Quibble, 37. Grief

Heartbroken, Nish faces the ghosts of her past.

37. Grief @Definition

Moth bore me through the monastery gates as dusk was falling on the last song in the heat. I’d driven him hard up the mountain from the consensus, determined to make the trip in one day and have done with it before I could second-guess my choice. A clean break. I stabled the horse with a word of thanks and an extra helping of oats, stopped in the kitchen just long enough to filch some leftovers for my own supper, and then, ignoring the mess I found there, I made a beeline for the hall. Best to have this out now, I thought.

As I expected, Indication was slumped in his wingback chair at the hearth with a book before his eyes. I settled myself in the other chair, rummaged a while in the basket beside it, found a tunic – one of Quotation’s – in need of mending, and took up the work with needle and thread, just as if I’d gone nowhere and this was only another boring night. A few minutes passed in silence. Finally I skanced the fat old fox: he was engrossed in reading and appeared not to have noticed me. I huffed and muttered, “Well, I’m back. Say what you’re going to say.”

Cate didn’t look up. “You took longer than I thought you would,” he said.

“Don’t take that superior tone with me!”

“What tone should I take?” he rejoined, laying the book winged in his lap. “I warned you. I told you – and Quibble too – you weren’t thinking. Now you’ve made a pig’s ear of it, and what do you want from me? ‘Poor Nish! Did the big bad excelsior hurt you?’ Fat chance! You had a job to do. We agreed, she had to become Adroit. You couldn’t keep her from seeing rectification? Fine, not your fault, no One can stop a Zero. But you had a choice this time. And sure enough, at the first sign of friction, the moment you got trouble out of Graph—”

“You already knew!” I interrupted. “Who was it? Aladfar?”

“Alsephina. The silence couldn’t come. That’s the pickle you’ve put them in, Nish. If you couldn’t protect Quill from their scheming, the least you could do was help them guard her – but no, you couldn’t even do that!”

“You don’t know what I put up with! You don’t know...”

I trailed off, lost, unsure I could even convince myself that I was right. To my surprise, Cate didn’t take up his book again and let me stew.

“No, I don’t know,” he said, low and soft. “Damn. It’s as much my fault as yours, isn’t it? I dragged you into this, knowing what I knew. Quote even offered to go down the mountain, and I wouldn’t let him. I had this cock-eyed notion you were good for Quill and she was good for you. Damn. All right, what happened?”

I told my story as succinctly as I could, backing up several times to fill in the necessary details. Cate let me follow my nose, posing no questions. All the same, the fire burned low and I fed it two fresh logs before I finished. I thought Cate would cringe at my frankness about making love with Quibble, but in the end he only sighed about my defacement of his Swift.

“I wish you hadn’t done that, tearing out the flyleaf. The lady Ankaa gave me the book. She found it on Egg 4.” He paused, sighed again. “Tens of thousands of years in vacuum storage, perfect preservation. Then, adroitness. You really know how to put the knife in, Nish.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him, and I meant it.

Perhaps sensing deeper regret, Cate began, “You should go back, see if you can patch it up, if Quill—”

“No,” I said firmly. “Right or wrong, it’s done now. I’m done with Quill. I’ll thank you never to mention her name to me again.”

“Nish, I don’t believe she really meant—”

“No!”

With a hard skance, I let Cate know I wasn’t interested in his version of what Quibble said and did, and if he didn’t yield to my wishes, this time I had no qualms at all about throwing him off a parapet or out of a window. Laying aside the tunic half-mended, I rose and left before he could protest.

Alone in my cell, I cleared away the clothes that had found their way from Quibble’s wardrobe into mine. She’d left a number of books, too. I took the clothes and books to her cell, tidied them away. Then I went to bed. I cried myself to sleep, amazed at the inexhaustibility of my tears. Yet when I woke the next morning, I had no more tears. I was getting rid of her.

No, Numberless, I don’t mean her face, her voice, her mismatched eyes fled from my memory, vanishing. Still I recalled what a cruel thing she did. Still it stung, but a little less now.

It was Study, so I went to the library and took a familiar book of poetry. I skipped most of it, not at all absorbed now by the scrivener’s comparison of his lover’s white thighs to white hills or his belabored reasons for writing the saddest lines. I read the last poem, a song of despair, again and again. There, I saw the truth about Quibble:

     Like distance, you swallowed everything.
     Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
     ...
     Blind diver pallid as ash, hapless slinger,
     stray voyager. In you everything sank!
     ...
     Daybreak. The wharves, deserted.
     Only a shadow flicks and quivers in my hands.

Yes, I thought, only the shadow is left.

One who doesn’t know grief well believes it must always be with you. But this isn’t grief’s nature. It doesn’t stay, day after day, like drawing breath. It doesn’t keep living in you – at least, not so strongly. You don’t see your lost beloved’s face in everything, everywhere you look. The face fades, and though at first it seems impossible you will ever forget it, you begin to forget it. A turn of the head, a flicker of the eyes which spoke to you once, saying without words all you needed to hear, in time is lost. The words your beloved did say and those you said in return go next.

And then your beloved’s image becomes only an image – a mere icon, inexpressive, mute. It tells you nothing and reflects nothing of yourself back to you. The image is as lifeless as a statue. And so time weathers it. At last, it crumbles and disintegrates into dust. The beloved dies within you. Then you’re left with only a name, a few keepsakes. And a belief, precious but vague, that the name, the keepsakes once meant something to you and still they must.

Now, the lines of Quibble’s face were softening, blurring, and the eyes in which I’d sunk flashed at me with not so much meaning behind them. Already, the statue was crumbling.

Getting my fill of self-pity, the next day I busied myself with work. I set the kitchen to rights. Now, guiding and correcting Ell and Nell, who were as helpless as ever, seemed a balm, not a nuisance. Something I knew how to do. Simple, safe.

Time sped up. Work, Speak, Touch.

Every day, Quote rose before dawn and left to hunt with the horse Cobweb, the dog Grammar, and the gyrfalcon Chapter. On the labor, he returned late and spent but with little to show for it, having bagged only a pheasant and a partridge. He groused loudly about the lack of game. He still had not returned when night settled in on the speech, and finally I gave up waiting and retired. If he came home at all that night, I heard nothing of it.

On the touching, he returned before supper but brought nothing with him. He gave me more clothes to mend. The wear he put on them astounded me, but it had been years since I hunted and maybe I’d forgotten how much trouble it was. He said wolves were afoot everywhere. A close encounter with a small pack had spooked Cobweb, and it took all of Quote’s strength just to stay in the saddle. How much he embellished on the tale was anyone’s guess, but all the same I admired his pluck.

That night, I found myself before the door of his cell, hovering in nightgown and shawl, unsure how I got there. I just need it, I told myself.

Answering my knock, Quote didn’t seem surprised to see me. He opened the door wide, gestured for me to come in. “Touch?” he said.

Saying nothing in reply, I strode to the cold hearth and waited for him to close the door. When he did, I dropped my shawl, then brushed the nightgown’s straps from my shoulders and let it fall too. He reached for me, but I flinched and drew away. I didn’t look him in the eyes. I couldn’t bear to do that, adroitness be damned.

“I’m not here for you to fuck me,” I said, feeling as if the words were alien to me, as if a stranger said them. “Just touch. Watch out where you put your hands or I’ll hit you. I’ll tear your eyes out, I swear. Just touch.”

“I understand,” said Quote. “Really, Nish, believe me, I do understand.”

At the crack in his voice, I skanced him. There it was: what I’d known all the time.

“It’s hard,” he went on, “losing an adroitness, leaving another—”

“Don’t speak of them!”

“I promise to be gentle, Nish. Do you know how long I’ve waited? I’ll be gentler to you than—”

“Quote, I don’t love you! Now, damn it, either touch me or don’t. But either way, that’s as far as it goes.”

He touched me.

Even as my selenery found relief at the first sensation of his flesh on my flesh, I knew Quotation hungered for me, for more. His eagerness betrayed him. He rushed, seeking out every corner and cranny I let him traverse. He wanted to take control of me, to ply and bend me to him. What he felt was ferocious, however held in check – like Chapter, perhaps, he could gouge and scar me. Altogether unlike Quibble’s passion, his was needy, domineering, selfish.

Yet somehow I found it alluring, even persuasive. At first, I shuddered at the feel of his hands, but at last I relaxed, giving myself up to this moment and what it meant. Adroitness. Oneness with the One who was with me, both of us Without.

Then I heard the whisper of falling cloth, felt Quote’s engorged member brush against my buttock. That woke me to myself. I knew what I felt and what I didn’t feel. I knew what a mistake it would be to let his desire whelm me. It took all my resolve, I admit, but I spun around and shoved him away from me. Anger flashed in his face, and for a moment I feared he would come at me and take me by force. Then the anger vanished at once, disappearing as if behind a mask. Shrugging, Quote turned away and walked naked to the window of his cell. I hurried to dress and left without a word.

I was furious with him, of course, but the close call had shocked me into clarity and I realized I was mostly furious with myself. Was I really so weak I could not withstand the ache of my awakened selenery for a few nights? Was I so hollowed out I needed his adroitness to assure me that I had some worth?

Perhaps I was. Gazing at my cell, I saw only dreadful memories, the wasteland the past had become. There Graph had taught me what adroitness was. There Index revealed what, when all else was abandoned, adroitness could lead to – the greatest joy, the deepest sorrow. And there Quibble pieced back together my ruined life. Now, the ruins lay exposed in every corner.

My joy always turns to ashes in my hands, I thought. Always. The only thing Without has ever taught me is not to hope.

If I stayed, the grief in that cell would kill me. Taking nothing, I went to Quibble’s cell and slept there.

Dreaming, I saw Index clearly for the first time in years. He appeared with Graph, and they crouched together at a wooden toolbox. One at a time, Graph lifted out the tools and explained to his son what each one was for, demonstrated how to use them with a wooden plank as an aid. Graph was good at teaching such things. Teaching our son about abstractions had always fallen to me, and in the dream I wished I had a better grasp of the practical. Then I knew it was a dream, and knowing this, I directed it.

I picked up my son and held him aloft. He squealed with delight, saying, “I feel the dream! Mother, I feel it!” A few, simple words, but how dear they were! I woke with them on my lips.

Now, standing before the mirror, I realize those words came with a cost, a price in blood. Yet even now I can’t say I would choose not to hear them. Judge that as you see fit, Numberless.

For this too I can tell you about grief: it does not stay, but it returns. Once the statue of your beloved crumbles and becomes dust, you begin to live as one recovered after a long convalescence, taking a pleasure in your life you had come to believe you could never feel again. The name and keepsakes are still there. But when someone reminds you of your beloved’s absence – “Oh, I wish he was here! He would’ve loved this!” – you only agree, and the mention doesn’t drive you to madness. And realizing this, you believe now you’ve healed at last. Yet you’re a fool to trust in it. One day, when you’re not looking where you’re going and it’s the last thing you expect, in an offhand way someone says something a bit like something else you heard once, or with a turn of the head someone gives you a glance in which you see the secret of their being laid bare, and instantly all the dust scattered around you rises and takes a form.

The statue fits itself together, piece by piece. Then it moves and speaks. Your beloved comes to life, and with a redoubling of grief you recognize your healing was a betrayal. Your beloved was always there, within you, but for how you let your love die off.

No, grief is not always with you, but it is perennial, recurrent. A scrivener tells us, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” That’s true, but it’s only half the truth. Grief hollows you in order to fill you up, but then it hollows you again.

Or so I thought then, waking in the predawn light with my son’s shout on my lips, not knowing what grief was yet in store.

I drifted through the last thought in the heat, unmoored from myself and everything around me, as if dazed. Since it was the thought, few people spoke to me, but I hardly heard even them. Always my solace, work seemed now only a litany of tasks. I wanted to go back to Quibble’s bed, lie down, and call Index’s face to mind again, but I sensed that if I did, I would never rise.

Quote didn’t go out hunting. I saw him only once during the day, as I worked in the stable. He passed me without so much as a skance. But at supper that evening, sitting opposite me, he waxed glib and callous. With a wink to me, he leaned over to Cate and jested in a whisper loud enough for all the Dazed nearby to hear, “I just wish Nish had learned sooner who her adroitness really is!”

I turned the knife handle around deftly in my hand, drove the knife half an inch into the tabletop between Quote’s forefinger and thumb. Everyone sat speechless – Cate appalled, Quote perhaps afraid for his life, the Dazed no doubt thinking the mad Adroit woman had snapped at last. I picked up my spoon and sipped broth. Quote wrapped a napkin around his finger where the knife had nicked it, then got up and stormed out. I went on eating as if nothing had happened.

Cate skanced me with an upward flit of his eyes and said, “We need to talk.”

“Nothing to talk about,” I answered.

A few minutes later, Cobweb’s whinny sounded in the cloister. Quote shouted for the benefit of everyone in the hall: “I’ll be hunting, if there’s still anything out there worth the damned hunt!” Then fading hoofbeats, silence.

The next day would be the first song at the hottest. I considered going to bed early, but I was still wary of what might await me in my dreams. So after supper I went to the hall, lit a fire in the hearth, sat in my wingback chair, and tried to focus on sewing. It was pointless: I only ended up staring at the fire.

I couldn’t stay at the monastery, I knew. There was nothing here for me now but grief and trouble. I suspected Quote would be out hunting a long time, days perhaps. When he returned, I would be ready to leave.

But where could I go? Back to the consensus, in spite of Quibble’s presence, to plead with Graph for a permanent place there? He had every right and reason to refuse me. But where else? To Egg 17, to become Gienah’s assistant and learn doctoring?

Despite the illness I suffered as One Within, I couldn’t help thinking of how happy – or at least content – I had been there. That was irrecoverable. Now I lacked consensus and purpose both. At the back of my thoughts arose a picture of the sea; once, I’d seen it from atop the westward cliffs. I tried to dispel it, but as I stared into the flames, the picture only became clearer. The sound of wind and crashing waves seemed to arise from the crackling of the fire. As if slipping into another dream, I found myself atop the cliffs again, gazing at endless water. Though I didn’t want to admit it, there lay the best answer I could see.

All I really need, I began to think, is a place to die.

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