Down
from the Stars ‘I’ve concluded you’re a
crook,’ says Alessia. ‘That’s a thing you pick
up,’ he says. ‘It’s only saying less than you actually do.’ ‘I’m
off to help people,’ she says. ‘What’ll you do? Fish ideas, dole out other
people’s art?’ ‘It’s
not warm, like blankets,’ he says. ‘But there’s no set price, so some comes
cheap.’ ‘Hedonism? Commitment?’ he
wonders aloud: ‘What’s for me?’ There’s
Alessia, stretched out on a rug, fit as a wolf, her yellow eyes dwell on her
future. Alessia
says, ‘That’s old stuff. Look how they’re doing. What they call research.
Brains; beginning and end of the world; robot people; empires on other stars.
They’ve gone into them all. It should be clear they know something, cover it
up. It’s the last spurt. Who cares now, if you burn, or you burn things down?
Imagining the big catastrophe – it’s an alibi, absolution, for all the other
things that’s being done, the public and the private ones.’ ‘Fresh
pastures,’ he says, ‘for you, Alessia.’ ‘You
mean I’m a sheep?’ she asks, not coyly. Stern rote, perhaps. Sheep’s not so
bad. There’s cows, and goats. ‘There’s
something biblical about you,’ he says. ‘But then, that’s a book where
there’s everything in, all hugger-mugger soldiering. Racism galore. Sacrifice
maybe, for you – holding high the knife, waiting for the countermand.’ ‘You
mean there’s something bossing me?’ She gets crosser. ‘You
could just leave, and no wordplay,’ he says. ‘But it makes a mock of what was
between us.’ ‘It’s
just perspective,’ she says kindly. ‘When there’s two of you, there’s three
or really four and cousins too. When you’re alone, you see if you want
another. A missing part.’ He’s
had times of blame, for being the most moderate of the extremists. Now those
terms are meaningless. Determined foreigners, gave a charge to us, they read
the books, went home to Africa and were corrupt. ‘You
look like a wolf,’ he says to her. ‘A husky dog. You’re all en brosse.’ ‘It’s
a myth,’ she says, ‘about dogs’ loyalty. They stick around. They have in mind
the quest.’ This
leads nowhere. ‘Bed?’
he asks. ‘At the last?’ Her
mouth is closed. No. She
says, ‘We see the beauty of the life we eat. Food – it saddens you, but puffs
you up. You won’t let it be, its glory, its heedless thrust. Eat, eat, is
you.’ He
says, ‘My folk used to sacrifice a sheep. It was for God; a present. Of
course, we ate the profane bits. But it was life too, to bring something for
the big guy, they said, showing we thought He had an appetite. I hope the
sheep believed. Me – I don’t believe in it, not anything, not parents, not
the fire, the knife. The family did. Believed in everything. Your mystical
side, Alessia, the beauty stuff. It’s new to me. And you’re right. Sardines –
a marvel. You wouldn’t make one if you could. They’re just right as they are,
food, exploring and comradely.’ ‘God
sniffs the smoke. There’s lots around. Beauty comes to mind, it’s sentiment –
it’s because I shan’t come back,’ Alessia says, ‘and I’m leaving you behind.’ ‘I
shan’t miss you,’ he says. ‘Now you’re here, and this is you. When you’re
gone, there’s nothing. Of you, not a thing.’ She
laughs, ‘Brave little soldiers, all of us. Sardines in our can.’ ‘That’s
depression,’ he says. ‘No,
no. Just sad.’ ‘Don’t
expect thanks out there,’ he says. ‘People in need thank their neighbours,
not their saviours.’ ‘I
don’t want a compact with anyone,’ she says. ‘Not these societies that fell
down. Absolutely not. I won’t save – just plaster over. No one will tell me
stories.’ ‘Well,
if that’s enough...’ he says. ‘It’s
something. I leave the adventure to you.’ ‘Remember,’
he says, ‘shoot the bad guys. Think of payday.’ Their
guns are issued when they get on the train. She clumps off down the stairs.
She’s never seen again – at least, not round here. There’s military
everywhere. You go outside, there’s spies and uniforms. History running out
the troughs and fountains, holes in everything, we float on, like a plank. ‘All
here’s public property,’ says a guy. ‘So you can’t steal for yourself. You
can’t have private stuff. If you steal, it must have gone to set up your
clique.’ We’ve
taken over what no one wanted. Trash that’s too heavy and grey to lift away. Those
two – that ‘he’, Alessia: both dead on her battlefield. It’s
the past; to call it ‘my past’ would be exaggeration. Enough of the ‘he’. Now
it’s ‘me’, it’s ‘I’. A
woman I was with, not Jewish, not at all, no need nor
wish to shoot at Arabs, went off to be a soldier. It’s a romantic comedy,
Schlock. I’ve no loyalty to her, Alessia the soldier, doing without her like
you do without a flag, a trumpet.
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