Of Nativity (Redactor’s Addendum)

“Miriam!”

I heard his voice from across the airport terminal.

I ran towards the source of the voice.

“Vincent! Vincent!” I cried.

My voice was bright and brittle.

The walls of the airport terminal were tall, transparent windows. The gray light of the darkening sky surrounded me, on both sides, as I ran.

When I first caught sight of Vincent’s face, it seemed to me that he was merely happy to see me.

But the closer I got to him, the more pained his smile became. He was surprised by the sight of me, in some way; I could see it in his eyes.

“I’m here!” I said, barrelling towards him on my strangely quick feet.

“I’m really here!”

“Miriam,” he said warily.

My arms were around him, already, and my head already resting on his shoulder. The pained, wary voice came from somewhere very near my ear.

“Miriam, are you okay?”

 

 

“I don’t know,” I said to him, sometime on the long bus ride home.

I don’t actually remember what question he had asked me. It might have been the same one he’d asked me in the terminal, or some other one.

Through the window of the bus, I watched the low, crouching buildings of Portland, Oregon advancing and receding.

It was an even stranger place than I had expected. It did not really look like my idea of a city at all, come to think of it.

“I don’t know,” I said again. “When I went to the airport, I was . . .”

It was curiously difficult to remember precisely what had happened earlier that day, before I had gotten off the plane and rushed into the grey, crouching, pained terminal there.

I remembered myself rushing about, on strangely quick feet. I remembered introducing myself to many different people, rushing from the one to the next.

It was difficult to reconstruct my motivations for doing these things.

It had been very clear to me where I had to rush next, in that other airport. I had seen the faces of the strangers, and had known immediately which one I had to talk to next.

That one—he is secretly pining for me! He will be sad forever, for all his years, if he never gets a chance to hear my voice!

And then that one—she has such kindly wrinkles! And then her, with those lovely sunglasses! They must want to talk to me—why else would they have such wonderful things on their faces, things I can’t look away from, things that draw me to them like a magnet!

I remembered going up above the clouds, and seeing the bright unclouded light of the sun flowing over me. And then there were five or six hours after that which I could barely remember at all. The memory was too bright; I couldn’t see anything when I looked back on them, except for the blinding light.

It really is remarkable how poor my memory can be sometimes.

I really cannot remember how this typewriter got here, for instance. On the desk, I mean.

I don’t remember buying a typewriter. And it is difficult to reconstruct what motivations I might have had for buying one.

“I went up,” I said to Vincent, after some time.

“But now I am going down, to the night,” I said.

 

 

“Are you sure this is really Portland, Oregon?” I said, as we walked along the street.

He laughed uncomfortably.

“They don’t really look like buildings at all,” I said.

“You know, from a city,” I said.

Everything was darkening very quickly, now. I could not see his eyes clearly, anymore.

“They are more like . . . rotting toadstools,” I said.

“Miriam,” he said, “you . . . you really don’t seem well.

“I’m worried about you.

“Are you really all right?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

 

 

He really does have spite towards flesh, I thought, when I entered his house.

Its exterior was strangely squat, like all the other “buildings” of this “city,” and curiously round, like they were.

Like them, it looked very, very old.

And its interior was strangely spacious, with an extensive and cavernous basement.

I recognized his living room immediately, and the desk in it where he filmed his video essays. The cameras, the lamps.

The green-on-green wallpaper, and the shadowed door.

These parts of the house, the ones seen in the videos, were deceptively well-maintained. Everything that the camera did not see, however, bore obvious signs that the tenant held it in contempt.

The walls looked dirty, and there were holes in them, here and there. In some places there were recesses that looked more like the results of some process of natural decay than of any sort of blunt impact.

The thick, dull carpet was thick with dust.

I could imagine the same house seeming palatial and luxurious, simply on the basis of its floor-space alone. But it was easy to see, once I was inside, why Vincent was able to rent it so cheaply. There are few people who have enough spite toward flesh to feel at ease, in a house like that one.

“You have spite towards flesh,” I said out loud, when I saw that there were two large kitchens in the house, and that—since the lone tenant could have need for only one of them, at most—he had given up on the other one entirely.

The dishwater in its sink looked as though it might have been sitting there for months, if not years. A thick fuzz of green mold covered over its surface. There were dark, unsightly shapes, mostly submerged, that I supposed must have had some relation to dirty dishes, in some past life of theirs.

I would not have been surprised to see ivy creeping over the table-legs and counters of that ancient and poisonously blooming place.

“Spite towards . . . flesh?” Vincent said, uneasily.

“Oh!” he said, seeing how I was staring at the sink and its verdure.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry!

“Miriam, I really should have . . . I’m just not used to having guests, you know, and the mold doesn’t actually bother me, I just forget about it most of the time . . .”

“Of course you do,” I said, smiling brightly.

“I really should have done more to clean the place up, before you got here,” Vincent said.

“I want it to feel . . . like a refuge, Miriam. Like a safe place, you know?”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

“I am safe,” I said, smiling sweetly.

 

 

“You really look like you need some rest,” Vincent said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are you hungry?” he said. His voice was pained, like his face.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well!” he said. “Might as well get you some food, to be on the safe side, then!”

What a bizarre sentiment!

And coming from him, no less! Didn’t he have spite towards flesh?

“Miriam, you look . . . you look so exhausted.

“I’m really getting worried about you. You look . . . different from when I saw you in Brooklyn.

“Are . . . you sure you’re eating enough?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Let’s get you into bed, okay? And I’ll bring you some chicken soup, okay?”

“No!” I cried.

“What?” He seemed really to not understand what I was saying.

“I know . . .” I said, “the night, but . . .

“I don’t want to go yet, Vincent.

“I just want to have a normal time with you, tonight, before I . . .”

“What?” He seemed sincerely confused, and even more worried than he had been before.

“The night, you know,” I said. “In your . . . bedroom.”

“Miriam,” he said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

“Look, just lie down on the couch for now, okay? And I’ll get some chicken soup, okay?”

 

 

I have no idea why you are still reading this.

None of this has anything to do with my brother. He was not even in my thoughts, then, not at all.

I am not only saying that. It’s not that I was trying to avoid thinking about him.

I mean, yes, of course I was trying to avoid thinking about him.

But it was so easy to avoid thinking about him that if I had not tried to do it, nonetheless I would have. It was the path of least resistance.

I was not thinking, either, about the baggy, tattered mass of his so-called “papers” that were in my suitcase.

Most of the time, anyway. Occasionally I would remember that they were there, and I would feel something close to disgust. Not for my brother himself, just for the “papers.”

What they looked like, you know. I didn’t like thinking of that.

You only had to see what those pages looked like to know that there was something very wrong with the person who wrote them.

The way the words didn’t stay inside the ruled lines.

The huge, scrawled, upper-case words that would sometimes swell so large they filled half the page. You know, “ADVERSARY,” and that kind of thing.

The constant, half-nonsensical underlining of seemingly whimsical words within virtually every sentence.

When I did think about those awful things, I did sometimes feel that they were cursed. That they still had the poison of that awful apartment dormant within them. That I had brought it here, to Vincent, and to this whole restful and half-dead land of toadstools and moss.

That they would no longer be able to rest, after they touched it. That they would grow feverish, and start to hallucinate pictures on the ceiling.

And so on.

But mostly, I did not think about the papers at all.

Yes, I had finally and fully “FORGOTTEN”!

Oh, did it feel good!

I really did feel safe. It felt good, to be there, with him! And not in some bright, brittle way, either, one as easily lost as it is gained.

I was really quite sick, then, as he quickly discerned. And of course my sickness colored the way I saw the place I had ended up in, and Vincent, with it.

But it wasn’t the house, or Vincent, or Portland, Oregon, that were the problem. Only my sickness was the problem.

And he had swiftly discerned it. Look, now he’s bringing me some soup!

The people of Portland, Oregon seemed to lead such slow, restful lives, in their ancient and vegetative “city.”

And it seemed that even I myself was capable of being nourished by its rich soil.

That even I—Miriam SCHOEN—might yet be a curable case.

 

 

“You know,” I said.

“I think that the chicken soup really helped, somehow,” I said.

“The ice cream probably did, too,” Vincent said. We had been eating it from our separate pint-sized containers, as we watched the television.

“You need calories, Miriam, that’s the main thing,” he said.

“I feel so different, here,” I said.

“In a good way, Vincent! I feel different in a good way!”

“Honestly,” he said, “I bet it’s mostly from the calories.

“Your body needs food, Miriam.

“The feeling’s probably just your body, telling you that you’re doing the right thing.

“Telling you to keep going, you know?”

What a strange thing for Vincent Vierge to say, of all people!

I moved closer to him on the couch, and laid my head on his shoulder.

We had been watching movies for hours and hours, now. I think we’d watched two of them back to back by then, and were now starting the third.

It had been Vincent’s idea. One of the channels was doing a marathon of Christmas movies, on into the middle of the night, and there was no way that Vincent Vierge would ever be seen to miss such a thing.

He had theories, you know, about the special role set out by the transmitters for Christmas movies. They were supposed to be as significant, in their own way, as the situation comedies were.

I was afraid, at first. I thought I would not be able to watch them without thinking too much of my brother. But I said I would try.

And so I sat with Vincent, and sipped chicken soup, and watched some silly, colorful piece of nonsense about elves and reindeer.

And it was all right! It was perfectly all right!

The next movie actually had Santa Claus himself in it. But it was fine, too!

The Schoen poison was receding, already! I was in remission!

All it took was chicken soup, and ice cream, and Portland, Oregon—and Vincent, my love!

It was really starting to get late. It must have been midnight, or shortly before midnight.

I was getting tired. I was getting tired, and that meant that my body needed sleep.

But I didn’t want to leave his side just yet.

Soon, soon. My body did need sleep!

But not quite yet.

We could do whatever we wanted, on this couch! We had no bedtimes! I lived here, now!

“These movies are very silly,” I said.

“I don’t think I’d ever seen a Christmas movie, before,” I said. “I wasn’t . . . prepared for how silly they were going to be.”

He made a mock-affronted gesture.

“The transmitters,” he said in an exaggerated parody of his Vincent-Vierge-the-video-essayist voice, “show more of themselves than usual, in Christmas movies.”

“Oh, stop that,” I said, and tickled him.

Would you believe it? I was a person, for once!

With her boyfriend, on his couch, watching dumb movies in the middle of the night, and eating ice cream right out of the container!

None of it had any secret meaning, or served any higher purpose. No, we were simply having a good time!

And I liked him, and he liked me!

And my body needed calories!

 

 

A moment later, I heard the oddest noise.

I guess I would call it a popping noise, or maybe a clicking noise.

It seemed to come from somewhere outside the house, and not from any particular direction.

It must have been pretty loud, to be heard so clearly here in the house. And when we had the television on, at that. But it wasn’t a harsh noise at all.

A moment after that, everything went dark.

The TV wasn’t on, anymore, suddenly.

Vincent had left the kitchen lights on, when he’d gone to fetch the ice cream. But when I glanced in the direction of the kitchen door, I saw only the same darkness that I saw everywhere else.

I looked toward the living room window, and saw that the streetlights had turned off, too.

At least, I think I was looking toward the living room window.

But I couldn’t really be sure. I had not been in this house for long enough to remember where all of its things were.

And I really could not see anything, now.

I stood up from the couch. I turned in what I thought was the direction of Vincent’s bedroom.

Because I knew that this was.

The night.

Yes, it had come for me now.

The absolute darkness, and the unfamiliarity of the house, made me quickly lose my sense of direction.

I was standing in complete darkness, and the room was terribly silent. It would have stood to reason that there was a couch, somewhere nearby, and a kitchen, and a bedroom. But I really could not be sure.

It would have stood to reason that my boyfriend, Vincent, was somewhere very close to me, just where he had been a moment ago. But if he had not been there, I would have been none the wiser.

I wanted to call his name. But I was terrified of calling his name, too.

What if he wasn’t there?

What if I really was alone, here?

An awful thought came to me.

What if I was alone, in the perfect darkness and the perfect silence?

And what if I would be here, like this, forever?

The night.

The apex transmission.

The one broadcast that goes out to all, and becomes our life.

What if this is the content of that broadcast? Darkness and stillness, forever?

What if this was what the transmitters had been building to, this whole time, with all their unfunny jokes and their nonsensical plots?

What if the apex transmission was simply the act of turning the screen off?

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Vincent,” I said.

“Please, Vincent! Are you there?

“It’s so . . . dark.

“I’m afraid, Vincent.”

There was a horrible moment, after I stopped speaking, in which I really did think that he had not heard me. That no one would ever hear me again.

But then I felt something.

I felt him take my hand in his.

And I felt his hand tugging at mine, gently leading me onwards.

And we walked, together, into the dark.