His voice that whispered to me in that fake dark room
in Buffalo was different, the inflections of Russia being slowly strip-mined
away. He has worked so hard to be American, to dynamite away the traces of the
Russian-he-was. I still though remember though, I remember our home when I go
to him. In unlit and tender moments we relieve out past. But all memories have
a reserve, all the hordes of ore, of precious metals under the earth have a
limit, they can be exhausted. And what of me in his plan to reinvent himself?
Am I being slowly sandpapered away, planed out of existence? I suppose I will
go easily.
But he cannot deny what he is. He is an atlas of
Russia. As our hands slide down what have become accustomed paths, the map of
scars across his back is a path for my tongue, the Trail of Tears under this
highway, the road from Khabarosvk to Moscow. I can taste the Russia-there-was
in his mouth and see a chart of our home tattooed onto the contours of his
body. But then how is it possible that we belong here? How improbable we are
pure Russian: I as common to the streets of Moscow as he is to the tundra of
Siberia. You see our eyes, our cheekbones; you know where we are from.
He is from a seaport town and his eyes are the colour
of the ocean at sunrise. His moods recall tides, waxing and waning, the sudden
violence of the storm, the longing that come from wanting to see what is on the
other side of the water you live by. People who live by the sea are governed by
rhythms of seasons more detailed than the four puny changes in North America.
Summer to winter, warm to cool, these are barely noticeable, but he is freezing
to boiling, white to black, the grey coral that built fortresses on the base of
the Great Sea.
We have made ourselves belong here, even though we are
intruders of the newest sort. Who hasnÕt fled to Canada, crossing the border like
you are entering another dimension? IndianÕs, they were betrayed. Slaves,
travelled here on the Underground Railroad; carrying less than he did when he
defected, with their own scars on their backs. Immigrants, desperate for a
second chance. Even AmericanÕs fled here, from the draft. They all came, and
all prayed they would not be stopped at the border, would not be turned away.
Alex has always had an open invitation to the path to my heart.
Under this highway there are historical settlements,
they dug up arrowheads when they built this, they found stones organised in
circles burned black from cooking. All are gone now, all marched out. They
played lacrosse games here once. All the tribes would put aside war and play
the game on a field that stretched for a kilometre, games that could last for
three days. When a competitor grew to tired he was replaced. Players died in
these three days games. Died and were replaced.
The families, the lovers of those players would have
called out to each other, would have chanted, would have cheered, would have
counted the goals. And then they would pack up, gather the dead and go home.
They followed rutted roads that were older than this one dear Alex. Paths set
by dinosaurs, by the retreating ice, pre-dating the wound of this road.
There was a treaty signed here, it promised safe
passage to the IndianÕs that came from America, crossing the border to heaven.
It is almost unnecessary to say that Sitting Bull and his followers were
betrayed. I was not surprised to find this treaty was written in English. This
language has made me a secondary character. I have been left behind, I have
waited to long, to long of being friend instead of lover, lover instead of
partner, uncle instead of father.
Our voices donÕt fit in here, we should speak Russian
here, we should speak Cree or French or anything that isnÕt English, this
language that built up walls between us. When we met again, he would only speak
English, and he seemed confident but I could not get my clumsy tongue to form the
words. But still I was calling out to him, in the babble of a baby.
I have loved him for so long that it has become habit.
Sometimes I think it is like gasping for coffee in the morning to wake up. I
wonder if I love him, or the image of him that I have built up in my mind. Or,
maybe, the image of him that I have etched onto my heart.
I imagine myself going to him now for a type of
surgery, cutting him out of my life the same way you would perform an
amputation, quick hot pain and then blessed relief. There would be a surgical
lesion around my heart, but that would harden and heal into scar tissue. And I
know now how sensitive scars can be, how the edge of the scar reacts to the
touch of a hand or a mouth, how the marks on skin are an irresistible attraction
to your tongue.
And how long would it take to harden into a scar
anyway. WouldnÕt I run my hand over the space in my chest where my heart used
to be, tease until they were ragged the edges of the wound. Let the pain wash
across me, revel in that sensation the same way I revelled in the things his
body did to mine, in the gentle dark, long ago. ItÕs all still sensation; it is
still caused by Alex.
And donÕt people complain of pain in phantom body
parts years after they have been hacked out? Years after feeling danced across
the skin? Years after old limbs have become limestone dust tumbling to the
bottom of the warm Great Sea, as sediment.
Now it all becomes clear to me. There is always a path
beyond. It is right there, shiny and open and empty before me. The ice drew back further than this,
the highways criss-cross the world, I never have to stop, never have to leave
the safe box of this car. And now this road twists and turns, finally I have to
concentrate on the drive on where I am going. Finally just when I had decided
to keep going, I have arrived.
Now I donÕt know what I want. Did I really want to
force a showdown with him? A final rendezvous where our past and our present
would collide? This dramatic moment, my Russian moment in neutral, neutralising
North America. Did I think I could force a resolution one way or another,
wouldnÕt he would raise an eyebrow at me, smile at me, and I would end up
begging him, for what? I donÕt even know any more. To love me? He does love me.
What have I come here for? His flesh, his smell, his taste? I can get flesh
anywhere. What coral bridges link us, on what honeycombed rafts are we lashed
together on as we float across the ribs of the world?
Travelling on the birthday of the world, across the
Ice Age, over the Sea, over the Lockport Dolomite and the Niagara escarpment,
over dinosaur bones and the first blooming of flowers; cutting across the Trail
of Tears, broken treaties, and fifteen years and three countries, the faces of
which swim in front of me, the accents which shill in my ears. Cree, Mohawk,
Canadian, American, Russian, they sing, they shriek, they blend and waver in
front of my eyes.
I donÕt know how long IÕve been sitting here in the
car outside his house, with the engine still running and the headlights
brightly shining forward. And I wait here in the car, my hands frozen to the
wheel, resting my head against the door, and watch the house. I am trapped in
the present. I canÕt move, canÕt step back, you canÕt go back, canÕt go on, I
canÕt move at all.
The door opens and Alex steps onto the porch, the
black cave mouth of the interior visible through the open door. I lean back, my
hands still fused to the wheel, the engine still on.
He is a dark shadow; he steps down, just one step,
resting his hand against the railing, he waits. He stretches one arm, one hand,
palm I have kissed, fingers I have sucked into my mouth, he stretches his hand
out to me, palm up, waiting for me to step out of the car and place my hand on
his. Friendship handshake; comradeÕs connection; lovers reuniting; all with the
touch of skin on skin.
I stare at him, I watch him wait like IÕve waited,
drink him in hungrily, eat him up, taste the tears dripping down onto my lips,
exhausted by driving, exhausted by rituals, exhausted by promises, exhausted by
waiting, the alluvial pressures of holding on, the winds of time distributing
silt into layers over my heart, the magma of love, that hot core of the earth
still lying under this Precambrian rock, under the Canadian Shield. Damm it,
choose Pavel! Make a decision! You have been driving for six hundred million
years!
Decide. Now. Stay or go? Step out of the car; go back
in time to the gentle dark when you were young, sink beneath the warm waters of
the Great Sea. Drive away, facing the future. Feel another earthquake, seismic
change that will alter the shape of the world, another asteroid hitting the
earth, the new Ice Age. Come to me love, in the gentle darkness, as once we
did, when we were young. Come to me. Alex, Alexander, whom-I-have-always-loved,
you choose. I canÕt IÕm too tired. It is so unfair, I have been following you
for fifteen years, come to me. Stay on the porch, come here, I could never
resist you. Give me a sign. My dear Sasha, come to me.
End.
Bernie
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