Debriefings
“I’m sending Ted back,” Lorraine says.
“Good,” Piotr responds. “He’s not cut out for this line of work.”
Lorraine pauses. “That,” she says, “is something for him to decide. At the very least, he’s not much help right now with his busted hand.”
Piotr returns to his work.
“I’m worried about you,” Lorraine says. “You seem… distracted.”
He waves his hand in the air, the way Rana does when she says he’s being too smothering.
“Irina said that you sent her these distribution maps.” Lorraine hands them back to him. He looks them over, but his eyes have difficulty focusing. He pinches the bridge of his nose.
These maps aren’t even of Bhuj. They’re of Orissa, after the cyclone he and Lorraine had worked two years ago. He isn’t even sure why he has the maps. Perhaps he brought them to look at comparable village sizes or—
“A silly error,” he says.
She takes his hands again. He hadn’t realized they’d been shaking. “A lot has happened.”
A lot. Such a vague notion, like saying That’s a lot of rice or That vehicle’s had a lot of damage. She makes it sound as though the past intruding on the present can be quantified. The past and present are an inseparable whole, a river, and memories are large rocks that occasionally break the surface when the water strikes them just so. They bare sharp edges; they break limbs; they capsize boats.
“You can’t see all this stuff and not have it affect you,” she says.
Stuff. He wants to laugh. If Rana were here, she’d have a few choice words! Piotr whispers under his breath, “Sanjam da prdnem na tebe.”
The Right of Return
Piotr sees Ted off to the airfield, where he will fly to Delhi on a cargo plane. For a brief second, he has a feeling: This is the last time I will ever see Ted. But he shakes the idea from his head. Ted will come back; they will have another assignment; the world will continue to crumble and be rebuilt.
Ted asks, “Are you all right?”
Again, this question. He doesn’t mind it per se, but its binarism suggests that one is either all right or not all right. The working assumption of the asker is that he, at this moment, is not all right.
“Yes,” Piotr replies. “Of course.”
Ted holds up his bandaged hand. “One day,” he says, “I’ll be made of iron like you.”
Piotr shakes his head. “I doubt it.”
Ted’s face contorts, as if he’s been insulted. Piotr hadn’t meant it that way, but Ted says, “Yeah, you’re right,” and boards the plane.
Piotr should apologize. But he doesn’t. He watches the plane take off and continues to stand there as other planes come and go, roar and screech. Live bodies arrive; dead bodies depart. The sun sets, and the after-dark curfew descends over the city. The moon makes its slow arc in the sky, nearly full. He needs to address the matter of the water supply. The government waste-removal services have dumped rubble into Pragsar Lake, which feeds the city’s wells. A 450-year-old source — ruined. The waterway schematics have curled. It is the nature of paper to bend, to be malleable. He is not paper. He is the information. He is words, numbers, explanations. He is the shortest distance between Desalsar Lake and here. He needs to be all right for this.
But Piotr can do nothing; he’s frozen in place. He can’t move, can’t think. Possibilities loom before him; the endlessness of them terrifies him. He wishes Rana were there to tell him what to do. He wishes Rana could tap his shoulder, lay his pencil down, and stop his information gathering, the ceaseless, distracting numeracy. He wishes she were there to tell him, once and for all, Things will be fine.
Normalcy Bias, as Defined by Rabbits
Piotr will read Watership Down to Katia. She chooses it because she loves rabbits, and she thinks single-minded determination will convince him to buy one.
He pauses when he reaches the word “tharn”—a made-up word from the made-up language of rabbits. He licks his finger and flips to the glossary. Tharn: Stupefied, distraught, hypnotized with fear. But can also, in certain contexts, mean “looking foolish” or again “heartbroken” or “forlorn.”
He holds the book open in his lap.
Katia, in a tiny voice, says “Daddy?” She stares at him, at this creature that is not her father, because her father does not cry. He looks at her, sheets pulled up to her waist. Her eyes are wide as flashlights. She is transfixed, and he cannot move, not to hold her, not to comfort her.
Tharn. Yes, he thinks, that is exactly what it is like.
EPILOGUE
Sweet Unknown
I.
What time is it in the air? What time is it on the ground? How does time move forward when, every thousand miles, Ted loses an hour? Could the plane fly fast enough for time to run in reverse? Will they reach the moment before Andy dies? When would be the best time for Ted to warn himself, This is where things go wrong? Do he and Andy travel the same westward path, the slow arc over Asia and into Europe? When do they part ways, as Ted continues across the vast, black ocean? Is Andy cold there, in the belly of the plane? Does he have his own compartment, or is he braced against people’s luggage, cargo, souvenirs? Who picks up his body in London? His mother? Does she even know what happened? Are two firefighters, in black double-breasted dress coats, knocking on her door now? Will they call him a hero? Will they tell her that he died valiantly? Will they comfort her? Will they give her a number to call? Do forms need to be filled out? Once they leave, what’s left except the waiting? Why do the minutes stretch on and on, in the unending elasticity of grief? How does one survive the long hours until someone tells you what to do next? Will she sit in his old room, surrounded by his old things? Are magazine pictures of soccer players hidden and folded between the pages of a book somewhere? Are they stuck to his wall with tape, the adhesive yellowed and brittle? When she opens the door, do they fall to the ground and scrimmage in the breeze? Did Andy even like soccer? Why is it that the more he tries to remember Andy, the more Andy fades? Does forgetting happen that quickly? How long until Andy is a glimpse, a hazy memory? Occasionally, when the plane passes above a break in the clouds, lights flicker far below on the surface of the water — What are they? Ships? The moon reflecting off a cresting wave? How far away is Andy now? What unit of measurement marks that distance? Miles? Hours? Lifetimes? Did he say good-bye to Andy? Will he be invited to the funeral? Would Andy’s colleagues want him there? How would they get in touch with him? Would he recognize Andy’s mother? How would he introduce himself? And what does it matter anyway? Why imagine a life that never could have been? How would he and Andy have handled the distance? The age difference? What was he thinking when, on their second night together, his hand crept over Ted’s? Why did he keep it there, the warm weight, his rough, stubby fingers? Why does it feel like cold has seeped into Ted’s fracture, his joints, his marrow? Have the bones been set correctly? Will they heal crooked? Or at all? When can he return to work? Should he continue with Lorraine’s DART? With USAID? What good could come of it? How long can he put off this decision? What will he do in the meantime? People continue like normal after their worlds have changed irrevocably, but is that any way to live? How long will he stay up above the weather, shuttling between one time and the next? Has it snowed in New York? Did the flakes fall from the sky, steady as an IV drip? Are the electrical lines covered so that the city looks like it’s crisscrossed by conduits of bone? When the white and silence blanket the city, does everything beneath freeze in place? Is it like a scab? Does the city heal underneath the snow? Will it leave a scar? If Ted dies, who will inform his parents? How does one speak the language of grief? If he doesn’t hear bad news, has it not happened? Would he rather be lonely than have someone mourn him? Why does he feel that, at any moment, he could burst into tears? And why can’t he? What inside him feels like concrete? Why do his hands and feet feel leaden? Will he ever fall sleep? What demons await him when he closes his eyes? Should he take a sleeping pill? Two? A handful? Is it worse to sleep and run the risk of dreaming or to stay awake with endless questions?