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IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
VII: The Burning
Chapter
16 Red
River
Tuesday, April 13, 2709 Today
we can’t budge Lufti.
He curls in upon himself, not crying or anything, just
staring in an
exhausted kind of way at a seed-pod fluttering on the end of
some weed. I try to get him onto my
back, but he won’t
hold on. In the end Marduk has to
carry
him babelike in his arms, the long limbs dangling listlessly. After awhile we all hear soft snores
against
Marduk’s chest. (The
western quadrant will bring us to the
largest, densest part of Nuvelle Parie. I’ll
admit
that I rather dread the thought of covering it on foot!
I try to recall where I picked up these
excellent hiking-boots that I now lace up, glad at least that
I don’t have to
make the journey in some of the impractical shoes that I
bought before
everything fell apart. While
Cybil packs
our lunches with her usual excellent taste (she can pair up
road rations into a
charcuterie board like she’d been born a chef before she even
suckled) I wipe
the soot from the car mirror and dab on my lipstick, rubbing
in two spots of it
for rouge as well. Curious, how
just a
dab of red can bring so much life to a face. “Makeup,
Zanne?” I can see Cybil’s grin in the
corner of the mirror. “Again? Every day?” asks my homeless
gourmet. “No matter what?” “Am
I not a woman, darling, no matter what?”) (This
time it’s a woman. The fishnet
curtains clued me off right away—serving
no purpose; light can shine straight through them, just put up
there to drape
prettily. It didn’t matter that
nobody
else could see; she saw those curtains every day till the last
hour of her life. But the other
guys knew before we even made
landfall, referring
to our latest hermit-corpse as “she”. And
there she lies, freeze-dried over the
winter, her hair fanned out on
her
pillow: an old dried pod with the life long-emptied from it,
yet still oddly
pretty, like a brown, dried flower arrangement.
Enough toughened skin clings
to
the skull to show that she died smiling. And
sure enough, she left this life with every
plate in place, every jar in order, homemade lace on the table
and the cups and
saucers and spoons laid out, with the teapot and the
dust-coated bowl of sugar,
as if she expected to enjoy a cup of tea with Death before he
got down to
business. Withered flowers still occupy a bone-dry cut-glass
vase in the
table’s center. I can still smell
old
perfume lingering in the air, probably from that cachet
dangling with the rack of dresses.
It almost masks the mustiness of our latest
customer, waiting for her funeral. Very
tall dresses, for one closer to Wallace’s
height than mine. Very big shoes. Very small pelvis on the bones in
bed. Traces of make-up still
color the leathery
remains of a face that met her death serenely.
She sought solitude to be what her country had no
surgery to make
official. My
mother would have shaken her head, saying
something about accepting whatever God gave you, no matter how
perplexing, and
quoted whatever scriptures seemed most suitable, but would
only say it
once. Then, testifying done, she
would
have poured that cup of tea, sat down with the dress-clad
hermit as comfortably
as Death must have eventually done, maybe swapped some
recipes, and never
mentioned the issue again.) Out
of what bits and dabs we find I cut the rations as close as I
can, to stretch them out. Hunger
seethes
in us, like something with a substance of its own, hazing
through our brains
till we can hardly connect one thought to the next.
All else loses substantiality. Yet
some of us have plenty of experience with
want, and can direct the steps of the three with no familiarity
with it until
the fire. Even they can hang on
better
than they might have done in times past, for what we endure now
doesn’t compare
to what they'd nearly died of when we found them. Chaska
hums a few bars of Rebel anthem. Damien
picks up on it and starts to strum
along. Sometimes music can stand in
for
food, sort of, or at least stir up a hope that it can.
She smiles at him, a little bit saucily, and
starts to sing. What
would her parents think of what I’ve made of their
daughter? Maybe all they’d care
about is
that I saved her and her brothers’ lives.
At least I hope so. (What
about me, mother? Would you have
accepted whatever God has made
of me, no matter how perplexing? Sometimes I can, and
sometimes I can’t, and I
honestly don’t always know for sure which is my time of virtue
and which is of
my vice. But
mother isn’t here, and Death has long since
left for other business. Death
creates
work for undertakers, but doesn’t engage in the trade himself. She has waited patiently for us to
give her
this one, final dignity, so we get to it right away. We
slit the back of her fanciest dress so that
we can slip her into it. We wrap
her in
the lacy tablecloth for her shroud.
After the burial and proper words, we dig up bulbs from
among the
flowers around her porch, planting daffodils, crocuses,
hyacinths and anemones
in the soft soil of her grave. And
then
we lay cobbles in a scalloped border around her final rest
because she seemed
to like the little touches. We
give her
no headstone because we can’t find a clue as to her name, and
even if we did it
would probably be the wrong one anyway.) (Right
away we find more graves, some marked
with stones, wood, or metal, scratched with letters that fade
already, some
with mementoes of meaning only to those who left them, many
unmarked at all,
only recognizable by the rough size and shape of the disturbed
earth. Maybe some had mementoes ,
once, that other
people stole. Maybe the thieves
thought
they had to, or didn’t even know they picked it off a grave. People
walk around them obliviously by now, some
dreamy, some grim, most still in a psychic haze.
My head hurts trying to keep them all out,
but Tshura helps. We try to talk
to a
few, and they seem friendly enough, but we can’t get more from
them than word
salad. None of them look
starving; and
everywhere we turn we see the half-looted remains of stores,
restaurants, and
warehouses. Time
to take a break, considering the marathon
we have ahead of us. Cybil and I
sit on
a bus stop bench and share a thermos of herbal tea.
The flavor brings me back to All Kinds
Sanctuary, so I tell her more about it. “I’m
starting to think you’re right,” I say, and
take a deep swallow of chamomile memories.) (Jake
hesitates, then takes out a knife and,
before I can stop him, cuts the still-pink scar on his wrist. George grabs me as I cry out and try
to lunge
at him, but he holds his wrist over the grave and lets the
blood fall on it. “It’s
for the daffodils,” Wallace murmurs. “Jake!”
I cry, “What are you doing?” “I
don’t understand it,” he murmurs, “But she
wanted to menstruate. I wouldn’t,
but I
respect her wish.” George
lets me go and I rush to grab his
arm. The cut’s not deep at all; I
sigh
loudly and bring him back to the house where we can bandage
him up. Wallace finds the
bandages. It could be worse, I
remind myself. Jake has done
worse things to himself in the
past. Still, I don’t like it when
Wallace says, “One way or another, you have to have blood. For birth or for death, blood. I never wanted to understand that.” I
grumble, “The blood of the cross is enough for
me, thank you very much!”) Still
limp in Marduk’s arms, staring out at nothing, Lufti starts
to sing a song I don’t recognize, in Amereng.
When did he learn Amereng?
We
shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile For
you take with you all of the sunshine That
has brightened our pathway a while.” Then
he whispers, “But once you drain it dry, only the husk
remains.” Then we get nothing more
from
him. He dangles like someone dead. (After
resting from our labors, we brew up tea
from an old apothecary jar, still flavorsome enough, and share
a toast to her
memory in her collection of demitasse cups.
For a brief moment I wonder if Death’s bony mouth last
sipped from mine,
then shake my head at the power of my own morbid fantasy. “It
was her fantasy first,” George sways. My
scalp tingles. “I shouldn’t pick
up on that. And you shouldn’t
read my mind.” Jake
says, “Don picked up on it, then George got
it from him, then it bounced to Wallace, and he bounced it to
you because he
doesn’t know how not to. Neither of them does.” I
sigh.
This is going to be a long trip.) Lufti
opens his eyes in Marduk’s arms. “The
buzzsaw!” he shrills “All the
little pockets and the whining roar
of the motor but I didn’t do anything wrong, did I—did
I?” I
run over to him and take him from Marduk to myself.
“It’s okay, dear—that all happened long ago,
and nobody got hurt.” “You
did!” he cries, twisting to stare at me with unnaturally wide
eyes. “He gouged right through your
soul
and cut out all your juicy parts till you rattle like a seedpod
in the wind!” “No,
no, that didn’t happen.
My friendclan didn’t let it happen. “It
did! It did! Just
inside where nobody could bandage you
and you’ve been bleeding ever since!
Everywhere you go you leave a trail of blood.” I
feel Kiril’s arms around us both. “What’s
happening? What’s happening to
Lufti?” She shakes us in her
urgency. “It’s more than his usual
madness, isn’t it?” “Just
telepathic overload,” I try to explain while sitting under a
tree with Lufti wailing in my lap. “He’s
picking
up on bits and pieces of my memory out of context and mixing it
with
his own issues.” “It’s
not mine!” he insists.
“It’s them! The Man-Boy
conducts
as the rails rattle, blood rivers from all over the world
converge and
intermingle and it’s awful! It’s just bloody awful!”
He sobs against me until my blouse feels
soaked, and I rock him, not knowing what else to do. But
apparently Kiril does.
“It’s okay,” she says, kneeling beside us and taking
Lufti’s hand. “The world is full of
tragedy, but that’s not
all there is. Anybody can get swept
up
in it. Sometimes it overwhelms me,
too. But there’s other stories,
happy
stories. And every time we fight
for
truth and justice and everything right, we make more room for
happiness to
grow.” “We
feed the worst! We feed
the awful red rivers! We...Oh
Kiril, oh
Deirdre, everything’s going red, everything’s just so...so...” “All
our mothers, all our fathers, how you’ve suffered—will it
never end?” Then I feel him harden
in my
arms. “No,” he murmurs.
“No.
It never will.” Then he
shrugs,
not in the usual raised-shoulder way, but in Randy’s
idiosyncratic head-tipping
way. “Well, we must make the best
of it
we can, and find what beauty we might along the way.”
And he climbs out of my lap and starts
walking down the path as if nothing had happened. (How
long have we been walking through these
troubled streets? I dispute my
body’s
claim that we’ve been at it for centuries, yet not with
absolute certainty. An
unseasonable rise in temperature beats
down upon the city and makes it steam with odors better left
unwarmed. A yellowish tinge to
the light speaks of
great fires somewhere, yet I don’t smell smoke, so it can’t be
very near. A naked youth sits up
on a fire escape above
us, hugging his knees , softly singing, “All my mothers, all
my fathers, will
it never end? Then come sit down
beside
me if you’ll abide me, don’t hasten to bid me adieu...” and he
breaks off into
giggles. “That
doesn’t even rhyme in the right places,”
Cybil grumbles beside me. “Could
be worse, darling. At least he’s
not singing a war cry.”) “WOOOO
HOOOO!” Lufti suddenly shrills in his highest voice.
I run up and clap my hand over his
mouth. He immediately crouches down
the
minute I let go and presses his finger to his lip.
“Sorry,” he whispers. I
settle my nerves hoping nobody had come near enough to hear
us. As handy as his oraclism makes
him,
it doesn’t mean that Lufti’s madness doesn’t put us at risk. So
far, though, we encounter no bullets or soldiers, and so we
move on. Or maybe...yes, I feel an
approaching vibration deep in the ground.
MAC? I signal everyone to
take
cover as whatever it is comes nearer, with a roaring, clacking
sound. Next
thing I see a train hurtle past us across the path ahead,
where we hadn’t seen the tracks in the fresh-fallen leaves that
now whirl up
into the air. And its whistle blast
sounds nearly identical to Lufti’s outcry earlier. (We
come out to where the street crosses a
railroad track. “Hold up,” I warn
Cybil,
throwing an arm across her breast to halt her as I feel a
shaking beneath us. “Ow!”
she cries, for I inadvertently smacked her
with Tshura. “Zanne, do you
really have
to bring that...” and then she stops at the sound barreling
towards us. Of course the signals
don’t work, but
apparently a train still does, because it doesn’t take long
for it to chug
right past us as if nothing had ever changed in Vanikke. “How
wonderful is this!” I cry, my hair blowing
in my eyes from its passage. “And
yes,
it’s slow enough...have you ever train-hopped my dear?”
Not waiting for an answer, I run alongside an
open box car, toss in Tshura and my walking-stick, then make a
leap for it,
then hold out my arms to catch a panic-faced Cybil and roll
her over me to the
safety of the haybales filling most of the car.
“Now
that’s more like it!” I exclaim. I
pick up a pinch of hay and blow it, making
a wish as it flutters down. We
used to
do that with the goat-fodder, back in my childhood.
I wish for an ultimate good outcome for Vanikke. “We can travel in style, Cybbie, and
spare
our shoes some wear!” I pull off
my pack
and start to lay out the lunch she so thoughtfully provided.
“And by the way,
dear, isn’t it about noon?”) By
afternoon we come across a meadow absolutely infested with
hoppers. Braulio says something
about
using them for bait to fish, and I praise him for the
initiative. Soon we have filled the
banks of a brook with
lines, each one dangling string into the water, and a hooked
hopper at the end
of each string. Oh, but fish
sounds so
delicious right now! (Some
people have a silly notion that agency
will knock the sybarite out of anyone.
But no, it’s not quite like that.
You simply redefine luxury. You
relish
every pleasant detail all the more Like
right this minute, I feel absolutely
pampered, lounging in this boxcar while the city rolls by much
swifter and more
efficiently than if I had continued to tromp along on foot. In the current warm spell the wind
of our
travel feels good. Foul odors
last only
for moments before we whisk on past and the predominant aroma
of hay smells
sweet indeed. I smile at Cybil
and she
smiles back, then pays attention to the passing scene again. For
we still have our work to do, observing what
has become of Nuvelle Parie. More
graves
out here, and also, disturbingly, unburied skeletons.
I startle to see one seated in a car going
nowhere, skull still propped against the headrest. And
then we come to the gibbets. Or rather,
ropes, chains and wires hung from any available high place,
most dangling human
remains, some with what’s left fallen from the noose to a mess
below. Cybil hides her face
against my breast and
sobs. I just hold her till we
pass that
area and then whisper, “It’s over” when I can.
She raises her flushed face, wipes her eyes, and
continues the survey.) I
keep visualizing silver, iridescent bodies twisting and flipping
on the end of our strings, and imagine the smells and tastes of
fresh fish
frying, the tender flakes within the mouth, the lure of
satiation! But so far not so much
as a nibble. So
I I tell Kiril to get out her pans and start a fire anyway. Soon the smell of hoppers roasting on
sticks
doesn’t differ all that much from fish, kind of shrimpy. While they sizzle and pop I look
for suitable
rocks—something large and flat, and a rounder, smaller one
hefty in the hand—and find them. When
we get the hoppers to the proper
crispiness, we grind them up so we don’t have to look at what
we’re eating
(since the cobbler kids, at least, have delicate sensibilities
that way) and
then re-roast the squishy mess into cakes, that don’t taste half
bad, with a little
salt and some wild onion. We
never do succeed in catching any fish. (“Look
over there,” Cybil says. I see,
coming up, an airfield. There’s
still planes with fuel in them, and
people cramming in livestock, art, furniture and of course
lots and lots of
canned food. “They always make
the same
mistake,” Cybil shakes her head. I
realize suddenly that this thought doesn’t
come from me alone, as I feel rising waves of anger and
outrage crash through
me from the track ahead. It bends
around
the airport, so I can see the angry mob farther on, rushing
onto the track to
try and block the train. I
suddenly
realize that this hay—and who knows what else in the other
cars—also heads out
of the country. But
the train doesn’t slow down. It
speeds up.
Cybil screams along with the crushed mob, seeing the
bright-red spray of
blood. We hurtle on through the
mess and
we shudder with the horror of it, we can’t tell our own sobs
from those of the
mob’s survivors, we fall into each other’s arms, hysterical,
inconsolable, and
the screaming keeps going on and on in my head till I can’t
stand anymore, I
can just hold onto Cybil, crazed by the madness overwhelming
me, the clacking
of the train repeating itself like nothing had happened, and
it doesn’t help
when the telepathic tide draws back again, for it leaves a
rhallunn scum of
shame and condemnation. This was
my
mission! These people died—all of
the
many, many people died—because I utterly, completely, horribly
failed in my
mission! |
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