All of Us (15 page)

A little quietly outstanding uptown

piano music played in the background

as we sat at the bar in the lounge.

Discussing the fate of the last caribou herd in the US.

Thirty animals who roam a small corner

of the Idaho Panhandle. Thirty animals

just north of Bonner’s Ferry,

this guy said. Then called for another round.

But I had to go. We never saw each other again.

Never spoke another word to each other,

or did anything worth getting excited about

the rest of our lives.

Happy to have these fish!

In spite of the rain, they came

to the surface and took

the No. 14 Black Mosquito.

He had to concentrate,

close everything else out

for a change. His old life,

which he carried around

like a pack. And the new one,

that one too. Time and again

he made what he felt were the most

intimate of human movements.

Strained his heart to see

the difference between a raindrop

and a brook trout. Later,

walking across the wet field

to the car. Watching

the wind change the aspen trees.

He abandoned everyone

he once loved.

If I’m lucky, I’ll be wired every whichway

in a hospital bed. Tubes running into

my nose. But try not to be scared of me, friends!

I’m telling you right now that this is okay.

It’s little enough to ask for at the end.

Someone, I hope, will have phoned everyone

to say, “Come quick, he’s failing!”

And they will come. And there will be time for me

to bid goodbye to each of my loved ones.

If I’m lucky, they’ll step forward

and I’ll be able to see them one last time

and take that memory with me.

Sure, they might lay eyes on me and want to run away

and howl. But instead, since they love me,

they’ll lift my hand and say “Courage”

or “It’s going to be all right.”

And they’re right. It is all right.

It’s just fine. If you only knew how happy you’ve made me!

I just hope my luck holds, and I can make

some sign of recognition.

Open and close my eyes as if to say,

“Yes, I hear you. I understand you.”

I may even manage something like this:

“I love you too. Be happy.”

I hope so! But I don’t want to ask for too much.

If I’m unlucky, as I deserve, well, I’ll just

drop over, like that, without any chance

for farewell, or to press anyone’s hand.

Or say how much I cared for you and enjoyed

your company all these years. In any case,

try not to mourn for me too much. I want you to know

I was happy when I was here.

And remember I told you this a while ago—April 1984.

But be glad for me if I can die in the presence

of friends and family. If this happens, believe me,

I came out ahead. I didn’t lose this one.

He took a room in a port city with a fellow

called Sulieman A. Sulieman and his wife,

an American known only as Bonnie. One thing

he remembered about his stay there

was how every evening Sulieman rapped

at his own front door before entering.

Saying, “Right, hello. Sulieman here.”

After that, Sulieman taking off his shoes.

Putting pita bread and hummus into his mouth

in the company of his silent wife.

Sometimes there was a piece of chicken

followed by cucumbers and tomatoes.

Then they all watched what passed for TV

in that country. Bonnie sitting in a chair

to herself, raving against the Jews.

At eleven o’clock she would say, “We have to sleep now.”

But once they left their bedroom door open.

And he saw Sulieman make his bed on the floor

beside the big bed where Bonnie lay

and looked down at her husband.

They said something to each other in a foreign language.

Sulieman arranged his shoes by his head.

Bonnie turned off the light, and they slept.

But the man in the room at the back of the house

couldn’t sleep at all. It was as if

he didn’t believe in sleep any longer.

Sleep had been all right, once, in its time.

But it was different now.

Lying there at night, eyes open, arms at his sides,

his thoughts went out to his wife,

and his children, and everything that bore

on that leave-taking. Even the shoes

he’d been wearing when he left his house

and walked out. They were the real betrayers,

he decided. They’d brought him all this way

without once trying to do anything to stop him.

Finally, his thoughts came back to this room

and this house. Where they belonged.

Where he knew he was home.

Where a man slept on the floor of his own bedroom.

A man who knocked at the door of his own house,

announcing his meager arrival. Sulieman.

Who entered his house only after knocking

and then to eat pita bread and tomatoes

with his bitter wife. But in the course of those long nights

he began to envy Sulieman a little.

Not much, but a little. And so what if he did!

Sulieman sleeping on his bedroom floor.

But Sulieman sleeping in the same room,

at least, as his wife.

Maybe it was all right if she snored

and had blind prejudices. She wasn’t so bad-

looking, that much was true, and if

Sulieman woke up he could at least

hear her from his place. Know she was there.

There might even be nights when he could reach

over and touch her through the blanket

without waking her. Bonnie. His wife.

Maybe in this life it was necessary to learn

to pretend to be a dog and sleep on the floor

in order to get along. Sometimes

this might be necessary. Who knows

anything these days?

At least it was a new idea and something,

he thought, he might have to try and understand.

Outside, the moon reached over the water

and disappeared finally. Footsteps

moved slowly down the street and came to a stop

outside his window. The streetlight

went out, and the steps passed on.

The house became still and, in one way at least,

like all the other houses—totally dark.

He held onto his blanket and stared at the ceiling.

He had to start over. To begin with –

the oily smell of the sea, the rotting tomatoes.

Cranes lifting up out of the
marshland…

My brother brings his fingers to his temples

and then drops his hands.

Like that, he was dead.

The satin lining of autumn.

O my brother! I miss you now, and I’d like to have you back.

Hug you like a grown man

who knows the worth of things.

The mist of events drifts away.

Not in this life, I told you once.

I was given a different set of marching orders.

I planned to go mule-backing across the Isthmus.

Begone, though, if this is your idea of things!

But I’ll think of you out there

when I look at those stars we saw as children.

The cranes wallop their wings.

In a moment, they’ll find true north.

Then turn in the opposite direction.

So many impossible things have already

happened in this life. He doesn’t think

twice when she tells him to get ready:

He’s about to get a haircut.

He sits in the chair in the upstairs room,

the room they sometimes joke and refer to

as the library. There’s a window there

that gives light. Snow’s coming

down outside as newspapers go down

around his feet. She drapes a big

towel over his shoulders. Then

gets out her scissors, comb, and brush.

This is the first time they’ve been

alone together in a while—with nobody

going anywhere, or needing to do

anything. Not counting the going

to bed with each other. That intimacy.

Or breakfasting together. Another

intimacy. They both grow quiet

and thoughtful as she cuts his hair,

and combs it, and cuts some more.

The snow keeps falling outside.

Soon, light begins to pull away from

the window. He stares down, lost and

musing, trying to read

something from the paper. She says,

“Raise your head.” And he does.

And then she says, “See what you think

of it.” He goes to look

in the mirror, and it’s fine.

It’s just the way he likes it,

and he tells her so.

It’s later, when he turns on the

porchlight, and shakes out the towel

and sees the curls and swaths of

white and dark hair fly out onto

the snow and stay there,

that he understands something: He’s

grownup now, a real, grownup,

middle-aged man. When he was a boy,

going with his dad to the barbershop,

or even later, a teenager, how

could he have imagined his life

would someday allow him the privilege of

a beautiful woman to travel with,

and sleep with, and take his breakfast with?

Not only that—a woman who would

quietly cut his hair in the afternoon

in a dark city that lay under snow

3000 miles away from where he’d started.

A woman who could look at him

across the table and say,

“It’s time to put you in the barber’s

chair. It’s time somebody gave you

a haircut.”

His wife died, and he grew old

between the graveyard and his

front door. Walked with a gait.

Shoulders bent. He let his clothes

go, and his long hair turned white.

His children found him somebody.

A big middle-aged woman with

heavy shoes who knew how to

mop, wax, dust, shop, and carry in

firewood. Who could live

in a room at the back of the house.

Prepare meals. And slowly,

slowly bring the old man around

to listening to her read poetry

in the evenings in front of

the fire. Tennyson, Browning,

Shakespeare, Drinkwater. Men

whose names take up space

on the page. She was the butler,

cook, housekeeper. And after

a time, oh, no one knows or cares

when, they began to dress up

on Sundays and stroll through town.

She with her arm through his.

Smiling. He proud and happy

and with his hand on hers.

No one denied them

or tried to diminish this

in any way. Happiness is

a rare thing! Evenings he

listened to poetry, poetry, poetry

in front of the fire.

Couldn’t get enough of that life.

The sad music of roads lined with larches.

The forest in the distance resting under snow.

The Khyber Pass. Alexander the Great.

History, and lapis lazuli.

No books, no pictures, no knick-knacks please me.

But she pleases me. And lapis lazuli.

That blue stone she wears on her dear finger.

That pleases me exceedingly.

The bucket clatters into the well.

And brings up water with a sweet taste to it.

The towpath along the river. The footpath

Through the grove of almonds. My love

Goes everywhere in her sandals.

And wears lapis lazuli on her finger.

The green fields were beginning. And the tall, white

farmhouses after the tidal flats and those little sand crabs

that were ready to run, or else turn and square off, if

we moved the rock they lived under. The languor

of that subdued afternoon. The beauty of driving

that country road. Talking of Paris, our Paris.

And then you finding that place in the book

and reading to me about Anna Akhmatova’s stay there with Modigliani.

Them sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens

under his enormous old black umbrella

reciting Verlaine to each other. Both of them

“as yet untouched by their futures.” When

out in the field we saw

a bare-chested young man with his trousers rolled up,

like an ancient oarsman. He looked at us without curiosity.

Stood there and gazed indifferently.

Then turned his back to us and went on with his work.

As we passed like a beautiful black scythe

through that perfect landscape.

It was a sixteen-inch ling cod that the eagle

dropped near our feet

at the top of Bagley Creek canyon,

at the edge of the green woods.

Puncture marks in the sides of the fish

where the bird gripped with its talons!

That and a piece torn out of the fish’s back.

Like an old painting recalled,

or an ancient memory coming back,

that eagle flew with the fish from the Strait

of Juan de Fuca up the canyon to where

the woods begin, and we stood watching.

It lost the fish above our heads,

dropped for it, missed it, and soared on

over the valley where wind beats all day.

We watched it keep going until it was

a speck, then gone. I picked up

the fish. That miraculous ling cod.

Came home from the walk and —

why the hell not?—cooked it

lightly in oil and ate it

with boiled potatoes and peas and biscuits.

Over dinner, talking about eagles

and an older, fiercer order of things.