since coming in just now. My goal is to help you make sense of the various parts of your own experience, help you look at the roots of things." He stopped for a moment, evidently to allow interruption.

  "Are there specific things you'll help make sense of ?" I asked to fill up the silence and keep my end of the conversation.

  "Are there things you'd like to make sense of?" he asked back.

  My thousand thoughts came flooding in, and Duncan along with each and every one, things slipping away or fixed wrong and the fallen walls of the asylum grown over thick with foxfire and sage.

  "Things generally, the way thoughts slip around so much," I began, trying to be as specific as I could. "Memory."

  "What about memory?" he asked.

  These were such big questions. My hand slipped off the couch and dropped to the floor, bumping up against the soft carpet.

  "Excuse me," I began, still uncertain what was allowed. "I sometimes worry I've not remembered things right." I stopped and waited in silence, waiting for my mind to explain itself. "I think that things are just every moment gone."

  I turned in
my place to see if he understood, but he was busy scribbling so I turned back.

  "Or I think there's a way past things stay which is different from how they were but isn't exactly 'gone' either, like when it rains and the ground gets all run down into gullies." I looked at the windows, dark as night now.

  His pencil stopped tacking across the pad.

  "Are there particular memories?"

  I thought this must be the part Mother told him.

  "You mean Duncan?" I asked.

  "Duncan?" he asked back.

  "Didn't Mother tell you about Duncan?"

  "Perhaps you could tell me about him," he said evasively.

  I wondered how I could tell about Duncan. Parts I don't think of at all, except in moments like when I thought of my dream and tried drawing some more, or when I'm alone in my bed and I cry so much from thinking then. But not to tell about, I've not got words to tell some parts I feel. So I thought of the rest, the summer and last winter and spring. Mother and his father.

  "He's my best friend since a long time. Since the fire when I was seven."

  "The fire?"

  "The earthquake and fire, when the city burned down."

  "Why do you mention him?"

  It seemed a stupid question and I laughed a little and unched around even though I could see him clear in the glass, knowing he couldn't mean for me to tell him since he obviously already knew or else why'd he think Mother'd send me to him anyway. He just raised his eyebrows in mock puzzlement and waited through the long silence.

  "I guess because I figured that's what Mother would have told you about, so I thought it's what you'd want to hear from me," I put in finally.

  "What would she have told me?" he pressed on.

  "That he's dead," I said to him, wondering why he was playing with me this way.

  "Is there more?" he went on.

  "More what?"

  "More about Duncan."

  "What more?" I said impatiently. "What's more than dead?" I really couldn't understand what he was getting at.

  "Why did he die?"

  The question was so simple and impossible.

  "Because of an accident," I began, "a stupid accident." It was my litany, as close as I'd come to an explanation. "He was so tired then, and cold." I stopped speaking and watched it all play back in my memory.

  His slight, pink arm collapsing down into the rough waves.

  Thick clouds tumbling lower and lower onto the sea, fat and swollen gray and dumping rain down on the face of everything. The flat sand, hard wet sand, slipping straight into the mouth of the ocean. I see it stretching out wide and forever, deep under the raging waters, caressed by the heavy bellies of ancient, hoary-spined fish, scattered with rocks, and pulling at Duncan, pulling him down into that deep water. His helpless, desperate panic is in my legs and the wide, flat sand I stand on. And the rocks and water and wild, gray sky rolling in off the ocean are all impossibly that empty, hollow desperation. It is the sound of this place, the unstoppable rumbling of the water on the shore, sea birds calling into the wind and mist, the absence of any panicked cry, Duncan's silence. And what of this is memory? What is present to mind now? We are standing at dusk in Bolinas lagoon, the thin surface of the water slipping away just below our bellies, our feet set soft on the muddy bottom. What of him remains with me?

  I heard the door close and watched the doctor return with a box of tissues. He offered them to me and sat down again in his chair. Lights were going out in buildings all along the lake shore. The doctor shifted in his seat and took a tissue for himself.

  "Can you tell me if the friendship was unusual, special in any way?"

  "No."

  "It wasn't unusual?"

  "No, I can't tell you."

  "Why can't you tell me?"

  I began to wish he'd just shut up.

  "I can't tell you if it was unusual. I don't know usual."

  "Was it like other friendships you've had?"

  "No."

  He paused a long time, waiting for me to go on, but I paused longer. It must've been minutes, the snow drifting into the light of the window, the black night hanging out over the lake.

  "Did you have a sexual relationship?"

  "Yes," I said as I was getting ready to think about what answer to give. The short simple word surprised me more than all the others we'd said. I couldn't elaborate as the answer'd not really come from me yet, though now that it was out there, I started to think what words could be added to it. Some few words kept crowding around down in the base of my mind, pushing at the back of my throat, jumbling and jostling for place and position, and I let a small mouthful slip onto my tongue and out, wet with my spit and warm breath pushing past my lips.

  "I loved him," I heard out loud and then a terrible long silence.

  It's all I'd really wanted to say for such a long time, and I could just barely mumble it through my slobber and spit and tears. Dr. Berminderung stayed silent and still, waiting.

  My crying was a way my body had of freeing me from the burden of speech.

  Outside the black air stung me sharp on my bare face, blowing in off the lake colder than any cold I've known and almost too painful to breathe. Distant light looked different in this air, so sharp, and tinkling too, like candle flicker but bright like a show torch and brought tight into tiny brilliant points. I got into the rumbling car and curled in against the backseat, alone in this dark warm shelter, my breath still clouding up around me, my face flush and burning.

  Teddy could tell straightaway. I kept a sad face knowing he'd see, and walked slowly to my Pullman, wishing he'd follow me to bed and I could curl in tight around his strong, warm body and feel his big arms around me. If he could just hold me through the cold night I'd not feel so alone. But that wasn't possible.

  * * *

  I lay in my warm bed, turned toward the window, hugging the pillow to my belly, holding my fingers near my mouth imagining they were Duncan's. Salty sweet fingers warm in my mouth, running my tongue down over them and closing my lips to pull from deep in my throat. The train shot steam, long and low, billowing up in clouds and we lurched forward an unch, two, and again, me sinking down into my bed with each chug and choof of slow motion forward, finally rolling steady along the rails, the rattling rumble wrapping around me, the bed warm and lonely. The train went out along the frozen lakes, out east into the cold black nighttime.

  Lullabye

  Spring

  _______________________________________________

  12 FEBRUARY 1916

  The hills are insane with green bursting velvet smooth and lush, not a blond spot to be seen. We live in fog-shrouded forests of rain and damp ferns. I roll here in mud made by my body beating in against the moss, a snuffle of air and snort of water run off waxy cedar fronds by my fingers soft and pink. Jack-in-the-pulpit. Amaranth and bracken fern. Storksbill, eucalyptus, gooseberry. Miner's lettuce and mountain grape. Wood sorrel and shepherd's purse. They are my friends. I listen to the loons, calling their long low song. I'm washed away into nothing, all possible distinction dissolved by that sound.

  Down below the Fair is busted, blown up to high heaven with dynamite bombs rolling thunder across the hills. It's more than war or fire or the wild ripping fault come wrecking down the rill. Only Maybeck's ruin remains, saved by sentiment. Mother's married to the earth, I saw her toppled today.

  How do you remember him?

  I don't, don't know this. I am innocent of this. What of him remains? An outline, a footprint? The cut of rain on a muddy hillside? How can I remember? It's not that I remember him. It may not be him I remember. I am a living thing with roots planted in the ground. I'm a rotting tree.

  Why did you love him?

  I can't think of this. Everything I tell you will be a lie. I didn't know him. I knew him without ever thinking and that made me able to love him. That is, he wasn't disfigured by my thinking ideas of him until the end, when I loved him most, or loved what I thought was him, when I needed th
e words that would contain him, and he died then. I was desperate for him, for the words that would say it.

  Why did he die?

  Why? His body heavy as stone, the water raking across its bed. Flesh could not hold him inside, failed to resist the ocean dragging down his throat. His dull opened eyes, unseeing, turned toward the bottom. His body died, his shell.

  Why does it matter, then, his dying?

  Why must a body contain him? What is this experience of soft, warm flesh? Spirit? I don't know what it was I held in my mouth then. It was much more than simply him. What is it to be breathing the breath of another, to lie in sleep, our open mouths touching? Is that all gone simply because his body's gone? Yes.

  Why do you remain here?

  I returned because of the weather. It rains down on me. I'm knocked flat on the ground here into mud. Or else I'm no longer here. There are other places. They all bring me back here. I'm water caught in a storm.

  Is this a resolution?

  Is there a sound to tell us, a blessing, a cure?

  Dear Robert,

  We've started up through these barren hills, following the yellow torrent of the Vardar. We'll be the first back to Gievgieli since Colonel Hunter withdrew, bringing, I pray, some hope that the typhus might be contained and beaten.

  The Serbians seem to regard the epidemic with morbid pride, a badge of honor that is distinctive, not among the incomprehensible modern afflictions that now ravage the rest of Europe. A plague is the proper, traditional path to annihilation and the Serbians regard vaccination as a sign of cowardice, a breaking with the past.