Displacement

That summer, it was like snow. We stood on bilgewater-soaked herring nets and watched the wrinkled lava slump into the sea across the harbor. Black clouds rose from the mountain, the accretion of a thousand molten pours, and transmuted into luminous shapes we believed keen and conscious. The ash fell on our heads, on our sun-blocked skin, on dusted cars and rusted boats, the sand, the pier, and we were enchanted. We smelled liquid earth and brine. Fish and beach. On very quiet nights we imagined we heard the hiss of lava-touched water, the accession of two states, and it was good. We hardly moved in our sleep, next to each other. It was like listening to a soul and knowing where it had its source.

For breakfast, we made two cheese omelets and watched the volcano. We stood by the window with our omelets on our plates, and watched the insurrection of inner- with outer-nature. Our faces rambled in the proud brightness of the sun. The volcano was young and old. The volcano’s smoke was wild. Wind-stoked, it rose up. The volcano told us what we were.

In the dimness of dusk, the smoke loomed and the earth trembled, and then it was still. Night birds trilled. Interiors of lampshades were powdered with the wild gestures of moths shaped like leaves. Our eyes were exhausted. From inside the apartment, we tried to look around in the dark, to let it expand and become pure, to return us to dawn with restored vision, to the volcano. To the ash-dappled landscape and animals looking both ways at once. How they looked about them told us they’d known the mysteries of the nature of the volcano in darkness.

In the afternoon, we descended to the harbor. Dogs barked and barked. Wind coaxed a plait of smoke in our direction. We watched it unravel above the water in wonder until it disappeared without any shame. It never reached us. The wind turned cold and we shivered back to our apartment, where the landlord ushered a woman bent over a cane from one room into the next. She stood before the window and watched the volcano without expression. Her whole body watched. The spirit rose from the volcano and burned.

Understand that some are lost forever, you might have whispered. I hadn’t considered all the possibilities; bit-by-bit they revealed themselves. The woman, she turned around. She sat at the kitchen table and the landlord pushed a caked plate away from her into the center. We were unsure. We weren’t supposed to be there. To begin to know the countenance of the one that signed the lease.

The Minder

It is Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog I mind on occasion. Mrs. Chattopadhay is a clairvoyant woman, a woman with powerful black eyes and smooth skin, my upstairs neighbor. Her mouth looks sensitive. Foregathered inside it are precise dictions that acquire a curious inflection—it is beautiful to hear. When we meet, Mrs. Chattopadhay and I, her dog sniffs at my doormat and looks for a corner. In a moment, Mrs. Chattopadhay turns around delicately with her suitcase and leaves behind her dog, little and white and with a nub of a tail that is like the curls of an unctuous lamb.

Mostly, it is just me in my apartment and no one else. It is very quiet. I don’t own a TV because it is boring to watch TV alone. Moreover, lives begin and end in TV like it is simple to begin and end. I take advantage of this deficit and look out the window and see everything extraordinarily well. This could mean I live a peaceful life.

I do, I do.

No one to follow me from one room into the next. But what does it matter.

Now Mrs. Chattopadhay’s little white dog watches me move into clothes with its red-rimmed eyes after I shower. It really is like a lamb!

I don’t feel ashamed. Instead I move as if I usually dress without peace and am very sad.  

Hours pass and Mrs. Chattopadhay calls from someplace I’ve never known. She asks me to put the phone up to her dog’s ear. But I don’t. I listen instead to the space between us and wonder what is within this distance; its emptiness is exceptional. Then Mrs. Chattopadhay tries to communicate to her pet: Yes, I’m fine. I’m a pillar. It’s not obvious and it’s difficult to understand. I leave in order to see.

I imagine Mrs. Chattopadhay on a bed.

No.

In a chair next to a window above a realized city with a glorious view.

She says: I miss you. How is it? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?

I breathe into the phone so as not to sound human.

Mrs. Chattopadhay says: You do.

She is silent. Everything between us expires. Meanwhile, her dog licks my hand.

Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog pulls hard on its leash. It is foggy outside and everything cannot be seen. It is like we are walking inside a king-sized glass of milk. Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog, despite its small size, pulls me across the streets I don’t want to cross. I lurch. I think what the dog is doing is ingenious somehow. I wonder how Mrs. Chattopadhay walks with her dog, how her steps might look, transmuted. I observe her dog nip at overgrown grass. There is gray in its gums. For some reason, this devastates me. Then Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog lifts its head and pulls hard. The leash escapes my hand. Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog darts across the street and disappears. It is a worry.

I move as if to avoid my next step and the steps afterward. Come back? I call out.

Once or twice, I have come across posters of lost dogs, loved. The words and descriptions used to describe them were desperate because of love. I have never felt this manifest form of desperation in any kind of loss I’ve endured.

Why not?

I say, in imitation of Mrs. Chattopadhay: Do you miss me as much as I miss you? But I cannot imitate Mrs. Chattopadhay’s voice. I walk and the ground goes on and on. It is the longest I’ve been outside since I can remember. It’s easy to forget what I’ve missed.

I am about to give up when Mrs. Chattopadhay’s dog reappears and runs toward me.

Triumphantly, its collar chimes with its gait and its leash curves along the ground like a reckless snake.  

I wait for it. I kneel down. I reach out my hand and click my tongue three times.

Yes, I say. I am fine.

I hear my words at the edge of myself. For the time being, it is like a dream.