Andrea Barrett - The Forms of Water

Those were the worst days, the days that had stayed with him for forty years and crippled his joints and burned the holes where his tumors now grew, but when he dreamed it was not so much about the march, or about the huts where they were beaten and starved, but about the slow, perilous journey back to Peking that he and a handful of survivors finally made.

There were only eleven of them. One night, they never knew how or why, the doors to their huts were opened and then abandoned. Emaciated and tattered and sick, he and his brothers had stepped out, looked at each other, and walked into the night. They hid by day and traveled in darkness, slinking through fields and eating rats and weeds while the abbey — they passed it, they saw the fire — burned to the ground and wolves and bugs ate the unburied bodies of those who had died on the march and been left behind. He saw things on that trip he could never describe; two more of his brothers died. By the time they reached Peking he could no longer talk.

He remained silent in the hospital there; silent during the endless travels that brought him to Hong Kong; silent during his ocean crossing. Silent on the train across the prairie, to the abbey in Manitoba that had offered to take him in. But there, in those cool, serene buildings where silence was once more expected and blessed, his silence had cracked when he tried to resume his old way of life. Among those gentle, orderly men, he was seized with a need to say what had happened to him.

He’d spent twelve years in China, thinking he’d never leave, and to end like that, like an animal — it had stripped him of everything. He led men into corners, interrupted them at work and prayer, broke into their meditations. “Listen to me,” he said. “Let me tell you this.” War, famine, pestilence, death. He broke the Rule, again and again; the abbot reprimanded him and still he could not control himself. The silence that had drawn him into his Order now seemed repellent, and when the abbot suggested he transfer to the new foundation in Rhode Island, he went without a fight. He thought he might have something in common with the flood of new postulants there, shell-shocked men returned from the same war in other places, but he found them even more withdrawn than the brothers in Manitoba. Crippled by then, heartbroken, he’d applied for dismissal from the Order and made his way back to what was left of the family he’d abandoned. His brother — his real brother, his blood brother — was already dead.

Near Jackson’s garage, he dreamed of his nights in the Chinese wilderness. He dreamed of his silent trips. He dreamed of the days, in Manitoba and Rhode Island, when his hands had reached out for a belt or a sleeve and his mouth had moved, words had come out, but his companions had lowered their eyes as if he didn’t exist. They’d looked through him as if he were dead. And they’d been right, he should have died and joined his martyred brothers. He’d had no business surviving. I am a brother to dragons, he dreamed. And a companion to owls. He was dead in his dream, a ghost in a misty cowl and robe.

When he woke, it was very dark. Light spilled from the open garage, outlining Henry and Jackson; Jackson wiped his hands on a rag and lowered the hood of the van. “That ought to do it,” Brendan heard him say. English words, an upstate accent. Cool, calm, quiet. His brothers had been dead for forty years and China was half a world away; he was not a monk and hadn’t been for years. In the dim light his hands formed the signs for bitter and blessing.

“That’s great,” Henry said. “Lucky you had the parts.”

They came out to Brendan then, past the light and into the darkness, where Brendan could hardly tell them apart. Solid men with spreading stomachs and thick, sturdy legs, they seemed to have forged a friendship over their wrenches and belts and valves. Brendan felt more insubstantial than ever.

“You guys hungry?” Jackson said. “I caught some bass this morning — I was going to throw them on the grill.”

“That’d be great,” Henry said. He squatted down until his face was level with Brendan’s. “Are you awake? Would that be all right?”

“Fine,” Brendan said. In his dream he had eaten no food — the yellow millet, the sorghum, the limp potatoes, had not crossed his lips, and he understood this to mean that he would not eat again. But he wanted to keep Henry happy and fed, and it was too late for them to drive any farther.

“About the bill,” Henry said to Jackson.

“Sixty-eight. That sound fair?”

“More than fair.” Henry stroked the ridged surface around the dial of his heavy watch and then said, “Would you take this instead? We’re short of cash, but this is a Rolex, it’s worth a lot. It’s all we have.” He slipped it off his wrist and held it out.

Jackson turned the gold band in the glow from the garage. “It’s a good one?”

“The best,” Henry said. “It ought to run forever. Or you can sell it, if you want — you’ll get some decent cash for it.”

Jackson slipped the watch into his shirt pocket. “Fair enough.”

A watch for a van, Brendan thought; a bracelet and earrings for plums. He saw the plums float over the wall again, and the faces of the children who’d eaten them, and then all the faces of everyone he’d left behind.

THE SAAB WAS AS SPACIOUS AND SMOOTH AS AN OCEAN LINER: dim, private, silent except for the occasional clicks and squawks of the radar detector on the dash. Cool air flowed over Wiloma’s legs and lights gleamed behind the steering wheel. Waldo touched a button and music washed over them.

“What is that?” Wiloma asked.

“New CD player,” Waldo said. “Pretty sharp, isn’t it? I had it put in a few months ago.”

“No, I mean the music — what is that?”

“Jazz harp. Isn’t it something? Sarah turned me on to this guy — he’s German, he does things with a harp you’d never believe.”

“Really,” Wiloma said. Sarah: the sort of woman who could interest her older husband in something as exotic as jazz on a harp. “It makes me feel old.”

“The music?”

Wiloma nodded. “You know. Harps used to be for symphonies, or for ladies in long dresses.”

Waldo laughed. “I know what you mean. It seemed strange to me at first, but Sarah just thinks it’s wonderful.”

“She’s young,” Wiloma said.

“She is,” Waldo agreed. “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, thinking about things that were important to me in high school, or when you and I were first married, or when our kids were kids, and I roll over to talk to her and I realize she won’t know what I mean. It’s hard to explain.”

All that you want is made impossible by all that you want, Wiloma wanted to tell him. That was one of the first things her group leader had taught her at the Healing Center: that needs and desires excluded each other, fed each other, led to despair; that want followed want until your life reached a point where the several things you had to have were at war with one another. Wants are like lions, her teacher had said. They will tear you apart. Brendan, despite his dislike of her church, had admired that phrase when she’d first repeated it to him and claimed it was simply another version of what the Christian mystics had always taught. Everything we seek has already been given to us, he’d said. We only have to learn how to recognize it.

“This is nice,” Waldo said. “Sitting here with you like this, not fighting. It’s relaxing.”

“Is it?”

“You know me.”

And it was true, she thought. She did. They had known each other all through high school, although they hadn’t started dating until later, after Da and Gran had died. She knew his family and his disappointments. She knew how he’d fought against taking over his father’s building firm, and how hard he’d worked once he’d given in. He hadn’t always been the confident, successful man whom Sarah had married, and sometimes she wondered if he’d divorced her just to shed his years of struggle. Once he’d told her, in the midst of a fight, that it was no blessing living with someone who’d known him so long. You can’t forget, he’d shouted. You can’t forget a single damn thing.