No One is Here Except All of Us (23 page)

The water was moving fast, and my people, all of them strangers and all of them family, were carried away.

Ahead of the others
in the tumbling water, each of Hersh’s and Kayla’s pumping organs pumped hard. Like the men before, they had crushed what had fallen in their path. The mud had slapped their feet. They had parted the grass like a curtain and passed through it. The rain got in their eyes as they rounded the corner to the river. They had jumped into the cold, rushing water. They took each other’s hands and Kayla held on to a reed to keep them still. The water chewed them with its cold teeth, made all their short hairs stand and their skin harden.

They looked back at the barn and could see the dark ink of movement inside. They could hear as well as they had ever been able to hear in their lives: the begging and screaming was needle sharp. The river was another kind of music, rain falling softly into it. Kayla and Hersh listened to the melody of the two sounds together.

“The real stars,” Kayla said, looking up.

“We will have to let go,” Hersh said. “They will eventually find us here.”

Kayla’s shoes fell off, one and then the other. They rushed away.

“My shoes are gone,” she told her husband.

Hersh reached down to untie his but did not remove them, he let the river do the removing. Their skin was numb now, just a casing for their insides.

Their socks stayed a few moments and then snaked themselves off, slithered away. Kayla’s dress was heavy on her shoulders. She turned to Hersh and without her asking him to, he unbuttoned it and they waited while it slipped down the length of her body. It surfaced, a white bubble, which they watched until it turned the corner. She was in her underwear now, the weedy, soft grass fanning against her skin.

“I am not a young woman anymore,” Kayla said.

“I am not a young man.”

“I never swam well. We should have gone to the woods.”

“We do not need to swim. We only need to float,” Hersh said.

“Let me take the weight of your clothes away so you are a lighter boat,” she said while she unbuttoned his vest, his black woolen vest, and then his white shirt. He put one arm out at a time while she held the other and his clothing was caught in the current and slipped away.

They took turns holding the strong reeds and each other while they removed the last of the cloth. Their skin, loose now after all the years of hanging on to their bones, flapped softly.

“It was a nice place to raise our daughter,” Hersh whispered.

“She’s fine,” Kayla said. “Someplace in the world, our daughter is fine.”

“We have passed ourselves along,” Hersh told his wife. His face was white with moon and cold.

“We couldn’t have done anything to help the others,” Kayla said.

“No one could have done anything.”

“I’m happy we finished the sky.”

“Do you remember the beginning of the world?” Hersh asked. “What a lucky time to have been alive.”

“I wish it hadn’t gone so fast. Here we are, old and swimming away.”

“But I’m glad we’re old and swimming away together,” Hersh said, and he laid his cold lips on her forehead.

On the bank, in the tangle of dark willows, something small scratched in the branches. Something else slapped at the water. In the distance, Hersh and Kayla could hear the march of hundreds of feet. The entire earth rumbled under the migration. They could see the black line of the villagers leaving the village.

“The river is cold.”

“Should we be getting on?” he asked.

Kayla let go of the reeds. The two of them began their bobbing journey. Their naked bodies floated to the top of the water and they put their heads back and held their breath. Their fingers were twisted together.

They did not say the names of the constellations out loud but they knew them all. The sky was a cloth with enough holes to breathe through.

After a long time, Hersh said, “Tell me you’re here.”

Kayla made a small and caught noise.

“Say your name,” he told her.

She made the same small and caught noise.

“My name is Hersh,” he said. “I am yours.”

He floated with her cold hand for a long time. The river turned and turned back. The banks narrowed and the water grew faster, then the banks widened out and he could hardly feel the water’s movement.

“I’m yours,” Hersh said again to his floating bride but she did not answer him with a squeeze of her fingers or a word.

“You’re mine,” he said, and he opened his fingers up and let her go.

Kayla whirled in an eddy. He closed his eyes even though the darkness was already a sheet over everything. “I’m yours,” he said again, and kicked against the drift, trying to stay close. He gave her a final push, sent her coasting toward the edge. “Bring good luck to the riverbanks.”

The weeds would be the ones to catch Kayla, the long arms of the willows taking her close. They would spiral around each of her parts. They would grow into her, under and through. Short green leaves would not be far behind.

Hersh floated away under the shameless beauty of the heavens. “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven,” he said to himself, remembering when he had read the passage as a young man and the idea that life could be invented had seemed like a fairy tale. Now, floating alone in the river, far away from the known world, he was hopeful that someone had thought to conjure up places downstream from here. “Let there be a village not far away,” Hersh said quietly to the night. The stars winked back, as if to prove they heard him. “And let those villagers be out on the bank gathering glinting fish from a flood,” he said. “And let them be there when a stranger washes up on their shores, and let the villagers wrap him in wool blankets and take him home where a new world waits. And let there be someone, somewhere, to tell his story. Our story.”

THE BOOK OF THE SEA AND THE FUTURE, WHICH IS NOW

I
gor slept alone in the windowless dark of his cell. For the first time he wanted to punch the walls out himself. For the first time the cage made him feel kept. For the first time he did not sleep well in his four-poster bed, even with his legs spread wide, his arms out and the blanket pulled up to his chin.

“I’m by the ocean!” he yelled, and the walls sent his words back. “I don’t know where that is!” He stood up and jumped on the bed. He sprang up high and yelled, “I’m a prisoner in a foreign land!” He jumped and he called, “I have a wife and two sons someplace!” He landed, bent his knees and flew again. “I have everything I need! Where is it all?”

Later,
Francesco took Igor by the arm and walked the scrabbled path to the post office. The letter went addressed to
Lena, My Wife, Zalischik
. Igor touched the envelope to his cheek before handing it over.

“A swim?” Francesco asked.

“I’ll come and sit on the rocks and watch you. I will be waiting for my wife to write back.”

“It will take weeks, I think.”

“Then I’ll write another one.”

“There is no point in being angry. You’re a prisoner, you have no choice. You might as well enjoy it.” Francesco had felt easy knowing that his friend could not leave him, trapped as he was. Yet he had not considered the troublesome and unkeepable mind, free to remember, to imagine, to roam. Francesco flung his arms down as hard as he could onto the surface of the deep blue sea. It stung his skin, and salt splashed into his eyes. Igor did not recognize it as one man’s great display of heartsickness.

Francesco hauled himself out of the sea and sat down on the rocks. “Once,” he said, “when I was little, I was playing on the beach while my eldest brother talked the bathing suit off a girl. My job was to keep watch and yell if someone came. I spied on them and saw my brother’s hand slip up the girl’s salty, cold flanks while she stared at the sky with a profoundly bored look on her face. My brother did not look heroic, as I would have expected, but pathetic. Cross-eyed and drooling. I wished I had never seen it. I wished I could have known only my brother’s elaborate tale of conquest, and not the fumbling truth.” He looked at Igor. “Love looked so sad. So humiliating.” Igor patted Francesco on the knee.

“That wasn’t love,” Igor said. Francesco’s face brightened.

Francesco felt as if a bird were flapping its wings in his chest. He felt as if he could fly. He stood tall, reached his arms up. Francesco dove into the sea, soared right through the surface of the world.

Igor sat on the rocks and wrote several more notes while Francesco swam laps, looking like he was having the most wonderful, the most completely terrific time.

Dear L,

I am alive, did you know? I am getting to be a very, very fast swimmer. I can swim from the big rock all the way to the sandy beach in a matter of seconds. I learned how to make lasagna. Do you know what that is? My friend Francesco taught it to me, actually his mother did. How are my sons? Are you alive? What is the weather like where you are? Remember the time we climbed to the top of the apple tree and fell asleep in the branches? I hope you are alive.

Love, I

Dear L,

I still don’t know if you are alive. Please write back. Please don’t forget. Please tell Solomon that he is my son and that I am his father. Please send something of yours that I can keep.

Love, I

Dear L,

I am sitting by the sea. I am waiting. I am not swimming because you are far away.

Love, I

Dear L,

I might like to go swimming sometime but it’s not because I have forgotten you. I suffer if you suffer.

Love, I

Dear L,

I am hungry. Should I eat something? You would have fed me if I were home.

Love, I

Dear L,

I am going to put my feet in the water but not my knees. You never told me, is the baby taller than my knees? Does he like to go swimming?

Love, I

Dear L,

We are going to have lunch now. I am going to eat but I am also being punished, you have to remember. I am going to eat less than I want to. Maybe I should eat more, enough for you, too? Which do you prefer? I’ll do whatever you want.

Dear L,

Lunch was not very good. Is that what I should say? Is it better if I am unhappy? I will try to be.

Dear L,

I still sleep whenever I can. Is Solomon a sound sleeper? Will you be bringing him with you when you come? He is not an adult yet, right? What size is the baby? What qualities has he inherited from me?

Dear L,

I will try to win at checkers tonight in your honor. I will declare that I dedicate my game to you. When I look at any girl I will replace her face with your face. I will begin to make a list of all the things to teach Solomon and the baby when I see them again so that I should not forget. I am a father today, tomorrow. I am still alive, so that you know.

When Igor woke up, he waited with his letters, all the time writing more. He used to sleep until Francesco unlocked him, the morning sunlight on the other side of the windowless wall unable to alert him of day or later day or evening or full night. But now he woke up himself and waited. Now he sat with his back against the bars and his lamp on, reading the mail he wanted to send off into the waiting world. He thought of me, his wife, sitting in a comfortable chair with a blanket over my knees, reading his letters, both boys at my side. What would I do in between deliveries? Eat some fresh preserves on toast? Did I wait all day, all the next day? And when would my replies make it over the mountains and mountains and mountains?

Igor put his lamp out when Francesco left for the night. The dark of his cell smacked at his open eyeballs. He blinked and tried to make shapes in it but the darkness came at him. He swatted and it hit him back. He was soaked through with it, and he curled up and felt the dark crawling over him and lapping at him and filling up his lungs and his ears and his mouth and his eyes.

Igor made Francesco
escort him to the post office again and again. He wrote a note and wanted to go take it in. At first, Francesco obliged, guilt souring everything. After a few days, he told Igor to collect all the notes of the day into a pile and they would take them after lunch. And then he told Igor to collect all the notes in a pile and keep collecting until the week was up. Then he told Igor that until they got a reply there would be no more notes.

“What kind of jail is this?” Igor yelled.

Francesco shook his head. “We cannot afford the postage,” he replied. “There is a war on, and I’m pretty sure we’re losing it. We all have to make sacrifices.” He did not include the ultimatum: if you promise to be my best friend for the rest of time, I will send your mail, even if every general in the army finds out about it.

“My wife is busy forgetting about me
right now
,” Igor said.

“Who could ever forget about you? Maybe not Carolina. Certainly not me.”

“Keep that exquisite woman away from me,” Igor said, “before she tries to kiss me again. Can we go for a swim?”

“I thought you were punishing yourself.”

“I need to swim in order to teach my sons to swim. I have to be very accomplished to be a role model. Don’t worry,” he added, “I won’t put it in a letter—I’ll put it in a book so when I see them again I can teach them everything.”

Igor tried to keep exact track of each of his movements. The muscle-by-muscle motions he made in order to transport himself through liquid. He touched the undersides of his arms and the sides of his waist, hunting for the stringy mechanisms of movement. He listened to his breathing, the scratch of air in his lungs. Francesco climbed out and warmed up on the rocks but Igor kept swimming. He kept sweeping his arms out over himself, a fan of water falling from them. He kept kicking his feet in the straightest lines he could make. His hands were flat paddles. Igor came up and stood on a rock, called up to Francesco on shore.

“Write this down!” he called. “Make your hands into cups!” He dove in again and came back a few strokes later. “Kick with your whole leg!” He swam more, rose up dripping. “Think of your arms as wheels!” Francesco transcribed Igor’s instructions, and by the time Igor got out of the water all the way he was blue and shaking. He went flat on the rock and said, “Thank you. My sons will be great swimmers.” He closed his eyes. “I’m going to fall asleep. Here is how I do that: I close my eyes. I let my toes sink down, I let my legs sink down, I let my back sink down.” Francesco did not fill in the rest of the list, but lay there listening to the sea rolling over every rounded thing, every jagged thing.