Travellers May Still Return Read online

  She looked at him writing notes in the margin of a typed page. His mouth was open. She was fascinated by his mouth. She seldom noticed his eyes. Perhaps that would be it, a few more stories, a little renovation every year. They always argued about it. What he wanted, what she wanted. He spoke, she contradicted. Sometimes she spoke, but he never listened. She couldn’t keep her thoughts on track. This house was almost aquatic in the spring, the birdsong fishsong. And the sound of rain was like Noah’s final lecture.

  The wind was freshening. And here they were analysing their relationship in terms of what could happen next. Or she was analysing; he was pretending to think, his pen poised. The windows contained green hills, rippled and distorted. George, dressed in his rain cape had just come in and was squeaking along the blue tiles. He was struggling with the heavily sprung bathroom door. Soon would be lunchtime.

  She’d tell the children the story of Noah this afternoon. She’d told it all before, variations on why, what and how. Why did the Lord flood the world? What had we done that was so wicked? How could it rain so much? According to Charles, there had been a single cataclysmic event. Nature throwing in a wrench, dipping an oar, tightening a screw. With Charles, her silence on God was unsilent. Couldn’t he just float out his theories and allow her her belief every now and then? While he read and scrawled and chewed his pen, the clouds rolled away. Everything in their vicinity was dripping; the sun came out; George came out of the washroom across the hall. He looked shocked, worried, pleased, puzzled, interested, and dazed, in that order. And Emma burrowed deeper into her thoughts and tried not to disturb Charles.

  The sun illuminated his face and his open mouth. What was he thinking? She reached and hit him on the shoulder. “It’s lunchtime. If you want a sandwich, go and get one.”

  And obediently he wandered off. He disappeared for an hour.

  She bent her head and drank in the gorgeous plumage of the carpet. Charles was still good-looking, youthful. Just last week she had admired his back as she watched him set the first stone of his wall, after years of gathering and crouching and pondering, his fool-work, and now he was like a runaway, outside scouting direction at every opportunity, a master of escaping her questions.

  She felt his attention on her and looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Annie has had a hard fall. She’s soaked. She was at the farm getting patched up.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I think so. She’s getting changed.”

  8.

  “How are you today?” he asked.

  The girl lay pale under the skylight, just awake. Last night had been worse than the night before. She had had her second fever. No medicine would help. He had drunk too much wine. They had sent George to his grandparents. He had had with Emma incomplete sex and now he was upstairs in Annie’s bedroom feeling guilty.

  “I’m okay, Papa.”

  “Will I tell you a story?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Afterward he went downstairs to the front room where Emma stood looking out of the bay window. She turned as soon as she heard him. “How is she?”

  He shook his head. “When she’s sick I can’t think.”

  Emma sank into her chair. She played with the worn threads of the armrest. “Are you afraid, Charles? Are you afraid?”

  “They bury themselves in the sand.”

  “Who do?”

  “The San. The original humans, according to genetic research. The folk who stayed in Africa when the rest of us left. To escape the heat. What d’you think are our chances of understanding life before our grandchildren come along?”

  She looked away from him. “Please don’t start.”

  “All creatures seek water, but only at certain times of the day. When it is safe. What if knowledge is water? We don’t really know who we are or why we’re here, do we?”

  She flinched. She wrinkled her nose. She craned her neck, gazing through the bay window, fingers busy with the worn armrest. “Our kids are good, aren’t they?”

  He went to the window to see what she was looking at. The road outside was wet, empty except for a gull striding along, big red screams leaving its beak. “She will be okay.”

  “I’m afraid now, Charles.”

  “She will be fine, sweetheart.”

  “But she’s worse, isn’t she, Charles?”

  “Yes.”

  “She woke me up in the night. When I went into her room, she was soaking wet.”

  “She’s sleeping now.”

  9.

  The April walk through the field path was a last goodbye. Their sweet child was gone, and they were daily overflown by Canada geese. He dared not touch his wife.

  “When did the light begin to fade?” he said. “Was it that first year in the city, when we began misunderstanding each other? Is it our fault? Do you know?”

  “I don’t want you to do this now. You want to offend God and I want to praise Him.”

  “I mean no offence. I can only blame nature and myself. I only have questions.”

  “You ask stupid questions. I think you’ve never considered me. Most of the time you are in your own world. You don’t care about me.”

  “I don’t ask stupid questions.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you actually interested in hearing what I think?”

  “Not much any more. Most of it has nothing to do with anyone. Listening to you is exhausting. It’s a sort of constant useless exercise.”

  “Do you want me to stop talking to you?”

  “It was Annie’s time. She loved Jesus.”

  “That doesn’t help me.”

  “We are breaking down, Charles. We need to be with others. I feel so heavy today,” she said. “And yet life’s going on. We’re not getting anywhere, are we? Let’s go back.”

  They had ceased. They had stopped halfway. Where was the path? Emma was panting, her mouth open. There would be no greater challenge. Probably for both of them. The geese were so loud. Probably it was her fault. Perhaps his heart was failing. He felt her weight leaving his side, her body crossing the field, going away. He watched her draw the shawl over her hair. Her shoulders were wet.

  “Wait.”

  Through the trees the windows of the house reflected green and sky. He felt they were the only passengers. And she was leaving him. Clouds were massed to the west. Women struggled with God, that heavily sprung idea. Déjà vu?

  “Wait! I have something to say.”

  10.

  They were returning to the house. She was trying to breathe. She’d listen to him now, even though she’d heard it all before, or variations, because she had to hang onto something and his voice was a life-line. He spoke, she listened. And if she had never really listened before, never really heard, did it matter? She was listening now. She wouldn’t contradict him. God had thrown in His wrench, dipped His oar, tightened His screw. Her silence was silent. He was eloquent. Incredible. Like birds calling. Like ravens calling. Incredible. Let him converse with the hedge-dwellers, the shaw-birds, in their vicinity. Let him charm wrens from their thicket. Each quick, suspicious, pleased, puzzled wren. She was inside and outside at once. She was between rooms. She burrowed deeper into herself as the sun illuminated his face, his talking mouth. She could see all his years of hovering and crouching over rocks and fossils, all the seas he’d crossed. He had built his stories and now he was breaking them down for her. He was like a derailed train. She was fascinated. The split world was full and mobile, even though it was poisoned. They shouldn’t have sent George away. That haze was from the fire in the death room. What a beautiful pearly light in the smoke. Opalescent.

  “Of course we keep going because we are following our desire. I am following my desire to speak and you are following the desire to listen. The geese follow the seasons and the seasons . . . ”

  What was he? She turned and struck his chest with her fist.

  11.

  He shrank back, told her she looked like the
graceful statue of Mary she kept on her dresser. He knew the longer he talked and the longer she listened the quicker time would fly. And he could always find, after all, something to say, especially now she had given up trying not to listen.

  “We are confused,” he said, “by the uncertainty that ensues when long-held patterns of behaviour are interrupted. It’s not just us. So many of these birds — thrushes, robins, wrens, tits, finches — are in trouble. The latest mist-netting fieldwork and point-counts tell of coming extinctions. Listen to those crows. The Bushmen’s language follows the calls of birds . . . ”

  She bent her head. “Annie’s hair was so soft and fine.”

  He drank her in. She was still good-looking, though no longer youthful. “There is a filled niche — no room for listening or talking — when Eros is in the room. No one truly dies.”

  “Charles? What’s happening?”

  He felt her attention on him. He studied her. She tilted away toward the house.

  This was frightening. He was frightened. He leaned forward and kissed her ear.

  12.

  “Was I asleep?”

  “Oh, just for an hour.”

  They were upstairs in Annie’s room. Emma lay on the bed under the skylight. Last night the house had been empty all over again.

  “How do you feel today?”

  “I am trying, Charles, but it makes no sense. How are you?”

  “Not good. Not so good.”

  “I depend on you, you know.”

  “You want me to worship.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I can’t do it, Emma.”

  Again he saw her weight shift before she turned over and slid out of Annie’s bed. She crossed the room. He watched her draw the curtains back.

  “The sun is so red,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly seven.”

  “That’s haze from the city, I suppose. What a light in the sky. Pearly pink . . . ”

  She stayed a long time at the window. He stood guard.

  “What was it you said? Once a niche is filled, then Eros looks for a change?”

  “That’s just the way it is.”

  13.

  But now she’d stopped listening. She was the mother who had given birth to the children of this man and she couldn’t remember how she had got to where she was, where she was, who was around her, or what he was. Let him talk to others, she didn’t want to witness it.

  “I have been pregnant and in labour and now I have lost a child.” She took his hand and set it on her belly. “What happens if I deny God? I will never repair this.”

  “We must bring George home,” he said.

  “Yes, we must get George home.”

  14.

  That summer, Emma’s hopelessness was complete and overarching. That summer Charles built the glass schoolroom and in the fall their first students enrolled.

  “You wanted the school,” Charles said, “and I wanted to make you forget.”

  “The children are still not settled. They are wary of us.”

  “Oh, come on. Of me, you mean.”

  “Charles, you’re only interested in sitting at your desk. We need to be useful to others.”

  “It’s not fair on George.”

  George, unless he was asleep, would not stay still. He never stopped running, inside and outside the house. His constant running was from Charles to Emma, from Emma to Charles. And then he began running away from home. The day he turned eighteen he sat his mother down in the glass room to say he was going away, like Uncle Danny, and they had small conversations all through the day about his prospective travels. She found that her son had always thought he was a little safe boat in the midst of chaos. Everything since Annie had been out of hand, almost too much. Now it was almost in hand he was going away. Charles, who was busy most days at his wall, joined them in the late afternoon.

  The three of them sat together in the garden.

  Charles told them a story of three kings and two crowns and a magic wagon full of words that fell off a bridge into a chasm.

  Emma said nothing.

  George asked why didn’t the kings invent a system to share the crowns?

  They were busy men with kingdoms to run. Or it didn’t occur to them.

  “What good is a kingdom?” Emma said.

  “What good are words?” her son asked.

  “Ask your father.”

  15.

  Charles brought Emma a gin and tonic.

  “Our son will come down that road, along that path, one day very soon.”

  “What if he doesn’t come?”

  “We can’t imagine otherwise.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ah.” He turned his back on the wind, sat in the tall grass, lay down.

  “No, Charles, please don’t. I can’t see you.”

  “Can you see me now?” He raised a hand and knew his five fingers were visible at the same level as the hissing seed heads. The sky so big and blue up there.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he in sight yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell me when you see the dust.” He was down there because of tears and not wanting to be seen crying. Her dress was so old and thin a teardrop would dissolve the cotton. The stems stood as straight as thin pale legs.

  “It’s all right, Charles. I’m okay.”

  Of course she was okay. He’d made the renovations, built the glass school; the wall was a few feet long. What next? He would rise in a moment and walk up to the house. He would go back to the house and leave Emma.

  16.

  He was alone in the garden as usual at the end of the day. Afraid. For a moment Emma was a cloud covering the sun. This was where we sat with George when he told us. No, no. That was another hillside. This one faces south. Been here before, though. No. No. Annie was dead and he didn’t know whether his son was alive or dead.

  Charles.

  What.

  Charles?

  Yes?

  He was writing a tale about a house by the sea where an old man watched birds fly from their cliff nests into the air. The old man would pop out his hearing aids and enter silence, the mass of undigested memories low in his gut, and watch the eerie birds swaying out over the mute surf and back. What are words? Where do they come from? What are they?

  Words are what we use to talk of where we have been and who we are.

  I can see you!

  Is he coming yet?

  Not yet.

  He felt the planet tilt, the raw words rising through his chest: Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, English. In the end Emma understood nothing except what he told her. Annie thanked him for the water. It didn’t matter that she was his daughter. When she died, Emma was holding her hand and Emma’s old friends were calling.

  Gulls were crying above the nuisance grounds. His old friends calling. Okay. He would rise in a moment and leave the wall and go back to the house. No, no running away. There was a light in the clouds, through the clouds, yes, and down below — this was memory, surely, all memory — down under the ground he’d discovered an old wooden wheel. Uncover the grass, lift the brown thatch and there would be the rim, chipped blue paint, and the spokes. A girl’s voice was calling, listen, over there, far away, calling to a dog or horse or brother. The wheel if unearthed would be missing spokes. The wheel of an old wagon or carriage. It was not so important to hear what the girl was calling. The hillside was a swaying green down to the road, but he didn’t want to return all the way home until the light in the sky changed and the wheel was pushed down a bit farther. Because this wheel was what mattered, not the top, which had been in the wind, not the hidden part, but the whole wheel: this half-buried wheel with only the girl’s voice, not insistent yet, disturbing the stillness.

  Who can I talk to now? Blue flakes on the rim, the hub in darkness, Annie’s scraped knees, curling hair, without meaning, this spring without meaning, wet spring, and yet her spirit will flavour next year, along with a fe
w ideas — how to count the earthworms pushing into starlight; that’s something Emma and I can talk about, knowing we are ordinary, knowing nothing but our children, remembered bits of childhood, that nun, that shopping list that went treasure, treasure, treasure, treasure, don’t forget the milk, there are children in the house. But not for long. The hub divided into centuries when we could say centuries before we knew things took millennia to change. Olives in brine. Now there’s no one to take one and none to offer and no one to listen and the wheel was a story once, the rust quick on the tongue. Be still. There’s no one to listen. What might I say? Summer, yes, fall, yes. One by one the spokes forget who they are next to.

  MISTRESS OF HORSES, MISTRESS OF THE SEA

  Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen, bald werden sie wieder nach Hause gelangen.

  Friedrich Rückert

  (from Kindertotenliede)

  I

  1.

  I wish I had a simpler voice. I had one once, when I was young. My thoughts have too many angles now. This river valley is rich. I can appreciate its opulence from the shelter of my wall this late afternoon, raindrops falling from a low cloud, its smell and colours and little winds. But our village is slipping. We are waning in population, our discards outweigh our possessions. True. What else? A smoke would keep me from falling asleep. I pat my pockets and look out for my wife returning from Dmitri’s Market. She trades as best she can with her arm in a sling. Such a fine wholesome gentle woman to anchor me to the earth’s molten core despite Danny’s horses, specks in the distance, cropping the curly grass below the vine hills, between the field of stooks and the orange river. Apocat and Kata sit near the river in a haze of dust kicked up by the rain, dry under the big tree where they weave their lazy baskets. This is their job: to weave at the edge of things as the world convulses and the village slips beneath the waves, just as Emma’s job is to give me ballast and my job is to report the faults in the facts that let in the dreams. I am still recording, though not broadcasting, as if redundant, as if silent and have nothing more to say to the outer world, even though these horses go on cropping, a wife shops at market, wise women weave, even though summer rain fattens the grapes. Ah, but is there a new element? Something between horse and sea, axe and tree? What exactly is it?