Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(46)
Riza looks past the ghost to see her husband finally turn his attention from the care and feeding of his camels to hoist a packsack and begin walking toward the house. He does not hate Emil even now. The man easily could have resorted to bondage and rape in the absence of moral civility, he could have taken what he needed without conscience like the hoodlum vagabonds of yore who died out in vileness and misery. Emil is a handsome breeder and will find a healthy suitor to share his spawn. Riza dreads to see the man’s righteous face crumple into a mask of grief, his innocence forever sullied. Emil will wail and rip his cassock in grand spectacle at the terrible news. He will suffer for weeks in exile in his desert tent, walking to ground for a word of prophecy from Sungod, plumbing the depths of doom and ruin. But with the gathering curative of time and reflection he will shrug off his weight of guilt to the wisdom of holy law while the fallow ground cries out unheard.
All men hold a crystal core in the centre of their being, invincible and invisible, a private asylum packed solid with sorrow and sheltered from probing eyes of introspection. Emil will hide his wife away in a frozen catacomb of pain and force a balm of forgetfulness upon his mind. Riza knows the place and has packed his crystal core with untold tales of dismay, year after decade, heartbreak upon tragedy. The horror of life has condensed into a hard and brilliant diamond in his soul, for he has seen too much for one man to comprehend: children ravaged by starvation and women maimed by violence and disease. He awaits his final settlement with Sungod, a goddess of consuming fire who barbecued all flesh on Earth in a moment of cosmic indifference two centuries ago – snakes and frogs, sheep and goats, all the children of men. Riza steels his gaze now and hardens his strong shoulder for the benefit of others, but he cherishes his right to die and holds it tight for the day of reconciliation. Death is his only heritage, and who will speak of his legacy?
“I wanted the best for you,” Riza says to the girl in the red sari. She had fled to him for final sanctuary, to spill her blood under his roof while he slept. He could have done more to save her, his firstborn and only child. He could have stayed awake all night and cradled her with comfort in his spindly arms. “I must be a failure.” A pall of despair drags on his neck, a shroud of responsibility he has carried all his life and finally understands. A single stroke from a knife can steal away destiny, and one barren generation can obliterate the memory of mankind.
“Tell my story,” she says behind her veil, “that I might gain recompense for my suffering.” Her gaze is intense with insight, and her eyes linger like beacons of promise as the ghost fades to a mirage of shimmering noonday heat and leaves only heartache behind.
Riza bows his head in duty, pitiful servant to her passing vision of glory. He vows to write the last narrative for a lost civilization, spill his harboured burden of truth for an audience unseen. By the consummate power of the word, the keeper of the oasis will bring justification to the elders and heritage to the unborn, he will summon hope for the hopeless and conjure a future for his desolate homeland, and his daughter will lie nearby to him always, close enough underfoot that tree roots can find purchase when the rains return and the cisterns fill with life. Someday soon the heavens must break their ponderous silence and Sungod will weep with shame.
One man can plant his crystal core in the dust, and another will water the seed in season. This much can be accomplished in a single lifetime, and only this much is required from Riza as he brushes the sand from his knees and turns from his garden of earth to greet Emil for the final time.
MANITOU-WAPOW
GMB Chomichuk
(with Curtis Janzen and Thomas Turner)
From a letter to the Crown from the Hudson’s Bay Company representative at Fort Albany, 1836.
It is almost laughable now, the idea that we had entered into a treaty and that we, litigious and bold, had believed the Invaders would hold to their end. They only wanted a small piece of a great whole, we told ourselves. Who could truly own the Earth? It was a time when it did seem that any could lay claim in the vast land. Indeed that proved true. Only a few could keep it.
Journal of Colonel West, Selkirk: 1840.
When those first few cylinders fell, when those first few arrived, we looked to them as we had the French. Foreign and strange, in competition for this, the New World, conquered and claimed by the ingenuity of the British Empire. That the Colonial wanted their share was as foolish to the Crown as the French claim or the claim of the noble savage or the strange tall creatures that roamed the smoke-black hills on three legs. Each had their sovereignty. Ours was to make the world England.
Account of the Red River Rebellion, recounted to Peter Black by an Anishinabe man who has never been identified. 1848.
“This story is traded in nights without sleep. They had come long ago and soaked the mountains in a smoke like a dying fire that stung the eyes and makes one sick. We did not venture there. They did not venture far. Three-legs had taken the home of the thunderbirds in a spirit war long ago. The mountains and land beyond belonged to the tall beasts on three legs with the spirit eye. One does not go to war with spirits. Soon our lands were being taken by the people from across the water. The English and the French, then all the others. We had no place to move to, and so, like mother wolves, we fought.”
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: Spring 1845.
Today I abandon the cottage for the fort. I prefer my home for its place outside the walls. But the children need me I think, or perhaps I need them. A reason for hope. With Eden Colvile dead and his staff fled, it falls to those who are able to do what we can. What else is life for, then? I’ve not travelled across the ocean, braved the trap lines and long nights of the forest winter to die asleep, alone in my cabin, killed by cowards for my coat and rifle. Those that mean to stay need those willing to endure, if not to lead them, then to lead by example.