Falling Out of Time Read online

  it’s too late now,

  come back

  to rest,

  quick,

  to obscurity,

  to oblivion,

  just do not see

  with my own eyes

  what happened

  to you.

  WALKERS:

  Our feet lift slowly

  from the earth lightly

  lightly we hover

  between here and there

  between lucidity

  and sleep

  the thread will soon

  unravel

  and we will glide

  and look

  at whatever is there

  at whatever we dare

  to see

  only when walking

  in a dream

  TOWN CHRONICLER: Sleeping … They’ve been sleeping almost constantly for days, sleeping their minds away. Sleeping and walking, speaking to one another in their dream, each head leaning on another walker’s shoulder. I do not know who carries whom and what force drives them to walk—

  DUKE:

  Sometimes, alone

  in my private chamber,

  I take off both shoes and look

  at my feet and think

  it is

  him.

  ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

  I hit him. He was

  a stubborn boy, and impudent,

  with strange opinions

  even as a child, and I—spare

  the rod, spoil the child—I had to

  beat him.

  When he raised his hands to protect

  his face, I hit him

  in the stomach.

  WALKING MAN:

  But where are you, what are you,

  just tell me that, my son.

  I ask simply:

  Where are you?

  Ayeka?

  Or like a pupil before his master

  (for that is how I often see

  you now),

  please teach me—as I not long ago

  taught you—

  the world and all its secrets.

  Forgive me if my question

  sounds foolish and insipid, but

  I must ask because

  it has been eating

  at my soul like a disease

  these past five years:

  What is death, my son?

  What

  is death?

  MIDWIFE:

  Great, definitive death,

  my girl,

  with b-b-boundless power. Eternal,

  immortal d-d-death. And yours.

  Your single, little death,

  inside it.

  COBBLER:

  Actually, I wanted

  to ask, What’s it like,

  my girl, when you die?

  And how are you there?

  And who are you

  there?

  DUKE:

  It is a perplexing thought, my son,

  but perhaps you now know

  far more than I do?

  Perhaps a new and wondrous world

  now carries you in flight,

  and with a massive flap of wings

  it spreads out

  its infinity, just as

  in our world here it long ago

  lavished your soul with its abundance,

  your pure, boyish soul. I feel

  so young and ignorant before you.

  TOWN CHRONICLER: Every so often a tremor passes through them, all of them, one after the other, as though an invisible hand had slid a caress down the spine of the small procession, lingering lightly over the head of each and every one. In their sleep, they straighten up toward it like blind chicks hearing their mother’s voice, and their eyes glow through their lids.

  MIDWIFE:

  I see her

  jumping,

  dancing in the kitchen,

  before she fell ill,

  when she still

  had the strength. And her f-f-father,

  my man, my love,

  my cobbler, kneels before her

  and places his hands: shoes for her feet.

  COBBLER:

  Am I dreaming?

  I hear my wife.

  I swear

  her words are

  hardly broken

  anymore!

  MIDWIFE:

  … he walks her

  through the house in his

  hand-shoes, and laughs

  until the roof almost flies off,

  and she hugs his neck

  and squeals, she has only just

  learned how to talk,

  you remember,

  just beginning to say

  her first words,

  Dad-dy,

  Mom-my,

  Lil-li-li-li-Lilli.

  COBBLER:

  Lilli,

  my

  Lilli.

  WALKERS:

  We walk. Impossible

  to stop. My body

  won’t allow it. My feet

  are weak. And me, my breath

  is short, yet still our body

  will not stand. It pushes from inside, onward,

  onward … It’s like

  going to meet your sweetheart,

  isn’t it, Mrs. Chronicler? Yes,

  my lady of the nets, it’s like a lovers’ rendezvous.

  WALKING MAN:

  This void,

  this absence,

  death alone can render—

  and it is not at all

  a disappearance,

  a cessation,

  nothingness.

  It has one final place,

  a window opened

  just a crack, where still

  the absence breathes, still loosened,

  palpitating, where one can still

  touch the here,

  still almost feel

  the warming hand that touches

  there.

  It is the threshold,

  one last line shared both by here

  and there, the line to which

  —no farther—

  the living may draw near,

  and where, perhaps, they still can sense

  the very tip,

  just one more hint,

  the fading embers, slowly dying,

  of the dead.

  ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

  You have become your death

  so much that sometimes I must wonder

  (Forgive me, have I crossed a line?

  Best to be quiet? To ask? You know,

  my son, I am a gentlemen, yet find myself unsure

  how to address you … May I use the second person?),

  but tell me, speak it clearly,

  show no pity:

  if they were to allow you—they,

  there—if you were given liberty

  to choose—

  would you come back?

  Come back to this?

  To me?

  DUKE:

  Or, as Rilke wrote of Eurydice,

  are you, my child,

  abundant with your own death,

  which fills you

  like a sweet and darkened fruit?

  While I,

  a bothersome Orpheus,

  try to pull you

  over here

  against your will?

  ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

  Just one more, if I may?

  (Whom else can I ask

  but you, my teacher

  in these mysteries?)

  Tell me just what is the thing

  in us, the living,

  whereby we can become

  completely dead

  within an instant,

  in the blink of our own death?

  And give up everything,

  be given up on,

  as though a primal law

  that always lurked inside us

  suddenly appears and rises

  like a shadow from the depths: around it

&
nbsp; still the ruins mount,

  and comfortably it settles in,

  a haughty landlord long in charge,

  its stony glare—which does not miss

  a thing, yet sees nothing—

  declares with just

  a hint of triumph

  in its smile—

  “Death, my friends, is what is true!”

  WALKERS:

  When we meet … What will we tell them

  when we meet? I, gentlemen,

  have already made up my mind:

  I shall not tell him of his brother,

  born after his time. In her room

  we changed all the pictures.

  We couldn’t bear it any longer.

  I ended up giving his dog

  to a boy on the street.

  (silence)

  WALKING MAN:

  And after some time,

  whatever I do, you

  fossilize.

  Then I must

  carve you,

  time and again,

  out of the layers of stone

  in which you are

  cast. I must try very hard

  to want it—

  must carve myself for it, too,

  must fight—

  while my whole being

  shouts: Let go, it’s best

  this way. Let human nature

  do as it will, you must

  accept his fate, respect

  his border—

  But then I soon suspect

  myself: perhaps deep down

  I long for you

  to fossilize?

  To bleed no more.

  To not be

  so awake, so sharp,

  white-hot and

  everdead.

  But no less painful

  are the times when I succeed,

  when my imagination

  cleaves the hunk of stone until

  it cracks, then crumbles,

  falls around you,

  and then suddenly

  you are there:

  naked,

  breathtaking,

  glowing in the palm of rock,

  or merely standing,

  limp

  and incidental,

  you look this way

  and that, embarrassed, without knowing

  that I watch you: present,

  so present,

  neither promising nor

  disappointing, only

  coolly beating with the pulse

  of your calm being.

  Just warm

  enough.

  And living.

  Maddening.

  WALKERS:

  When we meet, if

  we meet,

  what shall I tell him?

  What shall I tell her?

  Do you think they know?

  Know what? That they

  are dead.

  DUKE:

  In August he died, and

  when that month was over, I wondered:

  How can I move

  to September

  while he remains

  in August?

  WALKERS:

  Perhaps we’ll simply

  face them, when we meet,

  without a word? Perhaps

  he’ll say that now he understands

  I only hit him

  for his own good? I might sing her

  the song I sang when she was

  just a baby. I want to get there

  soon, dear God. I’m afraid

  he’ll be a stranger

  to me. Rock-a-bye, baby,

  in the treetop, when the wind blows …

  Just to be there

  with her, just to be. I wish

  I could take him

  a bowl of tomato soup.

  WALKING MAN: No, no … It can’t be, it can’t be—

  WALKERS: It can’t be, it can’t be—

  WALKING MAN: It can’t be that it happened to me, it can’t be that these words are true—

  WALKERS: It can’t be, it can’t be—

  WOMAN IN NET: That I saw them throwing my boy into a pit in the earth—

  MIDWIFE: That I heard—thud-thud-thud—the sound of a hoe digging in the soil—

  WALKERS: It cannot be that these words are true, they cannot be the truth—

  WALKING MAN: It simply cannot be.

  MIDWIFE: Burn! Burn the words! Burn this miserable talk!

  WALKERS:

  We look up, we know

  just where to look, to the fire,

  the small fire,

  the constant flame,

  day and night it walks

  with us, we’re used to it.

  I, my friends, call it: the blaze.

  Forget it, those are just small embers,

  not anymore, not anymore,

  look at the fire, inside,

  it’s alive, it’s like life—

  Don’t move, wait, don’t anger it,

  it’s opening,

  peculiar, now

  stretching out, slowly

  slowly reaching hands, arms,

  my God, what is this,

  fingers—

  WOMAN IN NET: In the earth! The earth is where his little body rots!

  WALKERS:

  The air trembled loudly, the arms

  of fire bristled, froze briefly in a glowing,

  burning crystal, then started once again

  to spin, to flower in wild blossoms,

  then up above exploded

  in a rush of molten fire, waxed

  and roiled, above our heads

  the fingers spread, lines of fire

  flooded, slashed through

  shadows, images, and suddenly

  like whips they lashed, leaped, caught—

  caught whom—the words—

  the words? The miserable words,

  they devoured all the it-cannot-be,

  they swallowed all of it in fire, everything

  went up inflames, we shouted

  bitterly, a black-and-yellow flame

  shot up from deep inside us, then

  we fled—

  kept still—

  we screamed—

  we froze, while she—

  her flames of lionesses,

  dragons,

  snakes, we promised

  silence

  yet we screamed, we vomited

  a brew of words, horrendous

  words, it cannot be,

  it cannot be, and she—

  keeps thickly rising, bustling,

  rounds of fire chasing us, and

  now inside us, eyes of red

  and black, they open,

  tracking us, tongues

  burning, let her come and burn,

  damn words, she blackened memories, and scenes

  we have not dared to see for years, she ate them, gulped,

  a huge fire, swallowing and scorching, lapping

  in our gut,

  we barked, we wailed

  at the mad fire, take everything,

  take all of it, burn it to ashes

  while we suffocate in the smoke

  of words, the furnace—

  Weary,

  empty, standing,

  tripping, faces

  blackened as she dies

  down finally,

  then silence,

  silence, tiny flames

  abating, sated,

  shhhhh …

  asleep

  (pause)

  What, what was that?

  Was I dreaming? Sleeping?

  Look at me! I’m breathing!

  So light of limbs now suddenly, the body

  floats on air … Tell me, madam, am I

  dead? Alive?

  Your face, my woman. Touch me,

  touch. How strange,

  it’s smooth, just like

  it was

  before—

  Want—

  I want—

&
nbsp; I

  want, we want

  to wake up,

  to wake out

  of it, to wake into the light, I want

  to dip, to bathe my everything

  in light—

  You—

  All of you—

  Who cannot hear—who do

  not answer—lying heavy

  on our hearts—drawing

  out our blood—sucking every drop

  of life from us—collecting

  tax—a coldness tax—

  from every moment of our laughter—

  light—forgetfulness—

  distraction—you who whisper

  back each word we say from here

  And why?—Have you considered that?—Why did you

  become dead?—How could you be

  incautious?—You weren’t careful like we were—

  Why did you go and pick up that disease?

  And war,

  why did you go to war?—

  And to the waves—

  The razor—

  And how is it that you

  are dead, while we

  managed to stay alive?—Have you ever wondered

  what that means?—Perhaps it is not chance

  that you are there while we are here?—

  Might you have even done something that made you

  be this w-w-way?—

  You know what? We don’t even want to trouble ourselves

  with these thoughts!—We don’t even want to

  think of you!—We’ve thought of you

  enough!—We’ve thought enough

  of everything. Before it happened

  I didn’t even know there were

  so many thoughts!—Ahh, how many

  years, dear God—how many tears—

  So take—take—take your bundled bones—

  and get out—get out of our lives—

  Do you hear? Our lives!—

  You,

  All of you there—

  Die now!

  WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY:

  Quiet

  has come.

  The distant town

  slammed shut

  at once.

  As though

  there, too,

  they all stopped

  breathing.

  WALKING MAN: But who am I?

  COBBLER: Who are you?

  WALKING MAN: I think I was looking for something here.

  WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY:

  He left

  and he came back,

  he searched their faces

  for all

  that had been lost.

  He ran

  and circled

  them,

  and suddenly—

  he fell.

  WALKING MAN: Who am I?

  ELDERLY MATH TEACHER: Pardon me, sir, do you happen to recall who I am?

  COBBLER: Ma’am, any chance you remember—

  MIDWIFE: There was a baby, and another baby, and another … Did they all come out of me?