The Tent Read online

  Eating the Birds

  We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn't sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can't fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don't stand a chance. We're mired in gravity, we're earthbound. We're ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.

  Something Has Happened Something has happened. But how? Was it overnight, or has it been creeping up on us and we've only just noticed? It's the girls, the young and pretty girls. They used to sing like sirens, like mermaids, all sweet and liquid, breezy melodies, wavy melodies, but now they're shorn of melody, though their mouths open and close as before. Have their tongues been cut out?

  This is true as well of the cries of babies, the wailing at funerals, the screams that used to arise, especially at night, from the mad, from the tortured. It's the same thing with the birds: flying as before, spreading out their feathers as before, heads thrown back, beaks gaping, but they're mute. Mute, or muted? Who has been at work, with a great carpet of invisible snow that blots out sound?

  Listen: the leaves no longer rustle, the wind no longer sighs, our hearts no longer beat. They've fallen silent. Fallen, as if into the earth. Or is it we who have fallen? Perhaps it's not the world that is soundless but we who are deaf. What membrane seals us off, from the music we used to dance to? Why can't we hear?

  Nightingale

  People die, and then they come back at night when you're asleep. By the time you're my age this happens more frequently. In the dream you know they're dead; funny thing is, they know it too. The usual places are a boat or a forest, less often a cabin or an isolated farmhouse, and, even more rarely, a room. If a room, there's often a window; if a window, there will be curtains - white - or heavy draperies, also white. Never venetian blinds: they don't like that kind of lighting, the day or night falling in slantwise through the slats. It makes them flicker even more than they normally do.

  Sometimes they're friends, and they want you to know they're all right. That kind might make a remark or two, nothing earth-shattering. It's like the screen when you turn off the television, one of them said - it's just a loss of contact. Another one - the setting was a woodland walk, in fall, orange and yellow leaves, that crisp smell - this one said, Isn't it beautiful?

  Some don't say anything. They might smile, they might not; they might turn away once they know you've seen them. They want you to see them: that's the point. They want you to know they're still around and they can't be forgotten or dismissed.

  Procne turned up the other night. Got in through the window, as she always does. Right away I wished I'd taken a sleeping pill: that would have shut her out. But you can't take pills all the time, and she waits. She waits until I'm unconscious.

  You shouldn't have let him lock me up in that shack, she said.

  The location was a room; the window in question had white curtains. We've been through this before, I said. You weren't locked up. You could have opened the door. Anyway, I didn't know.

  You knew, she said. You repressed it, but you must have known.

  I knew you'd been his first wife, I said. Everyone knew that. But according to him you were dead.

  That's what they wanted you to think, she said. I might as well have been, but I wasn't. Meanwhile, you were getting ready to take my place.

  I had to, I said. I had to get married. He raped me. What else could I have done? Don't tell me you were jealous.

  Jealous? she said. She gave a kind of caw. Not for an instant! I knew his dirty ways, he could never leave me alone. Believe me, you were welcome to that part of it. I only wish he hadn't cut out my tongue.

  That is a lie, I said. He never did that. You made the decision not to speak, is all. The tongue part of the story is a misreading of a temple wall painting, that's what people say now. Those things weren't tongues, they were laurel leaves for the priestess, so she could hallucinate, and prophesy, and -

  You and your archeology, said Procne. He cut out my tongue, all right. He knew I'd tell stories.

  Maybe he had his reasons, I said. If he did cut out your tongue. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm not excusing his behaviour. It wasn't good. None of us behaved very well, and I regret that now. The two of us never got along when we were young, but you were always my sister and I loved you. That's why he kept you a secret from me.

  I knew you wouldn't excuse it. His behaviour, I mean. That's why I sent you the message - to let you know I wasn't dead after all. Procne is among the slaves, is all it said. I didn't write, Set me free, I didn't want to influence you one way or the other. I didn't want you taking any risks on my behalf.

  Then why did you send me the message?

  I wanted you to avoid the mistakes I made, that's all.

  What mistakes?

  In answer she lifted up her hands. They were wet, they glistened. Our son, she said. I couldn't stop myself.

  The window was open at the bottom, there was a breeze, the curtains were blowing. The air smelled of apple blossom. I wish you'd leave me alone, I say. It's over, it's long ago. You're dead now, and he's dead, and there's nothing I can do. It's only a story now and I'm too old to listen to it.

  You're never too old, says Procne. Her voice is so sad. Then she starts turning into a bird, the way she always does, and when I look down the same thing is happening to me. This is when I remember the two of us running, running away from him, and I know in the dream that I'm dead too, because at the end of the story he killed us both.

  Then Procne flies out through the window, and so do I. It's night, a forest, a moon. We land on a branch. It's at this moment, in the dream, that I begin to sing. A long liquid song, a high requiem, the story of the story of the story.

  Or is the voice hers? Hard to tell.

  A man standing underneath our tree says, Grief.

  Warlords

  To be a warlord - that's a boy's dream everywhere. Point a finger, say Bang, and thousands die. Most of these sharpshooters grow up to become dentists. But if you're born under the rule of a warlord, you have only three futures. To be a warrior and die in the service of the warlord. To depose the warlord and become the warlord yourself. To be one who by definition cannot be a warrior - a woman, a priest, a one-legged tailor. But you are shut up inside the warlord's territorial periphery, which at times feels like a protecting wall and at other times like a dungeon. In there, you can live what is thought of - in there - as a normal life, as long as you wave the warlord's flag, pay the warlord's taxes, bribe the warlord's henchmen, grovel at the feet of the warlord's relatives, and avoid all negative comments about the warlord himself, as he is known to be touchy.

  The warlord sits at the centre of his own power, inert but potent. Sycophants spoon food and good news into him; vulture-handlers handle his pet vultures; ruby-counters count his rubies; beautiful damsels lick his toes. Concentric rings of warriors encircle him. The outermost ring is most at risk. The men there bristle with hardware; they look like many-bladed jackknives, the kind with the corkscrew, the nail file, and the awl, and it is they who take the first risks, and are ground under the giant clanking wheels of the invading warlords. The next ring is made of slippery defences, labyrinthine corridors, trenches filled with pointed stakes, ambushes involving falling boulders and red-hot coals, very deadly but after a while
not enough. The warriors who work this ring obey one single command: Hold the gate!

  Hand-picked worldwide warriors form the inner circle. They are mercenaries, because you can't trust volunteers. They are the bodyguards, They guard the body. They're supposed to guard it with their deaths, they aren't supposed to live to tell the tale, but some do. The tale is about how, despite their best efforts or anyway their second best, the warlord's forces were finally overcome. How his cave, his tree, his tower, his castle, his city, his weapons factories, his prisons, his billiard rooms went up in flames. How the invading army drank up all his champagne and took baths in his bathtubs. How his concubines were gang-raped on the rooftops, his wives dismembered, his children blinded, to the delighted howls of the crowd, who now claim never to have liked the warlord anyway. How he himself was roasted, skewered, blown up, beheaded, hanged upside down, forced into bankruptcy. How his statues were toppled and sold as scrap, or else as kitschy souvenirs.

  What point in continuing, after that? With being a hand-picked worldwide warrior. No future in it. No prestige. Scramble out of the uniform, the trappings, the trap; run for your life, through the dank forest, across the prickly desert, up the icy mountains, leaving blood footprints. When you've reached neutral territory, when you've stashed the loot hoisted from the warlord's mansion - well, he didn't have much use for it any more, did he? - and when you finally have a spare moment to sit down at a cafe with a cool drink, you rethink your occupation.

  But your occupation's gone. You can't get another. Once you've fought for a warlord, any warlord, even a warlord committee, you can't forget. You can't learn anything else. Nothing can replace the adrenalin, the hellish but enlivening nightmares. Nothing - let's face it - is nearly as much fun as being a warlord's warrior. Fun taken in the broadest sense of the word, you understand.

  Look over there. See that ropy-muscled old guy raking the lawn? The other one sweeping the sidewalk, the third hauling the trash? Warlord survivors, all of them. They're branded with invisible tattoos. Behind their eyes the embers smoulder. They're waiting. They're ready for the call.

  The Tent

  You're in a tent. It's vast and cold outside, very vast, very cold. It's a howling wilderness. There are rocks in it, and ice and sand, and deep boggy pits you could sink into without a trace. There are ruins as well, many ruins; in and around the ruins there are broken musical instruments, old bathtubs, bones of extinct land mammals, shoes minus their feet, auto parts. There are thorny shrubs, gnarled trees, high winds. But you have a small candle in your tent. You can keep warm.

  Many things are howling out there, in the howling wilderness. Many people are howling. Some howl in grief because those they love have died or been killed, others howl in triumph because they have caused the loved ones of their enemies to die or be killed. Some howl to summon help, some howl for revenge, others howl for blood. The noise is deafening.

  It's also frightening. Some of the howling is coming close to you, in your tent, where you crouch in silence, hoping you won't be seen. You're frightened for yourself, but especially for those you love. You want to protect them. You want to gather them inside your tent, for protection.

  The trouble is, your tent is made of paper. Paper won't keep anything out. You know you must write on the walls, on the paper walls, on the inside of your tent. You must write upside down and backwards, you must cover every available space on the paper with writing. Some of the writing has to describe the howling that's going on outside, night and day, among the sand dunes and the ice chunks and the ruins and bones and so forth; it must tell the truth about the howling, but this is difficult to do because you can't see through the paper walls and so you can't be exact about the truth, and you don't want to go out there, out into the wilderness, to see exactly for yourself. Some of the writing has to be about your loved ones and the need you feel to protect them, and this is difficult as well because not all of them can hear the howling in the same way you do, some of them think it sounds like a picnic out there in the wilderness, like a big band, like a hot beach party, they resent being cooped up in such a cramped space with you and your small candle and your fearfulness and your annoying obsession with calligraphy, an obsession that makes no sense to them, and they keep trying to scramble out under the walls of the tent.

  This doesn't stop you from your writing. You write as if your life depended on it, your life and theirs. You inscribe in shorthand their natures, their features, their habits, their histories; you change the names, of course, because you don't want to create evidence, you don't want to attract the wrong sort of attention to these loved ones of yours, some of whom - you're now discovering - are not people at all, but cities and landscapes, towns and lakes and clothing you used to wear and neighbourhood cafes and long-lost dogs. You don't want to attract the howlers, but they're attracted anyway, as if by a scent: the walls of the paper tent are so thin that they can see the light of your candle, they can see your outline, and naturally they're curious because you might be prey, you might be something they can kill and then howl over in celebration and then eat, one way or another. You're too conspicuous, you've made yourself conspicuous, you've given yourself away. They're coming closer, gathering together; they're taking time off from their howling to peer, to sniff around.

  Why do you think this writing of yours, this graphomania in a flimsy cave, this scribbling back and forth and up and down over the walls of what is beginning to seem like a prison, is capable of protecting anyone at all? Yourself included. It's an illusion, the belief that your doodling is a kind of armour, a kind of charm, because no one knows better than you do how fragile your tent really is. Already there's a clomping of leather-covered feet, there's a scratching, there's a scrabbling, there's a sound of rasping breath. Wind comes in, your candle tips over and flares up, and a loose tent-flap catches fire, and through the widening black-edged gap you can see the eyes of the howlers, red and shining in the light from your burning paper shelter, but you keep on writing anyway because what else can you do?

  Time Folds

  Time folds, he said, meaning that as time goes on and on it buckles, in the extreme heat, in the extreme cold, and what is long past becomes closer. You can demonstrate this by pleating a ribbon and sticking a pin through: Point Two, once yards away from Point One, now lies just beside it. Is time/space like an accordion, but without the music? Was he making a statement about hard physics?

  Or was he saying: Time folds its wings, at long last. Time folds its tents and silently steals way. Time folds you in its folds, as if you were a lamb and the lack of time a wolf. Time folds you in the blanket of itself, it folds you tenderly and wraps you round, for where would you be without it? Time folds you in its arms and gives you one last kiss, and then it flattens you out and folds you up and tucks you away until it's time for you to become someone else's past time, and then time folds again.

  Tree Baby

  You remember this. No, you dreamed it. Your dream was of choking, and sinking down, and blankness. You woke from your nightmare and it had already happened. Everything was gone. Everything, and everyone - fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, the cousins, the tables and chairs and toys and beds - all swept away. Nothing is left of them. Nothing remains but the erased beach and the silence.

  There is wreckage. You didn't see that, in your dream. A jumble of smashed years, a heap of broken stories. The stories look like wood and chunks of cement and twisted metal. And sand, a lot of sand. Why is it they say the sands of time? You didn't know that yesterday but now you do. You know too much to say. What can be said? Language turns to rubble in your throat.

  But look - there's a baby, stranded in a treetop, just as in those other dreams, the ones in which you can lift yourself off the earth and fly, and escape the roaring and crashing just behind you. A baby, alive, caught in a green cradle; and it's been rescued, after all. But its name has been lost, along with its tiny past.

  What new name will they give it, this child? The one who es
caped from your nightmare and floated lightly to a tree, and who looks around itself now with a baby's ordinary amazement? Now time starts up once more, now there is something that can be said: this child must be given a word. A password, a talisman of air, to help it through the many hard gates and shadow doorways ahead. It must be named, again.

  Will they call it Catastrophe, will they call it Flotsam, will they call it Sorrow? Will they call it No-family, will they call it Bereft, will they call it Child-of-a-Tree? Or will they call it Astonishment, or Nevertheless, or Small Mercy?

  Or will they call it Beginning?

  But It Could Still

  Things look bad: I admit it. They look worse than they've looked for years, for centuries. They look the worst ever. Perils loom on all sides. But it could still turn out all right. The child fell from the eighth-floor balcony, but there was a sheepdog underneath that leapt up and caught it in mid-air. A bystander took a picture, it was in the paper. The boy went under for the third time, but the mother - although she was reading a novel - heard a gurgling sound and ran down to the dock, and reached into the water, and pulled the boy up by his hair, and there was no brain damage. When the explosion occurred the young man was underneath the sink, fixing the plumbing, and so he was not injured. The girl survived the avalanche by making swimming motions with her arms. The father of two-year-old triplets who had cancer in every one of his organs watched a lot of comedy films and did Buddhist meditation and went into full remission, where he remains to this day. The airbags actually worked. The cheque did not bounce. The prescription drug company was not lying. The shark nudged the sailor's naked, bleeding leg, then turned away. The rapist got distracted in mid-rape, and his knife and his penis both retracted into him like the soft and delicate horns of a snail, and he went out for a coffee instead. The copy of Darwin's Origin of Species the soldier carried next to his heart stopped the oncoming machine-gun bullet. When he said, My darling, you are the only woman I will adore forever, he really meant it. As for her, despite the scowling and the cold shoulder and the unanswered phone, it turned out she'd loved him all along.