DUNE’S EDGE
Except for us, only the wind and sand move. Intermittently the wind rises and flays us with tan curtains of sand. It would be a good penance if I were only guiltier.
We think we are climbing the east face of the dune. None of the five of us has any directional sense. The sun parcels our days by rising at our backs and descending beyond the dune’s edge. We recall another sun, and call this shifting slope the eastern face.
The five of us:
Toby is—was—a dancer. She has no breasts; her hips are wide, her thighs very muscular. Her black leotard has frayed through at elbows and knees. She was born in New York City.
Albert is the fool. He is dressed in tweeds rather than motley, but he is the target of all our gibes. Albert has the physique of a professional wrestler.
Paula is my enigma. I know less about her than about any of my other companions. Her skin is copper stretched over fragile bones. Her face lacks expression. Paula is strikingly beautiful. She speaks with a Portuguese accent.
Dieter is the old man with the gun. He was here long before us other four. He wears a ragged uniform. The automatic rifle cradled in his arms is new; the wooden stock oiled, the metal shiny. He stares past us and mutters often.
Myself. What is there to say? I have forgotten my face. Paula says I have horseman’s hands—fingers strong enough to use the reins well but tender to soothe a frightened animal. There is little point in self-description.
I scramble toward the summit of the dune, always slipping back frustrated, lungs burning. There is a woman I imagine to be beyond the dime. Her name is lost; neither do I recognize her face. The keys of memory jangle painlessly when the locks have been lost.
* * * *
It is getting toward dusk and the sky has turned purple. My sweating skin holds the dust. I lie spread-eagled so that no part of my body clings to any other part. Paula kneels beside me, to shade my face.
“I think we’re allowed more rest periods,” I say.
“No.” She shakes her head slowly and sadly. “You think too wishfully.” She moves her shoulders and for a moment the sun moves out of eclipse. I close my eyes against the dazzle, then open them again and watch the tiny translucent planets drift across her face.
“I like to shelter you,” Paula says. She stretches her arms stiffly.
“Christ on the mountain.” It is Dieter leaning over us, using the automatic rifle as a cane.
Paula looks up. “You know of him.”
The old man smooths back his thinning white hair. “I know of him. Every morning when I left my apartment I would see him up there with arms spread wide in benediction.” He laughs harshly, a dry ratcheting sound. “No benediction. All he gave down the mountainside was a shadow of superstition and ignorance. I often watched the gullible spending their centavos on candles rather than food. It was quite amusing.”
“Is not redemption more important than a full stomach?” says Paula.
“I am skeptical of a redeemer who looks like nothing more than white plaster over chicken wire,” answers Dieter.
Paula’s green eyes turn toward me. “Were you ever in Rio?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve seen movies. I’ve always wanted to visit Brazil.”
“It is a green and wild country,” she said, “and beautiful. In your movies, did you see the statue of Christ on the mountain, arms outspread, eyes turned toward Sugar Loaf?”
I nod.
“What of the favelas, do you remember them?”
“I think so. The slums on the mountainsides. Shacks of wooden lath and corrugated metal roofing. There were scenes of the favelas dwellers dancing joyously. At the time I suspected it was a fabrication, like an American image of happy darkies singing in the cotton field.”
“I remember, the favelas very well,” says Paula. “I was reared in one. Joy seldom came.”
“What about your Christ?” says Dieter. “Did he not bring you joy?”
“My Christ? You’re quick to attribute allegiances.”
“My job, once.”
“Old man, your memory seems clear. Let me test you. Do you know a bar in Ipanema called the Club Roca?”
“In Ipanema? Of course. I found many nights of diversion there.”
“There was a woman you saw. Her name was Floriana.”
“Yes.” For the first time Dieter looks startled. His eyes flicker between Paula and me. They are clouded sapphire. “What about her?”
“Floriana was a very beautiful woman for a while. Did you know she was a mestiço?”
Dieter shrugs. “I knew. I didn’t care. We must sometimes settle for what is available. The woman amused me.”
“Isn’t that cold-blooded?”
“I am not a warm man.” He smiles without humor. “What is your interest in Floriana?”
There is a shout from above us: “He’s going to make it!” Toby stands with legs wide apart, braced ankle-deep in the sand. “Albert, you’re going to make it.” Her cupped hands amplify the words. “Just a little further!”
Albert is only a few meters from the dune’s crest. He scrambles up the final, steepest part of the slope, arms and legs moving like the limbs of an enormous spider. He scrabbles frantically in the sand, beginning to slip back.
“Albert, please.” It is almost a prayer from Toby. Her hands clench.
“That’s it!” I yell. “You’re there, Al.”
With a despairing screech, Albert falls. He topples backward and flip-flops down the dune like a weighted clown-toy. He pushes before him a landslide in miniature. The sand eddies around our ankles.
“Clumsy animal,” says Dieter.
“Baby, poor baby,” Toby croons, brushing sand away from Albert’s eyes.
Albert is crying. Tears form in the corners of his eyes but are quickly clotted by the dust. “Had it almost paid off,” he whispers. “Only a few months and mine. Paid.”
He is both comic and pathetic. I’ve seen his headlong pratfalls too many times to be amused now. I feel an abstracted sympathy.
“He must be very hot in those tweeds,” says Toby.
“Why not take them off?” suggests Paula.
Toby does not hear. “He must be very hot.”
I look around for the old man. Dieter has left us and is climbing determinedly toward the summit. I wrinkle my nose. Dieter has left behind him a strong scent of decay: the smell of carrion in the sun.
* * * *
I walk the beach, picking up bits of driftglass. Green and amber shards dry on my palm. The luster swiftly dulls.
Down the beach a low mist has settled over the headland. The morning is still chilly. The sound of the surf overpowers everything except the cries of gulls. The white birds wheel low over a mound on the wet sand.
At first I think it’s a drowned animal washed up. I hurry closer and stop. The dress is striped red and blue; the waves have covered her face with the hem. I gave her the dress a birthday ago. She wore it last night.
I kneel and slowly pull the edge of her dress down. Her eyes are driftless. I let the cloth fall back. Then I am screaming into the surf, but I cannot hear myself.
Paula kisses my forehead, hugs me to her breast, repeats again and again, “It’s all right; you’re dreaming.”
The incantation works. Gradually I stop shaking and stop crying. The base of my skull feels as though someone is tightening a garrote.
Paula’s lips are cool. “Was it the same?”
“It was.”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes. Not her name, but I know her.” The pain begins to subside to its permanent background throb. I think of the girl on the beach and I feel sorrow. There is grief and pain, but no guilt. I should feel guilt.
“You will remember,” says Paula.
I say nothing, but get to my feet. I rub my hands together for warmth. The nights are short but as cold as the days are hot. We have no protection other than our clothing. On the infrequent occasions when we can stand one another, the five of us huddle together for warmth.
“I’m going to try for the top,” I say.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“This is a solo.” Each of us has made many night attempts. Otherwise our only option is sleep. And to sleep is not to rest; only to dream.
* * * *
I have spent nearly an hour watching Toby plait her black hair. She is meticulous, taking apart and redoing each braid at least a half dozen times. I sit behind her and watch the patterns form.
“Doesn’t it bore you?” I ask.
“That’s got to be the funniest thing anyone’s said since I got to this place.”
I hesitate. “Does it bother you, not dancing?”
She slowly turns to face me. “This is a dance, all of it. The choreography is clumsy. It’s not like I’d do.”
“How would you change?”
“Call an end, for one thing. Start over. Our choreographer is sticking with classical ballet. I hate that. It’s far too structured. I would try something more contemporary.”
I ask one of the questions we seldom use. “Where were you before you came here?”
“Salt Lake City. I was giving up the dance. For three days I’d lain in bed in my apartment staring at a photo of Lar Lubovich I’d tacked on the wall. I could never be that good, so I gave up.”
“That simple?”
She impatiently ravels a braid. “Of course not. You want me to catalog all the sordid details of failure? Would you like a list of non-names I was going to give my miscarried children?”
“I’m sorry.”
“The two most useless words.”
I start to turn away. I am sorry, and I’m confused. Toby catches my elbow.
“Listen,” she says. “I’m wrong. We shouldn’t try to hurt each other.”
But what she means lies fallow in my mind for the next ten thousand climbs.
* * * *
ESSAY ON WHAT ITS LIKE HERE. The essay is committed to memory as I have no pen or paper.
I can talk about the anomalies. For example, there is nothing here to eat or drink. We are continually tortured by hunger and thirst. Yet our bodies sweat curing the day and shiver away calories at night. Starvation cannot kill us.
There is the compulsion to climb the dune. Many times I have attempted to walk away at right angles from a direct path to the crest. I step off the meters carefully, my eyes searching for fixed reference points. Inevitably my counting becomes confused and I discover myself struggling toward the top of the dune as always. We climb and we fall back, and that process has become a constant.
Here are the basic questions: Who? Why? How? Where? The answers evade us. Each of us seems to have a pet theory as to the “where.”
Hell has been suggested. So has purgatory. There are less philosophical speculations. Toby was once given a pet turtle for her birthday. She wonders if perhaps we have been abducted by hyperscientific aliens from another planet and imprisoned in something like a giant terrarium.
Dieter refuses to believe this is anything but a plot against him by his enemies among the technocrats.
I can come to no conclusion. I would like to believe this all a dream. But can a dream last this long?
* * * *
It is time; I detour a few steps to avoid Albert who is squatting beside his latest castle. The sand is too dry to make a good construction material. Spires turn out low and blunted.
“Biggest credit corporations in niggertown,” says Albert, cupping his hands around a minaret. “And no ceiling on interest rates.” He takes his fingers away and the tower collapses. “God bless me, everyone.”
Paula sits crosslegged watching Albert. She tilts her chin and gives me a sphinx look as I pass. I nod and smile.
Dieter is standing at parade rest, one hand shading his eyes from the sun. I nod; he grunts.
Beyond him Toby lies on her belly, puffing. She raises herself on both elbows and shakes her head. Sand sprays from her hair. “Closer,” she says. “Little bit... I think.”
“Good,” I say, “One of us’ll make it today.” I’ve said that many times and I still believe it.
The grade steepens rapidly, almost geometrically. Once, years before, I skied at Sun Valley. One morning the electrical power for the lifts failed. I learned to herring-bone up the hills. I use the same technique now—it’s the only time I’m glad I have size eleven feet. Feet sixty degrees apart, heels in, toes out. One foot ahead, then the other. Dig the inside edges of my feet into the sand. One, then the other.
Repeat.
* * * *
One day my inevitable fall brings with it an epiphany. The answer is simple beyond belief. I wonder at my obtuseness.
The hummock which was Albert’s sand castle finally stops my fall.
Toby helps me to my feet. I grab her shoulders and whirl her around. Her braids fly out straight. “I’ve got the answer,” I babble. “We’re going to the top.”
“Work together?” says Dieter. “You overwhelm us with your simplicity.”
“I’ll try it,” says Toby. “Why not?”
Paula’s eyes catch the sunlight and are unfathomable. “It will work,” she says quietly.
“Albert?”
Albert is again building a sand castle.
“Albert.”
Paula walks over to him and touches his shoulder. He recoils. He looks up at her, face contorted. “I dreamed, last night. You’re a savage god! you—” His screams compete with the wind.
The flat sound of her slap does not echo. Paula slowly takes her hand away and Albert bends forward from the waist. His forehead rests on the keep of the castle and he begins to weep.
“Albert will help us,” she says.
“But I will not.” Dieter’s voice is dry and without inflection. “I see no reason to do this thing.”
“If we cooperate,” I say, “we can reach the edge of the dune. We will discover what the compulsion has driven us toward.”
“Then the four of you will cooperate. I have no desire to see what is beyond the crest.”
“It is impossible,” I answer. “My plan requires five.”
“No.” Dieter raises the automatic rifle and points the muzzle at my chest.
“Dieter . . .” Paula walks slowly toward him. I move to stop her but she motions me back. The old man swivels the gun to cover her.
“Don’t come any closer, Paula. I don’t know whether a gun can kill you, but I will try.”
The girl faces him across a meter of sand. “You cannot shoot me, Dieter, but the fault will not be with the gun. You are incapable of face-to-face killing.”
His face tightens.
“How many were you accused of exterminating? Four hundred thousand? A half million? You killed them with a pen, with requisitions and directives. You never saw a single corpse.”
“Ill kill you,” he says. “Stop it.”
“I love your flash of anger,” says Paula. “It’s a reflection of your gypsy blood.”
“What . . .” His skin pales to bone and he backs two steps away. “You lie.”
“Look at us, Dieter. All of us, mongrels. All of us. Did your maternal grandmother never tell you of the incredible night she once spent in a gaily painted wagon outside Ingolstadt?”
Dieter appears stunned. Paula continues to speak to him as the rest of us watch and listen. She talks and the old man crumbles under the subtly erosive destruction that only women can bring to bear.
Finally Paula stops and begins to turn away. She pauses. “One thing more, Dieter. Do you remember the Club Roca and the woman Floriana?”
There is silence.
“Do you?”
Dieter slowly nods.
“Did you know of Floriana’s pregnancy? Did you know of her prayers beneath the Christ on the mountain? Of her clumsy, hesitant walk to the butcher in the seventh month?”
Like a small boy, the man looks down at the sand.
“Her friends finally left her there on the table. She lay as bloody as the carcass of a slaughtered hog in the market. But the baby lived.”
Dieter moans.
“I lived, Dieter.”
The old man sinks to his knees and rocks back and forth.
I take the gun from unresisting fingers and remove the clip. There are no shells.
* * * *
The beach is the same, except for the mist which has crept close from the headland. The waves still thunder. The gulls still dive and shriek.
I bend over the drowned woman and examine her face. The flesh is bluish, swollen, and cold.
She waded into the surf sometime during the night, taking one last look at the stars. Then she lay down and let the waves cover her. Deliberately she breathed the water in, panicking only in that one unbearable moment of suffocation.
Why did she take her own life?
That question is the one I cannot face and so I awaken, sweating even in the chill night and gasping for breath.
As she has so often, Paula is holding me tightly. My cheek fits neatly against the curve of her throat.
“Was it the same?” she says.
“The same, and more. I know now that she committed suicide.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. I don’t want to know.”
Paula strokes the back of my head, gently massaging the taut muscles.
“I’m suspicious of you,” I say. “I wonder whether you’re player or pawn. You’re not the same as the rest of us.”
“Does it matter that much to you?” There is no change in the pressure of her fingers.
I consider it. “No,” I finally say. “It doesn’t. Not so long as we reach the top tomorrow.” I deliberately pause. “You won’t stop us?”
“No,” and it’s a sigh. “No, I won’t hinder you.” A moment later she whispers four words, nearly too soft to hear: “I wish I could.”
* * * *
I have explained the plan to everyone. In varying degrees they should understand and comply. But I am optimistic.
“The day is great for climbing,” says Dieter. We laugh dutifully; all the days have been great for climbing.
No more conversation or uneasy laughter. I pick up the automatic rifle and we start for the summit. The sun is still behind us and our shadows stretch ahead. The climb seems somehow easier; none of us is winded when we gather in a knot about twelve meters below the dune’s crest. I think we’re all in good physical shape.
“First step,” I say. The rifle is our only tool. I carry it uphill until I begin to slide. I point the muzzle of the gun down and jam it into the sand. Pounding with doubled hands moves it a little deeper. I twist the gun like an auger. Eventually not quite half the length is buried. I stand up, my back stiff. “This won’t do.”
A shadow moves and Albert stands beside me. Without a word he bends over the walnut stock and begins to pound it with the heel of his hand. Powerful, sledgehammer blows. Centimeter by centimeter the rifle drives into the dune. Albert remains silent, even as we hear the small bones in his hand crack and splinter.
“That’s good, stop.”
Albert takes away a bloody hand. The gun is securely buried. About four inches of stock protrude above the sand.
“Step two.” Quickly! Quickly, though there’s no deadline.
Albert is the first and the strongest. One foot is braced against the rifle stock as he lies on the slope. I’m next, scrambling up beside Albert, letting him help me with his uninjured hand. Then I’m standing with my face against the dune, my feet on Albert’s shoulders.
Third is Dieter; then Paula; finally Toby. By some miracle, our human tower is assembled on the first attempt. This in spite of accidental kicks and clawings. The combined weight is unbelievable; I can hardly imagine what it must be like for Albert. “Toby!” I call “How close are you?”
“Very. Less than a yard. I’m reaching but nothing’s up here to grab.”
Dieter groans, legs shaking with strain; I feel the vibration on my shoulders. I don’t think he can stand this for long. Then I feel Albert’s body twisting beneath me.
“We’re going, Toby! Jump. Damn it, jump!”
Our bodies tumble like jackstraws. I have one quick glimpse of the summit and a black-clad leg disappearing. “Made it!” I yell as we roll and slide down the dune, half buried in hot sand.
* * * *
The winds shrill a coda, I hope.
We stare motionless at the crest of the dune, waiting. We listen vainly for a shout, a cry of discovery, a reaction.
“A savage and alien god,” says Albert. He hugs himself and breaks into high-pitched giggles.
“Quiet, you black ape,” says Dieter.
“Where is she?” I say. “She must have found something.”
Paula slowly turns and looks past my shoulder. I follow her eyes. A human figure toils toward us from the foot of the dune.
“Oh, Jesus ...” I whisper. I feel the sand slipping away beneath my feet.
Paula touches my cheek and I swing back to her. She says nothing, but her face reveals infinite weary compassion. Her eyes burn like the sun. When I can no longer bear their heat I turn away . . .
And watch Toby struggle up to us through the sand.