Ramona Ausubel - No One is Here Except All of Us

“You have been true to me all this time,” he said to his bride. “This, finally, is your reward.”

“I have followed along behind.”

“Exactly right.”

On all sides, deep and shallow, the dictator and his bride heard the four-leggeds hunkered down, feeding their bald babies, licking the blood off.

There were two other men in the room, officials. One was the witness and one was the officiant. The dictator had not known either of them long. They had been called upon only recently, as the land got smaller and the only breathable air was underground.

“Everything is going great,” the men lied. “We are sure of it. How could it go any other way?”

The dictator combed his fingers through his mustache. His companion looked down at the brought-down wood floor. She did not say to him that this was no wedding: her mother was not there with a hat on. Her sister had no new dress. Her father would not give her a new silver knife with which to divide the vegetables along their spines.

“We are supposed to be getting married,” she said. “I have been following along.”

“The lady is right,” he said. “Tell us what to do.”

“Stand near each other. Stand so you’re touching,” the official told them.

They moved shoulder to shoulder but the dictator took a step away when his head came up shorter than her head.

“Friends,” the official began, “we are gathered here today to witness the union of this man and this woman in the eyes of all that is pure.”

The walls crumbled slightly under the feet of living things inside them. Powder fell in soft piles. The hundreds of feet came closer.

“The earth is cleaner now than it was. The world is new and better. We move ahead cleansed,” the officiant continued.

Centipedes, millipedes and carpenter ants devoured the sandy ground. Their legs needled and pinned the path.

“Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife until the day that you die?”

“I will do that.”

“And do you take this man?”

“I will.”

“For the rest of your life?”

“For the rest.”

The walls simmered with the bodies of the living things.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the official said. “Kiss.”

The dictator leaned down and scratched his new wife’s cheek with his lips. “Is that what you wanted?” he asked. “Are you satisfied?”

“Do you love me?”

“You’re a pure woman.”

Champagne was enjoyed out of crystal flutes. The bubbles stung the faces of the celebrants when they sipped. By the time the toasts had been toasted, the floor was dotted with insects. The four humans stomped as many dead as they could but the supply was quickly renewed by the bountiful, plentiful earth.

The new wife lay naked all night long, waiting. Her skin was cold. He did not press against her. He did not spank her in the midst. He did not kiss her with his open and dripping mouth. He did not collapse and whisper a few words into her ear. He slept right through the night, though the creatures made the turn from floor to bedposts and found the two large bodies under the covers. The dictator’s wife was walked upon by tiny feet, pricked by them on her pale skin, but she did not scream because she did not want to disturb her fair, sleeping husband.

And in the morning, when the officials came back with the news that the enemy was closing in, that the space of their territory had become very slight, the dictator handed his wife a terrible, beautiful pill and took one for himself. “Thank you very much,” he said to the official. “We will be in our room.”

“Cheers,” the wife said, ever hopeful, while she tapped his pill with her own.

“Bite, then swallow,” he told her.

But after the stuff spilled out over their tongues, and before it worked to end their lives, the dictator took a gun out of his belt and put it to his head, giving his new wife the opportunity to watch him die. She fell over him and watched his blood roll down into a river in which the bugs swam. In the time it took her to die, the river had reached the wall and begun to soak into it, the wall was reddened and rich. What was alive inside rejoiced.

The officials wrapped the two bodies in a cloth, carried them through the tunnels and out into the spinning world where spring tulips lost one waxy petal at a time. The dictator and his new bride were tossed into a hole, where they became inseparable, indistinguishable in death — bones were bones, insides were slippery and rich — and the tiniest of creatures began to eat.

The buildings were giants and the trees were small. Our boat rolled into the muddy slip, the ghosts wrapped themselves around mussel-ringed pilings, mossy concrete and the soft, wet wood of the dock. They climbed onto shore and wiped themselves clean.

They rubbed the salt out of their eyes and shook their hair out.

All along the shore, men in beige grabbed ropes and yelled. In front of me was a city huge and prickling. It smelled of rotting wood. Edward and I tried to hold hands while people pushed down the gangplank, braying like horses. Our fingers slipped apart in slow motion, centimeter by centimeter, in the crush of bodies. I was mashed and had to tip my head up to the sky to find air. Had I died right then and there, the mob would have carried me without meaning to or wanting to.

I descended from that ship carrying nothing but the feathered makings of warmth and broken pieces of home. At the bottom of the gangplank, we were funneled into lines. A man sat me on a cold metal stool and stuck something into my ears without asking if he could. In my chest, the old fear pumped. “Name?” the man asked in my language.

“Natalya,” I started to say, but then shook my head. “I’m safe here?”

Prideful, full-chested, he said, “You are safe here.” I wanted to start my life with my good name. With this first stitch, I attached two new worlds together.

“Lena,” I said, and it was like shaking hands with an old friend.

After that, he was gentle and careful. I had offered him the position of my savior, offered this country whose name still felt jagged in my mouth the chance to rescue me.

I looked at the man’s blond hair, oiled into a sharp part. It was a mirror for the vain, bright lights hanging from the ceiling. At other stools, other dirty boat people. In front of them, other slick-headed men in gray wool trousers and shirts. Their belt buckles, the whole row of them, looked like a chain. Then the man stuck his tongue out and I stuck my tongue out. In went and out came the thermometers from under the tongues of the boat people, and numbers were added to the record books of the clean boys. He handed me my bag and motioned to the row of doors. Outside, everything waited.

“Welcome home.”

“I don’t know where I’m going. This is as far as anyone told me.”

He handed me a small map. “You’ll be fine. You have nice American eyes.” The man clicked the button on his flashlight, preparing to shine it into the ears of another lost soul, as if, diligent and practical, he would search in the least likely of places, in case what we all were looking for was hidden there.

Some streets smelled like flowers because that was what was sold there, and some streets smelled like rotted flesh for no reason I could see. The map was meaningless no matter which direction I turned it. I put it in my pocket and walked. The streets were tightly cobbled, the sidewalks full of walkers. People, like a swarm, like an infestation. This must be where all the ghosts have come, I thought. Everyone who has ever lived — this is where God has decided to keep us.

“Excuse me, sweet cheeks,” said a man with a table full of oranges.