To Mervas (16 page)

I hadn't dreamt only about Kosti during the night, I'd had other dreams too. One of them was about the boy, a nightmare. I recognized it; I'd had it before. It was one of those nightmares with different variations on the same theme. The most common dream was about animals, various animals that I'd neglected, that I'd forgotten to take care of.

This one had been about the boy. I'd completely forgotten that he existed and suddenly I realized with painful clarity that he was inside the decrepit shed outside and that no one had been in there for months. I knew I had to hurry, that I had to go out there at once, but different things kept interceding. People showed up, I had to go away on trips, and time kept passing while my awareness of his being out there
became more and more impossible to endure. Finally, I stood before the crooked door where tall, sharp-toothed nettles grew. I had to take a big step over the nettles to push the door open. It was dark inside. The small aperture barely let in any light. The dirt floor was black and cold, and I knew it was a death room. The boy was tucked inside an old wood trunk attached to the wall, and it was utterly incomprehensible that I'd let myself forget about him. The last time I'd been there, I'd made the bed nicely and fed him. The room had been entirely different then. The whole winter had gone by and I hadn't even thought about him, about his existence.

The lid of the trunk was open and I leaned into its darkness. There was still something inside it, I could see that. But if it was still the boy, he had become incredibly small, almost like a bird. He showed vague signs of life, a scent, a breath. He seemed to be disintegrating, and I didn't dare touch him. I couldn't; everything was revolting and disgusting. I didn't understand how I could do this to him and felt afraid of what people would say if they knew. The only thing I knew was that I quickly had to find him some milk, that I had to feed him milk through a small tube.

When I came home again to fetch the milk, and perhaps a medicine dropper if I could find one, things, people, events blocked my way, and after a while, I'd forgotten what I was supposed to do. A long time passed and when I once again remembered the boy in the old trunk out there, all I wanted to do was press my hands against my eyes and ears and not know about it, I didn't want to be part of it any longer. Shameful notions of “removing him” from there, of getting rid of him, burned through me, licked at me like tongues of fire.

As if walking against a hard headwind, I made my way to the shed, which was now even more decrepit. Part of the roof had collapsed, and
daylight fell through the hole like through a large, ragged wound. The trunk was closed. I opened it slowly and immediately noticed something among the rags on the bottom, but this time it was barely moving.

I am always walking in my own shadow. My shadow falls on everything I see and everything I touch. My shadow is heavy with my presence, the way a rain cloud is heavy with water. I don't understand how other people do it, how they manage to be human.

Yesterday it started raining, and that was just as well. I couldn't do anything but stay on the sleeping pad in the car and stare out the window while the drops beat against the roof and my thoughts dug their paths and tunnels through me. I'm walking around with a longing in a constant state of alert, an impatient, chafing state of waiting. It is a longing for love and I don't know what it wants with me, I don't see how it could be useful. It is digging a hole through me, digging a hole to give my emptiness room to grow. I know my life cannot be shared by anyone; to burden another person with my issues would double the guilt and pain for me. If I can't even be close to myself, how could anyone else? And still, this voice inside me is alive, this ripping longing for love so strong I'm beginning to think it's bigger than me, bigger than my own life.

Today I emerged from my torpor and went outside. In the morning, I followed a path leading to the village. The path opened onto a small
beach, which was clearly man-made with its gravel, sand, and pebbles. The natural shores around the lake consisted of bogs and impenetrable swampy areas. The lake was small, perhaps a hundred yards wide. But there's something about water that makes you feel good just by looking at it. When I stepped out on the little beach and stood there looking at the surface, I suddenly felt moved. It is difficult for me to describe why, but small lakes like this one in the middle of the woods, they lie there like a caress, a soft caress. There's something open and forgiving about them; they possess a quiet healing quality.

The surface of the water was so still that the cloudy sky was reflected in it. It was as if the lake were calling me. Come inside, it said. Let me surround you. I took off my boots and my pants and took a few steps out into the water. It was icy cold; nevertheless I stood still in it and let the cold push and pull at my feet and shins. I rinsed my hands and wet my face, then I quickly ran out of the water and pulled off the rest of my clothes. Naked, I stepped into the water again and it was as if I were meeting someone in it, as if I were seeing a lover. The water had awakened a desire in me; I washed my armpits, my crotch, I rinsed my face again and again, pulling my wet fingers through my hair: I pulled and pulled so it felt like dull plow blades against my scalp. The water was so cold it hurt, but I had been seized by a thirst for it, I couldn't get enough of it; the cold, soft water would make me come alive. It would awaken me, rinse the dirt off me. I would emerge hard and clean, shining like a pebble by the edge of the water. I stood there scooping up the water, splashing it over me, thinking that water really was the origin of life, everything was made from it, and I wanted every pore in my skin to drink and be full.

When I finally got out, both my arms and legs were numb from the cold and my fingers ached. But the depths of me felt remarkably warm,
delighted in being alive. Something had begun stirring inside me, a desire to be part of the world.

But the euphoria I had felt by the lake in the morning quickly dissipated. I guess I can't handle that much happiness. Little by little, the day filled me with gloom; darkness arose in me like an endless, gray December dusk. I walked around aimlessly searching for the cabin. It hadn't been visible from the lake as I'd expected, but I knew it had to be somewhere close to the water west of the beach where I'd been.

In the birch forest I had seen when I came to Mervas were plenty of paths leading here and there, a tangle of tracks among the rubble and the ruins. This was where the outdoor dance floor had been; the little kiosk was still standing, its windows broken, garbage visible inside. Fifty years ago, Lilldolly had danced here with Arnold and the men from the bachelors' barracks; it wasn't difficult to see where the stage and the dance floor had been. It was as if the forest wanted to hold on to the memory; grass grew here, budding buttercups and red campion.

One of the small paths by the dance floor led into the woods and I soon ended up in a dense forest of young pines. In an instant, mosquitoes surrounded me like a wall; suddenly they were everywhere with their thin whirring sound and feathery touch. They danced around me and attacked me at the same time; their bites burned everywhere, on my neck, my scalp, my hands, throat, and face. I was seized by a deep, claustrophobic fear and walked faster until I was running, surrounded by a buzzing cloud. The cabin appeared before me without warning. A rough gray wooden wall materialized between the tree trunks. I stopped and heard my own breathing along with the whirring of mosquitoes while I angrily swung a leafy branch around me.

Here was the cabin. I gazed at the back of it; the trees were close together in front of the windowless wall. The fear the swarm of mosquitoes had produced in me grew larger, rose to the surface, and at once everything seemed ominous: the forest, the dull gray wall of the cabin, the notion that someone could be inside it. I turned around and, like a hunted animal, ran back through the woods.

Marta, Mart!

This isn't the first time I have sat down to write to you. But all the other letters I've either thrown away or burned. Some I've placed among my journal notes like memory plaques. The letters often got incredibly long; if I'd saved them all they'd be an entire autobiography. I guess I've tried to understand my life by writing about it, to understand and explain. As you can see, I've failed. That's why I decided that this time my letter to you would be concise. It would still be a real letter, not just a note like the one I sent you last fall (and assume you received). My cowardly notion was that if you wanted to see me, you'd sooner or later show up in Mervas. If you do come, it will most certainly be in the summer, and then this letter would be here, waiting for you.

I'm a coward. I don't know if I want to see you. I really don't understand why I'm writing to you at all. Something in me has pushed me to do it, and I finally decided to go ahead.

Enough rambling. This was supposed to be a concise letter.

For many years, I've lived periodically in Zimbabwe, participating in the excavations of the old gold mines there. Seven or eight years ago, when I happened to be home for a while, I saw a story in the newspaper.
It was a brief notice about a mother who had killed her severely disabled child. She'd been evaluated for mental illness, it said, and had been in such a state of shock she had to be hospitalized.

I knew immediately. I knew it was you, Mart. My body knew it, my muscles, my nerves, and my cells. I began shaking violently where I sat; it was as if an electric current were going straight through me. My tea spilled onto the newspaper. I screamed, just screamed without words. I felt so terribly sorry for you. But it wasn't just that; without quite understanding it at first, I also felt responsible. I knew I was involved and responsible. I was part of this story. What I'd read in the newspaper was part of my own story, part of my own life. Isn't that right, Mart? Isn't it?

With time, I've understood that my actions also were part of this story, that they were part of it in a way that couldn't be changed or erased. It was as if I had in some impossible way been with you. As if I had been present. It all flashed in front of me as in a dream sequence, a nightmare; everything that had happened was replayed in my mind over and over.

You might think that I'm barging into something I ought to stay away from, something that concerns only you and that no one else has the right to talk about or touch. But what I want you to know is that you weren't alone when it happened. What we'd had together and what I did to you was part of why you did it.

It isn't always simple to know what's important or crucial in your life. I think it's possible to miss it altogether. That's probably the easiest way. When I came back from the Orkney Islands and heard that you'd had a child with another man, I thought all ties between us were cut. I wanted it to be that way. I wanted to be free from you. You were frightening, disruptive, and I felt swallowed and crushed by you. I thought I could let you disappear from my life. That is, until I read that notice in the paper. It hit me – all this time, I hadn't really been part of my own life. I had
escaped into something else, changed my name, assumed another fate.

But I never contacted you. I resisted the urge. I thought it would've been foolish, that my inclinations were sick. When you received my little note, I'd already written impossibly long letters that I'd thrown away.

I'm still not sure. I still don't know why I'm writing to you. Perhaps I'm not writing to you as much as I'm writing to the part of my past tied to you.

I've been allowed to use this cabin, where my letter will be waiting for you, until the moose hunt starts on the first Monday in September. Mervas is an odd place, odder even than it may first seem. I'm down in the mine most of the time. I've found something down there that I can't write about, an entire world.

You're welcome to stay in the cabin so you don't have to camp. I would like you to stay in it.

If you want to come down into the mine (and to everything else down here), the easiest way is through the tunnel that opens onto the village. It looks like an ordinary ground cellar. The other entrances have more or less collapsed or are underwater.

I'm a coward. Please forgive me.

Your Kosti

Slept in the cabin. Had a terrible night. I lay in the lower berth of the bunk staring at the grainy, thin twilight inside the cabin. The light was a shivering gray specter whose warm, enveloping darkness had been taken away from it. My thoughts moved around in the room like anxious shadow animals, sniffing and listening. I almost thought I could see them flickering over the walls. Herds of fear ran down the slopes as if they were being hunted, being egged on by the thoughts and visions spinning in my head. The terror seemed to hatch in new places all the time, one vision after another appearing in long, painful sequences. And I had to keep looking at them; I couldn't avert my eyes.

I've secretly longed for Kosti the way someone may long for the warmth of a nice bonfire. But the pleasant and warming fire turned out to be a dry roaring pyre, the kind of blaze that can set the very air on fire with its electrically charged flames. The fire I had sought out suddenly wasn't tame at all, it was reaching for me with glowing arms, wanted to pull me into it, wanted to consume me. Standing there, unscathed and cool, Kosti smiled sweetly while trying to pull me into the flames.

“Do you want me to tell you about The Day?” he asked with a whisper, his voice so eerily intimate that it made me hate him.

That's when I saw the cabin walls contract and expand around me like the inside of a mouth. I had to breathe or else I would suffocate. A loud moaning woke me – it was coming from my own mouth. I leapt out of bed, flung the door open, and ran outside.

The sky was vast above me. I took a deep breath. Exhaled. A streak of silky, thin gray fog covered the blue and in the northeast the sun was pumping its sheen through the thin layers of clouds. The light seemed so pale and mild and birdsong was everywhere like thousands of tiny stitches of invisible patterns.