Joyce Oates: Sourland

Sophie shuddered. “But — that’s terrible. Finding someone like that — must be very upsetting.”

Kolk shrugged. “Why? Whatever was rotten in them is gone — ‘cauterized.’ That’s the point of killing yourself.”

Sophie was thinking: Matt had liked — loved — hiking in the wilderness, before she’d known him. Then abruptly he’d ceased. That part of his life had ended. Rarely would he talk about it, he hadn’t been one to reminisce. The walks they’d taken together — the “hikes” — hadn’t been very arduous, challenging. After law school, Matt had gone into corporate law. He’d been a brilliant and ambitious student at Yale and he’d gone into a corporate law firm immediately after law school, in Summit, New Jersey. Initially he’d been successful — always he’d been moderately successful — always competent, reliable. Always he’d been well paid. But he’d been disappointed with the nature of his work and with his associates — never would he have called them “friends,” still less “comrades” — and by degrees he’d lost all passion for his work. Servicing the rich, aiding the rich in their obsession to increase their wealth while giving away as little as possible to others. Sophie had no wish to confide in Kolk that her husband had never been happy in his work — possibly, in his life. By his late thirties he was becoming a middle-aged man, his body had gone slack, fleshy. He’d lost his youth though he had always loved Sophie — it was his wish, that they not have children. They’d lived a life of bourgeois comfort of the sort Kolk would find contemptible, Sophie thought.

Strangely Kolk was looking at her now. Almost, a kind of merriment shone in his soot-colored eyes. In a voice that might have been teasing, or accusing, he said: “You’re a widow, are you! So, you must have money.”

Or maybe he’d said — “You’re a widow. So, you must be lonely.”

Money, lonely . It was logic, these fitted together.

Sophie said yes, Matt had left her money — and their house of course — but she worked, also — she’d worked for years at a university press that specialized in academic/scientific books — though she was now on a leave of absence.

Warmed by whiskey, Sophie told Kolk that she’d just finished copyediting a manuscript for the press by an anthropologist/linguist on the subject of twins. Most fascinating was a decades-long study of twins through their lives, twins who’d cultivated “private languages,” twin-survivors after the death of a twin, iconic and symbolic meanings of twins, that varied greatly from culture to culture. Kolk listened in silence, drinking. Sophie heard herself say that grief too was a “private language” — when your twin has left you.

Has anyone written about the “private language” of grief, Sophie wondered.

It was then that Kolk said in a halting voice that he’d lost his father — that is, his father had lost him . His father had disowned him, after Madison. More recently, his father had died — not that it mattered to Kolk, belatedly.

He’d lost his brother, that had been more painful. He’d been nineteen at the time. But a consolation to think that if his Vietnam War-hero-brother had lived, his brother, too, would have disowned him.

“Why?” Sophie asked..

“Because he was a war hero . I was the enemy.”

“I mean — why is it a ‘consolation’? I don’t understand.”

“Because he’d have ‘lost’ me — eventually. When, doesn’t matter.”

Kolk fell silent then, for some minutes. Beneath the table the bulldog snored wetly. The candles were burning down, luminous wax dripped onto the table like lava. Sophie saw that Kolk’s mouth moved as if he were arguing with someone. At last he said: “Friends I had here in Sourland, or thought I had — by degrees I lost them, too.”

“And why?” Sophie asked. Her veins coursed with something warm, reckless. “Why did you ‘lose’ them?”

Kolk shrugged. Who knew!

Sophie thought You need a woman in your life. To give your life direction, meaning .

You need a woman in your life to give you — your life.

In his slow halting voice Kolk was saying that he’d been waiting for — wanting — someone here in Sourland with him. He’d had some involvements with women, that had not worked out. This past winter especially — he’d been the most alone he had ever been, in his life. And when he’d thought of someone he wanted — when he lay awake plagued by such thoughts — it was she — Sophie — who came to him.

Sophie, whose face he saw.

But which face? Sophie wondered. Kolk had not seen her face in twenty-five years.

“You look the same. You haven’t changed. You…”

Sophie stared at Kolk’s fingers, gripping the jam-glass. She could not bring herself to look up at him, at his eyes. Was he drunk? Did it require drunkenness, for Kolk to speak in such a way? Was what he said true? — how could it be true? Sophie could think of no reply that would not be facile, coy, clumsy — her heart had begun to beat absurdly, rapidly.

Wanted. Was it good to be wanted by a man, or not so good?

Kolk confessed, he hadn’t been sure if he remembered her name. But he’d remembered Matt Quinn’s name.

Kolk was easing closer to Sophie. Hairs on the nape of her neck — hairs on her arms, beneath her linen shirt and sweater — began to stir, in apprehension. Unless it was sexual anticipation, excitement. For it had to be a good thing, to be wanted . Kolk said that when he’d “lost his way” — his “faith” — he’d “wanted to die” — he’d “come close to dying.” He’d hiked out into the wilderness — in Alaska, in Alberta, here in Minnesota — thinking how sweet, how beautiful just to lie down in the snow and sleep, shut his eyes. It would not be a painful death once you got over the initial shock and pain of the cold.

Sophie shuddered. Another time she wanted to touch Kolk, to comfort him.

“And what about you, Sophie? D’you ever think about such things, too?”

“No.”

“Yes. I think you do. I have a feeling, you do.”

The sudden interrogation made Sophie uneasy. Her swollen lip was throbbing, she saw how the man stared at it, as if fascinated. Elsewhere on her body the lurid little bites itched, throbbed with heat.

To be wanted was the reward, as it would be the punishment. To be wanted was not to stumble out into the snow and die, just yet.

Sophie conceded, yes she might have had such thoughts. But she hadn’t meant them.

Kolk said yes. All thoughts we have, we mean. No escaping this fact.

Fact? Fact? Sophie’s head spun, she had no idea what they were talking about.

In a lowered voice like one suggesting an obscene or unthinkable act, that dared not be articulated openly, Kolk said they could do it now — together. This night, in Sourland…

Kolk splashed more whiskey into their glasses. Crude jam-glasses these were, clumsy in the hand. Their commingled breaths smelled of whiskey. A twin-language , Sophie thought. No language more intimate than twin-language .

That was why she was here: her twin had summoned her.

This night. Together. Love me!

Then, Kolk surprised her. Saying — this was in a murmur, a mumble: “See, I saved his life. That was why.”

His life? Whose?

Sophie smiled quizzically. Was she expected to know this? What exactly was she expected to know?

In an aggrieved voice Kolk was saying that that was why he’d hated him — why Matt Quinn had hated him. Why he’d turned against him. His brother.

His brother ?

He, Kolk, had known Matt Quinn long before Sophie had. Their connection was deeper, more permanent. On the canoe trip to Elliot Lake when Matt had almost drowned. Afterward, they’d never talked about it.