Falling Out of Time Read online

rolled in from afar,

  clouds blew toward me

  heavy, low, hiding the sky

  from my eyes. The walls

  of the pit drew close, closed in.

  The earth is learning—

  I sensed—measuring,

  gauging: how it might

  ingest me.

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  We will be punished. I shivered

  from the cold and fear. I thought:

  People must not do

  this sort of thing. I thought

  about my beloved jester,

  so miserable as he lies near me

  in this bed of earth. And all the while

  I felt the blood, blood dripping from me,

  flowing into soil, reaching

  all the way to him, seeping through his veins,

  then coming back to me and melding.

  Now it is our blood, and it is her blood now,

  and both of us

  conceive her

  once again

  from blood and earth.

  I became dizzy,

  and drowsy, and suddenly

  it seemed so light,

  as if time had also

  loosened its bite.

  I breathed. I slowly,

  slowly breathed. I hadn’t

  breathed like that since then.

  I haven’t ever breathed like this.

  My insides were exhaled,

  then drawn back to me

  like a gentle dance—

  WALKING MAN:

  Then I awoke

  from frenzied dreams

  that I could not remember.

  The sky turned

  lucent, the wall

  towered up to split it.

  I could not hear

  my earthen neighbors, did not know

  if they were here or gone.

  Though I was cold, my fingertips

  smoldered and hummed:

  I will not be—they pulsed. They murmured

  in ten voices, a cheerful choir:

  I will

  not be.

  One day,

  I will not beeee!

  And from within the will-not-be

  there rose the flavor

  of my being. I knew

  how much

  I had been,

  while I was. I knew

  down to my fingertips.

  It was wonderful

  to know, to remember:

  how very much

  I’d been,

  and how

  I would

  not be.

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  I hope I forget your name,

  my girl, the music of your name

  inside my mouth, the sweetness that would spread

  throughout my body.

  You were so small,

  yet so much in you to forget,

  and not to want a thing that was once

  yours,

  nor even you

  yourself—

  DUKE: Who is that? I think I recognized my jester’s voice.

  TOWN CHRONICLER: Indeed, my lord. It is I, your servant.

  DUKE: My soul mate.

  TOWN CHRONICLER: It’s been a long time since those days.

  DUKE: More than thirteen years since you imposed this terrible exile upon yourself. Now tell me about your daughter.

  TOWN CHRONICLER: I cannot, Your Honor. The day disaster struck, you ordered me to forget her.

  DUKE: My beloved friend, you know better than anyone that such an order could never have entered my mind. Tell me about her.

  TOWN CHRONICLER: No, no, my lord, I cannot. Your order still stands!

  DUKE: Then, jester, I order you: Forget her to my ears!

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  I forget her fine short hair.

  I forget her pink, translucent fingers.

  I forget she was my delicate, delightful girl.

  I forget the way she—

  the way you would get angry if I forgot

  to separate the omelet from the salad on your plate.

  And when I bathed you,

  you would cheer and slap the water with both hands,

  and I would lift you out and wrap your body

  in a soft towel and ask:

  Who is this strange creature inside?

  CENTAUR: My friend the chronicler talked and talked. A wellspring of forgotten gleanings erupted from him. From my window I looked out on the horizon. Between two hills I saw the vast, empty plain where the pits were dug. Fragmentary droplets shone in the starlight. The many branches of a single, giant tree swayed slowly in the wind, as if to welcome or to bid farewell.

  Then a shadow suddenly moved upon the plain. It was a woman extracting herself from the earth. She took a few slow, heavy steps. She stood hugging herself. Her head was slightly lowered.

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  Who will sustain her,

  who will embrace,

  if our two bodies

  do not

  envelop

  her?

  CENTAUR: She looked around, studied the wall at length, then disappeared down into the earth, into the neighboring trench. After a minute or two I saw a notebook hurled out of it. It flew through the air for a moment, its white pages swelling and glimmering in the darkness, then vanished.

  WALKING MAN:

  I thought about the earthly

  beings next to me. I thought

  about my son. The earth

  grew warm under my body.

  I spoke to him in my heart.

  At least we parted without anger—

  I told him—

  and without resentment.

  You loved us, and were loved,

  and you knew that you were loved.

  I asked if I could make one more request.

  I’d like to learn to separate

  memory from the pain. Or at least in part,

  however much is possible, so that all the past

  will not be drenched with so much pain.

  You see, that way I can remember more of you:

  I will not fear the scalding of memory.

  I also said: I must separate

  from you.

  Do not misunderstand me

  (I felt the stab of pain

  pass through him

  right in my own flesh)—separate

  only enough to allow

  my chest to broaden

  into one whole breath.

  I smiled, because I remembered

  that was what the teacher asked for.

  The ocean sky rustled,

  and a smile seemed to open up

  above me. Someone may have understood,

  or felt me. I breathed in

  the full night. The sky

  no longer weighed on me,

  nor did the earth,

  nor me myself.

  Nor you.

  You—

  where are

  you?

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  Perhaps I need no longer reach

  the very end of ways,

  the final destination?

  Perhaps this walk itself is both

  the answer and the question?

  Perhaps there is no there,

  my girl, perhaps, too, no more

  you?

  But as I lie here, in the belly

  of the earth, my pains abate

  for one brief moment

  and I feel and know

  how life and death themselves

  reach equilibrium inside me,

  blissfully attuned (oh, but how

  can my lips utter such vile words?!),

  until like night and day, or

  like the day of equinox,

  when winter meets its summer,

  the two mingle inside me,

  granting wisdom and precision,

  for which I paid a heavy price:

  your life—

  no,
no!

  A bitter,

  loathsome bargain,

  yet still, my girl—

  allow me to say this or else

  go mad—now, for the first time,

  I know not only what

  death is,

  but also what is life,

  and more than that,

  I see—

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  —how life and death

  stand face-to-face,

  cooing at each other.

  How they touch,

  braided with each other

  at their naked roots.

  How constantly they pour

  and empty each into the other—

  like a couple, like

  two lovers—

  the sap of

  their existence.

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  As they commingle,

  so two rivers flow

  into my confluence.

  I did not know, not this way,

  that life in all its fullness

  is lived only there,

  in borderland.

  It is as though I never yet

  have lived, as though all things

  that happened to me

  never really were, until

  you—

  WALKERS:

  Morning broke. Thin red

  clouds sailed through the sky.

  We slowly rose

  out of the tombs,

  stood nude

  outside the wall.

  And once again we thought

  we saw it tremble,

  a wave, transparent,

  passing up and all along it.

  We could not speak; our breath

  stood still: a wall

  of rock

  yet also

  so alive.

  MIDWIFE:

  A face—

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  There

  in the wall,

  in the stones,

  I see

  a face—

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  No, my dear,

  look here, at me. Here

  is the face,

  the warm, living body,

  while there—

  just a mirage

  begat by yearnings.

  TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:

  The face

  of a young woman,

  or a man,

  or a boy—

  DUKE:

  And it moves

  and it’s

  supple

  and alive.

  MIDWIFE:

  I must be dreaming, certainly.

  My God, is that a young man?

  Or a boy?

  Perhaps a girl?

  Girl, g-g-girl,

  please look

  at me …

  COBBLER:

  They are

  imprinted

  softly,

  as in beeswax

  or on leather—

  ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

  Or in reverie?

  Or in a dream? No,

  no, I am not wrong:

  it is a human face

  I see.

  WALKERS:

  A child, we saw

  a child’s face,

  for an instant, the hint

  of his forehead, sharp chin …

  We trembled, as did the child.

  Waves, shards of shapes

  flowed in the stones,

  bringing alive a relief

  that writhes

  and sways.

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  Or so it seems

  to hearts that crave?

  That rave?

  WALKERS:

  Is it simply swelling

  in the rock, or could it be

  a child’s tiny nose?

  A mouth opening wide

  or grimacing? Or just

  a fissure

  in the cleft of rock?

  A girl? Was it a girl

  who loomed above him

  and then vanished? Will she return?

  A girlish flicker

  hovered,

  dissipated,

  as if the little one had knocked

  just for a moment on the doors

  of actuality—

  then startled.

  As she fades, the boy’s face changes

  right before our eyes. It turns

  into the long, fine, gentle

  features of a youth.

  His profile turns toward us,

  slow, with endless wonderment.

  He looks straight at us,

  two eyebrows

  soft arches

  in the stone. His eyes

  black holes.

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  Minute by minute they are losing

  their minds. Look, people,

  look: It’s a wall!

  Slabs of rock!

  The faces you behold

  are merely

  phantasms of light,

  sleights of shade

  and stone—

  WALKERS:

  But they are so

  alive! They flicker

  with the flash of smiles,

  with questioning and sorrow,

  as if those longing, desperate faces

  wish to try out

  every last expression

  one more time,

  to thereby taste

  the potency

  of plundered feelings.

  Struck by our own hearts,

  our souls wrestled,

  struggled to break free,

  out of their prison,

  to pass from here

  to there … Seized

  by frenzy,

  cranes in cages

  were our souls,

  while in the sky

  a flock of birds

  passed by,

  migrating home.

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  It is the longing, I am sure,

  it is the longing that deranges

  my own mind as well.

  Listen to me, listen:

  only our longing

  sculpts our loved ones, living,

  flickering.

  Yes, there, look—there!

  In the reliefs

  of stone—

  WALKERS:

  And more than anything, the mouths.

  Moving, moving constantly, gaping,

  rending, twisting,

  rounding … Perhaps

  in supplication?

  To whom?

  Or imprecation?

  Upon whom?

  CENTAUR: Damn it all, if only I could be with them! If only I were there, not sitting here writing and writing! I would ram the wall and tear it down, I would break in and I would—

  WALKERS:

  And their bodies, are they

  pushing, driving

  at the wall? Fighting? Against whom?

  And what? Or struggling

  to thrust their way

  back here?

  TOWN CHRONICLER:

  Or like a small child

  waking, still addled,

  draped in dream, beating

  at his mother’s chest,

  clinging,

  beating, beating,

  hugging …

  WALKERS:

  We saw an arm,

  a slender shoulder, then a knee,

  another, then two buds

  sprouted, mounded,

  a young girl’s sharp new breasts.

  Above them was her face,

  which slowly turned

  into a smiling boy’s,

  the pair of breasts became

  two babies’ faces,

  boy and girl.

  Long hands were laid

  and ten thin fingers

  spread themselves around

  the boyish face. His nose,

  it seemed, pressed up against

  the dimness of a win
dow

  as he tried to

  penetrate the depths

  of darkness

  with his gaze.

  Was he trying? Did they try

  to call us? Or to warn us?

  Perhaps we, too,

  from there, seemed

  merely faint outlines,

  fighting our way

  out of solid rock—

  Terror,

  terror fell upon us.

  Soon it all will vanish.

  We must run now,

  sink our faces

  in the wall, breach it,

  pull them,

  tear them

  out—

  We froze. We did

  not move! If only

  we could speak to them, we thought,

  we’d tell them everything

  we did not say when they

  still lived. Or else

  we’d shout at them

  through the lips of the hole

  rent in us, through which

  our life

  seeps out

  in throbbing

  surges.

  CENTAUR: The walking man suddenly fell on his knees at the wall and whispered his son’s name. There was no voice in his whisper, only a gaping mouth and torn eyes. In my room, I felt a sharp blade fly over here from there and slice me in two. Through my swoon of pain I heard behind me, from within the piles of objects, the voice of a small child who said quietly, softly murmuring:

  BOY:

  There is

  breath

  there

  is breath

  inside the pain

  there is

  breath

  CENTAUR: I stood up on my feet. I walked around the room. I picked up this or the other object and touched it, stroked it, brought it to my lips. Then I went back and stood at the window. I could see very well using a pair of binoculars I found in one of the piles: the walker’s whisper seemed to reap the other walkers. Like him, they, too, fell to their knees, the midwife and the cobbler, the elderly teacher, the net-mender and the duke, the town chronicler and his wife. And each and every one of them, each and every one of us, called out, whispered, to his child:

  WALKERS:

  Lilli—

  Adam? My little

  Lilli—Michael—Oh, my child,

  my sweet, my lost one—Hanna,

  Hanna, look here—Sorry, Michael,

  for hitting you—

  Adam, it’s

  Dad—Uwi—

  My speck of life—

  We awoke

  lying on the ground.

  The wall

  stood no longer.

  Perhaps it had never been

  there. Perhaps nothing

  of what we saw

  really was.

  But then a strange thought

  passed through

  all of us,

  elusive yet acute,