FIFTEEN

The World

[Early Spring, 2006]

“We’ve considered the embodied form, a thing embryonic, multi-limbed, hands and feet, arms and legs, what have you – these may still not be enough, time will tell – but still, the first word spoken when first awakening, when the eyes first open, when you recognize that you are there, and human, and there again, and still human, and perhaps this is necessary, the first word – you understand? – what you can scarcely help but say: that there is a body. Yes, this. That this may be necessary, all of this. In any event, it seems we haven’t got much choice. It could be you’ve thought about this also, this need, how nothing seems possible unless you have a body to carry yourself around in. Do you know what I mean?”

The old man beside me on the bus probably did not, but he smiled and nodded all the same. He seemed a friendly and agreeable sort, the sort you might hope to meet traveling on a fine spring morning; dew on the ground, dew on the trees – what trees there were – the ice beginning at last to thaw and unfix the mud expanse of the courtyard.

I continued to explain. “I wasn’t always myself, you know. Not me, but not anyone else either. Not exactly. When human again, at last…” I found I didn’t know quite how to continue. Could my companion relate to not being human? Being human, sure, but not being human? Otherwise, why bring it up at all? Of course, being human, or something like it… “Well, don’t worry about that. I was simply less than myself. But now that I am that thing, and I have a body, and am walking – or no, actually, well, sitting right now, never mind – but metaphorically, say, walking toward some horizon – I forget which one – with my arms, hands, stretched out before me, feeling that dying warmth of the sun, now setting – yes, now it sets – and we must be facing west, aren’t we…?” Though the bus in fact traveled east, along an empty road leading out from the city toward the airport, and my elderly companion shifted slightly in his seat, his face showing no particular discomfort. He was in fact quite entirely placid and serene, unruffled by the American who now sat beside him talking incessantly, unable to stop. He smiled, he nodded, yes. “What was I saying?” I asked, though this last was more to myself than him. “Oh yes, the body, the self, right. Well, that I was not myself, and not anyone else either, and moreover a body, a self disunited – though this isn’t the case anymore; I’m much better now, thanks…”

“You… are…” the old fellow said in a quavery voice, surprising me, since these were the first words I’d heard from him, and I’d assumed he’d not spoken any English at all, “the… police?”

I took stock of the items that I wore, however poorly: the badge, the hat, the heavy, holstered gun. “Well,” I said hesitantly, “yes? What else?”

I looked around us at the others who rode this crowded bus. Though some few noticed our conversation, those eyes which sought us just as quickly looked away again as soon as they were met. Those other bodies, sat or standing, hands clasped to safety straps, jostled with the vehicle’s shuddering movements, the vagaries of the road.

My friend continued, “Perhaps then… you go home…” An arm raised slowly made a sweeping gesture with his hand just above, but not touching, the crown of his head.

Home. Yes. He’d understood, then, what I meant, and was looking for – far better than I’d imagined – and this need, now, to leave the city; how, though what I’d found here, helpful as it was, was not sufficient. “Yes!” I said, excitedly. “Home! To the valley. I’ve learned this much. Not the mountain. You see, I’ve made that mistake before. I’d thought… I was… But no, that wouldn’t work out, would it? However, the valley? Of course, that’s different. In the valley… well, that’s different.” I felt that it would be better if I could explain myself to him more fully, and more to the point. “Listen… We sat facing ourselves, he and I. Or no, I… and I. We sat facing ourselves… and the evidence, what we found, it was specific, specific enough. We’d, I’d… found it in his remaining documents. The sheriff, he’d left enough documentation that the rest of it, if not spelled out explicitly, could be inferred. The valley. That would have to be the place then, wouldn’t it? In the valley, yes…”

The old man nodded serenely.

“Yes,” I agreed. “This is our home. In the valley. The place of the like-kind. Our people. Ourselves. Where ourselves meet ourselves and are recognized. So few have this opportunity, in life. We think, oftentimes, that we might meet ourselves, in life. And when that doesn’t happen, the sense of disappointment… it’s too much. No one can bear that, that we haven’t found this thing. Finally, though, let me tell you…” I leaned in closer – not so close as to threaten my new friend, but closer, enough to make my point heard and heard clearly. “It wasn’t our choice, was it, to leave? Ultimately we did leave. First, we had to leave the mountain, for we did not find there what we sought. Do you understand? Next – now – we’ve left the empty rooms in these strange and empty buildings, these places where nothing can happen, where everything is still and the world has not been made. We did all this, not because it was our choice, no. Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t our choice. Choice was not ours, and we could not choose. In the embodied form…”

The old man had fallen asleep.

“In this embodied form,” I continued, now in a whisper, since I didn’t want to disturb him, “certain agencies are necessary, agencies and exigencies. How else are we to know ourselves? When will we see ourselves? How else can we know… that the right thing… is to leave? They will come to us then. They come and show us the way out. They show us to the door, and if we did not know the door, they will show it to us, and tell us, now is the time, now you go. This is one way of knowing. To be told like this, by these… these… very small people. Do you see? This is a way of knowing that we are brothers in this world. This one. And that it is time.”

•

The airport was a bare block square in concrete, and I was able to read in the red large letters above its entrance CHINGGIS KHA – in the moment between being flung from the bus by the driver and hitting the pavement. I was lucky enough to land on my rucksack and not my face, and struggled, amidst the laughter of strangers, who filed out around me, to recover my crushed Stetson from the wind and get back to my feet.

Up again, limping a little, I found my way into the building and faced the board of departures and arrivals. When I first looked, all was in Russian, a language senseless to me. But when I banged my head with the ham of my hand and looked again, the words were re-arranged into a Roman alphabet, duplicated in English, and all was sensible enough. I shuffled forward across the tiled floor and toward the MIAT ticket counter where a young woman in uniform stood, and I said to her, “Good evening. Everything is well. Love and substance are the words of recommendation, and they will turn this world – this one – into colors, from red to blue and back again. I know this, having come from the sea. I’ve risen to rest on the rocks of this beach, up on the land, up on the flat earth, to breathe the air and adjust. Yes, I adjust. But sleep has not yet come, and I will not tell you the future, no matter how you ask, so please, don’t bother. I’ve learned my lesson, believe me. I won’t destroy you that way.”

The woman cocked her head to one side and raised an eyebrow, reminding me of someone. She was pretty. That thought came to me from somewhere, as if dropped into my head, and in those words: She Is Pretty. It was not untrue. But that thought, in those words, and the fact of her prettiness were two separate things, and did not otherwise seem related.

“Do you know,” I asked her, “that I was two people before? I’m not now – I’m no one now – and everything is so much better. Listen! I feel alive! Unsteady? Well, sort of, yes, but alive! The difference is between the one thing and the other thing. It always is. You must know something about that, yourself. A woman, a woman – one who is pretty, yes, like they say – you must know something of that. I’ll bet that you do! But can you understand why it is that I need to get to the desert? Where there is only the one thing and not the other? Can you see that it must be this way? Why I have no choice?”

She blinked. Her eyes, unusually large, or so they seemed, held little but the curiosity of one thinking creature for another, of what or how they might think. Otherwise, her face remained impassive. She may have understood me entirely, or she may have understood me not at all. I couldn’t tell.

“I have nothing,” I explained.

As if in acceptance, she nodded slowly. Her straight, dark hair slid from behind an ear, and she brushed it back with the graceful sweep of a hand.

“I have nothing,” I repeated, “but I am as wide, and as empty, as any room. I have been studying, and studying greatly, and have acquainted myself with the fundaments of law. Were I a worthy law man, I may be a better man, but my career was short-lived, and in all honesty I was never well-suited to the station. And yet I find myself again so bedecked, adorned, and suitably decorated, and you are witness – these articles: those belonging to a police man, a law man. A man…” I felt myself grasped by strong hands from either arm and pulled back, away from the counter. The ticket agent’s eyes remained on mine. She looked into me, not coldly, not without compassion – yet these things may have been hard to read – but with that same curiosity, however abstract, of one creature for another creature of a different kind; one whose threat, if ever real, had been neutralized. “A man…” I continued, as I was pulled away, “of some, or any sort?”

The guards carried machine rifles and wore bulletproof jackets. They held me tightly enough that I could not move either arm at all, neither could I move myself in any direction but where they led me. But I had no inclination to struggle; I simply went where I was taken, and there was nothing besides this I wanted anyhow. The day was long, and as long was the day, it was full of wonders.

•

The room where they took me was as long as it was wide, its floor tiled, lit by fluorescents, and cold; coldly unfurnished except for a few cold folding chairs and a cheaply-constructed folding table with false wood grain, where a grim-looking official sat, his face dour, his complexion sour, his eyes dark, flat, watery pools of indifference. I was pressed down to sit in the chair opposite him, where the two of us faced one another, and for a time, said nothing.

The two security men with their rifles stood back near to the door, remaining in the room to either side of me. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there.

The official at the table scowled at me, lips downturned, brow furrowed. He seemed very unhappy.

I smiled a small, shy smile.

His expression did not change.

My smile faltered.

Since he was a small man, rather smaller than myself, to look into my eyes, for him, meant to look up slightly. His eyeballs showed more white beneath the iris than above. As if to compensate for this disadvantage of height, his blue uniform – I couldn’t tell if it was a police uniform or an army officer’s uniform, or what, really – was loaded down with medals and colored tags and flags and ornamental shiny things, official-looking things. It was quite impressive, in fact.

The fluorescent lights buzzed. I tried to smile again, but found that I was unsure what my face might actually be doing. I’d become so self-conscious that my lips only seemed to stretch into a tight grimace, and that was not what I wanted at all. So I relaxed my face and let it go slack, as utterly expressionless as I could manage, and once I’d gotten it as blank as I could – and rested my face that way for a moment or two – I tried the smile again. Now it was only worse. My lips twitched spasmodically at either end into what I was sure was not in the least bit a smile, not even a little. I couldn’t say what it was. But not that.

The official, without moving anything in his face at all, darkened. This fascinated me. I’d never seen anything like it, and wondered how he’d done it. I was by now, I think, openly staring at him.

He barked.

The sound startled me. It was a surprisingly forceful sound, and coming from such a small man – I had to remind myself that he wasn’t really that small, but only seemed it – and from nowhere, so all at once, it made me jump and blink with amazement.

Now his expression had changed. He seemed to be waiting for something from me.

He barked again, a string of angry sounds, and slammed the table with his fist.

My eyes opened wide with astonishment. I couldn’t help it. My mouth too. My mouth had fallen open into a wide O when my jaw dropped, and I couldn’t help it.

The official man was breathing hard. His chest moved in and out, and all the small flags and metals with it. And then he stood so sudden, and with such force, that the chair where he’d been sitting was thrust back with the force and fell over on its side, and I fell back also – so surprised was I that I fell back in my chair and fell over and went, “Guh!” and I think that was the first sound that I’d made in the room. My metal chair clattered and folded up on itself.

The men with their rifles approached and picked me up by my shoulders, set the folding chair aright and pressed me again into it. One obligingly brushed the dust off my back.

The official stood glowering, but now something in his face had softened, or so I imagined. I imagined – perhaps that was all – that he even now appeared rather sad. He no longer faced me. He looked down now, down and to the floor at his side, as if embraced in sadness and ruminative with deep thought. Yes, clearly he was contemplating something, considering the angles and sides of something, some idea, something he did not like. Perhaps I only imagined that last part – that he did not like it. Perhaps it only seemed that way.

He looked up, looked to one of the guards, said something that I didn’t understand, and sent him away with a gesture of his hand which, slight and subtle though it was, was also clear enough: go, go now, do this thing. Do this thing.

I was utterly amazed by this transaction. The efficiency.

And though I may have read too much into the weighted silence that followed, it seemed to me this official man was uncomfortable with it. He wouldn’t look at me now. It seemed that he was done with me. He put all of his attention into the spot on the floor where his eyes now rested. He remained where he stood. He stared at the floor. He stared hard at the floor and nothing moved.

Eventually the door to the room was opened again and the guard came back inside, now with a young woman at his side, slim and tall, wearing a blue suit jacket over a silky, white blouse. She had the same dark hair as everyone. She resembled in some regards the woman I’d met at the ticket desk, especially in the eyes, though as large and wide as the ticket woman’s eyes had been, this woman’s were larger and wider, even more curious, and somewhat more serene. She grabbed a folding chair from a stack leaned up against the wall and set it beside mine, facing mine, and sat herself down into it.

She looked at me. She did not smile. I saw that her face was white with powder, highlighted with rosy blush, and smooth with youth. She could not have been thirty years old. And she betrayed little emotion beyond a certain detached curiosity as she said, in clear if halting English, “Hello. My name is Byambaa. I will be an interpreter for your interrogation.”

Byambaa must have been a rather common name.

“You do speak English? Do you not?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay.” She looked toward the official man.

He ignored her, but turned to me now, and spoke a string of angry-sounding words in rapid fire.

Byambaa blinked her eyes and nodded a little, blinked again and again nodded, just a little, then said, “It is known you are in this country illegally and are likely a spy. You have been watched since your arrival. You have been seen meeting with certain individuals.” With that, she stopped and waited for the official to continue.

He barked another string of angry words that seemed to continue for a rather long time.

All the while, the interpreter blinked and nodded, blinked and nodded, and waited for him to finish. When he finally paused, she turned again to me and said, “We expect for you to tell us… who you work for and what sort of information you have stolen from our industrial facilities. We expect you to identify who your contacts in this country are. We already know who these people are and who they report to, so for you to lie to us is… no good. We expect for you to tell us what you know about your foreign agencies in America, Russia, and the European Union. You will tell us also about the UFO contacts made in South America. You… will not lie to us. We already know these things and will know if you are lying…” She waited, and turned again to the official.

He barked a few more angry words, all run together very quickly.

She looked to me and said, “You will tell us about the future.”

•

The one guard remaining who could manage still to function escorted me – and far more gently this time, and with his rifle slung over his shoulder – to the security checkpoint. His face was pale and he seemed rather sick, but he hurried me along with reasonable dispatch and urgency, wanting me on that plane even more than I did. I dropped my rucksack onto the belt to be x-rayed, then into a tub placed my hat, my badge, and firearm in its holster, while I walked through the box-like metal detector.

The bag was of no interest to the security personnel at all. The objects of magic, on the other hand, aroused their curiosity greatly. Of the two inspectors at the other side of the belt, one picked up the badge, pinched gingerly between two fingers, and stared into it, apparently surprised by his own reflection there, or some quality revealed about it. There was a mocking smile on his face, and he made a joke that I didn’t understand, but I smiled and nodded all the same as I put the fucked-up hat back onto my head. The other inspector pulled the gun out from its holster and studied the thing closely, holding it up, turning it over and back. He found the latch to unlock and swing the cylinder out from the barrel – which was more than I knew about it – and spun the revolving chamber, looking inside.

He asked me something. I smiled. He asked me it again. I just smiled. I didn’t know what he was saying.

Pointing to the revolver, he held up five fingers, then pointed to the hole where a sixth round should’ve been loaded, where instead was only a spent casing, nodding and grinning. Understanding at last what he meant, I made a slow pantomime of drawing an imaginary gun from beside my hip, holding it up and firing, saying, “Bang!”

He laughed at that, and I did also, and he handed the weapon and holster back to me. The other returned my badge with due respect. I looked back to see that the armed guard had already left me behind. I watched his back as he turned quickly toward the nearest restroom to disappear inside. I continued out the gate of the terminal and toward the two-engine turboprop waiting on the tarmac, where the other passengers were already climbing the portable stairway up and through the open hatch, and loped along to catch up.

 

THE GOBI