THE COURSE OF THE river above the falls is largely unknown, for the climb is arduous and at that point the road passes near and provides a view to satisfy most. The country on up to the headwaters has been walked by government men looking for clues to mineral deposits and to complete maps, but it remains unknown nevertheless. The illusion has been sustained, if one asks around or consults a topographic map, that it is well known; but I know this to be false. And I cannot help but marvel at how little care has been taken in making certain distinctions. For example, at the headwaters itself, farther up than is shown, ravens are meditating, and it is from them that the river actually flows, for at night they break down and weep; the universal anguish of creatures, their wailing in desolation, the wrenching anger of betrayals—this seizes them and passes out of them and in that weeping the river takes its shape.
Any act of kindness of which they hear, no matter how filled with trepidation, brings up a single tear, and it, too, runs down the black bills, splashes on small stones and is absorbed in the trickle. Farther along the murmur of fish enters, and the sensation of your hands on sheets of cold steel, the impenetrable wall presented by certain deep shades of blue, the sound of a crack working its way through a plate of English china; this sound, the sound of quick drawn breath, the odor of humus, an image of the earth hurtling through space with thought ripped from its surface, left floating like shredded fabric in its wake, the loss of what is imagined but uncared for—all this is wound among the tears of bending pain and moments of complete vulnerability in each of us to form, finally, visible water, and farther on a creek, limpid and cool, of measurable dimension.
I have in the past recounted these observations to audiences poorly chosen and have had to move on after the silent reception, a narrow-eyed, malevolent squinting behind me, as though I were waking to knowledge of a cobra in a dark room. But this does not disturb me. The images are irrefutable, requiring only patience to perceive. They come into view as easily as a book is hooked with a finger and pulled from a shelf. But perhaps you already know this.
In recent years I have spent considerable time above the falls, along what I believe to be an unknown section of the river. It is in some ways the most dangerous country, reverberating with hope, seducing in its simplicity. It is little traveled. I mean to examine things slowly and thoroughly there; as often as I have failed at it, gone running with gleeful intuition toward what seemed an answer, I have hauled myself back, returned again to a strict and ordered course. After the initial, difficult survey I began to examine short sections of the river one at a time in the hope—beguiling but achingly real—of a larger vision. I noted, therefore, which creatures frequented each portion of the bank, the kind and number of riparian plants, the shape and structure of pebbles, the time of breezes, as well as the small and easily missed traces of observations not my own. I strove to be complete in my examinations, yet to not lean toward arrogance or presumption. In this way I came to a bend in the river one day from which I could see a house, which I slowly approached.
It was painted gray, with deep blue shutters in the Cape Cod style. Four stories pitched against the side of a steep hill, the windows casement-hung with small panes of leaded glass. A broad porch, on which moved the teasing shadows of tree limbs. My hand took the white porcelain doorknob of a French door. Its glass tempered the light, as I closed it behind me, to the interior of the house. The floors were oak parquet, the rooms spacious with centered rugs of Indonesian hemp, as thick underfoot as moss. The walls were papered in such a way as to appear distant, ghostly, as though seen underwater, at times the light interrupted them altogether. They were—one of the things one remembers for no reason, with which one insulates himself against all that is unknown—Cockerell marbled papers, from England, elegantly designed and of those colors between primary and pastel that burst on you like a forgotten name or the taste of a peach.
The furniture consisted of a few pieces, thoughtfully placed. A chair or two, often set alone by a window, as though someone had been watching, had just stepped into another room, was listening now in a stillness that suggested canyons or regret. A woman’s bed, with a brass bedstead and a spread of soft chenille, white as sun-bleached seashells, on which, somehow, light was always falling and on which she and I would lie, trusting, and fall asleep in the afternoon.
In one or two of the rooms were tables, of the sort one might choose to sit alone at to write a letter. I would sit and watch the river move through the trees, my hands folded on the table or cupped in my lap, with a look (she would say) of dismay and acceptance.
We would dance. We would remove our shoes and with only that slight chirp of skin against the oak floor we would dance to an imagined music until we were brought around by a movement of wind through the house and in our ecstasy another rhythm: songs remembered from springs of celebration in country close by, where the oaks grew once, implacable, hosting sparrows, rising now out of the floor as though released again. In moments of vulnerability such as this we would not speak and hardly move. Strands of her hair stuck to my cheek, the sound of our breathing. Out of respect for the floor.
The trees outside barely moved, thoughts passing sub rosa leaf to leaf.
In a room I entered for the first time one fall I found a book. It was left open on the window sill, as though someone would return. It was printed in a language I do not know which I nevertheless read, page by page, as though sensing a promise in the very form of the words and sentences and the feel of the chapter breaks of imminent revelation. None was forthcoming and I abandoned this project.
We danced, most often. And in the evening I would tell stories. The way we desired each other became dance and stories, and the passion took us as deeply, left us embracing and protective.
In that time I do not remember ever being away, though I know I was. Even now in the memory of it I do not know where I am. I know that I still spend time in the upper part of the river and that those relationships I hold to be true, such as that between anguish and the birth of rivers, endure.
Farther up the river are the unfolding of other relationships, together with the loss of the promise of anything to be found. I have been led to believe that that is the reason no one goes up that far, though the promise, in its way, is kept. It is the walk home that is terrifying.