The 14th Day (26 page)

Jory's emotions are astir, he has to force himself to be attentive to the splash of the oars and the creak of the oarlocks. The water, roiled by recent storms, looks like brown taffeta.
Am I always leaving?
Like the ringing of a distant bell, the question sounds, then fades as he takes the boat further onto the lake. On the receding shore the building where they rented the boat is disappearing into the foliage; the dock has retracted. He swings his head around. At last he can see where the lake bends. In the distance is a glimpse of the other shore: it's unremarkable, a low hill with an unpainted barn, a cover of green on the water that must be lily pads—most definitely not the moon; but at least he's managed to push himself away from the house on Archbishop Street: there's only this boat on this lake, only the moments measured by the stroke of the oars.

“Stop.” Ila's voice disrupts his rhythm. When he lifts the oars and the boat slows, the feel of the breeze on his skin softens, the sun's warmth increases. “Let me row for a while,” she suggests. “You forget I practically grew up on a lake. I can't let you have all the fun.”

He smiles. “Of course.” And they carefully exchange positions.

“No, don't sit,” she instructs him. “You've worked hard. Lie back.”

He nods. “If you insist.” With the boat drifting slowly he can feel the full power of the sun. He unbuttons his shirt and lies back, his head resting on his clasped hands. A trickle of sweat runs past his ear. This is good. All his problems are on the shore; here on the water he's immune: this lake is an enchanted zone. Ila is right: he's worked hard and deserves a rest. It pleases him to think that somebody watching from shore would think the two of them are just a man and a woman from around here relaxing on a Saturday afternoon outing. He hears the slow, uneven splash of the oars: Ila isn't rowing any place in particular, just directing the drift. When he closes his eyes the sun beats red on his eyelids and he takes out his handkerchief, dips it into the water, then lays it across his eyes. In the cool darkness he smells the boat's wood, the fishy water, a gust lifts the heat for a moment, then it's gone and the sun's touch returns. He feels its warmth reaching deeper into him. It's only after a while that he becomes aware of Ila's silence.

“Are we making any progress toward the moon?” he asks lazily. When she doesn't answer he asks, “Ila, where are you?”

Once again he hears her humming beneath the syncopated splash of the oars. “Oh,” she says distantly, “I don't know, I'm still here, in this boat, on this lake.” He waits for more and after a time she adds, “I was thinking that this is the moment I prayed for back there.”

“Back there?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” At last he understands what she means. He's heard her story of how she lay under the hay, listening to the sounds of the soldiers' heavy boots moving closer. “I'd breathe very quietly,” she said, “and they still hadn't found me. This is my last moment, I told myself, I'd lived one more moment. I'd wet my pants and I was afraid they'd smell it and find me. So as the footsteps came nearer I tried to remember everything about what I thought was going to be my last moment: what I could feel in my hands, the taste in my mouth, what I smelled, the closeness of the air. Hay was scratching my face and tickled my nose, I couldn't breathe naturally, my pants were damp and cold, I couldn't see anything and I was more frightened than I'd ever been, even as a little girl. Still I kept hoarding those last moments, one by one. I was greedy, I wanted one more, another moment more. I already knew what had happened to my family, there was nothing for me to live for and still I wanted to live.”

Remembering, Jory is there in that barn with her: how close that must have come to actually being her last moment. In the darkness he feels protective toward the frightened young woman who believed in her heart that she'd never leave that place alive. The warmth of his feeling for her brings a sense of connection. The Thirteen Days, their common experience: even on this lake so far away the two of them have been brought back to the homeland. “I for one,” he says, “thank God your prayers were answered.”

“I believed so completely,” she says, as if she hasn't heard him, “that this was the end. I really believed I'd never leave that barn. I kept praying but without any hope.” Her voice is tense, expectant, like someone walking barefoot through a dark passage full of broken glass—it's clear she's re-experiencing that moment now. And yet Jory hears something else in her voice as well: she's experiencing this moment alone. For all his feeling, he can't reach her, protect her, connect with her. In the silence that follows Jory feels shut out of her reminiscence. Once again he's standing before a closed door. During all this time he's lying there beneath his blindfold, knowing that the two of them are together in this boat, almost touching—he could affirm it with a thrust of his hand. He listens to the irregular sound of the oars, he feels the boat move in one direction, then another, drifting. They're here together but it was only she who lay in that barn, under the hay, the soldiers calling hoarsely to each other. Even in the mild warmth the hair on the back of his neck stiffens.

When she speaks again he can't even be certain she's talking to him. “God wasn't very generous,” she says and in his mind's eye he sees her shaking her head. “So many people's prayers weren't answered. All those people are dead, people I loved—” She cuts herself off abruptly, then says, “And still I want to live. What happened there makes this—what we have here—all the more precious.”

The sound of the oars stops and all at once her voice is closer, more urgent, the boat rocks gently beneath him. “Whatever happens,” she says, “we have this moment. Remember that.”
Whatever happens
. The words cast their own shadow, sharp, jagged, ominous. He's still trying to grapple with their meaning when he feels something, a sudden violation of his privacy, a shock that's recognizable as the faint touch of her fingers on his relaxed wrist, and he pulls the handkerchief from his eyes.

“Yes,” he says. Her face is before him, her eyes wet with tears.

“Remember that,” she repeats. Her voice is thick, hungry. After she's spoken no sounds come from the boat, only the faint ripple of water against its side. “You and I are alive and so many others are dead,” she continues. “We'll never know the reason why.” She kisses him suddenly—it's quick, desperate, as if she's trying to snatch away his breath, a tear from her eyes wets his. Before he can reach out to her she's resumed her position at the oars. When he moves toward her she motions him back to his former place.

“Close your eyes again,” she says and he puts the handkerchief back: it's no longer as cool as it used to be. “Do you realize how beautiful this moment is?” Ila asks.

“Yes,” he answers, moved by the powerful, complex emotion he saw in her face. It wasn't just beauty that provoked those tears.

“Then let's both just live in it,” she says. Her voice is suddenly brighter. “I give you permission to go off duty, I'll watch over your destiny for you.”

He nods though his eyes feel the sting of tears, whether hers or his he can't say. He wants to believe what she's telling him. He experiences a rush of excitement at the idea of handing over his destiny to her, of just enjoying this place, this moment. The warm darkness is peaceful, it enfolds him.
Destiny
. The word is suddenly strange, foreign, it suggests a physical property, a heaviness that can slip off like water from a swimmer's back when he pulls himself out of a pool. Maybe it's even possible for him: far from his country, unknown and unheard of, he might simply live his life, his own life that has nothing to do with his ancestors, his family and his history: Keslar, Uncle Jory, Helani. Here, today, on this lake he might be an ordinary man out for a Saturday boat ride with a marvelous woman.
To be forgotten
. The idea hovers in the darkness, a momentary suspension of his heartbeat; but Jory doesn't resist it, he lets himself entertain the thought: to forget and be forgotten, not to be burdened by what happened to those who are no longer here, just to live, breathe. Would it be so bad?

“Jory, Jory,” Ila says. “You and I have come so far.” Her soft, musical voice conveys the exciting way she moves, the light in her eyes that can always lift his spirits. And yet today more than ever he hears something else in it, a desperate hunger, the unspoken words of someone who's hiding in the hay, holding her breath, certain she'll be dead in seconds.

“Yes,” he answers from far off. If only he could shut off his mind, his memory. If they could stay here on the water forever.

His eyes remain closed under the damp handkerchief; he feels his blood pulsing through his body. His consciousness sinks into that pulse, the steady, repeated spasm of life. He's acutely aware that he's floating on his back over the depths of this lake. Ila is silent and he hears the water lapping the sides of the boat, he feels himself drifting, attuned to the shifting, random movements that are carrying him across the lake's surface. Gradually he lets go of the last vestiges of his will; he surrenders to the languid weightlessness of his body. He's moving as wind and current determine. It wouldn't take much to trick himself into believing there isn't any boat beneath him at all, that he's floating freely on the top of the lake, adrift like a leaf on its surface—his breath catches at the idea; no sooner does he think it than he's experiencing it. In his chosen darkness the last faint pressure of his weight is lifted from him, the surrounding shape of the wooden boat is gone, he feels a sudden ecstasy. Floating, drifting, he's alone and free. And what if there were no lake supporting him but only the air, a vast ocean of air? All at once the sensation takes hold of him with a thrilling, terrifying vividness: he imagines himself hovering in the air, high above everything: lake, town and countryside are hazy dreams far below while he passes unsupported, unconnected, the horizon itself sliding away. His stomach goes light, he pulls off the handkerchief and sits up abruptly.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing. It just got uncomfortable lying there.” His hands grip the sides of the boat as if to reassure himself of its existence. When he notices this, he lets go. “Nothing,” he repeats. He can see from Ila's reaction, though, that somehow she understands what happened to him as he drifted in the darkness.

She looks at him appraisingly. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” As he answers he's aware of averting his eyes.

“Would you like to row again?” she asks after a while.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I would.” He blinks in the sunlight. Everything around him has changed: it isn't the same place anymore, a spell has been cast over the lake. He can feel it on his skin. In a few moments he's at the oars once more, though this time he isn't able to lose himself in the repetitive effort of stroke and release. Throwing himself into his efforts, he catches sight of Ila only glancingly. Something about her is different, though what, he can't say. It's as if when his eyes were closed another Ila took the place of the one who'd stepped into the boat with him, an Ila who could still smell the hay in that barn in the homeland.

Jory rows on. Even as his back bends, his arms pull, a stray breeze brushes his skin, he can remember his experience moments ago, floating free, attached to nothing—the terror he felt then has entered his bloodstream. A few feet away, Ila has begun humming once more, the same elusive melody that troubled him earlier, as she looks toward the shore, lost in her own thoughts. If he could only call her back; if he could say something to her. But what can he tell her? This morning he awakened from a dream that reminded him of the trip he made as a boy to the port city where his twin aunts lived. Some trouble at home must have been behind this hasty visit, he could tell from his mother's tearful farewell at the railroad station; but Jory was excited by the prospect of a solitary journey to the exotic old port with its fat seagulls on the docks, wet streets and gray skies, shops with goods from all over the world, old narrow buildings of a subtly different architectural style than he was used to in the capital, mermaids and seahorses carved into stone arches.

Now, as he rows, he fears that this memory will be his alone, his aunts' breezy apartment with its silver light, the high windows from which you could get a glimpse, beyond the busy street, of the harbor itself, the dark room with the regal piano whose keys he would sound experimentally, the hard, yellow candy his aunts doled out to him sparingly at first and then with reckless generosity, the excursions they allowed him to take on his own into the port city's intriguing streets. Suddenly it seems desperately important that he tell her all this, make her share the experience.

Touching that memory, he's surprised by the emotion that engulfs him. His eyes are wet with tears and he can only wonder what it is that he's lamenting. At the moment it seems tragic that Ila might never know about his trip to the port city.

“You know …” he begins and she turns toward him expectantly. We should be talking, he wants to say. You and I both know there are important things we aren't talking about. There's so much to be settled between them. The thought crosses his mind that for all their closeness they don't know each other at all.

“Yes?” she asks.

“Nothing.” The port city is gone, they're here on the lake near the university town in the host country. As Ila said, there is only this moment. But what will come after? The moment is always vanishing. This one too.

His spirit fails. Why not just continue their progress across the lake, row to the other end where they'll drift among the lily pads? They can turn around then, loiter on the water; they don't really have to talk. The sun is still high in the sky.