A Fable

‘Not high, just high enough to stand between us and the sky like a way-station to heaven, so no wonder when we died the rest of us believed the soul hadn’t stopped there maybe but at least had paused to surrender half the coupon; no wonder when our mother was gone for that week in the spring, Marya and I knew where she had gone to; not dead: we had buried nothing, so she wouldn’t have to pass it. But certainly there, since where else could she be—that face which had never belonged to, had no place in, our valley from the beginning, not to mention what we, even her children, had felt, sensed, behind that face which had no place in our mountains, among our kind of people anywhere; where else but there? not to think, to be accepted into that awesome and tremendous condition, because even her face and what was behind it could not match that, but at least to breathe, bathe in the lambence of that furious meditation. The wonder was that she came back. Not the valley’s wonder but mine and Marya’s too. Because we were children, we didn’t know: we only watched and saw and knitted, knotted, tried to, what simple threads we had of implication; to us it was simply that the face, that something—whatever it was—in her that had never been ours and our father’s anyway even if it had been wife to one and mother to the others, had at last simply done what from the beginning it had been doomed to do. Yet she came back. She didn’t change forever that house, home, life and all, she had already done that by leaving as she did and coming back to it only compounded what she had already left there; she had been alien and a passing guest always anyhow, she couldn’t possibly come back any more so. So Marya and I, even children, knew even more than the valley did that it couldn’t last. The child, another child, a new brother or sister or whichever it would be next winter, meant nothing to us. Even if we were children, we knew about babies; who so young in our country as not to know, since in our country, our hard and unpiteous mountains, people used, had to use, needed, required, had nothing else to use, children as people in lands savage with dangerous animals used guns and bullets: to defend, preserve themselves, endure; we didn’t see, as our father did, that child not the brand of sin but incontrovertible proof of something which otherwise he might have schooled himself to bear. He didn’t turn her out of his house. Dont think that. It was us—she. He was just going to leave himself, put home, past, all the dreams and hopes that people call home; the rage, the impotence, the outraged masculinity—oh yes, heartbreak too: why not?—all behind him. It was she who cut that cord and left, swollen belly and all because it could not be long now, it was already winter and maybe we couldn’t compute gestation but we had seen enough swelled female bellies to guess approximations.

‘So we left. It was at night, after dark. He had left right after supper, we didn’t know where, and now I would say, maybe just hunting dark and solitude and space and silence for what wasn’t there or anywhere else for him either. And I know now why the direction we—she—took was west too, and where the money came from that we had for a while too until we couldn’t pay for riding anymore and had to walk, because she—we—took nothing from that house except the clothes we wore and our shawls and a little food which Marya carried in that same basket yonder. And I could say here also: “But you were safe; it was not enough” except that I dont, not to you who have in you what all heaven too might do well to blench at. So we walked then, and still westward: who might not have learned to think in that place during that week but at least she had memorised something of geography. Then there was no more food except what we could beg, but it would not be long now even if we had had money left to ride with too. Then that night, it was already winter when we left home and now it was Christmas, the eve before; and now I dont remember if we were driven from the inn itself or just turned away or maybe perhaps it was our mother still who would cut even that cord too with man. I remember only the straw, the dark stable and the cold, nor whether it was Marya or I who ran back through the snow to beat on the closed kitchen door until someone came—only the light at last, the lantern, the strange and alien faces crowding downward above us, then the blood and lymph and wet: I, a child of nine and an eleven-year-old idiot sister trying to hide into what privacy we could that outraged betrayed abandon and forsaken nakedness while her closed hand fumbled at mine and she tried to speak, the hand still gripping, holding onto it even after I had given my word, my promise, my oath——’