Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

Aggie, I said, stay here.

Why? she said.

I’m going to the bottom to talk to Marijke.

I’ll come with.

No, stay here. I’ll be right back.

I wanna come.

No, stay here. I’ll be right back.

I’m coming with.

We caught up to Wilson and Oveja and I spoke to him quickly and softly in slangy Spanish that I’d learned from Jorge and that Aggie wouldn’t quite understand. Wilson asked me if he could put his arm around me while we walked.

Why? I said. Are you okay? I knew immediately that that had been a stupid question but I didn’t know what else to say. Aggie walked ahead of us with Oveja, and Wilson put his arm around my shoulders and told me I looked pretty. I told him I couldn’t do any more naked things with him like lying in the field without clothes on. I told him that I felt so guilty and so bad and that I was terrified of Jorge finding out and killing me. Wilson said he could understand that. But, I said, I wanted more than anything to be his friend and to save his life. That came out wrong. He told me I was funny, that I couldn’t save his life, but that we could be friends. It felt like we had come full circle, from one obvious point to another one just like it. I felt like I should have said other more important and unique things.

Wilson, I said.

Yes, Irma?

If you knew that this was your last day on earth what kind of story would you write? I asked.

Given that I would actually use that time to write a story?

Yeah.

I don’t know.

Oh.

But it’s a very good question.

I was rejoicing silently in my heart. I had asked a good question. And not only had I finally asked a good question, I had asked a good question of someone I was trying to be friends with as opposed to myself. A question that had breath attached to it, that had left my own body. Jorge told me not to ask questions, he hated them, he could always tell when I was about to ask one and he’d put his hand up and say no, please. Please. Was I betraying Jorge by asking a good question of Wilson?

We got to the truck and Marijke saw us and pulled her legs back inside through the window and smiled and said she had missed us and what was up? She got out of the truck and gave us all hugs. She looked tired. I wondered if it was true that she had been fucking José. I told her that we had had to take Oveja away from Alfredo. We all decided to have some potassium-replacing bananas and water and a rest before we trekked back up the mountain. We heard more shots being fired and I explained to Marijke that Alfredo was angry again.

Oh my God, she said in German, is he killing people?

No, no, I said, he’s firing his gun into the air. He doesn’t know how to kiss properly.

And that’s what’s making him so mad? she said.

No, it’s the dog, I said. Oveja attacked him.

Marijke laughed. Wilson was teaching Aggie how to walk on her hands but it was a logistical problem because of her dress.

Come here you pig, said Marijke. Oveja waddled over to her. He was bleeding from where Alfredo had bashed him on the head. Marijke stroked his nose and said loving things to him in German which I didn’t bother translating for him.

Then we heard Diego’s voice shouting from Wilson’s radio. He needed Marijke after all, he had changed his mind, he was so close to his perfect shot, and we were supposed to run up the mountain to where they were shooting immediately.

What about the sky? said Wilson.

It’s perfect, said Diego. Send the girls now and tell them to move fast.

Diego said that Elias was running down the mountain halfway to meet Wilson with a reel of film that Wilson was to put under the seat in the truck and lock the doors. And Wilson was supposed to give Elias a certain lens that he’d bring back up the mountain and everything was supposed to happen now, immediately! We were all about to head up the mountain when we saw Elias tumbling towards us and screaming in pain and the reel rolled along beside him on the ground. When Elias came to a stop Wilson kneeled beside him and inspected his leg and said he had to get him to a clinic because he thought his ankle might be broken and he radioed Diego to tell him what had happened and that his shot might not happen right now after all and Diego went insane over the radio and said we were done shooting for the day and possibly forever. He said that even if he’d been the original Creator he couldn’t have conceived of a more incompetent film crew than the one he had. Wilson switched his radio off. We carried Elias to the truck and he lay in the cab while Wilson drove and Marijke and Aggie and I sat in the back.

Do you think it’s possible to rot without even feeling it? said Aggie.

Rot? said Marijke. Like, decompose?

Yeah, said Aggie.

Without knowing? said Marijke.

Yeah, said Aggie. Like until it’s a bit too late.

This conversation was being shouted at top volume against the howling wind. I looked at Wilson through the back window of the cab, through the rear-view mirror. I saw him mouth some words to Elias. I could feel my stomach writhe inside of me.

I took my notebook out of my pocket and made a list of troubling things.

Aggie is now my responsibility.

Aggie has to go to school, at least in the fall. But where?

We have hardly any money.

Jorge might never come back.

Our father is going to sell the house.

I have to get a map.

We’ll have no place to live.

We’ll have to stand silently by the road like that Tara-

humara family. Forever.

I miss my mom.

I’m a bad wife.

I tore the page out of my notebook and threw it away into the wind and watched it float up and over towards Belize or maybe Paraguay. I opened my notebook to the first page where I had traced my hand and wrote the words we live only in your book of paintings here on the earth along the length of my ring finger. But it was so bumpy that none of it was legible and the letters looked like little worms burrowing under skin.

When we got to the clinic we unloaded Elias from the truck and carried him in. He was still groaning but we had stopped worrying about him. Marijke had gone off to wander around in the cornfield next to the barn. We had to walk past three deformed dogs to get to the desk where the nurse was sitting. Is this a vet or a clinic? said Wilson. It’s everything, I said. The nurse was my quasi cousin. She had white-blond hair like Aggie’s. Our great-grandpa had had thirty-one kids with three different wives who kept dying and we had all lost track of who was really who. She might have come from a different campo, like maybe 4 or 2.5 or something. She asked me if I was a Voth and I said yeah, you? She said no, Nickel, but used to be a Voth. I thought so, I said. She didn’t need to ask what was going on or who these guys were. She told us to carry Elias right into the doctor’s room and lay him down on the stretcher thing and the doctor would be there soon.

We heard some screaming. Finally the doctor came and told us to leave so that he could examine Elias and we went and sat outside on a fence to wait. We heard more screams coming from the barn.

What is that? said Wilson.

A mother, I said. She’s having a baby in that other room next to Elias’s. We were all quiet, even Aggie, listening to the woman scream.

I would just say no way and take the doctor’s gun and shoot myself in the head, said Aggie.

We listened to the woman some more. Except for those screams there was no sound at all.

That’s her husband, I think, I said. I pointed to a guy sitting in a truck with a bunch of little kids.

Why doesn’t he go in? said Wilson.

They don’t do that, I said.

Elias finally came hobbling out of the barn with crutches that were too small so he was hunched over like a little old man. Wilson walked with him back to the truck and Aggie rounded up Oveja and I went into the corn to find Marijke so we could go. It took me a while and when I found her she was sitting in the dirt, crying. I crouched down next to her and asked her what was wrong and she told me that she kept opening and closing her eyes thinking that eventually, when she opened them, she would see her son standing there in front of her. She was afraid she was going nuts in this fucking desert. She wanted to go back to Germany but she was afraid that Diego would kill her.