Inexpressible Island

O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea, Passed the pageant swift and free, Tearing up, and trampling down; Till they came for London town.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1 (#ulink_3d5812fe-e211-50e2-837a-2404226ba9e1)

Anonymous (#ulink_3d5812fe-e211-50e2-837a-2404226ba9e1)

“ANYONE CAN STOP A MAN’S LIFE,” DEVI SAID, QUOTING Seneca, probably thinking he was being comforting, “but no one his death: a thousand doors open onto it.”

Don’t speak to me. Don’t look at me. Leave me alone.

He had begged her, begged her not to, yet Shae still left him behind.

“Stumble up from your river of loneliness,” Julian heard Devi say. “We know you’re in sorrow. But you’re not alone. Ava and I are with you. You’re separated from your heart, yes, but don’t think of how little you did for her, think rather about how much she did for you. Her love for you saved your life. That man would’ve killed you and desecrated you. And then killed her, and desecrated her. To give you a chance, she warned you, and then threw herself overboard. By sacrificing herself, she saved you. Even though you were lowly and unworthy. Take the gift from her and live.”

“I was unworthy? Did you hear my story?”

“Of course,” Devi said. “You should have never gone. You had no business going anywhere in the state you were in, in the state you’re still in. You should’ve waited until next year, or the one after. Or not gone at all. You were no good to her. You were in no shape to help her. That she helped you despite yourself is a testament to how her soul feels about you even when you least deserve it.”

“I least deserve it.”

“Stop rephrasing and repeating everything I say.”

“Why are you still talking to me?” Julian said. “Go away.”

You promised Mother no matter where I go, you would follow me. Did you mean it?

I didn’t promise it to your mother. I promised it to you.

Shae tried to take him with her. She jumped. But as always, he ran out of time, even for death.

Ava sat in horror. Nothing made her feel better, not the story of the frantic mother, not the bravery of the sainted Maori who stayed by Shae’s side to the end. “Kiritopa’s glory was in the union with that woman and my child,” Ava said.

Julian lost three fingers on his right hand. He nearly lost four. After multiple surgeries, the doctors managed to save his pointer. Steel screws now held it together. It was a robot finger. The pinky was gone, the ring and middle fingers sliced off below the second knuckle. Your fingers for your life, Devi said. Julian gave Devi the finger, but it was more like he gave Devi the nub.

In the corner, Ava sat weeping. It’s like the first time all over again, she said.

Julian’s body was a mess. Electrocution flowers. A weakened heart. Along with the amputated fingers, he had suffered numerous other injuries during his cagematch with Tama: a broken nose, a cracked cheekbone, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, a shattered radial bone from blocking that fucking mere club, torn ligaments in his knees, a fractured fibula, and a dozen cracks in his knuckles and hands and the bones of his feet. He was black and blue from his forehead to his shins.

Slowly, his body healed.

There were things that didn’t heal.

You say to her be my goddess, and she agrees and opens her legs. What a burden you’ve put on her—and you. She must be what she is not. You must be what you’re not. She is not a goddess.

Goddesses don’t die.

Julian lived inside the silence, inside the silence of the ocean with her body in his arms.

“Is there a purpose to my suffering, an end to my despair?”

Devi got up and said no.

“What will I find at the end of my story?” Julian said another day, another mute afternoon. “Will there be a recognition of my labors, a list of my shortcomings?”

Devi got up and said yes.

Julian searched for the power within. He and Ava were catatonics, her sitting in his hospital room by the window, him sitting in his bed, both barely rocking, trying to draw the power from silence. He kept staring at the space above his palm where his fingers used to be.

Your fear that she will cease to be—will recede, will vanish into the vanishing point—has been allayed. Hallelujah. She is not vanishing.

You are.

My life is wind, Julian thought when he finally returned to the apartment after six weeks in the hospital and six weeks convalescing at Hampstead Heath. He would’ve stayed longer, but they kicked him out. He would’ve stayed the rest of his life.

Instead he came back home.

My eye will see no more good, because he will not return to this house, neither will any place ever know him. Julian stood by the mantle in his empty apartment in Notting Hill. Their heads bent, Ava and Devi stood with him. They were always with him. They went with him to York to bring Ashton’s body back, they flanked him at the funeral, they were with him now. To the end of his days, Julian would complain of the bitterness in his soul. He preferred a drowning death rather than his life. The Lord didn’t take away my iniquities. I still sleep in the dust. You will seek me in the morning, but I won’t be here.

Because he wasn’t here.

Because she wasn’t here.

Devi tried to lighten the mood, as only Devi could. He made food, brought Julian tiger water, told Julian things. They sat down with Ava; they broke their bread; they had sake and egg rolls with twice-cooked pork dunked in chili soy sauce; they sipped Ga tan, a Vietnamese chicken soup. And then Devi talked.

“My own son was raised a Catholic, too,” Devi said. “But by the time he was grown, barely a trace of any teaching remained inside him. A remnant of faith turned out to be nothing but empty space.”

“It’s not just your son,” Julian said. “That’s how I lived most of my adult life. I had a fairly religious upbringing, which I attempted to discard when I went to college. My father’s family were loud devout Catholics, but my mother was a silent Lutheran Norwegian. Except for my near-constant search for answers to life’s unsolvable riddles, I felt more akin to her than I did to my Dia de los Muertos relatives. I went to a secular school with other kids who felt the way I did. Any mention of church was met with an eye roll. We talked video games, football, boxing, music, movies, girls. God never entered our language except in blasphemy. Until I met Ashton. He didn’t go to church, but he had faith.”

Devi nodded. “That was my son, too,” he said. “A typical boy, growing up in London, not listening to his dad. He wanted to be a photographer. I thought it was frivolous. He thought I was hopelessly old-fashioned. He was embarrassed by me. After his mother died, all he did was party.”

Julian nodded. Ashton, too, except for the dad part. Dad left the family, found a new life back in England, and didn’t return for his son, not even after the mother died. Ashton shuttled between a dozen foster homes until UCLA.

“Then as now, it’s difficult to tell by a man’s life and actions whether or not he is a believer,” Devi said. “Religious thought and teachings are so disconnected from daily life. A man can go one week, then another, and soon through his whole existence and not encounter God in his dealings with himself or other people.”

“Maybe when new life is created?” Ava said.

“Despite the requisite exclamations of Oh my God, often not even then,” Devi said. “The only time man usually comes into contact with faith or his lack thereof is when life ends.”

Julian lowered his head.

“You can conceive without God,” said Devi, “you can give birth, marry, live every Sunday, every Good Friday, every day without God, but it’s difficult to confront death without God—especially for the living. We don’t know what the dead do when the door closes, and darkness or light swallows them. But we know what we the living do when tasked with the burden of their burial, ritual, funeral, memorial. We have a hard time with it. A man dies quietly in the hospital. Sometimes his family is present, sometimes not. A priest is often absent, for the man has no priest and has never been to church, at least not willingly. After some medical to and fro, the body gets taken away. The funeral director brings it to a place most people rarely enter. There it lies for a few hours or days or weeks until the family decides whether to bury or cremate. Cremation is now the most popular option, for it allows the body to return to dust without any theological fanfare. I once knew a man who had made his own funeral arrangements, planned for his own disposal. He died alone in Dover, and by the time his sons arrived, a few days later, his body had already been cremated.”

“How do you know?”

“I went to Dover and sat with him before he died,” Devi said. “His sons didn’t know me at all. They were presented with a cardboard box filled with their father’s ashes and another cardboard box that held the last of his earthly belongings. His drugstore-bought reading glasses. His disposable cell phone. The Timex watch he had since the ’70s. His thirty-year-old wallet, in which there was a ten-pound note, a National Health card, a credit card, one nearly expired license, and an old magazine about eagles. That was all. The sons kept the ashes and threw the other box into the trash on their way out. There was no funeral, no memorial, no wake, no dinner. Perhaps they went to the pub for a drink, I don’t know. There weren’t even any secular words to remind anyone of the man’s life, why he lived, what he meant, who loved him. There was nothing.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Julian said.