Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

– I would almost prefer if you just asked us for money.

"When? What time?" she said.

– You're playing us both ways. You'll offer Hand sex – you'll offer your friend – but if that doesn't work, you throw in the stuff about your kid. And we have no idea if you have a son at all.

– You have no right to judge.

– I think I can wonder. I can speculate.

– You can do neither. Just one day in my life would cripple you.

"Right after we change, we'll dance," said Hand, swinging his hand over his clothes like a security wand. "I don't want to wear this stuff to the disco."

"Okay, so half an hour?"

"Yes. Then we will meet."

"You will promise to come?"

"Yes."

"You promise?"

"Yes. We promise."

I was out the door and Hand followed.

The street was barren.

"You're not going to meet them?" I said.

"No."

"The one with the fur was kind of cute."

"I don't even know what to say," Hand said. "I feel so shitty for them. With Olga it was different, she was just between jobs or something. But these two – Why not give them the money?"

"We gave them some, didn't we?"

"No, we didn't. We paid for their drinks."

"Oh."

"You heard Katya talk about her kid, right? We should give her the money. Give her all of it. They need it, right? They've got the Estonians breathing down their ass. They need it."

"Who?" I said. "Breathing down their ass?"

"Yes. The Latvians. Sorry."

"I don't want to give it to them."

"Why? Because you don't like them."

"Right."

"But what does that mean? That makes no sense. You're going around rewarding what? Good manners? That's about control."

"Anytime you don't know your head from your browneye you say it's about control. It's about control has turned into the catch-phrase of you amateur psychologists."

We were heading toward the hotel, we thought, but were quickly losing our sense of direction.

"If you want, you can give them what I have in my shoe."

"How much?"

"About $200."

"I think we should."

"Fine."

We walked back in their direction. We started jogging again. I was jogging with my knees high, anything to keep warm.

"You never finished about the helium," I said, finding the words through pants. "Before we got stopped by the cops."

"Oh!" He stopped in his tracks. He liked that sort of drama. "I have to tell you this!"

"I think we're lost again."

"I know."

We asked an older man, heavy-lidded and angular. The man gave us a general sense of how far off we were. We thanked him and I thought of paying him for the directions, but his overcoat, of camelshair, betrayed his wealth. We still didn't have jackets of any kind.

"Go on," I said, as we passed the Lasertag place again.

"Okay," Hand said. "I have to start back a ways. So first of all, I guess Raymond's ancestors were more or less native to Chile, on the Pacific – the southwestern part of the country. The something Archipelago. Chronos. Something like that. Chronos Archipelago. And these people had this theory, or maybe belief is the better word for it probably, that all people carry all of their relatives with them. Like in their blood, in their heads."

"That's not so -"

We were on a cobblestone sidestreet. Riga was so tidy, everything reflecting the most delicate of European gestures, and yet I was – fuck – so stunningly cold.

"I know, it was how they put it," said Hand, "that made it different I guess. Their point was that not only are you of the same blood as those in your bloodline, but you carry all of their memories with you. All of their souls. You carry their dreams and their pains and their anger and everything. Raymond was talking a lot about the bad stuff you carry. Like if your relatives died in some wrong way."

"Jesus. Sounds terrifying."

We stopped at a shop selling cheese and electronics. We were the only people walking in Riga, it seemed. When we did see people, they were alone and walking briskly, shrouded in fur.

"No, they made it sound okay. It's like a density thing. Apparently they wanted that density of soul. The density is desirable. Apparently they see the soul the opposite as we do, where it's the lightest thing, this wispy ghost thing. They think of it like a mountain. Like a mountain each of us carries around, and you want your mountain strong and dense, because that means your family has lived lives of great experience. But the trick I guess is to find a way to move around."

"With your mountain."

"Yeah. This is where I got a little lost. I love the part about the blood and the voices of everyone in your head."

My feet were frozen. They felt like claws.

"You didn't do the voices part," I said.

"Sorry. Well, I guess you can hear from these people, the dead and the people who share your blood, your parents first and everyone else, aunts and uncles, on and on – on some level you share it all. In varying degrees, depending. Thousands of voices, millions maybe. This endless chorus. And it's all there in the blood! I love that idea. I was thinking,of fiber optic cables, the way they can hold all that information -"

"Oh come on."

"Let's go this way."

"Good."

"Well so the point is, these are the people you're responsible to. You're literally carrying them with you at all times. You're you but you're also them, in a way that's much more, you know, tangible than any Judeo-Christian way. And it's not a reincarnation kind of thing – you'll never really be you again, directing some body with any sort of control. You die and become of a chorus, a voice in a chorus. The way Raymond explained it, it sounded so beautiful. And so when we talk, you and I, we're speaking on some level with the voices of thousands. And part of the challenge is to remember this, or I guess the point of their ceremonies and teachings is putting themselves in better touch with the chorus, searching for them and recognizing them, speaking with them."

"Like channeling?"

"No, no. It's more like listening. It's con si dering. What was the word he used? It wasn't an English word, it was Spanish, I think, and he couldn't find a word for it in English or French. It meant speaking with the dreams of thousands, the judgment of a bloodline. Which I took it meant acting in a way taking into account this chorus."

"Right."

"I think that was it."

"But – Wait, is that the hotel? The spire there?"

"No. We face the square, remember?"

"Right."

"So…"

"Well, it sounds so limiting. It's like having your whole family second-guessing every action."

We were nowhere near the bar, or the Pepsi disco, but we did see the McDonald's, which meant we were close.

"Let's go in and ask the concierge," Hand said.

We passed through the revolving door and were warmed in the tall white marble lobby.

"Were you high?" I asked.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Go on."

The concierge was gone. We were at the desk. There were small maps of the city center. Hand took one. On the back were ads for restaurants and clubs. He located The Pepsi. We would go again and find them. We stood in the lobby, warming ourselves.

"We weren't high," Hand said.

"Fine. Go on. All the voices in the head."

"Maybe I'm not explaining it right. The way Raymond put it – it was so perfect – it just seemed so rich, their being alive. They carried their blood and their voices with such grace, you know?"

I didn't. "I don't."

"It's just this illusion we live with, the illusion that we want to forget things. That we need to forget so we can live, because everything is too much, our burdens are so great we need to self-lobotomize, at least partially, chemically or whatever, right?"