He said, exaggerating the movements of his mouth and speaking loudly—as if the woman were deaf, or did not fully understand his words—"Do you recognize me? Who
am
I? Is there more to this?"
The darkness that was her face tilted slightly, as if in confusion. She said, in a voice that was clear and musical, but oddly tense, "Please, sir, you frighten me."
David shook his head. "I don’t understand that." He paused. "I’m . . . lost." He nodded toward the forest behind him. "I came from in there." He shook his head again. "And now I’m out here, but I don’t know where here
is
."
He heard laughter. He peered hard at the face of the black-haired woman and saw beneath the darkness that covered it the same full lips and the same eyes he had seen before. She was not laughing and yet he could hear peals of laughter that could be coming from no one else. There was no one else nearby. In the little hollow where the other woman was telling her listeners to "ask important questions," there were many people, but the hollow was far off, and the laughter he heard was practically at his ear.
He asked the black-haired woman, "Is something funny?"
"Please, sir," she repeated, "you frighten me. I can’t see you."
And as she spoke, the laughter continued. As an overlay to it, he heard, "You cannot stay here." The voice was clearly not hers; it was a voice that was essentially sexless, and it had come from behind him.
He looked back. He saw nothing.
"You’ll find out," said the voice. "You’ll find out that you can’t stay. I’m not joking with you. You’ll see. There’s pain if you stay. This isn’t something you should treat lightly."
David
whirled
, but there was no one behind him, only the forest, green and lush.
"Who
are
you?" he shouted.
"Get your business done with," said the voice. "You think you’ve got time to dawdle? You don’t. Believe me. I’m not joking here."
"
Who
are you?"
"I would say, ‘Who are you?’ Do you know? You must know. It’s very important that you know. You start losing track of yourself and you’ll be lost forever."
Nearby, a rectangle of earth in the dimensions of a man rose and fell very slightly, as if it were breathing. It was covered with pale green grass, and as David watched, the woman he had been talking to walked over the moving spot of earth. It rose through the bottom inch or so of her foot, caressed it a moment, then let it go easily as the woman passed into the forest.
David became aware of his nakedness then, seeing the woman’s sandaled foot.
I don’t have any clothes on
, he thought.
A grainy numbness—low and insistent—started around his eyes and forehead; he barely noticed it. Oddly, it was almost pleasant.
He thought,
I have pain
. He closed his eyes. He studied the pain, wondered at it.
He heard waves whispering to shore, the distant squawk of gulls, the low, moist sputter of an outboard motor. He opened his eyes. He saw nothing nearby that would cause such sounds. He saw the forest, like a dark green mouth, and turning his head to look in the opposite direction, he saw the woman in the hollow still exhorting her listeners to "ask important questions," and, around the hollow, a checkerboard landscape that reached very, very far in three directions; and beyond that landscape, the deep, cloudless gray-blue sky in turmoil, as if sunlight were trying to break through thick, and imperfect, moving glass.
From his left, he heard, "I want to talk to you." He looked. A man even taller than himself, but very thin, so the bones of his shoulders jutted out from beneath reedy muscles, went on, "Yes, you. I want to ask you questions." The man was dressed in a gray sports coat and tattered white pants, and his thick, light brown hair shot out in all directions. But his face, like all the faces here, was a mask of darkness. David could see only the suggestion of a full mouth and broad nose. "Yes, you," the man repeated.
"Who are you?" David asked.
"I don’t understand that," the man said peevishly. "‘Who are you?’"
But David didn’t realize the man was repeating his question, so he said, "I don’t know who I am."
The man sighed. "Can you come with me?”
“To where?"
"To my apartment."
A face appeared in David’s memory. It was pale, fine-featured, gray-eyed; and it was surrounded by darkness.
"I want to talk to you," the thin man with the unruly hair went on. "I want to ask you questions. I think you can help me. I think you can help us all."
"I don’t know," David said again, his mental eye on the pale and fine-featured face that filled his memory. His pain deepened a little as he looked at it. He winced, though not so much in response to the pain as in response to the possibility that it would continue to increase.
"I want you to come with me," the man said again. "I have things to show you." He paused. "Can you
see
through that; can you
hear
?"
"Through what?" David asked. "Who are you?"
"I don’t understand that," the man said. "‘Who are you?’ "
"I don’t know," David said, again misunderstanding what the man had said. "Dammit, I don’t know!"
The man sighed.
The face in David’s memory smiled.
"Anne?" David whispered.
"
Anne?
" the man said. "What is that?
Anne
."
But David’s eyes were on the face of his sister, smiling in his memory. The face disappeared. The pain encircling David’s head increased. He winced again.
And suddenly he knew where he was and what he was doing. And why.
He looked down at himself. "I don’t have any damned clothes on," he whispered.
"But you do," said the man standing with him.
"No, I don’t," David said, then continued, as if seeing the man for the first time, "Who are you? Can you help me? Can you tell me where my sister is?"
"Sister? What
is
that? What is
sister
? Tell me about
sister
. Is it connected to
mutherfother
?"
David’s gaze went quickly from here to there. It took in the little hollow, the woman still exhorting the crowd around her to "ask important questions," the fitful horizon, the lush green forest. "Is this the earth?" he asked.
The thin man asked, "What is
earth
?"
David looked at him a long moment. "You don’t understand me, do you?"
"Not so much that you’d notice," the man answered. "But I want to. I
need
to. I think you have many wonderful things to tell us. I’ve got this theory—it’s only a theory, you understand; and what is a theory but guesswork based on logical assumptions?—and my theory has it that we have all lived
before
." He paused. "No one believes it, of course. Show us the
evidence
they tell me. But what can I show them? My theory isn’t
based
on evidence, not in the way that—"
"I have
nothing
to tell you," David cut in. "Nothing at all." And he turned from the man and walked in the direction of the woman in the hollow. As he walked, he took notice of his bare legs and feet, then that he was wearing shoes and pants, then that there were sleeves covering his arms.
He felt pressure on his shoulder. He stopped. The thin man with the mop of unruly hair was behind him; the dark mask of his face was nodding.
"Oh, but you do have
much
to tell us. You do. You have no idea. You probably don’t
know
it, but I’m here to tell you that you do; I’ll lead you along."
"I’m looking for my sister," David said flatly.
"What is that?" the man asked, and his voice was filled with enthusiasm. "What is
sister
?"
"But you barely speak my language, do you," David said, as if the man’s comment had been proof that there was no hope of communication. "And if I can’t see your face, either—"
"You can’t? I
knew
it, I
knew
it. I’ve always thought that you people saw us precisely the way we see you. And that’s something I’ve talked with the others about, too, and you know what they told me—’What difference does it make?’ they told me. ‘What difference does it make?’ Can you believe it? I mean, you people are
everywhere
. Turn around, and there you are, staring at us through all that . . . stuff." He waved his hands in front of David’s face. "Do you mind if I touch it? I’ve always wanted to touch it." He touched David’s cheek. "Aha, that’s
you
under there, isn’t it?" He withdrew his hand; it disappeared into the darkness that covered his own face. "Feels the same," he whispered.
"You speak in gibberish," David said, suddenly angry at the man’s rambling talk.
The man would not be deterred. "It’s wonderful, don’t you see? You say that
I
speak in gibberish, but
I
can’t say the same thing to you. You are a . . . a teacher. Do you know that?" He was close to incoherent in his enthusiasm. "I have talked to so many of you . . . faceless ones." He paused. "Does that offend you? Tell me. I’ve wondered. Does it offend you to be called faceless?" He shrugged. "
I
wouldn’t be offended if that’s what you called me. It’s only a matter of perception, after all. Neither of us is actually faceless to the extent, I mean, that we have no face. Each of us does indeed have a face."
David said, looking hard into the darkness that covered the man’s face, "Christ, this is like talking to a goddamned ghost."
"Ghost. Yes," the man nearly shouted. "I’ve heard that word. Tell me about it. Tell me about
ghost
. And
goddamned
, too. I’d like to know about that. We have people here who use that word a lot. I mean, they walk around saying
goddamned
this, and
goddamned
that—"
David cut in, "I’m sorry. I don’t have the time to be your day’s amusement." And again he turned away and started walking in the direction of the woman in the hollow. She was much, much closer than he remembered; he didn’t remember walking that far. He was nearly one of her crowd of listeners, now. He stopped walking. He looked at her. She grew; the crowd grew, as if he were quickly drawing closer. Then she stopped growing. The crowd stopped growing. It shrank. He was at a good distance again. And he thought,
This is like walking in a dream
.
"Yes," the man said behind him. "We dream. Do
you
dream, too?" And David realized that he had said aloud what he supposed he had only been thinking. The man hurried on, "We dream of people we have never seen, and of places we have never been to. Is it the same with you, and with the people like you? Please tell me."
David felt pressure on his arm. He shook the pressure away. "Damn you, I can’t even be sure any of this is
real
, for God’s sake!"
"Real? Tell me about that. Tell me about
real
. Does it have to do with
reality
, and, if it does, then what is
reality
?"
"Please, leave me
alone
!" David shouted.
"Alone?" the man said. "Well, we’re
all
alone, aren’t we? Especially the people who choose to live in underground apartments, which is something
I’ll
never understand—"
"
Damn
you!" David whispered. Was it the pain that was making him surly, he wondered, or was it was simply this maddeningly insistent man himself?
He began to weep. He had no idea why, at first. It was a spontaneous thing, as spontaneous as a sneeze, and just as unbidden. But he wept loudly; his tears stained the dry dirt path on which he and the man were walking.