Gone to the Forest A Novel

11



The horses are still tied to the Wallaces’ gate. Tom helps the girl mount and then he and Jose mount their rides. Jose leading the fourth horse. The girl holds out her hand.

“Give me a gun.”

Jose looks at her. She keeps her hand out and stares back at him.

“I mean it.”

He reaches into the back of his trousers and pulls out a pistol, which he hands to her. The AK-47 remains on his lap. The girl’s hands tremble a little. She checks the magazine for bullets and thumbs the safety, then tucks the pistol into her boot. She nods to Jose. He hesitates, then brings out another pistol and hands it to Tom.

“Here.”

Tom takes the gun. There is powder at the barrel. He grips the gun and the reins and nods to both of them. The weight of the gun in his fingers.

“Let’s go.”

They go back through the village. In order to return to the farm they must retrace their steps. It is nearly noon. The sun is directly overhead. The bodies are melting in the sun. Already there are flies gathering in the holes and crevices of the corpses. The smell is awful. The horses are calm, preferring the smell of rot to the smell of blood, but to the humans, the smell is unbearable.

Jose looks back at them.

“Cover your nose and mouth.”

The girl’s body loses balance and momentarily she sways in the saddle. Her belly plunging her sideways. Jose wrenches her upright. He holds her there as he pulls a cloth from his pocket and wraps it around her face. She presses the cloth with her fingers. She grips the saddle with the other hand and nods to him.

“Do not look. Keep your head down.”

She nods again and sinks down into the saddle. Jose leads the horses over the bodies in the road, past the bodies hanging from the trees, past the overturned army truck. The girl is quiet, she sits still and careful in the saddle, face masked in cloth.

Tom would like to be riding behind her. He would like to climb up onto the horse, he would like to slide his arms around her belly and press his face into her back and sleep. Curled around the curve of her back. Instead he sits alone and sniffs as the smell of his urine grows sweet in the heat, sweet against the horse sweat and leather. Animal, vegetable, mineral. He is turning to stone as he sits astride this horse.

They could wait until dusk, he thinks. They could wait until it is dark and it is safer. It would be best for all of them. They are in a state of shock. Consider the girl, in her condition—it would be better to wait. This heat, and this smell. As it is the girl is not moving, she is sitting perfectly still and letting the horse carry her through the village massacre.

He acknowledges that they now have the morphine. He knows that he is still alive, more or less. But he has paid a price. He would like to unsee what he has seen but he already knows that is not possible. He has made his acquaintance with the contingent world, he knows now that it is a place built of madness. Past the farm there lies nothing at all. It unfolds and extends without reason. He, who has seen so little, can now see future’s history, that is going to happen in this country.

There is no life for him there. The last of his illusions slipping away. Jose says to them that they must continue. He says they cannot afford to wait until dusk. The girl, her face muffled by the cloth, does not respond. Tom is also silent. They will continue. They will go back to the farm. But it is like he has left a limb in the village, a hand or a leg or a foot. The world he has believed in has gone. It is lying by the side of the road in a puddle of blood. Therefore he is no longer innocent; his fetishes have been taken away.

WHEN THE THREE approach the farm, it is morning, or nearly morning. The girl sits bolt upright, having removed the cloth from her face and gripped the reins, which now drape over her belly. She stares into darkness, into the night, as they ride down the back roads.

For a long time she believed there was security in land, but now she sees there is no place with land in the country, she understands the land is receding from them all. Without property, the terrain becomes senseless. The country becomes a maze, the landscape now unrecognizable, the markers slipping away. And she is moving in widening circles, she is trapped inside a growing labyrinth.

As if there is only the farm (although it is shrinking). And there are only these men (although they are fading). She could travel the country and she would always end up back where she had started. It was not entirely as she had seen it to be. Around her the country splinters and fragments. There are deep shudders of violence while inside her the baby grows, shrinking the world down as it does. Without the baby things would be different. Without the baby she would be free.

But she is not free. None of them are. Such a thing no longer exists in the country. Instead they are retreating to the relative quiet of the valley. They have never crossed the land so quickly. Two whites and a native—a bad combination, at a time when whites and natives alike are being shot down. They are running for their lives and that is no metaphor. It is no longer the time for metaphor in the country, the girl thinks. Now there is only the thing itself.

When they come upon the farm in the morning it looks the same. The farm is quiet and the valley is empty. The rebellion has not yet arrived. They are safe. They are on their own land—land that is theirs, temporarily, they remind themselves that everything is now temporary, including and especially the land. But the farm, the property, still has its effect. False though it may be. They feel the chaos begin to recede before they are through the gate.

They stable the horses and Tom clutches the canvas bag with the morphine. He is exhausted and sleepless. His memories of the land in turmoil merge with fragments of the old man: the fits of pain, the medicine running low, the eyes crawling the ceiling and wall. The old man is the last surviving link to the old world, the old order, that they have recently seen crumbling. He is the last collection and already a ruin, but Tom reminds himself that he has the morphine, that at least here there is something yet he can do.

He starts walking up the drive to the house. Jose and the girl follow and together they enter. Where there is death throughout. They have been surrounded by death at top speed and now—now they are in the midst of death in slow motion, death that is slow as treacle. It is something different but no less gruesome. The house is filled with its smell: like all the doors and windows have been kept shut for the sole purpose of keeping the stink trapped inside.

Celeste runs to the door and pushes them back outside.

“Low. Keep your voices low.”

Although they were saying nothing. Although they were completely silent. Her face is stricken and in it all is there to see. She proceeds to tell them anyway.

That the past thirty-six hours have been very bad. All day he was in pain and screaming for the pills. She fed them to him, she kept feeding him pills until the pain was gone and he could rest. Then the pills wore off and then she heard thumps and pounding and she ran to his room and he was there, thrashing in the bed, screaming in agony, hitting his head against the wall and headboard, and she fed him more pills.

At nightfall he went mute. He opened his mouth but his voice was gone. His tongue flap-flapped in the air but no sound came out. She stood by the side of the bed. He motioned with his hand for more pills. She told him she had no more. He motioned for the pills again. She asked if he would like some water, some soup, some milk. If he would like her to rub his feet. He opened his mouth but could not scream.

She is glad that they are back. She is very glad. Tom nods and swallows.

“Is he sleeping? How is he now?”

“He is no longer himself.”

“I will go and see him.”

“Yes.”

He hands her the canvas bag.

“There is medicine in there.”

Jose takes the bag from Celeste and looks at Tom.

“You should sit down and recover from the journey. I will give him the morphine.”

He disappears. Now Celeste leads them, Tom and the pregnant girl, into the kitchen. She makes them sit down, she boils some water for tea.

“The old man is no longer himself. You must be prepared.”

“I am sorry we left you alone.”

Celeste makes a cup of tea and Tom drinks it. She finds a piece of cake and brings it to him. Celeste, who does not seem surprised to see the girl, offers her a piece. The girl refuses. She lets the cup of tea cool in front of her. Celeste sits down and eats the girl’s slice of cake. Tom takes a bite of the cake. His eyes are vacant.

The girl watches him. She sees how much he has been changed. She raises the cup of tea to her lips and then abruptly drops it back into the saucer. She stands and leaves the kitchen. She is not going to wait any longer. Whatever has to be faced will be faced now. After all, what does it matter to her—what is the old man to her, what is this place, this boy and this woman, what do they matter to her, of all people—

She goes into the bedroom and it is more or less like a wall swinging into her face and then she remembers. She actually flinches at the sight. Tom comes rushing down the hall behind her and it is too late—she cannot go running, she cannot back out or tell him not to enter, he is literally blocking the door behind her. There is no way to go but forward and so they enter the room together.

And yes. They are aghast. The old man lies on the bed and more than ever he secretes the toxic charisma of the dying. He sprays the air with it like a cat. They cannot look away. They stare instead at the limbs that have collapsed, the face that has gone yellow, the shallow mounds beneath the bed sheets that are now the old man—they are pretty damn sure he is dying at last.

It is plain as anything. The reality of the dying and the reality of the larger situation. Which is equally dire. There is no way around it. The old man is dying and the farm will die with him. Tom has run out of time. He has been running out of time for days and weeks. He is a fool. The world outside is beyond all control but the man in front of him—he sees the body stretched out before him and knows there will never be the time to say, what was it he intended to say? What would he have said, if he had found the time?

He does not know, that is part of the problem. He is crying. The girl is dry-eyed and passes Tom a handkerchief. She tells him to blow his nose and get a grip. He takes the handkerchief and blows his nose. He gives the handkerchief back to the girl but still does not have a grip on the situation. And the girl needs him to hurry up, she needs him to pull himself together, because as it is he is not helping.

The two of them and the world outside and the old man in the bed. The old man, who has lost the power of speech and no longer retains the power of movement, whose limbs lie frozen—the old man is glaring at Tom. It is not their imagination. The old man has had enough. The old man is dying and he is not happy about it. When he glares at Tom it is not a trick of the dying physiognomy. It is the absolute truth of what he is feeling.

It is therefore too much for Tom. Who will never be able to say what he feels. Who would gladly trade ten years of his own life for one of his father’s, for another month, another week or day or hour, but who knows such transactions are impossible. The feeling, his willingness, has never had anywhere to go, and now more than ever he does not know where to put it. Pressing his hands to hide his face, his body heavy with this deadlock, Tom leaves the room.

The girl closes the door behind him. She goes to the side of the bed. She stares down at the old man, dry-eyed. He glares back up at her, dry-eyed. They remain like this until the old man’s eyes empty and his head falls back into the pillow. He closes his eyes. The girl places her palm on his forehead, she grips his wrist between her fingers. He has slipped away again.

She adjusts the covers. She thinks, You wanted to die here and you did not even know that you were dying. You wanted to come home and die. That is more than what they got. The men and women and children who were hacked to their deaths. Also the soldiers. Also the un-soldiers. And now I am here, too, and I am backed into a corner but at least I am still living. Me and the one inside me. For what that is worth.

Not much, she thinks. It is not worth very much. She lets go of the cover. She turns and leaves the room. She does not want to see Tom or the others so she wanders the halls instead. For lack of anything better to do. She enters the wings that have been closed for months. She leaves the zone of dying where they have been sequestered all these weeks. She walks through the wings (closed but not locked). She opens doors and passes through corridors.

Here she finds rooms emptied of their contents. The walls are masked with sheets of plastic and white cloth. She can barely recognize it as the house she used to know. She looks and sees. Here is the room where this happened. Here is the hall where that happened. It looks nothing like what it once was. It looks like it is all ending. Like it has already ended and they are as extraneous as ghosts.

They and everything that happened to them in this place. It is being spirited away. It is not yet past. But it is slipping away. She can see that soon there will be no way of talking about it. That the past is going to be sealed off and the keys to the locks will be lost. It is already happening and she is starting to forget, she has already forgotten, how she got to where she now is.

There is so much empty floor. Once she was drowning in society, suffocating in its antechambers. Now it receded like ice melting in water. She looks up. These vaulted ceilings, these stone floors, these bay windows and chandeliers. It is too good to let go and too good to destroy. They will make it a government building. A department store. A post office or a bank. They will fill the rooms again and the people will talk about the architecture. They will say it is a good relic of the past preserved. It is a question, she believes, of time. Whether it is one year or one decade or one month.

The girl is sitting huddled and cold in the corner of an empty room when she hears the voices. They are both hushed and panicked. She hears a word here and there, following the native dialect with difficulty. She listens closer, concentrating, and hears more:

“We cannot stay any longer.”

“Look around you. He is dying, it is a matter of days.”

“We have run out of time. You do not know how bad it has become. It is spreading like an infection.”

“That is just the mood. It will not last. You will see that it will not last.”

“Listen. They will kill us. It is not just the settlers. They are killing loyalists all across the country. They are making examples of people. And you are a loyalist if you do not take the oath, it has become like that.”

The voices subside. The girl leans her head back and closes her eyes. She is nearly asleep when the voices return:

“I am no loyalist.”

“You went out in search of adventure. Like a child.”

“If I was looking for adventure I would have joined the Oath Takers.”

“But you do not like them.”

“No.”

“I do not like them either. I am waiting for something else for this country.”

A short laugh.

“You will die waiting. There is nothing else. It is a miracle that even this has happened. We are surrounded by a miracle.”

“It is not my miracle.”

“You do not have any choice. That is what I am trying to tell you. The choice has been made for us. We must do what is best. In order to survive.”

“He is your father. How can you speak like this?”

“He has been no father to me.”

“You know nothing. He has tried.”

“That means nothing. He has given me nothing.”

“He has given you a home. That is the love he could offer us.”

“He gave me the same home he would have given any native, any slave who worked his land. And you call this his love—”

A choked cry.

“No, no. I will not be sorry when he dies.”

Their voices move down the corridor. The girl peers into the darkness. She hears nothing further but she understands. The ghostly echo between Tom and Jose. Jose, who is so much like the old man and therefore so much like her. More—Jose’s hatred for Tom and his ignorance, the things Tom had been protected from knowing. Tom who knows nothing and Jose who sees everything. The father’s strange patrimony.

The secrets of this place. No wonder Jose and Celeste stayed when the others had gone. The old man meaning something to them yet. She cannot believe that she did not see it earlier. Nevertheless, it had been madness for them to stay. She wonders that Jose, canny as he is, could have made this error. It is true none of them know how far the rebellion will spread. But there is little margin for error, and none for human sentiment.

Eventually, she falls asleep. She lies huddled in the corner, on the floor, for hours. When she wakes it is with a jolt to the sound of footsteps. Her sleep has been crammed with the fragments of bad things—the volcano, the veranda, the dying fish. She gets up and half expects that this is the end, for her belly to be slit open and her head sliced off. She wakes out of the dream and she hears the voices again, she hears Tom and Celeste and is temporarily reassured.

She labors to her feet and walks in the direction of the voices. She goes into the old man’s bedroom. He lies spread-eagled on the bed, body flailing from side to side. His eyes roll in circles and there is froth gathering around his mouth. Celeste is asking where the pills are. The girl tells her there’s no point. No way he can swallow anything—just look at him. Celeste insists. The pills. Where are the pills?

She tells Celeste that Tom has them. She does not know where they are. Tom has all the morphine. Where is Tom? She does not know where Tom has gone. The girl cannot take her eyes off the old man. He is panting for breath, he claws at the bed sheets, at his chest and neck, at the air in front of his mouth. He screams in silence, his eyes yellow and bulging with rage and agony.

She steps forward—as Celeste continues to ask for the pills, again and again—and she grabs the old man’s hand. And even though his body keeps convulsing his arm, at least, is still. She grips it tight and tells him that it is going to be okay. It is going to be okay. She holds tighter and then he jerks his head to her, eyes staring. And she tells him again that it is going to be okay and he nods. He is a man grasping at straws and she can see in his eyes that he wants to believe her.

Yes. It is going to be okay. How okay and what okay she doesn’t know but she keeps telling him. It is going to be okay. And he looks at her and then he nods. Yes. It will. Will it? And then Celeste plunges a needle into his arm and they hear the quick suck of the syringe and he collapses back onto the bed.

The girl looks up. Celeste puts the needle down on the bedside table. She rolls the old man onto his side and with a quick jerk pulls down his pants. The girl looks at the old man’s face—it is frozen, it has no expression beyond resigned outrage. Celeste taps the morphine pills out of the bottle and shoves them up his ass. Her face says nothing as she pulls the old man’s trousers up again and lowers him to the bed. She pulls the covers up and he lies in perfect stillness.

Tom stands in the doorway, gripping the open canvas medicine bag to his chest. Celeste sighs and steps back from the bed. The girl stares at her blankly.

“Is he alive?”

The three of them stare at each other and then Celeste leaves the room. She is conscious of having done more than she intended. There is a long low wheeze and then the smell of shit fills the room. Like nothing they have ever smelled. The girl knows they should clean him but it is a distant thought. Tom shuffles up to the side of the bed and stares down at the old man’s face.

“What did Celeste give him?”

Carine shakes her head and walks to the door. Tom finds a chair and sits down. She looks back at him.

“What are you doing?”

“We can’t leave him.”

She thinks about it. She needs to lie down. She needs to eat. She cannot even breathe in this room. Tom is looking up at her. He is sitting in the cloud of smell and his face is full of decision, it says he is going to sit, for as long as it takes. After all, it is all that he has left. She nods.

“Fine.”

She leaves the room.