Gone to the Forest: A Novel (19 page)

They and everything that happened to them in this place. It is being
spirited away.
It is not yet past. But it is slipping away. She can see that soon there
will be no way of talking about it. That the past is going to be sealed off and the keys
to the locks will be lost. It is already happening and she is starting to forget, she
has already forgotten, how she got to where she now is.

There is so much empty floor. Once she was drowning in society,
suffocating in its antechambers. Now it receded like ice melting in water. She looks up.
These vaulted ceilings, these stone floors, these bay windows and chandeliers. It is too
good to let go and too good to destroy. They will make it a government building. A
department store. A post office or a bank. They will fill the rooms again and the people
will talk about the architecture. They will say it is a good relic of the past
preserved. It is a question, she believes, of time. Whether it is one year or one decade
or one month.

The girl is sitting huddled and cold in the corner of an empty room when
she hears the voices. They are both hushed and panicked. She hears a word here and
there, following the native dialect with difficulty. She listens closer, concentrating,
and hears more:

“We cannot stay any longer.”

“Look around you. He is dying, it is a matter
of days.”

“We have run out of time. You do not know how bad it has become. It
is spreading like an infection.”

“That is just the mood. It will not last. You will see that it will
not last.”

“Listen. They will kill us. It is not just the settlers. They are
killing loyalists all across the country. They are making examples of people. And you
are a loyalist if you do not take the oath, it has become like that.”

The voices subside. The girl leans her head back and closes her eyes. She
is nearly asleep when the voices return:

“I am no loyalist.”

“You went out in search of adventure. Like a child.”

“If I was looking for adventure I would have joined the Oath
Takers.”

“But you do not like them.”

“No.”

“I do not like them either. I am waiting for something else for this
country.”

A short laugh.

“You will die waiting. There is nothing else. It is a miracle that
even this has happened. We are surrounded by a miracle.”

“It is not my miracle.”

“You do not have any choice. That is what I am trying to tell you.
The choice has been made for us. We must do what is best. In order to
survive.”

“He is your father. How can you speak like this?”

“He has been no father to me.”

“You know nothing. He has tried.”

“That means nothing. He has given me nothing.”

“He has given you a home. That is the love he could offer
us.”

“He gave me the same home he would have given any native, any slave
who worked his land. And you call this his love—”

A choked cry.

“No, no. I will not be sorry when he dies.”

Their voices move down the corridor. The girl peers into the darkness. She
hears nothing further but she understands. The ghostly echo between Tom and Jose. Jose,
who is so much like the old man and therefore so much like her. More—Jose’s
hatred for Tom and his ignorance, the things Tom had been protected from knowing. Tom
who knows nothing and Jose who sees everything. The father’s strange
patrimony.

The secrets of this place. No wonder Jose and Celeste stayed when the
others had gone. The old man meaning something to them yet. She cannot believe that she
did not see it earlier. Nevertheless, it had been madness for them to stay. She wonders
that Jose, canny as he is, could have made this error. It is true none of them know how
far the rebellion will spread. But there is little margin for error, and none for human
sentiment.

Eventually, she falls asleep. She lies huddled in the corner, on the
floor, for hours. When she wakes it is with a jolt to the sound of footsteps. Her sleep
has been crammed with the fragments of bad things—the volcano, the veranda, the
dying fish. She gets up and half expects that this is the end, for her
belly to be slit open and her head sliced off. She wakes out of the dream and she
hears the voices again, she hears Tom and Celeste and is temporarily reassured.

She labors to her feet and walks in the direction of the voices. She goes
into the old man’s bedroom. He lies spread-eagled on the bed, body flailing from
side to side. His eyes roll in circles and there is froth gathering around his mouth.
Celeste is asking where the pills are. The girl tells her there’s no point. No way
he can swallow anything—just look at him. Celeste insists. The pills. Where are
the pills?

She tells Celeste that Tom has them. She does not know where they are. Tom
has all the morphine. Where is Tom? She does not know where Tom has gone. The girl
cannot take her eyes off the old man. He is panting for breath, he claws at the bed
sheets, at his chest and neck, at the air in front of his mouth. He screams in silence,
his eyes yellow and bulging with rage and agony.

She steps forward—as Celeste continues to ask for the pills, again
and again—and she grabs the old man’s hand. And even though his body keeps
convulsing his arm, at least, is still. She grips it tight and tells him that it is
going to be okay. It is going to be okay. She holds tighter and then he jerks his head
to her, eyes staring. And she tells him again that it is going to be okay and he nods.
He is a man grasping at straws and she can see in his eyes that he wants to believe
her.

Yes. It is going to be okay. How okay and what okay she doesn’t know
but she keeps telling him. It is going to be okay. And he looks at her and then he nods.
Yes. It will. Will it? And
then Celeste plunges a needle into his
arm and they hear the quick suck of the syringe and he collapses back onto the bed.

The girl looks up. Celeste puts the needle down on the bedside table. She
rolls the old man onto his side and with a quick jerk pulls down his pants. The girl
looks at the old man’s face—it is frozen, it has no expression beyond
resigned outrage. Celeste taps the morphine pills out of the bottle and shoves them up
his ass. Her face says nothing as she pulls the old man’s trousers up again and
lowers him to the bed. She pulls the covers up and he lies in perfect stillness.

Tom stands in the doorway, gripping the open canvas medicine bag to his
chest. Celeste sighs and steps back from the bed. The girl stares at her blankly.

“Is he alive?”

The three of them stare at each other and then Celeste leaves the room.
She is conscious of having done more than she intended. There is a long low wheeze and
then the smell of shit fills the room. Like nothing they have ever smelled. The girl
knows they should clean him but it is a distant thought. Tom shuffles up to the side of
the bed and stares down at the old man’s face.

“What did Celeste give him?”

Carine shakes her head and walks to the door. Tom finds a chair and sits
down. She looks back at him.

“What are you doing?”

“We can’t leave him.”

She thinks about it. She needs to lie down. She needs to eat. She cannot
even breathe in this room. Tom is looking up
at her. He is sitting
in the cloud of smell and his face is full of decision, it says he is going to sit, for
as long as it takes. After all, it is all that he has left. She nods.

“Fine.”

She leaves the room.

T
he old man stays in a coma for the next three days. He does not stir. His breath is regular as a clock but a clock that is gradually slowing. They listen to his breath and now they are waiting for him to die in earnest. To go on and get it over with. His breath is slowing but too slowly for their taste.

They would like him to die. They cannot wait much longer—they do not believe it is physically possible. The strain is immense. They are not getting enough sleep. They are not remembering to eat. Celeste is cooking all day. Always there is a pot on the stove, she is cooking through their last remaining store of food. But they have lost their appetite.

They are the living and it is difficult for the living to contend with the dying. There is not enough space. The old man inflates and expands and he presses them against the walls of the house. They are having trouble breathing from this position. While the old man’s own breath swishes rhythmically in and out.

Flattened against the walls and ceiling they listen to the
sound of his breathing. They wait for the walls to crack. For the house to collapse. It is obvious the structure cannot hold. There is not room for all of them and the dying and something will have to give. They hope it will be the house and not them. That it will not be their lungs that collapse first.

Tom alone sits by the old man’s bed and holds his vigil. He does not want the old man to lie unattended. He does not want him to die alone. Of course it is a possibility. He might get up to stretch his legs or use the toilet and
whoosh
in a flash he may go. It could end like this, it is a roll of the dice each time. But Tom needs to believe that there are still things he can do. At least inside this one room. That some things can still be maintained, even if too late.

Therefore Tom sits by the bed and the others, they sit pressed against the wall, they tumble out windows and crawl back in again. For three days Tom sits. He is persistent. He will not allow a single second of the dying to escape him. The others watch and to them it is like he is grasping the dying man to him, like he would devour the already stinking body if he could. He has the sense that he will dissolve when the old man dies, he can see the moment around the corner.

But even Tom’s persistence cracks in the face of this interminable dying. On the third day he leaves the bedroom and goes outside. He has had nothing but the smell of dying. The sweetness of which is now as strong as candy boiling. Lately he is having trouble breathing, he pinches his nose and holds his breath when he leans in to lift his father, to wipe him down and change the diaper.

The shit has the color and consistency of tar. A smear of tar on white muslin. Each time Tom examines the diaper like he is reading runes. Like there are signs written into the excrement.

Tom sits in the dark on the porch steps. He remembers putting the outdoor furniture into storage all those months ago. It goes without saying that it feels like a lifetime earlier. He looks down to the river, which is now running clear. Nine months—it has taken nine months but at last the river is clear. There have been no further signs of the rebellion in the valley. There has been nothing but the deafening silence of the old man’s death.

Later, Jose comes out and joins him. He leans against one of the pillars and lights a cigarette. Tom speaks without looking at him.

“Do you think they are coming?”

“I do not know.”

Tom nods. He continues to stare at the river. Which is not only clean but also flowing. In which there are fish, even if they are not huge in number and not yet breeding.

“I will give them everything. Our thousand acres. They can take the house—I have no need of it. I can live on an acre. I can live on less. Only—”

“Only you do not want to die.”

“No. I do not want to die.”

“I do not think they will come so far. There is nothing in it for them. They will return to the city and make their demands. Their leader will make a deal with the Government
like before. They are not mindless and they are not without purpose.”

He is watching Tom as he says this. Tom shivers.

“I do not want to die.”

“Nor I.”

Jose turns and goes into the house. Tom stays on the porch. The air is clean and warm. It will be summer in no time. If the old man does not die by summer his body will rot in the heat and that will be that. It will end in this way. It is hard to believe the old man will die. It seems more likely that he will rot before their gathered eyes, it seems more likely he will stay with them forever, undead as he now is.

Tom stands up and goes inside the house. In the kitchen, Celeste has left a tray of cold food. Tom thinks he will take it to the girl, who is sitting with the old man. He takes the tray and goes into the bedroom. The old man’s body has not changed. It is still churning through the air like a wind machine. One of the lids has gone up. The white of the eye is visible and the pupil stares at nothing.

Tom puts the tray down. He lifts and then presses the lid down and sits down. The girl nods to him. They are neither enemies nor friends. It has gone beyond that kind of thing. They may as well be the last two people left in the world. Why did you lift his eye like that? Forget it, she shakes her head. She is tired, she sits by the old man’s feet. She presses her eyes with the heel of her hand.

She stands and leaves the room. Tom stares at the old man. In the last day there has been a change and he has been
weighted to the bed. He can see the change clearly. Like there are a thousand stones resting on his body. The old man has been transformed by death’s alchemy: he had been weightless and brittle, now his body is heavy and dense like lead. Tom can no longer move him; his father can no longer be stirred.

He is also now a noise machine. His breath creaks in and out of his body. Like he has a bellows packed inside him. Like he is a giant bagpipe tucked into the bed. His body is very loud despite the stillness, it is making more noise than it made in all its life. Tom sits by the side of the bed and eventually falls asleep. He is dozing, he is slumbering, to the noise of his father dying.

H
E WAKES TO
a sudden and broad silence. In panic, he leans close to the bed. His breath—certainly his breath has slowed. Tom pitches his body to the bed and puts his ear against his father’s mouth. A long silence. So long that Tom’s heart rate rises in the quiet. It bangs against his chest. Then a sharp intake of breath that is dry—very dry, more like a mechanical click than a breath. Then another long silence.