Katie Kitamura - Gone to the Forest

They are reading the wrong signs. The right signs have nothing to do with history or culture. Two days before the eruption the snakes fled down the mountain. They slid, then dropped into the river and drowned. Within hours they were washing up on the dirt banks of the river. Stiff and twisted like small branches of wood, their bodies rigid in death.

The news of the snakes moved slowly. The villagers in the neighboring country were too busy gathering the bodies of the snakes, which they collected with their bare hands in baskets and then threw onto the fire like wood. They were too busy and so the volcano came to the valley first, before the news of the snakes that slithered down the mountain. The news of the snakes came with the ash. The ash and the slow clearing sky.

ON THE EIGHTH day the ash arrives in the country. It is quiet for four days. The mountain belching only a pocket or two of black smoke. The ground staying still. But then the ash happens.

It creeps across the border and into the country. It does it in the night, by stealth. The farmers in the valley wake and there is a thick layer of gray on the ground and in the air. They are baffled. It looks like snow but it is still hot outside and the gray is too fine. It is hard to see, almost invisible to the eye. Like a dry fog. Dry to the touch and everywhere in the air. They wave their hands through the air and their skin is parched.

By noon the valley is lost to a blizzard of ash. The children and the local imbeciles put on swimming trunks and goggles and run through the ash. They try to make balls of it. The ash balls fall to pieces in their hands and they throw handfuls of dust instead. They run across the fields and their feet slip and they choke on the dust. In places they fall to their waists in ash. They are laughing like loons, their minds cracked.

The ash continues to fall and the layer grows higher. It does not freeze into solid tranches. It does no melting of any kind. It only accumulates. The roads and tracks close themselves up. The car motors eat up dust and die. The bicycle wheels do not turn. They try to clear paths but the ash keeps falling. It is up to their waists, up to their necks. Two children disappear into the ash and are not found.

After two days, there is a brief respite in the ash fall and the men go out into the landscape. They try to clear paths. They fill wheelbarrows with the ash and cart it away, briefly they try to make order of it. Then the storm picks up and the ash plain grows higher and they retreat inside again. From the houses the windows show nothing but a field of gray without sky or ground. They look out the windows and give up. They bar themselves in their homes and watch the ash horizon climb up the walls of the houses.

One week later the ash slows. The farmers and natives step out into the monochrome landscape. Which was once their home. Which is all they know. They wear scarves and gas masks to protect themselves from the swirl of ash in the air. The particles minute and lingering. Then they embark on the task of rescuing the landscape from the ash. Digging it out like an archeological site: the evidence of their lives.

The real miracle is the fact that so many of the animals survived. The prescient put them in the barns. They left a native to stay with them through the ash storm. Feeding them daily. Avoiding them when they bucked and stomped in panic. Finally the ash stops falling and they release them into the open air. Onto the gray plain. Their legs buckle and their knees give into the dust. But they press forward, they find their footing, and disappear across the field.

THE FIRST DAY the mountain exploded, the old man held drinks at the farm. Among the whites, across the valley, there was a mood of hilarity. The girl said that company was what they needed and word was sent out. Dinner was ordered and the liquor trolley stocked. The neighboring whites — those who remained and were not afraid to travel — came at dusk and Jose served drinks on the veranda.

The men came without their wives, this being no time for a woman to travel. They stood with a drink in their hand and admired the view. On the whole the old man did not fraternize with these small landowners. These whites owned small plots of land and were therefore considered grasping. They had survived in the land through bluntness and cunning and were now starting to come into their own, what with the change taking place in the province.

They were men suited to this new age of violence. They were mobile and unreliable, with a reputation for physical brutality. There were fistfights and beatings on their farms and there had been shootings. The old man said they were men who did not understand the boundaries of behavior. But the girl liked society and they were now what passed for society in the valley. Therefore they had been invited to the farm.

It was almost a gathering like the old days, before the first departures and the unrest, before the rumors of possible rebellion. There was candlelight and crystal. There was in front of them a vast expanse of land. However, the men were tense. They stood on the veranda and watched the mountain tear into the sky. They talked but mostly drank from nervousness. They began with cocktails and then there was wine at dinner. After dinner there were ports and liqueurs.

The girl played jazz records on the gramophone and watched as the nervous men grew drunk. The scene loosened into a facsimile of the life back home. A poor one, the blacks and grays blurring into the white. A certain amount of play acting being involved. That play acting being imprecise. The girl smiled when the men made toasts to the mountain. She smiled again when the old man brought out a box of cigars and the men made toasts to the cigars.

Jose filled their glasses. The night progressed. The men were drunk but still restrained. The girl also. She had no intention of being reckless. She stood up and walked the veranda. She was not wearing very much. Her body exposed by her dress (his mother’s dress). Tom watched her and grew an ache in his throat and groin. She saw him watching and went to the old man. She sat down beside him on a stool.

In the morning, the men were still on the veranda. They had passed out in their armchairs. The old man ordered lunch for the party. The men nodded thanks without getting to their feet, and did not think of leaving the farm. Then it was noon and the sky was still dark and lit with fire. Lightning cracked up through the sky. They could see rivers of lava and the black cap of smoke continued to grow up above.

The men sat in the old man’s house and watched the mountain explode. Jose moved down the line of armchairs. He pushed a cart of drinks and then brought trays of cold food. The men ate and drank. The air now bearing permissiveness of a new kind. The men visibly inhaling it. It was hot, and they untucked and unbuttoned their shirts. There was not much conversation. One of the men said they might bring their wives for dinner, the roads seeming safe enough. He used the telephone to ring back to his farm and word was sent round.

There were eight men on the veranda that day and all eight stayed into the night. At dusk their wives were driven to the farm by their natives. They had dressed for the special occasion. With satin dresses and wraps to protect against the night air. A table was set in the dining room and dinner was served. Now that the women had come the atmosphere of nervous privilege was restored. The men made toasts to that privilege and proceeded to drink themselves blind.

After dinner the gramophone was switched on again and there was dancing and more drink. The girl came down after dinner. She had stayed in her room all day — trays were sent at mealtimes and endless pots of tea — but now she emerged. She was wearing a new dress, she had arranged her hair so that it looked like it was falling but was not. There was rouge on her cheeks and lips and she had put kohl on her eyes and smelled strongly of scent.