December 14. 2008
Second Life
Vito and about a dozen other young men of his clan had
hiked all day to reach the eastern edge of a vast, unexplored woods. There
they set up camp and built a fire around which they ate and drank and
boasted to each other of future achievements. This was the beginning
of their weekend hunting trip.
Long after Sun had surrendered the sky to the Crescent
Moon and her attendant stars, Night tightened the grip of her frigid fingers
about the Earth. Most of Vito's clansmen had snuggled close to the
campfire and slipped into the land of dreams, but he wandered a short
distance into the woods and found himself a fine tree to climb. Two
sturdy limbs not far from the ground met at the trunk where they melded to
form a throne on which he would rest that night, and from which, Vito
thought, he would awaken to greet the first prey of Dawn. He stretched
his back, relaxing, and rested his head against the trunk, gripping the hilt
of his hunting knife as he fell asleep.
But his next conscious thoughts were of pain, a deep
pounding pain in his right hip that shot down to his knee and then pulsated
sharply back to his hip. Vito was on the ground, soil and rocks
scratching across his face as he shook his head and moaned involuntarily in
response to the fire in his thigh. He shook himself and leaned
hard to lie on his back. The noon sun blazed through the treetops
and burned his eyes.
He spent the next hour yelling for help to clansmen, and
to gods and to angels, none of whom answered.
He spent the rest of the day standing himself up, leaning
against trees when he could, hobbling about in search of a sign, some small
sign that would point a way out of the woods and back to the camp.
And he spent that night, first cursing himself for having
been stupid enough to have fallen out of a tree, and next praying to an
array of gods, any one of whom, he imagined, might have pushed him out of
the tree, begging their forgiveness for whatever unintended insult he had
committed against them.
During the second day, he found a sturdy tree limb and
used his hunting knife to fashion it into a passable, if crude, walking
stick.
On the third day, he set out to escape the woods, limping
toward the dawn. He had reasoned that this route would take him most
quickly to the eastern edge of the woods where he had entered.
Each day he set out at dawn, limping east toward the sun,
but he would not find a way out of the woods for more than another month.
During that time, Vito fed on a variety of tubers and the occasional rodent
gained by a well thrown knife. Once, while digging for tubers, he
happened upon an ant hill and jammed his arm deep into the earth as far as
he could. The ants counterattacked with a fury, and Vito imagined each
pinprick bite on his arm as yet another morsel of meat
― a sumptuous feast that he would lazily lick off his arm and chew
contentedly. Days of rain became water feast days. He
would lie flat on the ground and accept the falling water as if it were a
direct kiss from the Almighty. And he would fill his small canteen to
carry him through the next stretch of dry days. Only once did
his canteen empty itself before the next water feast day, but Vito found a
spring and drank from it. The water of this spring was foul, having
been tainted by passing animals, and it made him sick for three days, but it
failed to kill him and therefore kept him alive. Throughout the month,
the pain never left Vito's right thigh. But he grew accustomed to it
so that it distracted him less.
On his last day in the woods, well past
noon, when the seductive scent of approaching evening fills the lungs and
titillates the mind, Vito crouched, leaning forward against his walking
stick, and pushed against ― nothing. Without the resistance of
imprisoning trees, Vito fell forward until he hit the ground, landing on his
hands and knees. He looked up and found the sun, no longer filtered by
countless treetops, brighter than he could remember. And the air, no
longer shared among a myriad greedy trees, rushed into his lungs like a
whirlwind, and Vito gasped furiously as his chest threatened to explode.
After what seemed a great while, Vito
righted himself and stood to survey his new surroundings. He had
reached a clearing in the woods. A great clearing. A village.
People.
This last thought was still sinking in as
Vito hobbled toward the nearest building, a modest barn of sorts, where he
saw two men busily sawing and hammering at wood. His pleas for help
were met with stares of bewilderment and anger. Brushing this aside,
he hobbled further on, appealing to villagers for help, but each time met
with bewilderment and anger, sometimes shrugged shoulders, other times with
curses.
As the sun dimmed, Vito sat himself in the
middle of a road, holding on to his walking stick, and wondering at the
insanity of these villagers. His appearance, he understood, must have
been bad: he was emaciated, his skin sallowed, his hair wild in a mangle.
Still, would this not be proof to these villagers that he was in need?
He sighed, as if preparing to concede to the unnamed imp who had brought him
here, and wondered if he would ever see home again. Then he shivered
as he struggled to remember his home.
Vito's descent into fear was broken by the sound of
giggles. Then the patter of small feet approached him as the giggles
turned into squeals, and suddenly they were upon him: two young girls
― neither could have been older than ten years ―
smiling deliciously, giggling and squealing with delight, hopping up and
down as if he were the prize in a game.
"Don't you recognize us, brother?" one
squealed as the other babbled a foreign name at him. Vito's
protestations of ignorance were useless, as the two girls shoved themselves
into his armpits and lifted him up, and then led him, as if they were living
crutches, to a home near the center of the village. They took him into
the house and dropped him onto a couch. The younger one straddled his
lap and covered him with kisses as the other disappeared for a moment and
returned with a bowl of cold, fresh spring water.
An older woman appeared, joyful tears
streaming down her cheeks.
Soon Vito understood that the two girls had
adopted him as their brother, and that made the older woman his adoptive
mother. The three women fussed over him, fed him and bathed him.
Noticing his grimaces when he moved on his right leg, his adoptive mother
called the village shaman to their home.
The shaman was a wild looking man who who
bellowed strange prayers to foreign gods. He looked down on Vito with
a fierce glare as he chanted a somber prayer "to the balance between Life
and Death." But in the end, he applied a balm to his right thigh that
sucked some of the pain out, and he left a supply of the medicine with him
with instructions for daily use.
It was as the shaman left that the last
member of Vito's new household appeared, a tall, haggard man who glanced at
Vito with unsmiling acceptance. He soon turned and walked away, not
rejecting him, but withholding his approval.
During the next several days, it became
apparent to Vito that his function in his new home was to be served.
It delighted his adoptive sisters to be given any task, whether to fetch
water, to scour the fields for a particular fruit that he momentarily
fancied, or simply to lie beside him for hugging naps.
His adoptive mother groomed him, trimming
and styling his hair differently each day. But she made her most
profound mark on him the day that she first cooked a stew for him. A
stew! a delicately designed conglomeration of vegetables and tubers and
meats and spices that, cooked with patience, gave birth to a strong,
nourishing aroma that saturated everything and slid down his nostrils to
fill his tummy, making his mouth water with a foretaste of nurturing love.
These happy weeks grew into months that
became a season. Not once during this carefree season did Vito dare
ask, Why? Why have you adopted me as your son and brother?
It was as if asking the question would have broken the magical spell that
had granted him pleasure and contentment.
But the season of Vito's contentment did
end, and early in the morning of the day after, the shaman appeared in the
doorway of Vito's home, accompanied by six priests. They forced him to
kneel in the middle of a room. The shaman stood before him and once
again bellowed his alien prayers. Vito saw his mother and sisters
huddled a distance from him, weeping. He tried to rise and speak, but
the shaman quickly grabbed his face and held his mouth shut tight, intoning:
"You are zombie. You have had your time for final farewell to your
kin. But now the time for your speech is past."
The priests gathered near him, three at
either side, and took hold of Vito, lifting him up. As they began to
drag him away, the shaman released his grip on Vito's face. Vito cried
loudly: "I am not zombie! I am a stranger to this village! These
people took me in and cared for me, but I am no relation to them!"
With each protestation, Vito's mother and sisters wailed more loudly.
With the last they shrieked and fell to the floor.
The six priests dragged Vito out of his
home to the outskirts of the village, the shaman following close by.
He explained to Vito that his mother's son had been reported killed in a
distant land the year before, the death blow having been delivered by an ax
that crushed the young man's right thigh and caused all of his blood to gush
out.
Vito argued that he had had a much
different life before. He pleaded with the shaman. He asked him,
"Do I even look like the man of whom you speak?"
Whether the shaman saw any resemblance
between Vito and the dead man did not matter because the women of the house
had made the decision that indeed he was that man. And whether those
women saw with accuracy or out of need did not matter either. The
decision had been made and accepted by everyone, including Vito. So
the shaman explained things as the six priests let Vito loose, and he fell ―
down, past the ground, into a shallow pit. Vito hit the dirt with a
crash and he felt one searing streak race through his spine.
The shaman leaned forward and smiled upon
Vito lying in his grave. "Consider this," he said. "It is
entirely possible that the women of the house are right and that you are
wrong. After all, you have already suffered one painful death and
wandered the land of the dead where memories are corrupted and destroyed.
And demons no doubt accompanied you as you rose from your grave in that
foreign land. Those demons tortured you, I am sure, but they still led
you back home for your final farewell."
Then the priests began to throw handfuls of
dirt atop Vito, in order to bury him.
He opened his mouth but could not speak.
He saw the earth falling down upon him, but he could not even blink as it
hit his eyes. He trembled with fear, but he could not move.
Soon, earth covered his eyes completely and
he was blinded. He felt earth covering every part of him, but he could
not flinch. He felt the earth in his mouth ― he tasted it! ― he
felt the earth filling his mouth and nose, cutting off his breath. As
his breath weakened, Vito clung to what the shaman had said, and he tried to
imagine a land of the dead to which he was travelling. But there were
no bright lights or spirit guides, no tunnels or paradisiacal landscapes.
There was only darkness ― cold, uncaring darkness. As the earth filled
and covered his mouth and nose completely, as breathing stopped, Vito cried
silently and imagined himself at the edge of a woods, a vast, unexplored
woods that, upon his entry, would keep him alive and safe.
