These Lifeless Things

I said nothing. I think I even felt nothing, not even the little leap of joy or hope I’d feel when someone says the word now. I was so tired. You cannot say ‘love’ any more, you just cannot. I wanted to say: Oh, you’d say anything. I know which side you’re on now.

But I was thinking instead: He knows everything about the plan. If I take my eyes off him he’ll be off to his bosses, those great shimmering walls of evil that have come to infest our planet, and They will say: Well done my good and faithful servant, or whatever it is They say. Look at him, he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking right through my head to the wall.

I said, I’ll think about it, and I let him raise my hands to his lips. His mouth, too, was warm.

When he left I wanted to run around like a headless chicken. We’ve been betrayed, or we’re about to be, or are we? We don’t have time. Call off the plan! No, move it up! Forget the ice. We’ll figure something out. A backup train. A rowboat. A wagon. Our people throw nothing away, once we get to the outskirts, near the wall, I’m sure we’ll…

…I had to physically sit down and sit on my hands for a while, which wasn’t a bad thing. They eventually warmed up beneath my thighs. I had to remind myself to breathe. Breathe, dammit! And V. asleep in the other room. For God’s sake.

I keep thinking: It would have been better if we had fought. Really fought. If I could have clocked him even once, if I could have justified him going to Them, and saying: She will betray you, look what she did to my face. But instead we are in this uneasy limbo, which I hate more, and the sky screams and chimes, and we are running out of time.

But it is much faster to betray than to build. O, that a man can smile, and smile, and smile, and still be a villain!

November 29

The ice must be almost ready. After breakfast, when the sun is fully up, V. and I will go down and check.

K. is done for me, he’s done. I said, directly, quietly, Are you going to turn us in?

And he looked back at me, and then looked away, and he said: No.

That was all I needed to hear, as damning as if he had taken out a badge and thrown it onto the floor between us. I didn’t even say: So I was right. I didn’t say: I saved your life, you bastard.

I thought, exhaustedly: Did I? Or was it all a play, a sham? Did I fall for it because of something so broken and hungry inside me that I cannot even give it a name?

Still I refuse to give it a name. Still I refuse to say to anyone: Forgive me. I was jealous, I wasn’t paying attention. I missed things, so many things, and I let so many things slide past me that I should have caught. I let myself be distracted.

And K. did not. God, I am almost jealous of that too. What a world.

I said, my voice wavering, Can you at least tell me what They want to accomplish here?

He sagged. We both knew exactly what kind of conversation we were having. He said, slowly, They don’t tell us, you know. Not in words, not really. It’s more like… the nightmares that everyone has. When They are done with one world, They find another, and if there is a way They can avoid doing Their own work on the ground, They use the existing life forms. Here, that’s us. Their learning curve seems… clumsy. They carry a time with Them that isn’t the same as ours. But…

I said, But you’ll be spared.

He said, Yes. And you too, if you…

No, I said. Why wouldn’t you turn us in? Tell Them everything? Won’t They punish you after this?

He said, I don’t know. Yes, probably.

They already know that we’re up to something, I said.

Yes.

So you don’t need to turn us in at all. It’s already been done.

Yes.

I turned away from him; I thought: Don’t let yourself be distracted. It’s almost done. None of this will matter in… what, a day and a half, two days? None of this will matter. Especially why we did what we did.

He said, You and him…

Him who?

Valentin.

I said, What about him?

And he looked at me with the flame of his eyes flickering behind the blue, turning it into glass, and I thought, I was a fool, I really was, in five or six different ways, to not see this coming, and he said, Nothing. Never mind.

Every family, they say, gets one saint. I wonder who ours is.

November 30

I wish I could so much as… picture a future that includes V. and me, together, alive. We don’t end up together. We can’t and we don’t. Even if, one day, it was love, we could never split our love and loyalty like that. We would never be able to forget these days and the things that were said. Perhaps for other people in the long, long history of war and love, it has happened that way, but not now. And no one else can know.

I fear the things I don’t know, not the things I do. I’m afraid of so much and I’ve never been responsible for so much. I’m so afraid. I’m worried I’ll freeze at the moment I can least afford it, and no one will be able to help me. But I am determined to stay and fight, if anyone needs to.

The enemy is not each other and the enemy is not love. It’s not wanting to be loved, either. It’s so important, I wish I hadn’t figured it out so late, but there’s no one I can tell any more. Only this paper, only this book, almost full, and so wrinkled and battered: that’s not the enemy. That’s the ally. The only one we’ve got. It will not help us win the day. Nothing will. But it will fight at our side.

It will not save us. It will only save our humanity. In the end.

There’s coal for the train. A. and I found a big bag of it this morning, and spent forever patiently packing it into paper bags so we can all carry some.

Fireworks last night. Just as we were promised, all those weeks ago.