If the blacks stay black and the whites stay white, it still remains possible to think clearly. There is something to be said for clarity, there is something to be said for understanding the lines. If the Jews were meant to breed with the Gentiles, God would have written it down through the prophets, the People of the Valley like to say. What if you cross a jackal with a child?
On a death barge a mongrel in robes might float by. What if without permission, the dog-child wore a crown and began to decree?
If you interbreed the races you are in for trouble, the People of the Valley are saying. Murky children rise up out of their dreams and walk the not-so-distant hills. You are left with the question when you bump into them picking flowers of what exactly they are. If you misguidedly vote one of these mixed-flower people, these freaks, into public office, you will only add to the National Nightmare.
But like it or not, fluidity and connections and dualities define the world now. Like it or not, forging hybrid identities is where it’s at. It does not help that the Morbidity Table indicates the kind of White People who live in the Valley right now will be dying off sooner rather than not.
The question in the Valley more and more becomes how to disable permanently the mongrel so he will not be able to run, but only hobble.
There is a lot to consider when pondering mongrels and men. The child should hurry and graft horse-running legs onto the mongrel candidate’s body. She should hurry and graft enormous white eagle wings to his back; a surgical expertise born of necessity will move into her hands. Among the species there is an aptitude for survival one can only call admirable. Winged, horse-legged, felled candidate, how are you feeling? Fine, he says. I feel great. The child and the mother and the candidate’s aptitude for bouncing back are unmatched.
If you cross a mother with a bat, then what have you got? Something shining and night-loving with a sonar intelligence of the first order.
Some things once brought into being can never be killed. Some things brought into light refuse to retreat back into the darkness. Not only that, but they obtain a lightness unlike any other thing in the world. There is a luminosity not to be believed.
If you cross the mother on the Equinox with the Night and introduce a Glove, a miracle will occur.
A BLUE MULTITUDE of children huddle around the mother. They’ve just come in from the blueberry patch. See them now as they doze off with their full blue buckets — Lars, Bibi, Ingmar, Anders, Sven. Baby Inga is not yet born.
INGMAR TUGS AT his mother’s blue dress and whispers, it is rumored that the Cold Lab is making its way to the Spiegelpalais.
Yes, she smiles. There are great hopes that the Grandfather from the North Pole at last will be on display.
FATHER TED HAD disappeared, and so someone ran to prop up the one-hundred-year-old Father Finch to say the Sunday Mass. The mother loved Father Finch best, for he seemed always furious, and he spoke with a slight stutter, and there was something in his fury that steeled her to his side. When he arrived at last, he started immediately telling the congregants that there was a word in Hebrew, and that the word meant when you save one person, you save the world. Plainly he spoke of the suffering of the children, and the mother imagined God’s infinite indifference in all matters big and small. Pity, Father Finch said, the children for whose suffering we are directly responsible. The child, sitting next to the mother in the front pew, could not understand how this could be.
When he was not giving the sermon, Father Finch was prone to stutter, particularly at the letter B. The latter part of the Mass was especially difficult for him with all the body and blood and breaking bread. At these times, a loud baritone voice would come out of the mother’s chest, and she would bellow bread, or blood, and it gave Father Finch the momentum to go on. The child stared at the mother as if she could not believe the mother was capable of producing such a sound.
The God Father Finch spoke of directed the leper to plunge himself seven times in the river, and with that, the leper’s flesh became the flesh of a child, and he was clean of his leprosy. Next, the God cast seven demons from the Magdalene. The mother put up her umbrella. There was no telling what the God might do next.
DOWN THE ROAD, the artist groped in the dark for her brushes and shouted to those who passed by, on this Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, that she had been blinded in the Spiegelpalais. She said not to go in there: all had transpired or would transpire, and all that was promised was nothing but a mirage.
FROM THE FOG the soldiers came now, singing their crooked songs. First a few and then a few more and then a cast of thousands. They are just over this last dune — Grave Alice and Laughing Allegra and Margarete with the Auburn Hair — you’re nearly there.
SHE PINNED THE Obligation Doily to her head. Once it was forbidden to walk into a church with the head uncovered. In those days, hatmakers’ shops flourished in the Valley. The ladies went to great lengths seeking out hats that might please Him. If not a beautiful hat or an intricate lace Obligation Doily, then what, the mother wondered, was the offering He was waiting for?
THE MOTHER THOUGHT while the child slept she might go out and confront the God, head on. Go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord, the faltering bat whispered; the Lord will be passing by. A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before her — but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake — but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire. After the fire there was a tiny phishing sound. When she heard this, she put her face in her cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
THE VIRGIN STANDS with her lantern at the mouth of the cave and gestures for the mother to come forward.
Yes, the mother says, but I’m not ready yet. I need a little more time. The Virgin smiles and puts down her lantern and rests awhile.
SOMETIMES, WHEN THEY were gray traces on a page, and the hand loomed and hovered and pressed down on them, when they were glyphs across the divide from one another, she despaired. In those times she was aware of the ampersand — the thin squiggled figure that both joined and separated them. The notion that someone had created them filled her with sadness; she did not know quite why. While the inventor slept, she slipped from under the great hand and went out untethered into the silence.
The mother wishes for the place where they are not already decided, not already made, the place they are autonomous, unmediated, free. She looks out a small window in the text. The hand asleep atop the manuscript. In the pre-dawn, she makes her way back home from the cave to the child and she runs into the members of the parish making their way to the sunrise service. She does not look up, but they see her anyway. When they greet her on the path carrying a torch, she sidesteps them. They are on their way to morning Mass, but she has had enough of the Creators, all of them, even the child, asleep, dreaming her, venturing out into the forest, seeking her once more, dragging the little ampersand.
HE HAD PULLED a fishbone from the throat of a choking boy, he had talked a wolf into releasing a pig for a starving old woman, he had visions of the risen Christ everywhere he looked — for his trouble, his skin was shredded and he was beheaded and named the patron saint of animals. And once a year, the mother and child were blessed with candles at the throat in his honor.
IN THE CAVES of Allah, the soldiers, sheltered, grateful to be out of the monstrous heat, crouch and talk a kind of baby talk: Tora Bora, Lahore, and then just gibberish. Before the youngest among them closes his eyes, he says, look! By the light of the last match: a lion, a deer, a running man drawn 24,000 years earlier. How filled with joy they are at this last moment, and how unexpectedly — at the very end.