Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

We dried the tears rolling out of our blistered feet. I chewed leaves and grass to make a paste for our cuts. I licked the bruises on Solomon’s knees like a mother cat, clearing in this way the rotten dirt that seemed to be growing out of his skin.

We soaked more bark of trees in rainwater caught and saved.

We relieved rabbits of their skin, roasted them. We dug roots from the musky ground and ate them whether they looked familiar or not.

We stole potatoes if we found them, carrying as many as we could in my shawl. The baby sucked on his fingers, which were chapped and pitted things. His length increased alone.

With a spine of mountains blue in the distance ahead and a low roll of hills gray with cold behind, the compass pointed us into a pine forest, where we came upon the carcass of a horse. Everything was gone from it, eaten by another animal. It was a sheet of skin and the eyes, yet we knew it unmistakably as a horse. We tore the skin up with rocks, put it over a fire. It did not break up in our mouths. The skin was leather, it was fur, and we ate it.

The baby waved his arms and I praised him.

When we tried to sleep hidden in the heavy brush of the forest, a thick but sharp layer of pine needles to hold us, Solomon rubbed my back. He hushed me the way I should have hushed him.

“You should sleep,” I said.

He told me, “You’re doing great, we’re doing great. We had meat today. The baby is still the baby.” He drew pictures on my back with his finger. “What’s this?” he asked. I shrugged and he said, “Guess.”

I said, “A mouse?”

“No, it’s me.”

“Do it again,” I told him.

“How old am I?” Solomon asked.

“You’re big. You’re growing,” I said. “How old am I?”

“You are all the way grown.”

All through the lit parts and the darkened parts, I asked myself, “Where am I?” I asked myself, “Where should I be?” I wondered if our village was safe, warm, completely normal, and only I was lost and battered. Or maybe everyone was sliced through and the whole village was full only of ghosts. Was Igor home now? Was Igor dead? Were the blankets still stretched tight over our beds, waiting patiently to be dreamed in?

The air started to ache with cold and I knew we had to find a place to be warm. Solomon put a sharp rock in his pocket and stood up to go. He tried to carry the baby but he was heavy. I tried to carry the baby but he was heavy. Solomon took him, held him close, the baby put his hand to Solomon’s chest, felt for a breast.

“No,” Solomon said, “I’m not your mother.” The baby started to cry.

“You can’t cry,” I said, kneeling on the ground, my face to his. “You cannot cry. It is impossible . Do you understand me?” The baby stopped mid-phrase, he did not finish even one more shriek. “Close your eyes and be light,” I told him. “See if you can make yourself weigh nothing at all.”

Eventually some of the girls came to watch the checkers game, even drank the wine. They were named things like Mariza and Mila and Francesca. They tossed their hair.

“You have so much hair,” Igor said to Carolina, sitting next to him.

She looked at him with her head aslant. Igor felt something related to delight. He touched her hair and she bent her head to let him. “Nice,” he said, not thinking of anything else to call it. “Very nice.” The men laughed at him.

“You can touch it all you want,” Carolina whispered into his ear.

“Very nice,” Igor repeated.

“I can wrap you up in it,” she whispered.

“Okay.” He smiled.

“You can kiss it,” she said.

But when he kissed, the hair disappeared from under his lips and was replaced with other lips. The two pairs of lips adored each other. They matched and they knew it. Everyone around clapped and cheered but Igor pulled away. He could not believe how different those lips were from his wife’s, lips he could absolutely not kiss now, so impossible was that kiss that it made his stomach hurt. He could not describe the difference, like trying to explain the scent of apple blossoms against the scent of lilacs. “I have a wife,” Igor said. The men laughed. “I was only planning to kiss the hair.”

“Okay,” Carolina said, offering the side of her head. “Have it your way.”

Later, standing in the doorstep of the jail under a yellow bug-fluttered light, Francesco said, “You’re not in charge of your fate. Your wife cannot be upset.”

“My wife ,” Igor said.

“It is not for you to decide. Here on the island, when someone wants to love you, what choice do you have?”

“If I sent a letter, would my wife get it?”

“A letter, to your wife?”

“I want that. I think I should tell her that I am all right. Alive. What if she marries someone else?”

“Not possible.” Francesco knew all about the German soldiers, the emptied-out villages, the bodies smashed into train cars, cells.

“How long have I been here?”

Francesco tried to count on his fingers but gave up. “You have been here for many weeks,” he finally answered. “Many.”

“That’s many weeklong chances for her to forget me. She does not know that I’m alive.”

“Is she even alive?” Francesco asked. He realized his coldness right away. “She’s fine, I know she is.”

“She could not be?” Igor asked back, betraying his shock.

“They are fine, maybe they really are.”

“We have no idea. We do not know if we are alive,” he fumbled.

“I am alive and you are alive,” Francesco said. “We know that much. Carolina is alive.” The bugs crashed and crashed into the light, so certain they had found something worth finding, if only they could get closer to it.

“Stay here tonight with me,” Igor said. “It seems I have lost everything.”

Francesco was light-headed. “Yes, please,” he said.

“Did you hear me? How big is my firstborn?”

Francesco put his hand out at hip level. “Maybe like this?” He was still thinking of sleeping the night away with Igor by his side.

Igor went into the cage, where he washed his face in the small sink at the wall. Francesco closed the gate and locked the two of them inside. He curled up on his side of Igor’s bed. “I’m sorry we took you away,” he said. “But thank you, too.” Francesco had gone from doing his duty to imprisoning someone for his own benefit. He did not pray for guidance, only forgiveness.

Igor began a letter.

Dear L,

Things are pretty good with me. How are you? I hope you are well. I am being held captive in a town by the sea by a nice man named Francesco who is also my friend. Maybe someday he will come and get you too and you can live in my jail with me. It is actually very nice. I have a comfortable bed and a sink and toilet and they give me money to buy food. I am allowed out during the day. Francesco and I swim and I like to drink coffee in the square. I am learning the language.

Solomon must be big. And even the baby must be big. Do you remember me? Do you? Are you alive? Are you going to marry someone else? If you wanted to come and live here I am sure they would take you prisoner, too. There are girls here but you are my wife. Today, one of them told me she’d wrap me up in her hair, but instead I am here, writing to you. Do you even appreciate this? I have a bed from an old woman, a big old bed. I am getting to be a fast swimmer. I did not know how to swim before, any more than to hold on to the reeds in the river when we used to go together. Are you still lucky? Do you look the same? I have a new suit. Francesco and me like to lie on the warm rocks by the sea. Do you know what the sea looks like? It is very beautiful and I think you would like to go into it. I would like to show you how to swim along the shore. We could eat cheese after and walk in the sun. Do you want to see me again? Do you want me to be your husband? Does Solomon like to practice arithmetic? Is the baby as high as your knee, as high as your hip? Which of them looks more like me? Which of them looks more like you? Which of them remembers my name? Are all of our parents alive? Do you sleep alone in the bed? How are the constellations coming? Is the whole sky there now, over everyone? I would like to sleep there again. Please tell me you are alive. Please tell Solomon and the baby that I am their father. Please send a letter saying they know. I almost remember who you are.