Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

Igor shared his bread crusts with the pigeons, who gathered around him as dedicated as pilgrims. The girls came around, made a second of eye contact and then continued on. The checkers jumped one another and piled up. The wine stained everyone’s teeth red, and they all smiled bloody smiles. The men commented on the girls: which one had the nicest eyes, the nicest bosoms, the nicest whatever else. The sea licked and went back, tasted and went back. The pigeons begged for forgiveness and love, promised devotion for the rest of their humble lives.

“You think anyone is left?” one of the men asked Igor.

Francesco reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, gripped it hard.

“Never mind,” the man said, his words a syrup of insincerity. “I’m sure everyone is just fine. I’m sure nothing bad has happened since you left.”

“Do you know something?” Igor asked the man.

“We’re perfectly safe here,” Francesco told him. Igor felt stung on his chest. It was a satisfying, hot, spreading pain. That’s how concerned I am for my family, he thought. His body was burning with it. His hand went to the hurt, and crushed a wasp. Igor was flooded with disappointment — he had not felt his heart’s big ache, but an ordinary, earthly bite.

Waking from a nap, Igor said to Francesco, “Did the soldiers mention anything about where I was?” Francesco opened his eyes and looked at his friend, propped up on his elbow. Francesco shook his head.

“I was in the temple. We were putting the constellations up all over, the entire night sky. They didn’t mention that? It was the most beautiful thing.”

“What was the purpose?”

“It was the beginning of the world. We were making the heavens for ourselves. Do you remember the beginning of the world?”

“The Garden of Eden?” Francesco asked.

“No, that was just a story.” Igor drew the shape of a star on his palm. “It was the best sleep I have ever had in that barn.”

“And you are a connoisseur.” What Francesco had stolen from Igor — home and family — pulled at his ankles. To love Igor, he had to hurt him. He had to take Igor’s past away to make a place for himself. What a miserable organ the heart was. Francesco said, “When I was young, my brothers were already grown. They pretended to be nice to me, because girls liked boys with cute little brothers, but after they got what they wanted with the girls, they’d be back to throwing sticks at me.”

“When I got married and my son was born, I felt so exhausted, just the idea of it put me flat on my back. I could hardly stand up. Life is so huge, so impossible-seeming.”

“I don’t feel lonely now,” Francesco said. Igor still felt tired.

Igor tried to walk the streets of our home in his mind. He tried to make the turns from one street onto the next. What was that shop there? What was the name of the woman who hulked around, always grumpy? And the petite girl who sewed all the men’s pants? He walked the route to the river, despite the fact that it had been me who most often made the journey there, with my wash and our babies. He walked from his father’s house to his own house over and over, trying to get the number of steps right. Did I never work? he wondered, and panning through his memory it seemed to him that he hardly had. Where did we get the money to survive? Had I nothing to do with that? he wondered.

Igor did not tell Francesco that his family appeared to him, his parents, his wife, his children, all. Why did he omit this? Because Igor did not want Francesco to feel guilty for taking him away? Perhaps even guilty enough to return him to that wet, gray place?

The beautiful baby grew and shrank at the same time. His bones insisted on lengthening. They extended themselves out in every direction, but on top of them the flesh thinned, leaving the shape of his optimistic skeleton exposed.

Solomon did not grow any new inches. His body had nothing to hold on to. I felt my rivers dry up when the boys went to drink from them.

“We have to keep moving,” I said, “we have to find something to eat.”

Solomon and I took turns holding the baby. The earth was either dry and dusty or wet and sucking — all the puddles thick with tadpoles. We took roads sometimes if the compass pointed that way, but worried that we would be seen. We took paths through the woods where pine needles made a thick perfume. We followed streams, valleys, ridges. We had come to and crossed the first mountain range. We had descended and snaked the valley. Always, there was a new landscape through which to draw a path. Always, the tiny red arrow. Never did we know where we were. Dirt stuck to our legs, to our hair, buried itself in the pores of our skin. It attached itself to us as if we could save it, take it somewhere better. When we came to a river we held on to reeds and floated in it, tried to be at home. When we came to a forest, we ate the bark of the trees and the meat of the grass and sometimes the bodies of rabbits caught and discarded by birds. Some rabbits were undressed, skinless and small. We passed farmhouses hidden behind groves of trees, farmhouses with doors to keep the cold out and windows to let the light in. Life busied itself inside, knowing nothing of the mother and sons tangled together under an abandoned appleless apple tree.

Solomon made fires, but only in nighttime to keep the giveaway smoke out of the air. Warming ourselves, I asked, “What do you think they are doing at home?”

“Sitting in the barn,” Solomon said, rocking the baby on his lap. He was as dutiful as a father.

“You are only four years old,” I said to him, which I meant as an apology. He squinted at me. To Solomon, this is what it felt like to be a little boy. A stolen father, a long escape, the outcome still unknown.

I wanted to ask if everyone’s throats were slit open. I wanted to ask if they had their own kitchen knives in their chests. I wanted to ask if they had all been led to the river and drowned together. I had a small wish for one of these stories to be true, the smallest wish, only for the sake of knowing I had not picked my children out of the rich earth for nothing.

“What else have we forgotten?” Solomon asked.

“When I was young I wrote a list of everything I knew,” I told him and this made him feel better. He wanted another of the lists but since we had no paper we had to try and remember it.

“River, rain, leaves, bark, dress, scarf, sun, dirt, mud, mother, son, son,” I started.

“Father, house, temple, stars, stars, stars,” Solomon continued. “God,” he said.

“Where?” I asked.

“God,” he said again. He started to talk about the weeks before we left, a time that seemed as if it belonged to other people. He tried to remember the prayers, blessed a loaf of bread he did not have, a glass of wine he did not have, a candle he did not have, a day of rest he did not have.

“I used to know how to pray,” Solomon remembered.

“You still do. Bless the path,” I said, “ahead of us.” Solomon put the name of God all over the path, paved it with that name, so that every place we put our feet would be soft with it.

“Bless the wheat,” I said, and he blessed it, hung prayers from all its blowing leaves.

“Bless us,” I told him and he put his hands on the baby’s head, his hands on his mother’s head, which I bent to meet him.

“I can’t remember anything else,” he said.

“Horse, street, lamb, baby, day, night, day.”

“Wheat,” he said, looking around him at the dark fields, “wheat, wheat, wheat, wheat.”

Each night Solomon slept a little less. At first he woke up suddenly from terrible dreams, but soon sleep was such a thin membrane that all it took to break it was a gust of wind, an animal crackling in the branches, his empty stomach.