The last entry of this thesis will be a look at Gilda’s death. More has been written on this event than any other aspect of her life. The controversy is fierce, with different factions taking multiple sides, launching volleys at their enemies and erecting towers to defend their particular theories. I cannot do justice to the many divergent views on her demise. I am convinced that dissertations will be written for centuries to come about her end.
We have spent some time in this thesis examining her life from different sides and I will now try to outline the two main schools of thought that interpret her life from opposite poles. Of course there are branches, nuances, and forks off of these two threads, but most fall into one of the two camps.
In the first, call it A, Gilda was mentally ill. Psychotic and profoundly disturbed. A few speculate she was bipolar.1 In Vietnam she was a camp whore. The rat story was cover for deep psychological trauma, or an outright lie. Her death was nothing but an orchestrated Christ-complex. Researchers of this persuasion see her death as a manic episode in a life that demanded constant construction from the ground up of a narrative that began in her imprisonment and continued to grow and develop in the years after. To them the surrounding detailed story was largely a mythology perpetuated by Lake’s refusal to face the truth of Gilda’s madness. In other versions, Lake was an actual accomplice in Trillim’s deceptions. This faction also tends to discount Trillim’s creative work. Although this is not universal. A preponderance of the A school does not recognize the literary worth of her strange minimalist novels. They see them as mere “word lists,” as critic Melvin Steward claims, “with no more meaning than what my wife intends when she hands me a note detailing what groceries I should pick up on my way back from the university.”2 Margery Tobkin says, “Whatever meaning people take from her novels, is nothing more than what they put into her work. Trillim is like a funhouse mirror that distorts and returns again what is put into it. It reflects nothing that was not there in the first place.”3 This group is the most dominant faction in American and Western European Trillim studies. This perspective is overtly naturalistic. Its advocates do not hold with any of the mystical elements that Gilda’s story demands if taken at face value. This group has also produced a number of psychoanalytic interpretations of Gilda’s writings, casting them with a Freudian or Lacanian spin to try to offer interpretations on what she was doing in her outrageous claims and stories (for examples see Sandra Lightfoot’s excellent review4). I have read many of these and find them fascinating and in some ways compelling. Their views are constructed carefully. They pay attention to intriguing details in her life that seem to make a strong case for a troubled and unstable personality disorder that, after Vietnam, descended to a clearly manifest mental illness. They are all grounded in thoroughly naturalistic interpretations of the events in her life.
The second faction, B, believes that Gilda must be taken on her own terms. Her words are those of a sincere seeker, neither mentally ill nor a charlatan creating an elaborate hoax. I must admit that I am of this persuasion. Having spent a great deal of time poring over her journals, reading her letters, and seeking to understand her views, I find a deep sincerity in her voice. She never shies away from painting herself as imperfect or off kilter, and seems to expose her deepest questions with curiosity and with an authenticity that strikes me as genuine. She was troubled. That is clear. But did it lead to the kind of psychosis that the A group promotes? I don’t think so. Indeed, I think the A machine exists solely because her account has no place in their Umwelt. It is a kind of naturalistic heresy that brokers no explanation in the tick-tock world of matter in motion. A rat choir breaks all the rules of parsimony. It tramples on Popperian science. It bulldozes over materialistic regularities like so many sandcastles before a rising tide. What do we make of Gilda and her rats? Those who look for alternative explanations jump through a maze of hoops to ignore the simplicity of her story and construe madness as the best explanation for what she relates. With no other corroboration for this view in any other aspect of her life, they must assume madness from the story itself. They then spend much time spinning why it manifests itself in no other way, while those who believe her story get to have a consistent and compelling Gilda at every stage.
I must admit accepting her story requires a bit of creative framing. And there’s the rub. One can keep naturalism, but then one loses the parsimony and is required to construct a shaky house around the multiple events in which she is acting more or less as any of us would. Yet by accepting her ‘as is’ one enters into a strange Twilight Zone-like world where the foundation of one’s understanding about how the universe works requires a new framework. Neither option is appealing. I suppose that’s why the two groups continue to contend—either way the evidence is just not there to render a verdict. One requires a complete rewriting of naturalistic metaphysics, the other a complete contextualization of the reported events and the addition of multiple ad hoc hypotheses: madness, bouts of sanity, conspiracies among actors, e.g., Babs Lake, Gilda, travel magazines accounts of praying rats that one must argue correlate only loosely with Gilda’s story, the creation of a rat music, and in the end, explaining her novels as meaningless lists, while at the same time sensing a profound artistic ability in her paintings, poetry, and other written works. Both groups are forced to give up precious things.
Neither option seems like a good one. Perhaps someone will offer a tertian quid, but for now I find it easier to swallow the Trillim I know from her texts and paintings than the one constructed by those who don’t want to believe her own narrative.
Now on to her death.
Trillim’s Death
In March of 1996, it appears Gilda may have been diagnosed with a serious disease. She had been spending summers in the La Sals; however, after her mother died in 1989, she started spending winters in Wisconsin with Babs’s family. These years are poorly documented. Gilda became less interested in keeping a detailed journal and focused on her books. Whatever the disease was, there is no direct reference to it in her writings. My interviews with Babs’s aged parents suggest it may have been a type of cancer. We do know she went to Grand Junction, Colorado for two days. This was unusual. The hospital there had a fire that destroyed most of the records in 1999, so we don’t have direct evidence once again that she was there, but there is enough circumstantial evidence that it appears likely. This evidence has been carefully examined in Karen Franks’s 2008 study on this issue.5 It was during this time that Trillim wrote her starkest and darkest works.
While most scholars buy the story that Trillim had some form of cancer or degenerative disease, I will offer my interpretation after examining Babs’s description of her last days. That spring Gilda began to sell off many of the things she loved: her home in Moab and many of her possessions. She also deeded her cabin near Buckeye to Babs. Following this, she and Babs flew to Thailand with apparent intentions for it to be an extended visit. Some speculate it might have been some sort of treatment with alternative medicine not available in the US.
Now, as most of the details have been hashed over and over again, I’ll let the full tale of Gilda’s demise be told through Babs Lake’s letter from Bangkok to her mother, dated November 3, 1996.
My heart is breaking into so many pieces. When I called you last week with the horrible news of Gilda’s death, you offered to fly out here to be with me. I told you I was OK. I’m not. Please don’t come, though, I’m coming home soon—I’ve put the details at the end of this. I feel so lost in this foreign land. And without Gilda I’m not coping well. I should come home sooner but it will be a few days—I need to understand what happened. I need to watch to see if the rats come back. I need to understand their song. To hear what Gilda heard. To understand how they remember her. I know this sounds crazy. It sounds crazy to me too.
The day before she left she seemed more chipper and lighthearted than I’d seen her in ages. She made jokes and appeared almost giddy with excitement. She was like a little girl. Of course, she wanted to come here ever since she read about the singing rats many years ago, but her excitement seemed beyond even this. I should have realized something was up, but I was just so pleased with her mood I didn’t want anything to spoil it, especially with some ill-founded suspicion that she was masking what she really was going through.
Mom we don’t drink a lot, but that night Gilda kept plying me with Lao-Lao a local Saki. She was making toasts and tossing them down. I now suspect she was not drinking at all, but knocking me out so she could make a clean getaway. It worked.
It was almost noon before I could crawl out of bed. My head felt like someone had split it open with an oak beam and filled it with cotton. Even the smallest noises sounded like a jackhammer going off in the room. I sat on a chair trying to gather my wits, asking for Gilda, but getting no reply. When I realized she was not in the hotel room I didn’t think anything of it—I just assumed that she had gone out for some supplies, or for a quick snack. About three o’clock, I started to get a little worried. I took a long hot shower and dressed. It was now nearly four. I was just looking for the room keycard to go out and see if I could find her when I noticed that she had left a note on the writing desk. This is what she said,
Dearest Babs,
You are on the bed snoring. You look lovely.
I must go see the rats myself. I can’t explain, but this is something I must do alone. Please don’t take offense. It’s not that I don’t want you there, it’s just that … I can’t explain. Just trust me. I’ll be back in three days. Just go to the Chatuchak Market and shop to your heart’s content. I’m fine. Really. I feel better than I have in months. I have to do this alone.
Love,
Gilda
I called the concierge and he confirmed that Gilda had arranged for a 6 am flight to Sakon Nakhon and had taken the shuttle to the airport very early that morning. The next flight was not until the same time the next day. I hung up not knowing what to do. Gilda has traveled the world. I knew she could handle herself. I felt hurt that she wanted to do this alone, but I understood. But I was overwhelmed with terror for her because I was afraid that seeing the rats again would trigger some terrible anxiety or flashback to the awful things she suffered, and that would send her over the edge. If that happened she would need me there. I had to be with her. But what if I flew out there and could not find her? I didn’t know where she was staying. I paced back and forth in indecision for a long time. When I finally made up my mind it was nearly time to go to the airport. I left a quick note in case Gilda returned before I did and fled the hotel.
It was the longest flight of my life. Every minute was agony. When I arrived I did not know what to do. I’d brought nothing but my small book bag filled with some necessities. I stared at the wall of taxi drivers, hawkers, and pickpockets (I supposed) waiting outside the barrier separating the small baggage claim area from the outside world and burst into tears. I sat on the ground and just bawled. A kind Thai gentleman in an extremely expensive business suit who had just picked up his bag off of a luggage cart stopped and squatted beside me and said in nearly flawless English, “Can I be of any help?”
I don’t remember what I said, but I know I spilled my guts, fears, and terror out in one very, very long sentence. He listened patiently then said, “Here is what you will do. I will share a taxi with you to the Dusit Hotel. It is very nice and they speak English very well. You will check in there. There I will arrange for a driver to take you to the Wat where you think your friend may be. He will wait all day until you are ready to return.”
He helped me up and I waied and cried and he waied back with a big smile. He was as good as his word. I soon found myself riding in the back of a taxi to the Wat Phra That Choeng Chum where Gilda believed the singing rats would be found. I was so anxious I could not enjoy the ride. The forested landscape only reminded me that this must be very similar to the place Gilda had been held captive for so many years and left me wondering what effect this might have had on Gilda when she arrived.
We pulled up to the Wat and oh, Mom, there she was like a miracle shining in the sun, her floral dress catching the breeze. I walked over hesitantly, afraid I was in for a lecture or worse for having followed her, but when she saw me her eyes lit up and she hugged me and said strangely, “I knew you would find me.”
All I could answer was, “Of course. I’ll always find you.”
“I know. That’s why I called you here. I needed you to be with me for this.”
“You did not call me here. You tried to run away from me!”
“No. I called you to me by running away.”
“I never understand you.”
“Come. See this.”
She took me by the hand and led me into the Wat.
It was filled with large rats. They were everywhere. Gilda told me the stories of her experience with rats in Vietnam, but the raw reality was beyond anything I expected or that I can even now describe.
Involuntarily, I let out a scream and backed out of the ruin saying, “Eww!”
I have known Gilda for many years and I would have bet my vinyl record collection against a jellyroll that I had seen every face she could muster, but the amalgamation of horror and reproach that contorted her face made me step back in fright.
However her anger quickly faded and she said, “Oh Babs. These are my friends.”
We went back into the temple together and we watched the rats scurrying about, eating grain provided by the monks, getting into occasional tussles over some scrap or some favored position in some hierarchy visible only to them. Every once in a while they would sing, which would delight the visitors thereby. But it was not like Gilda’s or the travel magazine’s version. They did not take up special positions. Instead a few would start squeaking, and this would spread like a wave to the others, who would offer a few chirps and it would ripple through the rats and it would die down again. It all seemed rather accidental, despite how unusual and otherworldly. When it had gone quiet again, whatever people remained would clap with delight. Every time this happened, I looked at Gilda. She would frown and seem confused as she watched this display. Tourists were passing in and out, but we remained. As the afternoon stretched into evening and these visitors thinned then finally abated, Gilda suddenly raised her arms in dramatic fashion like a conductor calling an orchestra to attention, her eyes fixed on the rats milling about the temple, and her posture full of intent. Yet they did not so much as look at her. She made the same motions again, then again. She looked at me and in a panic said, “I don’t understand. Yesterday they let me lead them in song just like I used to.” She tried again several times, but to no avail.
She did not answer but a look of hope graced her brow for a second.
Forgive me, mother, but for the first time I wondered if there was something wrong with her mind. I worried that she may be slipping into madness, but then if it was madness it must have been a long one because she often told of her time with the rats. She seemed so normal in every respect. And now so broken in retrospect.
We took a cab back to her hotel and picked up her things and then came back to mine, which had a much larger room. She seemed so strange and withdrawn. Her face was white and pale. I was frightened and I suggested we get something to eat, but she said she wasn’t hungry.
She got a strange look on her face and said almost in a whisper, “I’m dying.” I chided her and told her she had a long time yet. That she was just sad the rats had not sung and that I was sure they would sing tomorrow.
She smiled sadly and said, “Babs whatever happens just know it is for the best.” Now I was crying and telling her in no uncertain terms that she should quit talking like this. That we were going back to Bangkok and that this had been a bad idea from the start and that we even ought to go back to the States. She became quiet and subdued like she was literally detaching from the world. She reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of her mother’s scriptures—an enormously thick work that contained the entirety of the Mormon canon: Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. She opened it up and asked me to read something to her. It was from the New Testament.
I refused and pushed the scriptures back into her hands. I told her that I’d had enough of this seriousness and that we were going to go get something to eat: “You can’t do this to me now. You are acting really really weird.”
She finally consented and we went out into the night. We stopped and had some fish head soup in a coconut broth and Thai steamed rice. I’m not sure she had eaten since she arrived and I knew this would do her a world of good. In Thailand it is the tradition when you begin a meal to first take a small bite of rice to show gratitude for the gift of this vital grain. Gilda picked up a bit of rice with her chopsticks and raised it to her lips then paused and offered it to me instead. I took it gladly then I offered her a similar offering from my plate. For some reason this made her silly with delight. The mood shifted to one of strange gaiety. The food was delicious; we were laughing and telling jokes. Some people in the karaoke bar next door were singing rounds of Elton John songs, songs that both Gilda and I loved, and we found ourselves singing along; Tiny Dancer, Daniel, and a few others. The singers varied, but for the most part, and despite heavily accented English, they were quite good. When finally they sang Candle in the Wind, with Gilda and me adding our poor harmonies, I looked up and I found Gilda crying. I noticed I was too. She reached over and took my hand, then took her napkin and pressed it against my eyes.
“You remember this night, OK?”
She said it with such pathos and so emphatically that I could do nothing but nod and add, “I won’t forget. But you remember it too.”
She finally smiled, her teary eyes lit from the bright lights surrounding the restaurant and said, “Of course.”
We walked through the bustle of the town arm-in-arm and came to a place offering foot massages. The funny thing was she insisted we go get one. She had to talk me into it, as I was not really too keen on the idea of having a stranger playing with my feet. But for Gilda’s sake I followed her through the red door emblazoned with a golden dragon. She went first so I could watch. They soaked her feet in a bowl of steaming water then washed them with soap and dried them with a thick white towel. After, they took a delightfully strange smelling oil, the odor of which I have nothing to compare. It seemed neither floral nor pungent like eucalyptus, but it was not unpleasant. Just different. They rubbed her feet for about fifteen minutes. Next it was my turn. I sat on the chair and placed my feet in the warm water. It felt amazing. When it was time to wash them however, Gilda insisted that she be the one to wash my feet. I protested, but she was very insistent and given how worried I was about her and because she seemed to be having so much fun I let her do it. The Thai woman who was going to rub my feet protested but a 10,000 baht bill from Gilda backed her off quickly.
Gilda took off her skirt and wrapped the big towel around her and knelt on the wet cement floor. It was not an especially dirty floor but the soap and water of a thousand customer’s feet lingered there and the possibility of an infection or a fungal disease was all I could think about. I was protesting but she quieted me and washed my feet with the soap, dried them, and then rubbed both of my feet with the fragrant oil. I tried to relax and it did feel good, but I was worried about Gilda, nervous, and not thrilled with her doing this. Frankly I was glad when it was over. But it took a while because she was determined to give me the full treatment.
As she massaged my feet she told me a story of when she was in Norway living in the old farmhouse up on one of the fjords. She said she was thinking about the connections between things both animated and unanimated. One day, she said, she was gazing up the steep sides of the cliffs that framed that little hamlet, looking at the trees, the rocks, the water, the beauty of the white snow, the houses, and all the things, all the objects linked to varying degrees, some tightly bound like the trees in the soil, or some loosely—the road she stood on, the water of the sea that lapped the sides of the pier at the end of the road. Then she looked up from the floor and said, “We never really realize all our connections do we? And we never even realize what we are? Or how time structures all the connections that frame and define us.” It struck me as strange and irrelevant. Here we were in the tropics and she is talking about Norway and connections between things. She looked up from my feet and smiled and said as if she were reading my mind, “It’s just that the rats will need rituals. Something to sing about. Something to ground their practice and performance. They need a memory.”
“I’m not following,” I said this curtly. I wanted to understand what she was saying but it really was making no sense.
She smiled up at me, “I know. I’ll be quiet.” Then she continued to rub my oiled feet. Looking back, I wonder why these were her last thoughts. Why did she make this her last real conversation with me?
When it was over she replaced my shoes, replaced her skirt, took me by the arm, and led me back out into the street. The events of the day were starting to wear on me. The lack of sleep. The panicked flight from Bangkok. The strange arrival. The events at the temple. Gilda’s bizarre and upsetting behavior had all worn me to a frazzle and I started to feel panicky and anxious. I told her so and she agreed it was time to return to the hotel and rest.
I made her take a shower because she had knelt in that filthy foot washing water and she did not argue. I was sitting on the bed watching CNN-International on the TV, but she came over with those scriptures in her hand and handed them to me, “Now will you read me something?” I agreed and she opened it to Luke: 22: 19–20, which reads:
19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.
“What does remembrance here mean?” she asked formally. Socratically.
“I’m dying. I’m emptied out.”
“No you are not.”
“You know I am.”
“Well you’re not dying this minute.”
She didn’t answer, but flipped to an opened section of the scriptures and handed me the book. I refused, “Look, let’s get some sleep. Things will look much better in the morning. I’m so tired.” And I was. The events of the last 48 hours had been too much for me. She gave me a long sweet hug and kiss on the top of my head as if she were tucking in a child. “Go to sleep. We’ll see what the morning brings.”
Oh, Mom if I could just go back to the moment, I would have held onto her with all my strength and never let her go. But instead I fell asleep. I knew she was distraught. I knew she was worried about dying, but I fell asleep anyway. I was so tired.
About three in the morning I awoke with a start and knew something was wrong. Gilda was gone again. I never for a second doubted where she had gone. I jumped into my clothes, ran out of the hotel and flagged down a taxi and commanded them to get me to the rat Wat as fast as they could drive.
Dear, dear, mom, when I arrived all was in chaos. There were police cars with lights flashing scattered everywhere and a crowd of people had gathered from the village. I tried to find out what was going on but no one spoke English. I kept asking and asking until I found a young monk, about twenty, who spoke passable English. He said, “Rats attack some person. Very bad.” I frantically dragged him with me to the temple. There was a crowd of policemen and monks all hovering over a large spot of blood and next to it one of Gilda’s shoes and a good number of dead rats. I screamed and passed out.
I awoke to the young monk patting my cheek and repeating, “Miss. Miss.” I awoke to the horror that Gilda was gone. This is what happened? I got this from the young monk who translated for me from what another monk told him.
He said that shortly after midnight Gilda arrived and woke up the monk caretaker who directs the temple. She demanded he open the gate and let her into the shrine. He refused, but she was insistent, acting like it was life or death and finally he relented after she paid an extra fee for the late hour (a bribe). He said she came into the place and asked that he leave. He saw no reason not to, so he departed. He checked about an hour later and she was listening to the rats sing as they did every so often. He thought nothing of it and only stayed a minute and left again. He slept for a bit. He came back after another hour and she was lying on her back, her arms outstretched letting the rats run over her. She looked up at him and angrily pointed to the door, yelling for him to get out. Which he did. When he returned, he came upon a scene of grizzly horror. Hundreds of rats had nearly eaten her up. As he stood frozen at the sight, he said a rat would run over, take a large bite, be it bone or flesh, then run back to where it had been sitting on the wall, but there were many many rats each snatching a morsel and running back to their original position. He grabbed a broom and tried to drive them off but they attacked him and he ran for help. He called the police and rang the village bell that alerts people to a fire. Many people came at the sound of the alarm, but by the time they arrived Gilda had been wholly devoured by the rats. They managed to kill a good number before the rats fled from the temple.
Oh, mom, when I called you that night, I know I was a wreck but I think you can see why. Gilda is gone. I cannot get my head around it. Somehow I think she intended this. That she thought she was dying and that somehow she induced the rats to do as they did to her beloved friend Fatty Lumpkin. Or worse in a moment of insanity she believed she was the shepherdess of rats and had to die for them like Jesus and that is why she had me read the scriptures she did the night before. I have looked at where she was going to have me read, and it is these verses from John 15 which were marked with a red pencil:
11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
And then this one from John 17:
11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
Except she has crossed out “Holy Father” with just “Mother.”
I’m sick Mom. I did not see her madness. I should have. I knew she thought her death was imminent, but maybe I just did not want to believe it. Maybe I was blind to what she really knew. I’m so, so sad and broken. I’ve got the only thing that survives her being devoured—her bloody shoe. I’m going to bury it near the cabin in the La Sals. What I don’t know is if she died while blessing the rats, for that is what I believe she was doing laying on the floor with her arms outstretched, or if she took her own life first. It’s all lost in events that cannot be recovered by anyone’s memory. Only Gilda and the rats know what happened. Did she intend this? How wicked of her! How mean. How cruel to leave me behind like this! Mom, I’m so mad. I’m so hurt. It makes no sense. We had such a wonderful night? What has she done?
Mom. I’m so heartbroken. I’m crying all the time and did not stop for a second as I wrote this. That is why it looks like it has been submerged in water and dried. Because it has been.
I’ll leave for the States next week; I’ve already made arrangements. I’m sending this by Federal Express. I fly into Chicago at 2:25 on DL 2348 from LA. I love you Mom. I’m a wreck, but I’m OK. I’ll make it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to follow her into the darkness. I’m just never going to get over this. Ever.
Love,
Babs