A Spy in the Ruins. Christopher Bernard

anything else. You turned on your heel in the doorway and found yourself spinning forever. Only thinking back was there the crystal. Only looking back was the shadow thrown against the clouds majestic monumental that was I. Wow. As the mist vaporizes into evening. Something unknown defined you. What was to come. His ignorance drew a wiry line around him exact as a blade. I am because I do not know. How retrieve the redemptive ignorance he thought how forget the future. Overthrow the tyrant. Liberate the nation. Break through the palace gates. Kill the guards. Seize the temple. Conquer happiness. Draw back a step at a time blissfully into unknowingness. Toward where he stands now at this moment staring down.

      (You pored through the snapshots the old documents seeking a thread that might bind them together. It’s the morning of the next day. What made the day before a whole or seem so all the days before up to this one the decades. A lance across a windowsill. What I possess at the moment a confusion of papers and days. That doesn’t quite fit. That don’t quite fit. Bills invoices postcards letters uninformative from family and friends vaguely threatening or speciously friendly but deeply sincere from businesses requesting cashflow from you. Journals. Drafts of letters never sent. Glossy paper stained with white shadows. The one sure thing the oblivion before birth. Stuffed with movies and reading. And less certain the one to come. Oblivion that is. Dickered with guessing. Your life a deceptive confusion between. Suggesting order but never. Not sure even of that. Your prize possession your uncertainty. And nebulous fantasies obscure memories consigned to paper. Or computer screen. What a lark the literary life. Who is “he”? Who is “she”? Who is “you” or “I”? A vastness echoing with the sighing of cars birdsong half-heard speech the sound of barking dogs. Even that. Back into it you must. Lie between dreams. Guess at recall. Go.)

       They’re all sleeping. Even the guard, look at him. No, it’s all right. Just stay here. Sometimes he says something in his sleep, but I can’t tell what it is. Listen if you want. I’ll bring you a …

      Home. It marked the pattern best. Their household. A fixture between the villages. The slide at the back a swing set an archery target one spring put up against bales of hay. He sat on the grassy bank and gazed across the fields. A dreamer. Nothing made him happier than staring at the clouds. Or the delicious shallow-sea illusion of summer cornfields moving under the wind. Early summer. Late spring. Beginning of the fall. He was convinced he had been made to be happy. A difficult prejudice to shake. And yet it seemed so obvious so clear. For he was happy then.

      The lights in the house across the night field.

      Always distance however close always the horizon edged with trees and the far point of light sparkling on a hill’s darkness that made you dream of that distant happiness those lives you could only guess at. And preferred guessing knowledge always a. Only the dream. Nothing more. Enough.

      Thus dreams were protected there. Honored. A happy childhood. It comes to you now with surprise given. The place where he went to hide. From them all. Could. Can. Shall. The dogwood blossoming in the picture window.

      Until he disappeared. Out of joy.

      Deeper in. Further.

      For there was money oh one was not supposed to mention that it was not sex one hid one’s salary or the salary of one’s parents one’s father at the time. And the money behind that. One always assumed sufficient funds there was no question folly the mulch of happiness. Behind the battlements of one’s parents’ faces stood the brightly shining edges of the mint always unfathomable unmentioned and presumed the good life security false or real. The garden bed. Flowers falling to the hand fruit bending to the mouth. The laziness of expectation will ruin your future. But he does not know then. He dreams. Not knowing the decline from an extravagant wealth to the genteel pretensions decorating the poverty of his domicile to come.

      Wealth.

      Decor.

      Sun.

      Exterior.

      Day.

      The frame of childhood where the little boy with the crewcut stands looking hopefully into your eyes. Up. Smiling as if for a photograph. Straining just a little. Slightly uncomfortable self-conscious. With unquestioning and boundless trust. Of course I believe the face says frowning a little. I’ve seen it.

      What.

      In the clouds that cross in the stars picking light from in the turmoil of in the hills the cornfields in the woods the face and hands of. No. Don’t give it a name. A gesture only. What. That. This. The all of it although I know only this only that. Pinched between moon and sun. Pageant moving in unending circle. Always returning to its place yet shifting. Always returning yet always. New. Beyond us containing us. Small and foolish and proud. Reflecting it. Even death no object of fear. Even oblivion no reason for. For the single one lives only through the all of it only the all of it. Counts. Cradles the dead one like a child folds around it its arms taking it in. Tenderly. Perhaps. So he thought when he found the body of bird or rabbit or mouse as he walked the fields through the woods near the back of the house after school. For even in the dead one there was life it became nourishment gave back as it had been given. Given. Death was a justice not a punishment. You missed the point it is not here for you you (the small boy thought) are a little gold thread in a vast fabric draping the shoulders of you have your place you are not all you are the center you are not the center either way it makes no difference if you do not know this the universe ignores it either way.

      And yet thought the boy how many. Suffer. And make suffer.

      And he remembered photographs and films he had seen of dead naked bodies found in large walled and fenced camps after a recent war. And the pity and horror that had then touched his forehead.

      And the woods said nothing.

      But why don’t you teach me? thought the boy.

      You will learn or not you cannot be taught you children with the poison of adults you will destroy whatever you can out of boredom pride envy crazy-eyed optimism look at the clever ones what trouble they get into someday they will grow up and become dangerous there is a storm of godlike laughter.

      And woke hearing his own voice echo in the room.

      The solitary one walked the fields intent on the sounds.

      The sounds of broken straw in the wind of single birds whistle and chuff of wings of old leaves clapping on the gray boughs or singing across the ground.

      Whistle of wind through an old bone.

      The fallen trunk rotting in the yellow grass.

      The vivifying odor of decay.

      All the life of the land mulching inward into the land.

      The bustle around an anthill.

      The vagrant buzz of a late bee.

      The tingle of a cobweb against his cheek as he walks between two apple trees.

      Unending net of connective across the mud and air.

      Deepening weave of loom in loom. Fabric. Carpet. Spell. The wonder of it. Hidden and woven and teeming. Unregarding him anything human. However spurious even transcendence. Illusion whatever price.

      Drunk and happy he walked from end to end of his solitude to where the fields broke up into gray and welcoming woods.

      Where he shot his look up suddenly to confront the sky’s absolute eye.

      And the cold fell.

      Deepening weft of light and dirt.

      Fabric become stone field.

      Carpet become.

      Spell.

      Crystallizing wonder.

      Hidden woven teeming frozen.

      Still not regarding anything you.

      However spurious.

      Periphrasis in snow.

      Empire of the inhuman.

      Winter twilight.