The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [117]
Esther did not thrive with me huddled over her, staring, dabbing. If she seemed to see me, it was with a scowl, but scowl does not describe a face that shows disappointment and irritation mixed with something that a father might read as his child’s relief. Or maybe he only wants to see relief, and the desire, projected strongly enough, nearly changes the face of the young woman in the bed. I registered the small winces of distaste at my attentions, and, when I was certain Esther was disgusted by my hovering, repelled and annoyed and altogether bothered, I quietly celebrated. When I saw these grimaces I felt more sure that, yes, this was my Esther. Get away from me, I could almost hear her say. This was displeasure that I knew. A comfort to see something that I remembered. This was my girl. Finally I grew sure I had brought her home.
After that I draped a woolen wall over the cot, a blanket hanging from a wire, so Esther would not suffer any added distress. No need to punish her with my presence. Esther prefers privacy. I do understand. She deserves what personal space I can provide.
She deserves a little house of her own, too, and maybe when she recovers, and when her mother returns to us, Esther can choose the site herself, so long as it’s not too far from this hut. So long as I can get there easily, even in darkness.
47
Not so far off in the sky, the odd bird tours the valley. Birds seem to prefer the speechless world. If you lived here you’d have to be buried alive not to notice the superior joy they demonstrate overhead. Victory laps inscribed in the air. Rubbing it in. Admiring the way their shadows crawl over the salt below. Perhaps you require no convincing. Perhaps such sights are available where you live as well, and you, too, look from your shelter at this airborne gloating.
When I picture you examining this account, dangling each decaying page aloft with a tweezers, I wonder if you are alone, barricaded from someone with whom you once spoke freely. Are you reading this with assistance, an inhibitor cutting into the folds of your mouth? Does some cold, salted tonic sluice through your blood to give you shield, if briefly? Or is your protection something more, shall we say, bitter and problematic, achieved at a greater cost?
Perhaps a little one fell down in a great black swoon after you sucked free his assets, and the transaction has left you, what is the word, troubled.
Is there salt where you are, too? Just so much of it everywhere? Can you reckon that it is really the residue of everything we ever said, piled now in soft white mounds? It seems far too pretty to only be our spoils.
I would like to question you on your symptoms, the path you navigated to language, the choices you’ve faced. But we will never speak, as I will be dead by the time you read this. We do not get to survey the people of the future, who laugh at how little we knew, how poorly we felt things, how softly we knocked at the door that protected all the best remedies. You are monstrous and unreal to me now, it is important that you know that. You are my reader but I cannot reach into your face and pull out your secrets. Perhaps you live in a time when someone else’s harm is not bound up with your pursuit of words and you traffic easily with the acoustical weapon, the clustered scripts. Congratulations, if so. I remember those days, too. It is my true wish that you enjoy yourself.
But enjoyment is not one of the choices we have here today.
Darkness soaks these woods by afternoon, browning in so low. One must be careful in this season not to be caught past noon on too remote an errand in the woods, because after sunset a return home is difficult, even for me, who knows these trails by heart. This darkness is different. It interferes more finally with one’s passage through the woods, and one must halt