Manna Naomi, the author, was not here yet. Only her brother Zack, his dog Gytrash, and the other guests at her uncle Dylan's house. The space between her and myself was growing ever smaller. "No," I could hear her say, "space is zero."
"Manna said she might be late," I said to Zack. Manna was a social worker, and she had an appointment today.
"Do you know of the whisper broadcaster?" Zack said. I sat down with him on the low, brown couch.
"No," I said.
"It projects thoughts into your head like a movie projector projects thoughts on the screen."
"No, I haven't heard of that," I said.
Zack mumbled something to himself. We looked out the living room window, watching for Manna, listening to the din of conversation and the clinking of silverware and plates.
Dylan's house was just outside of town, on a plot just small enough so you could see the plastic fence that enclosed it. Us family members were all were gathered here to celebrate Easter sunday. It was a potluck. Gytrash yawned heavily. I got up and walked to the window.
It was hot. The house had no air conditioning, so the windows were all open. Everybody was sweating. I took a deviled egg from the table and ate it. Looking for conversation, wishing for Manna, I wandered around the room. I noticed a harsh glow beam out from Georgina's eye, and Zack began whispering to himself again. I walked up to Carson and the two or three people surrounding him.
"If we keep electing Democrat presidents, we're gonna end up with a dictatorship," Manna's cousin Carson said.
Ignorance! I thought. I swallowed and rebuked the thought, because it felt like a strong hand pushing a seed of anger deep into my head, threatening an epic battle with myself. I do wish people wouldn't listen to the television so much though, I thought. Gytrash licked Zack's hand, as he whispered something either to the dog or himself.
Everybody in the circle agreed with Carson, so nobody needed to speak. Except me: I disagreed, and I needed to speak, but I did not know what to say. Thinking about what to say, I missed what was being said, and all the while the anger flowed slowly through my head like water through seaweed. Their eyes all glowed, and only Gytrash could remain unmoved. No, I could too. But I wished Manna would get here.
"People in this country just don't know what they've got," aunt Georgina said. Her face grew pointed like a piranha. "I think of the people who don't support our country, and you know, Canada is just a couple hundred miles north. Try your luck there; see how much you like their socialized health care. But don't stay here, because we don't want you."
Everybody agreed with her, nodding their pointed heads and their bright, beady eyes. I tugged at my shirt collar.
"You know, there hasn't been a single war fought in American history that hasn't directly benefited the people," Carson said.
Ignorance! I thought again. But I wished my thoughts would stop pushing out of their cage like a thrashing tentacle. Zack began mumbling louder to himself. I looked at the chandelier—the brightness pressing against my eye, and the black spots my eye placed in front of it. Suddenly, it began to snow, indoors, and the snow was as light. Yet it was not cold—far from it. I looked at Zack. His eyes were wild, and growing wilder. If Manna didn't show up soon, Zack would be in shambles. I looked out the window. Manna, Manna, Manna! I thought, wishing to see her walking up the walk. But there was nothing to see: only the hot sun outside and this weird snow inside. I felt something brush against my leg, and looked down at Gytrash.
"I don't see what these people have against the death penalty. I mean, these guys are murderers. Do you think you feel safe living in a town full of murderers?" said Georgina.
Then Zack shouted, "What sight is this? Oh nightmare! If I could but writhe free of this putrid sea of dead, angry puppies! Charnel flesh and grey eyes glazed—gumming, growling, yipping, snarling mouths—Oh dread puppy! You gnaw my soul!" He did not mean Gytrash.
Zack was all spent, so I looked across the dark room from where I was sitting to my father, who was on the couch. It was cold, and the table lamp barely lit up my father's face. The lamp was the only light in the room, and it was nighttime: the sun had gone down an hour ago. The canary twittered from his cage in the corner, which was made from black metal, and intricate patterns ran along the walls of it.
"The TV is about to turn on," my father said.
"The TV is bad enough without the whisper broadcaster," I said.
"Yeah," my father said, "it's unfortunate, but it comes on every night."
"Hey, I'll make some tea," I said.
"You're not going to get the stove to work. We won't get a filament from the university until next Monday. University regulations."
My father worked for the university. He was an engineer. His latest project had to do with telephone wires. I remember how he talked about the politics of the university, how the engineers argued day in and day out about private contracts and intellectual property rights. Just the thought of it made me exhausted. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, but I was too cold to go to sleep.
"I might have an old filament you can use," my father said, getting up.
I followed him into the pantry. He began digging in one of the cupboards by the floor, handing me things as he pulled them out—instruction manuals, pots and pans, old stove knobs. All the things he handed me seemed very heavy: I could barely hold them.
"My arms are getting tired," I said.
"It's back here somewhere," said my father. "Here we go."
He pulled out a rusty old filament, and set it on the counter, then began taking all of the things from my hands and putting them back in the cupboard. I felt lightheaded. Just as he was taking the last instruction manual from my hand, I passed out.
I came to on the bed in my father's bedroom.
"You're awake," he said. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I don't know what that was about. What was I doing?"
"I was getting the filament so you could make tea. You were just holding things for me when you passed out."
"Oh yeah," I said.
"Do you want me to call the doctor?"
"No, I feel fine now. I'll just lay here for a bit then make that tea."
"The filament is right here by the bed," he said, pointing at it.
I lied there for a few more moments, as sleep drifted in and out of my body. Finally I decided to get up. I picked up the filament and started towards the stove.
Suddenly the TV was blasting, and I was in the middle of a snow-covered field just outside a large house in the country, surrounded by a white picket fence. I looked around, and I saw the narrator walking up to the gate in the fence. I looked down at my hand: I still had the filament. I saw the narrator and main character of the TV show walking towards me in a black suit and tophat.
"Are you going towards that house?" I asked him.
"Yes, I am."
"Would you mind coming with me for a second? I know there is a stove around back, and I just need to put in this filament so I can cook some tea. It won't take a second."
"Excuse me, but I wanted to go in the house."
"Don't worry, it won't mess up your plot; it will just take a second, and you can go in the house when I'm done."
"Okay, I can spare a minute."
We walked up the yard and around the back of the house. I found the stove: it was larger than I expected and shaped differently, made out of concrete instead of metal, and it had no door on the front. But it was all I had to work with until the TV's whisper broadcaster turned off.
"So I just stand here for a second?" Asked the narrator.
"Just for a second."
I fumbled around with the filament. The sound of an argument between a man and a woman drifted over the yard from the house. The narrator walked towards the house and looked in a window. Helplessly, I followed him.
"You're not supposed to do that," I said, "It's not in the plot."
"They're fighting," the narrator said. "That's my sister in there."
"Could you please help me with the stove?"
The noises grew louder. "Harry just punched her!" he shouted, "That bastard!" He made for the back door.
"It's not in the plot! You'll regret it!"
The narrator stormed in the door and down the hall and grabbed Harry by the shirt collar. Harry twitched as though a fly landed on his face: he didn't notice the narrator. The narrator continued to shake him and yell at him. Harry finally recognized him.
"Why, Jerry, fancy seeing you here," he said, confused. The narrator wrapped his hands around Harry's neck.
"Die, die, I say, die!" he said. Harry was choking and spluttering, and we walked up the yard and around the back of the house with the narrator towards the stove, and there we found Harry—staggering, his clothes ripped. The narrator rushed up to him in a fury and grabbed him by the neck. "Die, die, I say, die!" he said, throwing him into the stove and turning it on.
"Jerry, stop and think for a moment!" I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, as we walked up the yard and around the back of the house towards the stove, where Harry was baking—his skin glowing like coals, his body surrounded by ashes. I rushed up towards the stove, turned it off, and threw the ashes on the coals of Harry's skin to cool him down. But the narrator pushed me aside, turned the stove on high, and fanned all the ashes off with his coat, saying, "Die, die, I say, die!"
I thought, "I can't say how this is going to end," as I walked with narrator up the yard and around the back of the house towards the vast landscape of the unquenchable flames of hell, where we found Harry, burning, burning. The narrator grabbed him by the throat. The ground shook, and great chasms opened up all around us, and we were on the edge of a cliff. Plummeting of the cliff, the narrator's voice echoed off the cliff walls, saying, "Die, die, I say, die!"
I woke up.
I turned on the hard back-porch light so I could see the small area of my back yard, which was complemented by the broad glow of twighlight. I sat, calm and relaxed but not tired, and took in the hilly, suburban view: chain-linked fence upon chain-linked fence, pad of grass upon pad of artificial grass, fenced hill upon fenced hill, sandwiching on each other like wrinkles on an old, sunburned man's face. The old man winked: it was a deer, foraging in the distance.
She was watching me—those ever-dark pupils that seemed almost to glow with cold, refreshing blackness—her shoulders draped with her milk-white gown.
Tomorrow I would fold the laundry—I had written a lovely poem about that. Then I would sit on my bed with a pair of headphones and try to invent some Work to engage myself in, perhaps for a black man, or a Tibetan. A breeze rustled her silken hair.
I thought.
"Don't say it," she said.
"I feel it, Manna," I said.
"Don't say it. They'll surround you; they'll force more drugs down your throat, and you'll be drugged into oblivion. Don't say it."
Already I could feel their concern like daggers drawing my blood in from my fingertips, and out through my chest. But the thought welled within me, envigorated me with its Truth.
She said, "They'll surround you, this time with drugs, next time with ropes and tazers. They'll surround, and they come in packs. You'll regret it."
But I wouldn't regret it—with absolute certainty I knew this. I decided to say what I was thinking:
"Our world is cursed," I said. "No progress has been made that did not bring a hell of near-equal power with it, and no place has been free from this truth. We the moss have merely begun to crawl out of the sea—and only the moss which looks to the land at that, which is almost no one."
She frowned the hard frown of compassion. "What do you mean, crawl?" she said.
"Out of the sea of ignorance."
"Towards what?"
"The land of freedom."
"What a word, 'freedom.' Do you have freedom?"
I thought carefully. "Yes, I think I do."
"You think but you're not sure."
"No, I'm not sure."
"Then who made this sea? Who made this moss? I thought it was space."
That struck me, because I knew there was more "space" than "sea," metaphorically speaking, and space is hopeful because there's nothing to fear in it. Who can fear this space? It's just there. It doesn't move, it can't chase you, it can't be destroyed.
"What are you hoping for?" said Manna.
"For freedom, I guess. But maybe I shouldn't hope for anything, because I might not get it."
"No hope?"
"No hope is my doctrine of hope," I said.
"No hope, just space."
And the night melted on, stars glittering in the cellular yet vast landscape. That beautiful landscape, the clear space penetrating it, and me also—composing us like the center of a turkish delight does the powder. And space is only frigid if you forget the subatomic particles. The space made the landscape. Always.
I thought I felt their overbearing concern in the blackness; would they materialize? Oh if the abyss could vomit forth its secrets, but a voice is wanting! But it was merely a thought, which dissolved into space and was forgotten.
(The following is a letter I received from Manna Naomi on the 2nd of February, 2009. It is reprinted here in full.)
Dear William,
Zack is in the mental hospital. I have been visiting him every day; he needs my attention right now. I am thankful that you have been looking after Gytrash. Gytrash is Zack's favorite dog, and quite possibly his best friend. It's sad that he cannot come with Zack to the mental hospital.
I have been trying to get Zack a computer, but they do not allow cameras here, so I can't send him his computer. (It has a camera on the screen.) It's a poor replacement for Gytrash, I know, but that's the best I can think of. Zack has told me once that computer games are the best nodal points between universes. It's funny how a particular experience can amplify itself in the mind of a man with schizophrenia. I asked him if he'd ever jump into a universe without Gytrash, and he told me that every universe has a Gytrash. But wouldn't he miss the particular Gytrash he had before? I asked. But he just put his face in his hands and said, "I'm not a sentimental person. I refuse."
I feel sorry for him because he is a sentimental person, and every universe he jumps to, he will always fall back into the one with his demons. Nevertheless, I told him that this very universe is perfect. He smiled a smile that was almost a grimace, and seemed to say, "You do not know what you say; I'm in hell." Then I hugged him and told him, if you're calm and perfect, no one can catch you. You're almost perfect, so let them try.
I know you've been to the mental hospital before. I would be much obliged if you could write to Zack, and tell him something positive about the place. Zack feels he doesn't have a friend, because everybody is there on duty, even the dogs. They send dogs in so the patients can pet them as therapy, but Zack still misses Gytrash. I would like to bring Gytrash up to visit; I plan on doing so next week.
Anyway, I look forward to meeting you again in a few weeks. Don't forget to give Gytrash his bone!
Sincerely,
——/\/\-\/\//\/-\/\/-\ O /\/\/
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Copyright 2009 Nathan Foster, All Rights Reserved.