Paradise and Elsewhere (7 page)

I love my wife. I want her to come with me into our future. But the washing of dishes and the making of soup and the counting of books—surely, this trivia should not occupy so much of our time?

It is easier to talk in the dark. When finally she comes to bed I whisper my plans. She does not seem surprised—after all, she knows me well. You would enjoy the life, I say, would you not? You would make a fine ambassador's wife. We could live part of the year in a foreign city. We would be more at home in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, a city centre—an apartment with high ceilings, shutters, wooden floors, close to the caf
é
s and shops. Perhaps a drier climate, milder winters. You could go on with your translations, of course, meet the writers and talk with them so as to get your text exactly right. Yes, she says, perhaps. You would like it, I tell her. The wallpaper would be on straight. The plumbing would be fixed. And neither of us would have to do the shopping and so on.

I love you, but you don't quite understand, she says.

What? What is it I don't understand? What?

We must learn to talk to each other differently now, she repeats.

Can some things not stay the same? It comes from outside, this, from something she is reading, but she will not tell me what. She says she is not ready to; it is difficult, she wants to be sure; she has always been careful that way.

I taught my wife English, in which she has since far surpassed me. I gave her personal tuition, because she was a gifted student and also because I liked to look at her. I remember explaining the tenses, the future conditional, the future in the past—all those tenses we do not have in our own language; they are hard to translate. I remember watching her mind work while her lips waited for the right word to come; I remember the dim light of the classroom, the creaks from the stove as it cooled and the metal contracted. In winter her lips were cracked, in summer they glistened. She was still a child. Afterwards I went home to my first wife, and lay next to her, and my young son was in the cot beside us. I lay sleepless the night through: I knew that there was more to life than I had expected, and there could be no peace until I had it.

And now at the beginning of spring neither of us sleeps. Our flat is near one of the few working lamps that stand like extra trees in the courtyard and pinkish light glazes the room. They have not yet installed individual switches and so the heating will be on until May; tonight it is far too warm, we have thrown the covers off and lie naked but not touching. The books we have read together, or separately and then told each other about, surround us. I am sometimes tired of books now, I whisper to my wife. I feel I have read enough for a lifetime. To say this feels like a confession.

Toomis, it is not the same for me. I am still looking, she says, lying on her back with her eyes open as if there were words on the ceiling for her to read—with her body open too, as if she read what was there with all of it, the soft skin of her belly, her tender nipples, the velvet between her thighs: all eye.

Tomorrow we will go to my mother in the country, eat lunch, help with anything she asks. We will bring home bags of home-grown potatoes, turnips and carrots, just as we did before Liberation and during it too. We do it always. But at the same time things are changing in ways I cannot predict. I was never afraid before, just angry and waiting. But I am afraid now, as I lie beside my beautiful wife. Silently I ask: Is this fear also the beginning of spring?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We, the Trees

 

 

 

 

S
he should have seen trouble
coming from the way he stood out in the class. His hair, growing out of a short cut, was beginning to curl. He had the beginnings of a beard. He was one of many in jeans, dark T-shirt, and a green parka never removed however warm the room. But the way he carried himself was distinctive. She thought he might have trained as a dancer, or served in the military. Even sitting, he seemed taut, poised. During discussions, he constantly shifted position so as to see who was speaking and give that person his attention; he radiated a kind of alertness, physical and mental, that it was unusual to see in a classroom, especially at eight-thirty in the morning. But even so, there was nothing to suggest just how far he was preparing to go.

He asked for a consultation right after the first class.

“Well, sit down, Joshua,” she said, removing some files from the spare office chair she had obtained from the Humanities office upstairs. It was worn, but more inviting than the hard plastic item that was standard issue. “How may I help?”

“I chose this class because of your reputation,” he said.

“For what?” she asked, amused.

“Open-mindedness,” he told her, without missing a beat. “My final project is likely to be unconventional but I hope you'll be receptive to it.”

“Do you want to say a bit more?” she asked.

“Not at this point,” he told her. “I'm just giving you a heads-up. It's to do with the forest.”

“The forest industry?”

“Not so much that,” he said. “Well, there is one thing,” he added, “we're not sure about paper.”

“We?” she asked, but he just looked back at her, and she decided she had misheard. “An electronic file is fine,” she told him.

“Actually, I feel I may want to speak it to you,” he said.

“I'll still need the text,” she told him, “to mark.” He shrugged, and declined her proffered copy of the course outline for Journalism 200, which listed all the assignments, including the requirements for the final piece: a feature article of 2,500 words on a contemporary issue, showing evidence of a balanced approach, historical understanding, in-depth research, and judicious use of interview material: twenty marks.

At the door, Joshua paused, thanked her and smiled—and it was an extraordinary thing, that smile: it involved every part of his face, and could well have involved his entire body, too; it was blissful, intimate, infectious—to the point that she felt a shock of loss when the door closed behind him and her mood reverted to the norm, which suddenly felt closer to depression than she liked to admit.

It had been a
very
difficult year: her partner of fifteen years had moved out at the end of the previous semester, after months of emotional arguments over whether or not they should try to adopt. So now she was middle-aged, alone, and left to wonder, Was this it? What was she really for, now? Another twenty years of teaching? There were no prospects in the university, and it seemed to her that the industry she had once worked in had changed beyond recognition. Returning to it was a fantasy. But of all these voids and losses, the hardest to bear was that she was, now, extremely unlikely to become a parent. She made a point of taking regular exercise, and being as sociable as she could. Still, she often felt very low, and so that powerful, connective smile of Joshua's was very likely a good part of why she accommodated him when he followed an almost perfect first assignment consisting of an interview with a retired logger,
very personal but at the same time the history of an era and an attitude, sympathetic, humane, A+,
with a second piece that was completely off-topic, though in its way brilliant.

The assignment was for a
Who, what, where, when, why
piece covering a local event in 750 words. Instead, he handed in an essay called
Seeing the Woods for the Trees
which summarized a class discussion then argued that while the impossibility of objective “truth” in reporting was a given, the community could still come to an understanding that was what he called “closer to truth.” He saw the journalist as inevitably partial, and morally bound to a frank acknowledgement of her bias or perspective, along with a rigorous attitude to fact-checking. Beyond that, the public must take responsibility to read widely and come to the best understanding possible through debate and conversation: the model of the writer as the one who created “truth” or “balance” was now obsolete. Each one of us, he wrote, had to find the way through the woods, to the trees, but we could not do it alone. Of course the argument was not new, but the writing, simultaneously academic and poetic—passionate, even, was striking.

The problem, she told him, was that he did not seem to have read the requirements for the assignment. There was no event. No particular
what, who
, et cetera.

“Not yet,” he said. He kept his eyes on her face, but without seeming to stare.

“I wasn't looking for an essay,” she told him. “You need to write about something specific. I gave examples. Look, I know you can do this, and I'll give you an extra week.” At this, he treated her to another smile, a dose of warm human connection which briefly released the knot between her shoulders. However, no work materialized and after much struggle she gave him a C, which was both less and more than his piece deserved. Following this, he missed two classes, sending an email both times to apologize: he said he was in the forest, researching for the final project, which, for him, was the main part and only point of the course.

It was irritating to have her course ignored in this way, but she got over it, and warned him, as pleasantly as she could, that he was missing vital content and assignments which led up to that final project. In responce to this, he sent her a link to a published paper which sounded like a fantasy but turned out to be written by a well-respected academic at a sister university: the research showed how forest trees were joined to each other by a fungal web that connected their roots, and in this way were able to communicate their needs and share information and resources; every tree was interconnected by this mycorrhizal network and it was as if the forest had a vast, communal brain.

 

A
tiny young woman
with thick brown hair in an urchin cut appeared at the next class. She introduced herself as Jen and said she had come to take notes and participate on Josh's behalf. She seemed to be familiar with some of the other students, and slotted right into the session on editing to a word count, though it turned out that she was not even registered with the university.

“You really can't come again,” Paula told her. “But I'd be grateful if you could tell Josh he has missed another assignment now and his attendance is looking very poor.”

“Josh is working very hard, I do know that,” Jen said. “But I'll certainly pass the message on.”

“Where is he?” Paula asked, but Jen was already halfway out the door, moving with a fluid, economical grace despite the heavy work boots that she wore.

That evening she received another email from Joshua: links to a set of maps showing the remaining areas of old growth forest in the world, compared to fifty and a hundred years ago. Shocking, she thought, but not news: people had been protesting for half a century; global warming had been incontrovertibly attributed to human activity, yet nothing had changed. How many thousand stories had been written about this, while the weather became hotter and more erratic? Such writing was largely a matter of bearing witness, she understood that. But it was hard to avoid a sense of futility.

Thanks for your understanding,
the note with the maps said,
I am counting on you.
Counting on you? For what? A passing grade? She felt it was something more than that, but as to what, she had no idea, and even though she was sitting in her overheated office with the light on, her skin tightened and she felt suddenly chilled.

I'm afraid I don't understand,
she typed.
Your last three assignments are missing and although you are a very able student I am concerned about your progress in this course. Please let me know if you plan to complete the missing assignments. What I may do if I don't hear is refer you to Student Services, who ask us to identify students who may need support with the aim of meeting their needs…
She made sure to file a copy.

No reply.

Alex, very tall, with a slight stoop, greeted her at the door to her classroom. Just checking in, he said, offering his hand: it was calloused, and missing the top of the middle finger, but very warm. Josh was doing great, not to worry at all, he said. He was the most amazing guy, and what he was getting down was totally mind-blowing. So what exactly was he doing? Alex bent down to her level, lowered his voice. “Cross-species communication,” he said. “I can't tell you more than that.” He got out his phone and showed her a picture of Josh in outdoor gear posed with a pick and a shovel and other equipment in front of an enormous, gnarled tree-trunk so wide it filled the entire picture frame. His hair and beard had grown considerably, but even in the tiny underexposed image she felt as if he was looking straight through the screen into her eyes, his smile almost as captivating as it was in real life.

Cross-species communication? Josh had not seemed crazy or depressed, quite the reverse. She wanted to believe that he was engaged in some kind of eccentric but purposeful behaviour, that even now he might turn in a stunning piece of work at the end of the course. He had kept in touch, after all. But there was no reference to the missing work or to any desire to make it up, and another week had gone by. Clearly, she been too open-minded.

“Not attending,” she told the counsellor at Student Services. “Three assignments missed, though he does communicate. He sends emails, maps, links to research papers about forest ecosystems, but no written work and no reference to it. No make-up plan. He's started to send his friends to class to take notes and bring me messages, like he's some kind of prophet in the wilderness. Well, it's getting to the point where I'd have to fail him even if the final project he keeps promising materializes and is brilliant… Struggling isn't the right word, he's very able, but even so, I thought I should let you know there's an issue here.”

“It can't be overwork,” the counsellor told her. “Joshua Pearson is only signed up for the one class, yours.”

That's totally cool,
he emailed her.
Thanks for your concern. I know this is hard to understand.
By this time, she had not seen him for almost six weeks and the course was entering its final phase.

What are your intentions?
she asked.
Are you in some kind of trouble?

Not at all,
he replied, and then a girl called Angela dropped by her office to explain that Josh would not be in touch now until he finished. He had asked to be left alone for this final phase of his work.

“Why? What work, and where is he?” Paula asked.

“We can't say any more at this point,” Angela told her. Her voice seemed to waver and her eyes were huge, the blue-grey irises floating in a sea of glistening white. “You'll be the first to know. Please be patient.”

Patient?
She made a second call to Student Services to update them. The counsellor said that they would do their utmost to contact him, and to rest assured, the matter was in their hands. Then she heard nothing at all for several weeks and although it was in a way a relief, she knew that she was waiting.

On the Friday when final assignments were due, she stayed late in her office to make a start on marking them. She had the blinds closed and a Bach violin concerto played softly in the background as she worked. Even through the music she heard her computer emit the soft chirp that signalled the arrival of an email, and without thinking, broke her rule about waiting until she had finished the current task before looking at the message.

This was the last email from Joshua (or rather, as she was later to realize, the last one sent from his account). It contained no explicit message, just the scan of a hand-drawn map showing logging roads and trails in a piece of privately owned forest land that lay three hundred miles north of where she sat. Directions to the forest were sketched in and then a route within it was marked with neatly drawn dotted lines and arrows pointing towards the destination, a red X. There were a few brief hand-written notes on the terrain, but no hint as to what the X marked. Leaning back in her chair, Paula let out a long sigh, closed her eyes.

I chose this class because of your reputation
.

He had said that, in this very same room… And now, crazy or sane, he was relying on her to answer his call.
Because of your reputation
. She was being summoned. Why? What for? Should she go? Telling herself she would decide in the morning, she sent the document to print. But she knew that she had already made a commitment—or was it that he had made her make one?
Because of your reputation
. He had chosen her, and then, bit by bit, enmeshed her in something she did not yet understand. And now there was no choice: unwise as it might be, she would follow through and find the place marked X.

Early in the morning Paula packed her hiking gear and set off north, alone. It was a hard drive on twisting, hilly roads, much of it through managed forests in varying stages of growth. In some places, water ran down cliffs beside the road and covered it in a thin, shining layer. For miles on end, the road skirted a long, narrow lake. The farther she went, the slower she had to drive and the farther apart the occasional visible buildings were; exhausted, she put up on arrival in a motel mainly frequented by fishermen.