DOUBLE BIND
Short Story
by Dr. Emily Bilman
Part One
War-Glyphs
Chimpanzees in the
canopy hunting
The galago with wooden
spears no longer
forage fruits and
deciduous leaves. Predators
shred their sylvan
fields, dislodging them
to the plain where they
play with water, cool,
and groom their bodies free
from parasites.
Flesh-eaters move
closer to each other.
With less day-chores,
lactating females
save their energy for
accrued immunity.
Some fight for space,
some carry viral pests,
some compete with
boulders thrown on trees,
others mob each other
and wage war to keep
their primal territories,
portending war-glyphs.
…
Rowan walked along the oak forest
immersed in a conscientious dilemma. He could not decide whether he should
enlist in the army to counteract war casualties in Praetorium. He had a
conflict between his conscience and his ego. His ego spurred him towards
self-preservation whereas his conscience urged him to enlist in the armed
forces.
Rowan was a geographer and writer who lived
alone in a restored stone cottage in the countryside of Nova Brescia. That year, spring was deployed like an
air-inflated parachute on the countryside. On bright days when the mist lifted
from the valley and the fields, he could hear the stream flowing along the
cottage. Then, he would stop writing to listen to the stream skipping on the
grit of the riverbed. The sound of the stream soothed him.
The entrance of the cottage and the
living room were strewn with irregular brick walls that maintained the heat in
winter and cooled down the house in hot days. The white-washed ceiling was supported
by wooden beams. The chamois of the antique bellows by the granite fireside was
nailed with pewter thumbtacks.
That day he decided to speak to his
friend Frank who was on leave from the army. Frank said he would be at his
place as soon as he could depending on the density of the urban traffic. Frank
rang the bell before an hour. Like old chums, Rowan and Frank, greeted each
other warmly. Rowan poured the single-malt Laphroaig he had bought in Islay to
his glass and started the conversation:
“I am facing a dilemma. I cannot decide
whether to join the army or not.”
Frank looked at him closely, then
retorted: “I left Praetorium a week ago. The area where I was stationed is
devastated by the enemy. Soldiers sleep in trenches, they are starved. There
are artillery duels at every turn. And many deserters.”
“What about the civilians?”
“There are civilians, mothers, and
children, too, who have been trapped inside a steel factory for more than a
month with very little food and water. The streets are open fields of
violence.”
Rowan sipped his Laphroaig like a
portion of consolation and said: “I hesitate to join for moral reasons.”
Frank gazed at him in a comprehensive
manner, saying: “Despite the grenades, and artillery attacks, and civilian
hostage-taking, the camaraderie on the front is great! We get together in the
evenings for drinks and the soldiers join us. We hope to start a new day despite
the fighting.”
As the evening flowed into the night Rowan
felt the whisky began to affect his consciousness and he stopped speaking.
Frank said: “I know a journalist couple. He is covering the war. They
coordinate the refugee centres in town. They are looking for teachers. I could
speak to them on your behalf.” Rowan agreed to meet them both.
Rowan and Dr. Frazer
The next day, Rowan contacted the army
headquarters and fixed an appointment with Dr. Fraser, the military
psychiatrist. Dr. Fraser was a middle-aged man with a prominent forehead. Rowan
noticed his wall-to-wall library reflected on his eyeglasses. Aware that the
psychiatrist was scrutinizing him, Rowan said: “I hesitate being drafted
because I think this war is amoral”.
“Please explain your motives in more
detail.”
“Civilians are being targeted,
intellectuals coerced to combat, and voluntary soldiers are being mistreated.
It is war of perversity. Soldiers are recruited from minority groups within the
country and coerced to fight against an enemy that shares the same
essential culture while intellectuals suffer burnouts and are left to die.”
“I understand that your motives are
humanitarian.”
“Yes. I think the perverse effects of
this war will continue to affect us long after the war is finished. Like the
cold war.”
“You have the option of joining the
civil service in Praetorium itself.”
“I have taken the decision to teach
refugees here in Nova Brescia. I can, hence, compensate for my guilt in
deflecting. I feel well with my decision to teach those who escaped the war
rather than fight in this absurd war.”
“If you decide to join forces with those
who serve in the civil sector in Praetorium you would, perhaps, fear less being
considered a deserter but if you refuse to fight you will still be a deserter.”
“No, not at all. On the contrary, I
would be avoiding being trapped in a vicissitude of hatred as all wars
inevitably exert an extreme pressure on soldiers and induce hatred for the
enemy.”
“On both accounts you woiuld be facing a
double bind.”
“I visited Praetorium long before the war
started. There was unrest in town hidden as a subtle complaint against the
Western world. The social unrest was partly evident but also compensated for by
subtle gestures of sympathy. Some married couples lived separately: the husband
would study architecture in Italy while the economist wife would work in Nova
Brescia. Families were broken.”
“Your observations would justify joining
either the army or the civil service in Praetorium knowing that in boith cases
you woiuld be facing ambiguity.”
“When I visited Praetorium the people I
met there were tentatively trying to discover the hidden aspects of their
history and their place in the world.
Warily, curiously, slightly suspiciously, too. We had the project of
bringing out a book with the authors of our respective cities, but the project
fell apart like a broken stack of cards. They, then, cancelled their
participation due to the political sanctions against Praetorium. Perhaps, they
perceived that neutrality and the ensuing sanctions, on our side, would mean
yet another war on theirs.”
Dr. Fraser gazed upon him
surreptitiously and closed the conversation.
Rowan had spoken of his state of mind
candidly. For Rowan, cowardice was a prejudice that society imparted upon you,
Janus-like, if you refused to conform to its binary rules. And the thought of
being considered a coward did not disturb him because his moral duty justified
his deflection. At least, he would not be used as an instrument of evil to kill
and maim and carry out blind double orders like an automat. The irony of war
and the trauma they entailed were absurd.
He felt light-hearted but, strangely
enough, as he left the office, an event dating back to his adolescence haunted
him. Rowan remembered how, when he was fifteen, he had wandered upon an open
field and encountered a horse. He had stared hard at the horse. When he went
around the horse, the animal had lifted its hind hooves and kicked his nose
with a blow so sudden that, at first, he did not feel the pain but felt his
blood’s warmth as it flowed in his hands. He had neglected the magnetism that linked
horse to man inextricably. When he had woken up at the dispensary with
the large, gauzed bandage around his nose, he knew that his well-shaped
straight nose that resembled that of a warrior was gone.
Teaching Refugees
In the spring, Rowan worked as a social
worker to place the homeless, some of whom were refugees, in near-by shelters.
He also raised funds to augment the shelters’ capacity for opening in-house
restaurants. Due to his initiative more than six restaurants were opened in the
urban shelters in Nova Brescia. But his most important contribution was the
relocation of the homeless in shelters supervised by volunteers.
In October, he started teaching in the
special gymnasium opened for war refugees in town. He taught teen-agers. Oreste
had escaped the ransack of his city by escaping in a bus filled with others. At
checkpoint, he had been led to another bus by the border guards. He was an
asocial boy yet would always smile when Rowan said “of course” when he
relativized his students’ mistakes. Oreste later joined a gang of looters who
ransacked a bar in town by taking the barman hostage. He had to be discharged
from school and ended up in the city prison for three months; then returned to
school.
Another of Rowan’s students, Ilya,
suffered from PTSD. The trauma he underwent was evident through his resigned
disposition and especially, in lapses of lax detachment and inattention in the
classroom. In his moments of absence, he would be completely disconnected and
drift back to the fragmented traumatic scene.
Rowan recommended him to Brenda, the
gymnasium’s psychologist. He even attended some sessions with him. Time and
again, he would notice the change in Ilya’s distant gaze as his denial turned
into a paradoxical escape from their conversation back to the flashback of the
bombing. Ilya would, then, lower his eyes.
He said he went back to the scene when grit blown off from the railway
tracks hit his head. He had hidden his head with both hands and ran for his
life. He had lost consciousness and was hospitalised.
Ilya said to Brenda that after the
blast, as he recuperated in the hospital, he felt he had been ripped off his
essence. He had been cut from the surrounding world. He said he thought he had almost
turned into a carcass like a desiccated crab-shell abandoned on a low-tide
strand.
Yet, as Ilya spoke of his troubles to
Brenda, she realized Ilya had traversed the stream of the repressed like an
undertow that had deposed a mixed silt-seam and grit on the riverbed of his
youth. Ilya said he often thought of his mother and sister who were left
desolate in the village; the more so because his father had abandoned them at a
young age. He said he felt guilty. He did not see them again after he left the
country and sought asylum in Nova Brescia. But he never, in fact, abandoned
them. Ilya also said to Brenda that his father had fought in the war and was
slain at the front. He would never see him again. Within a few months Ilya,
too, would be called to the army to fight on the borderlands.
Later in the month, Rowan called Ian
Thorpe, an investigative journalist whom Frank had contacted on his behalf.
Rowan wanted to set up an interview with him for the local paper. Ian Thorpe
was a hawk-eyed handsome man in his thirties who had travelled the world and
reported on the war. Rowan met him at the entrance of the school and they both
entered the long hall that led to Rowan’s office. Rowan said that his students
were well-integrated within their classes and to their lives outside and
continued:
“They are all refugees from Praetorium.
I teach quite a homogeneous class. Students interact well with each other
except for two students who were war victims.”
“Were there any students who were
affected directly by violence?” he was asked.
“One of my students suffered from PTSD.
He is under psychological treatment.
He is making progress in remembering the
circumstances that led to his disconnection. The more he can remember the more
he can reconnect with reality. His reactions to war scenes are being analysed.
Through digital war games he can externalize his negative emotions and increase
his concentration.”
“What is his family context?”
“Trauma almost made an orphan out of
him. He has difficulty reconnecting with his nuclear family, with his mother
and sister.”
“And his father?”
“He lost his father at the front. He
came from a broken family. His father had strayed from home during his
marriage, then volunteered for the war.”
“Let me note any other observations
concerning your students that might be interesting for local people.”
“I think we will have difficulty keeping
the affected ones like Ilya in place. I think they will either stray again or
be driven back to the war.”
“Is there any way this can be stopped?”
“Since most of the students come from an
agricultural background, re-introducing them to the land would be an efficient
way of preventing them from roaming away.”
“But that means re-locating them in
other countries where agricultural land is available.”
“I believe it is one way; unless they
would volunteer to fight.”
“Do you think they would be liable to
fight in their war despite their trauma?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They are prone to mixed feelings: they
project their nostalgia for their native land into the army which gives them
the impetus to fight as an unconscious order coming from their commander.”
“But it should be the exact opposite.”
“Teenagers suffering from PTSD become
like drones or robots and can be manipulated at will.”
“That is the real danger.”
“The aggressive war situation is
reversed and can even become attractive since the traumatized person, according
to Ilya’s testimony, is emptied of his very essence.”
“And is ready to follow orders.”
“Or defend another frontier or far-away
outpost. Or fight.”
“Either be integrated, kill or die.”
Mid-term Break
At the mid-term break, Rowan took his students to Transvaldia, in
the south of Nova Brescia, an agricultural territory producing olives, apples,
cereals, and kernel nuts. Transvaldia’s large, terraced oak and pine forests
were encircled by a river that ran all the way to the sea near the port. Upon
reaching Transvaldia by train, the youngsters started climbing the stony hills
like a spartan army in convoy. They reached the rustic wooden huts dispersed
among millennium-old oak trees, vying on the way with sprinting mountain goats.
Each day, they hiked, skied cross-country on higher ground, and swam in cold
mountain lakes. Evenings were spent camping in tents around a fire for meals.
One day Rowan took them to a cattle fair in town where small
stature red cows with full udders were paraded like trophy figures by their
owners on the marketplace. There was a horse stall that kept thoroughbred races
from all over the country. Then again, chimpanzees imported from the Far East
jumped from tree to tree and were being fed with peanuts and banana bits by
passers-by. They watched a farmer shear one of his black sheep with a special
inox razor and blade. While the razor severed the fur’s heft gradually, the
farmer would lift the heavy fur from the sheep’s skin, exposing the animal’s
shorn skin covered with a thin layer of sweater-like black fur to the elements.
While watching the shearing, Rowan enthused with elysian contentment. He almost identified with these bucolic days
drifting by in harmony that endorsed the accomplishment of seasonal pastoral
duties. He would be glad to move to the countryside.
On a halcyon day when the sun played hide-and-seek with
Transvaldia’s plains as if they were grasslands, Rowan suspected trouble
brewing among his students. Like fluvial undertows, rumours had been
circulating among the students about Ilya’s romance with Olenka. Their arms
intertwined, the two would often leave the group to wander down by the river
and would re-join the hike later.
Some students had reported to him that they saw others prying into
their intimacy in their hut at night. When Rowan gathered them to disclose the
despicable situation, they turned pale and began sneering, bringing their hands
close to their mouths to disguise their guilt.
Rowan understood that the rumours might have been grounded. But, for
lack of evidence, he felt incapable of punishing the trespassers.
Towards the end of their sojourn, Rowan walked along the
riverbank. Blasé and alone. He began to realize the imminent, divisive,
unstoppable potential of the war. He began to envisage how Nova Brescia would
be cleft between the have and have nots, the honest upright citizens, and the
corrupt greed-ridden outsiders, some bought by bureaucrats. How the future
politicians who would replace Nova Brescia’s despot would raise the civic and
economic stakes at whatever cost. The
civil strife would break him, too, if he continued to restrain from joining.
But, then again, it would break him at all cost.
In Love
Back in Nova Brescia, Ian Thorpe invited
Rowan for supper one evening. After the interview for the local paper, the two
men were linked to each other with the intangible bond of comprehension like
the combination of bow and arrow. Ian and Ruth lived on a hill on the western
suburbs of Nova Brescia. In early evening Rowan parked his car at the entrance
of the house and rang. Ruth opened the door to let him in. On the living room
library, Rowan could recognize the literature and geography books on the shelves
and the memorabilia from different parts of the world.
As he sat down, he noticed the autumn sunlight
playing on the brick walls. The light drew chiaroscuro patterns of laced laurel
leaves intermeshed with the balcony’s iron-wrought semi-circles. Shadow-patterns
had always fascinated him.
Rowan offered Ruth a bottle of Bordeaux wine. Ruth read the
label and thanked him. Ruth came back with three
glasses of red wine and Ian joined the conversation. Ian said: “Thieves broke into our flat and tore and scattered
the manuscript Ruth was working on.”
“Do you have any idea who they were?” Rowan asked.
“We think they were protesters against the multinationals.” Ruth
said:
“I was away on a conference; I got back one morning and found the
front door had been forced. The flat had been invaded by thieves. Like lost epistles,
some pages were dispersed on the wooden floor, others behind the door. Some had
been trampled upon, others torn.” Ian retorted:
“The war is at three hours from Nova Brescia. It’s a war of ideology
between borders. The delinquents might have been spurred on by their allied
factions. They are cyber-criminals who send the money to their allies. We are
having a cold war in town with all its perverse effects. In the streets and on
the radio, too, rumours of crime are circulating.”
Ruth looked away and out of the window with nostalgia: “The
borders will, one day, be set by the natural patterns of rivers and mountains
instead of being split by ideologies, cultural differences, and intolerant
retaliations.”
As she served him another glass of wine, Rowan looked at her with
awe. Ruth did not return his gaze and pretended she did not notice him. He
thought she was quite naïve in thinking that the war would end soon without any
loss. He felt that Ruth was a romantic woman who had a high self-esteem. She
was extremely poised, and a poet like him. He felt an irresistible affinity
towards her. An introspective mood rendered him silent and reserved during
dinner. He felt troubled. Rowan felt romantic feelings for Ruth resembling the fulfilled
feeling of sustenance.
He became passive at the dinner table and started thinking about
his female relationships. He usually felt shy and reserved with women. He would
usually let a woman take the first step and try to understand their psychology
before having a relationship with them. He intuited that it might be related to
his early relation with his mother who was an attentive, good, and kind mother.
But Ruth was married to the man with whom he felt a strong bond that could
spill the beer with the foam from the glass containing it.
Rowan & Ruth
After dinner, Ruth asked him whether he wanted to see
her reportage on the conflict in Preatrium. Rowan agreed. The door to Ruth’s
home office was half-open. The manuscript with its typed-up chapters which she
had meticulously filed on her desk had been opened to a section concerning the
refugees. She had re-arranged the pages, one by one, in their appropriate
chapters, adding the necessary notes to the blank ones with abbreviations. Ruth
wanted to show him what she had saved from the violated manuscript.
Then, she opened a drawer in her large mahogany desk
and carefully brought out the folder containing the war reportage. Rowan sat
down with Ruth to read certain sections. Rowan felt the imminence of the
conflict intensely as they read about the prisoners coerced to forced labour in
the outposts, the displaced people, and the split families – the civilian
strife, the hidden unburied dead, the fire, the fervour, the smoke, the stench,
the death pits, the torture cells, reports of tortured dissents, the perversion
of war carried out by soldiers who, like chain workers in a metal factory of
spare parts, were driven to fight for a territory that would serve to open up
new territories for their opponents and their former allies.
But neither the fighters nor their allies believed in
the future of their states. In the nihilistic context which reigned both in
Praetorium and Nova Brescia where values failed to sustain both the people and
the intellectuals, the imminent expansion of war outside of Praetorium was
inevitable. Albeit absurd.
Their dictator’s power was also paradoxical. He
continued to send hundreds of untrained poor soldiers to the front to fight and
keep the territorial unity of the lost empire so that Praetorium, like the
other states, would not obtain their independence and continue to maintain
their cultural dependence on Novo Brezice. He would continue to exploit the
conquered territories’ natural resources which would bring about another type
of war since democratic countries are determined to regulate the use and misuse
of its sparse finite resources.
After their discussion,
Ruth got up and opened the window and breathed in deeply. Sylvan effluvia from
the forest stimulated her awareness. Then, she sat on the sofa next to Rowan.
Ruth’s melancholy had created a frightened other-ego, a persona that would
protect her against all odds. Ruth had internalized her other-ego as that of
her mother as if she were carrying her mother inside her. She had developed an other-ego as a defence
against her maternal unconscious fear that helped her survive through tough
situations as if she were a little girl continuously protected by her
internalized mother figure. Through her internalized mother figure Ruth was
able to protect the internalized child and her creativity.
Her mother had been afraid of animals, a fear
inculcated to her by her authoritarian father. But Ruth was not afraid of
animals. She had fed foxes at the threshold of her summer house. She had saved
a baby bat who had fallen prisoner inside a window-ledge. She had given water
to an ailing pigeon that landed on her window. She was glad when she heard it
fly away from her nocturnal window the night before she flew out of a country
where she reported on the effects the cold war.
Now, her sentiments towards Rowan were beginning to be
stirred up like enzymes inside her belly. Rowan approached her and held her in
his arms. She trembled with emotion. He took his hand in hers
and smiled. He bent over her and kissed her. She felt a tingling sensation that
reached her throat and all the way to her breasts. He kissed her lips inside
her soft mouth. She felt her erect nipples inside her blouse.
Rowan looked at her tenderly. They went out into the garden
through the back door. Ruth observed a sepia caterpillar with light green
shades with its three tiny velvet-legs and soft appendages as it slid and fed
on an elm leaf on the grass. She picked up the caterpillar carefully with the
leaf and took it into Rowan’s shed. He followed her into the shed. There they
embraced passionately as if they had been lovers for years. Then, he unbuttoned
her satin shirt.
In late spring pollen filled
the air like plankton at sea. When Rowan and his
students returned to Nova Brescia, Rowan his repressed guilt as a total objector re-surfaced at the
same time as his love for Ruth. Did this mean that he would join the army? He
did not know. His new relationship with Ruth opened a wider yet unsusceptible
space within him and spurred him to re-consider his decision to deflect.
Towards the end of term and the beginning of summer, Rowan noticed
rebelliousness among his students. He noticed that some students were acting
more aggressively towards him while others showed less respect or grown
indifferent to his teaching. Others shifted between lethargy, rebellion, and
anger. Olenka had spoken to her father who refused to let her know where he was
or what he was doing in the army or whether he was on a special mission
somewhere on the front. Ilya said he had not spoken to his mother and sister
for a long while. Olenka felt distressed. They both felt confused. Some
students began to have mixed feelings about their identities. Brenda concluded
that, at the end of term, the students’ projections towards Rowan were becoming
distorted due to their reconsidered identity problems.
Rowan felt quite restless and called Ruth. Ruth was happy to hear
about his holiday with the students and said she would come to visit him if he
wished. Rowan said he would be delighted to see her again. When Ruth reached
Rowan’s cottage, she stopped by the river and looked into the water that cannot
flow twice identically. Her face was fleeting along with the fleeting water.
She thought about her narcissistic problems.
She knew that most artists were narcissistic because they created
partially through their egos and the egos’ energy was disseminated in their
creations. What could she be repressing that kept her bound to herself?
Perhaps, she loved and was revulsed by her erotic self ambiguously. She would
confide to Rowan. Ian was her partner but she felt more relaxed with Rowan. She
depended too much on Ian as if he were her manager; yet she felt close to him
at the same time. Perhaps, her profound problem was a lack of self-confidence
that prevented her from building stable, mature relations. Or maybe she was
evading a deeper inner problem.
Part Two
Corruption in Nova Brescia
Ian Thorpe met the Civil Officer to discuss health insurance and
accommodation for the new refugees who had arrived in Nova Brescia. They sat
around a table on which he placed a folder containing their names, ages,
familial and financial situations. It would be hard to discern the difference
between the critical refugees fleeing the war zones from those seeking
political or economic asylum. Some refugees were used as a human shield and as
war instruments to colonize the host countries.
Ian had placed his large leather satchel bag on the floor under
the table that he shared with the officer who said that right now, five hundred
new refugees had to be accommodated in Nova Brescia. Right then, a beggar, a
short man with dirty features dressed in a tattered black suit, approached
their table, begging for money. They handed a few coins to the man who rapidly
disappeared from sight. When Ian Thorpe reached out to his satchel bag to take
out a document, the bag had disappeared. The beggar had stolen it.
Ian Thorpe, then, addressed the Civil Officer:
“I feel like a refugee in my hometown and my proper country where
there are as many beggars as thieves. My newspaper reports, my laptop, and
check book are gone. If more crooks flock into Nova Brescia, they will soon
outnumber the local inhabitants and will begin to gain power through thieving,
and corruption. There are serious emerging problems in Nova Brescia like human
trafficking and hard drugs which augment criminality to a higher degree.
Attempts to invest in cultural institutions like theatres and concert halls in
the city are being counterbalanced by acts of prostitution, both male and
female. Competing gang leaders act like pimps to protect the prostitutes and
terrorize the population in bars in town. Gangs are like refugees since they
flock in from different cities in Nova Brescia. The money that’s made from
drugs and prostitution is exported to countries which are being liberated by
terrorist organisations. Denunciation means death. Money is the common
denominator between those countries and our country Nova Brescia. Money serves
to cover up crime. Crime is hidden behind lies and crookery. I have met some
people who lie as they breathe and justify their lies to hide their destructive
inner motives as if everything that we give them were due to them. We are far from
any civilisation in these cases.
The war occurring in Praetorium is almost a civil war. Mercenary
soldiers are recruited from far-off villages. They are young, jobless, and
uneducated. They obey orders without questioning their validity. If they survive
the war, they will form a less cultured albeit a uneducated stratum of society.
And that is as dangerous as the war, even more so, since it is based on
ignorance. As a result, dictatorship is likely to be strengthened.
In the future, another problem with the incoming refugees will be
their double, or even, triple allegiance to their countries of origin, to their
cultural identities, and to Nova Brescia. There are already heavy cases of
mobbing in public spaces and the workplace. The person who is a victim of this
type of exclusion enters a state of regression and reacts unconsciously as a
regressed person. This widens the vicious circle until, denounced, the person
is, finally, ejected from his position which he has taken years to build. I
have, thus, witnessed heavy cases of mobbing. Commonplace mobbing starts by
placing oneself in the proximity to the person to be mobbed; then, closer, and
closer until proximity becomes almost promiscuity. People start to meddle in
another person’s life. Then, promiscuity cedes to violence unless the person
reacts either with verbal force or excludes himself or both. That is how some
people take other people’s places.
On the other hand, people harass each other by verbal violence
which takes the form of incessant verbiage which the interlocutor must endure
to maintain the semblance of a civilized response. In fact, it is a hypocrisy
based double standards. Not only do people hide behind a group of people to
usurp an individual’s place but they do so out of an instinct of segregation
hidden behind cowardice. The tattered beggar made me feel like a refugee in my
own city due to the war. Will there ever be a way out of this flux of
corruption?
Thorpe’s Dilemma
Ian Thorpe knew deep down inside that Ruth was having an affair
with Rowan. He would have to have a man-to-man talk with him. After the theft
he experienced, he called him up and set up an appointment in his office in
town. Rowan walked into Ian’s office with a pale face and started to speak:
“I know you would like to know about my relationship with Ruth”.
“Indeed.”
“We could not fight off being attracted to each other.”
“But you knew we were living together”.
“Mae culpa. Yet I do not feel extremely guilty about our
relationship.”
“How can you say that? Ruth did not speak to me about your
relationship but I understood it from the way in which you reacted during the
dinner.”
“You can blame me for seducing her, but it happened so naturally
so that we both did not realise the strength of our bond. The conflict in which
we are trapped and our shared interest in it spurred on our connection. And for
that neither of us are to blame.”
“I suppose you could say that love is the perfect antidote for
war.”
“Could be.”
“We will be separating soon.” Ian said.
“I understand. As for me, I decided to join the armed forces as a
military envoy to Praetorium.”
“Have you told Ruth?”
“No. I do not want her to know. I will write to her when I am at
the front. I am leaving next week.”
“Don’t you think it would be honest of you to let her know your
decision. You letter might shock her.”
“I still think she should not know until I write to her.
Paradoxical as it might seem, my love for her prompted me to join. Perhaps,
it’s a way of proving to her that I care about others by joining the army in
Praetorium where the casualties are most intense.”
“At any rate, now the cyber war is happening there. People must
face drone attacks, three, four, and, sometimes, five or more drones flying
over their heads and hitting them and destroying whole buildings, new and old
ones also”.
“Precisely. Drones are like missile attacks, if not worse since
they are set up in advance to attack people who were unaware of the danger.”
“I will make a reportage on the cyber war. Remote control killer
drones, imported from countries that ignore moral codes, now open the era of
cyber war that could become apocalyptic if used more widely to destroy our
cities and their infrastructures”.
“As a military envoy, I will be negotiating an imminent truce to
stop the war. But
Ruth must not know until I write to her.”
Part Three
The Nightmare
Like the curt crevice on the potter's
cooled clay, the dreamer’s memory breach
cleaves her mind in the dreamer’s
virtual
room while the rift between the real
woman
and the potter’s threat as a bait-woman
hidden in the shadows breaks her body.
The dreamer’s skin distends with sweat.
She shrieks like a vulture spiralling
the blind sulphurous skies of madness.
Ruth screamed out of her nightmare in the dead of night. She woke
up from her nightmare, sweating. She went out to the balcony to breathe.
Strangely enough, she could remember every detail of the incubus process as if
she were dreaming and living it simultaneously. As if she were possessed by a
demon. She was in a strange foreign country among male potters. One of the
potters bullied and harassed her as if she were his property. Then, he tried to
rape her. Then, she woke up.
Upon waking, she remembered defending herself against the
demon-potter who thought she would surrender to him without defence. The potter
of her nightmare was virtual, but he was the dark shadow of a real man whom she
could not reach. He was not with her when she woke up breathing the nocturnal
sea breeze. He might have been the dream-man she wished for. Yet, the potter’s
incorporated double figure of a man and demon frightened her.
Ruth was now living alone. She and Ian separated a few months ago.
Their separation had not been an easy one. Ian had asked Ruth to justify her
affair with Rowan. She said it happened naturally. Since their separation, she
felt guilty and vulnerable. Her separation could have been the cause of her
nightmare which she associated with her mother’s virtual self which she assumed
when she felt fragile. The most disturbing aspect of her remembrance was the
reality of the assault when the assumed virtual dream-self which the potter
wrongfully imposed on her seemed real. Upon waking, she, of course, realised
that her nightmare self was virtual. But during the process of the incubus, it
seemed more than real. Shouting and sweating were her body’s reactions to her
distress and disbelief. She had shrieked out the terrible gap between her
virtual and real selves.
When Rowan visited her during the week, Ruth started the
conversation by implying her anxiety:
“I woke up sweating and shrieking last night.”
“Do you think it is related to your recent separation from Ian?”
“I think my deep anxiety could be related to his questions about
our relationship. I said it just happened so naturally that I did not ask
myself any questions.” Ruth said.
“Funny, but I also said to him that it happened naturally.”
“I feel my separation from Ian, my long-term companion, and my
moving into a flat on my own might certainly have triggered my deep anxiety. I
think pent-up stress that causes the unconscious lid to break off.”
“What happened?”
“I awoke shouting and sweating from a nightmare as if my body were
protesting against the virtual harassment I experienced in the incubus.”
“As if a demon entered your body and induced the frightening
dream?”
“As if I were possessed.” Ruth retorted. “I felt trapped in it for
a whole week because the experience seemed so real while I was dreaming it. I
could hardly distinguish between night and day, dream and reality; so woke up
all in sweat and shouted to stop the bitter confusion. Did you ever feel
someone treating you as if you were their property?”
“You mean as if you were someone’s slave?”
“Precisely.”
“Your denunciation into modern day slavery in some countries might
be related to the dream setting you remember.”
“It might. Shouting was a healthy reaction against all these
destructive powers that induce dreadful visions in our unconscious.”
Rowan and Ruth spent the night hugged in each other’s arms until
the break of day. They knew they needed each other more than ever. They knew
they had each other.
Rowan’s Mission
After the nightmare, Rowan moved in with Ruth. They decided to
present a press conference on the violations caused by war and planned to
project the videos of Ruth’s reportage in countries where young women were
victims of rape and forced marriage. Ruth had been campaigning against such
practices before the war. During the press conference, they crowd-funded and
collected money to send to the foreign NGO’s.
After the international conference, Ruth decided to join the
campaign abroad and flew out of Nova Brescia while Rowan contacted the
diplomatic mission and volunteered to join as a military envoy. During his
interview by the chief military commander, Rowan stressed his experience in
supervising the relocation and education of the refugees. His actions depended
on the Education Ministry where he had to report the education and the health
conditions of his supervisees. The commander registered him as an envoy.
His mission consisted in contacting Praetorium’s diplomats to
negotiate a truce between the two countries to end the war as soon as possible.
Hence, he was driven back and forth between Nova Brescia and Praetorium to
speak to the military commanders and convince them to reach peaceful agreements
in agricultural civilian territories. He succeeded to demilitarize a rural
region where the river and its tributaries were used to irrigate the crops. He
was also responsible for the sanitization of drinking water. Negotiations were
tough but, in the end, both sides agreed to retreat to let civilians manage
their resources.
Two months into his mission, Rowan knew the war terrain quite
well. The main fighting took place on the plateau above the valley where the
winding river surrounded the stub fields. In autumn rain drenched the roads.
Driving was difficult. One day when Rowan’s vehicle stopped at a rest point,
the lieutenant began speaking to Rowan about their chances of winning the war.
On a pessimistic note, he said: “The enemy is using drones and
artillery fired with the latest technology. They also have reinforcement from
their allies. If we do not have help from our allies, we will probably lose
this war.”
“Corrupt as they are, if they win, they will corrupt us even
more.”
“And if we lose, we will lose become more and more nihilistic as
we are now in Nova Brescia.”
“For the moment, I think we should get our soldiers up from the
river into the plateau and defend ourselves if the enemy attacks and keep track
of the weather before winter turns rain into ice.”
“Some of our soldiers are already fighting there. And we are
waiting for more reinforcements. Our soldiers are so courageous that they do
not see any danger in attacking the enemy. They live in the present moment of
alertness ready to fight.” the lieutenant retorted.
As his vehicle advanced along the road, he noticed a few gunmen
halfway up the hill track and asked to stop outside a village. A security
patrol had stopped a few armed men thinking they had deserted their regiments
and kept them at gunpoint. When a man tried to escape, the lead shot and killed
him on the spot. Rowan realized the absurdity of the war in which countrymen
shot their countrymen based on the false loyalty to their country and out of
anger and frustration at the war situation. Rowan could not imagine holding on
to his position for long; yet desertion at this point meant death by a blind
bullet.
One day while Rowan was
driven to Praetorium, his convoy was assaulted by shell fire. He was badly
wounded and taken to the nearest hospital. After being operated for several
injuries to remove the metal particles from his body he remained in the
hospital. During his recuperation, he could not stop thinking of Ruth but hesitated
to write to her by fear of hurting her after the shock of her nightmare.
In fact, the shooting of the would-be deserters without any
witness that Rowan witnessed the assault resembled Ruth’s nightmare. There the
enslaved virtual Ruth of the nightmare seemed more real than the real Ruth
while she was dreaming. So was it with war, too. Men who shot their countrymen
without verifying the truth of their desertion or their status in the army
were, in fact, virtual robots who killed others randomly. Demons enter men and
men wage war, he thought.
So, the war and nightmare were identical in that both transformed
real men into virtual automatons. That’s how Ruth’s virtual double made her
shriek with horror when the potter tried to rape her. War was man’s nightmare
in which all his impulses were released without any restraint. And that’s how
man could kill in cold blood. War was, indeed, a true nightmare.
During the day, the soldier who was driving an ambulance came to
visit and offered Rowan a large box of pastries with local fruits. They spoke
of the offensive up in the mountains and how the pouring rain was making
manoeuvres difficult. Rowan felt gratitude to see and speak to him. And when
the nurse came in for his daily care, he thought of Ruth and longed to be near
her. He began composing a letter for her.
“Dear Ruth,
I joined the army as a military envoy a week after you travelled
to the NGOs abroad. I took the decision to do so because I thought I could be
more efficient in my service to the civil population in war-ridden Praetorium.
Reports of the drone victims who were deprived of the essential basics for
living kept flowing in and disturbed me more and more. The military convoy
vehicle in which I was travelling was ambushed at a countryside turn a week
ago. I am now resting in the military hospital in the suburb of Praetorium
after surgery. I long to see you.
Love, Rowan”.
Ruth’s Farewell
Ruth found Rowan’s letter a week after she returned from her NGO
tour overseas. She booked a train ticket for Praetorium and reached the town in
the late afternoon. The town with the church and fountain in its centre seemed
calm. She left her room situated in the large brick house next to the hospital
and went to visit Rowan.
He was slumbering in an iron-wrought bed. Ruth approached him
silently and kissed him softly. He took her hands in his and kissed her back
and felt as if he were being infused with a fresh life-force like the beginning
of new life in spring. They looked at each other in silence and mutual
understanding when Ruth started the conversation:
“I was surprised to know that you were out in the front. I thought
that was quite a change in your world-view since we met. You were a
conscientious objector.”
“I thought it over and think that I joined to prove my courage to
you after I fell in love with you. I wanted to project my feelings of love to
the victims of the war atrocities and that is the main reason why I joined.”
Rowan answered.
“How long will you be in this hospital?”
“I will start with the walking exercises tomorrow. I’ll move
around with crutches for another week. Will you continue with the NGO
activities back home?” he asked Ruth.
“I have taken on fund-raising initiatives abroad because that’s
where they are needed most due to the energy and water restrictions imposed by
the war.”
“Two weeks ago, soldiers were being driven up to the plateau to
reinforce the ally positions but today our troops are retreating. The enemy
took over the higher positions which we were trying to defend, and withdrawal
was the only solution.”
“Do you think this might end the war on both sides?” Ruth asked.
“The purposeless shooting of men on account of false betrayal
charges that I witnessed convinced me of the absurdity of this war which, I think,
will continue long after the withdrawal of all the troops from their positions.
But the war might take another form. It might cause the exploitation of the
weak and the poor by the victors who will, probably, become even more corrupt.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the nurse who came in to
change Rowan’s bandages. During his recuperation in the hospital, Rowan thought
of Ruth as the nurse disinfected his wounds and felt he regressed to his
adolescence. He was getting better but regretted not being involved in the
army. He felt his inaction was a detriment to his masculinity; yet, he had
joined the armed forces to prove his courage to Ruth as was expected from him
by his patriarchal culture. Now the woman he loved was here and proved that she
cared for him as much as he cared for her. But he still felt the lack left by
his inaction in the premisses of the hospital and it created a tension in his
mind.
When Ruth returned to her room, she noticed some children playing
behind military silos used as hiding points by the civilians and as defence
sites by the military in front of the town hall. Ruth thought the children’s
play was an ironic enactment of the fighting factions pursuing each other at
war. She thought a terrible nihilism would invade people after the fighting was
finished. Death-like emptiness could
replace men’s aggressiveness which would even be more devastating than actual
death itself.
In the morning, she met Rowan and the doctor in the hospital’s
park. Rowan smiled as he walked towards her on his crutches.
“The doctor thinks I should resign from the army.”
Ruth did not respond.
On the weekend, Rowan was
handed Ruth’s letter of farewell. She
had taken the decision to leave for overseas without him. Although Rowan was
glad that he left the war scene and all the fighting behind him, he still felt
the moral wound of Ruth’s desertion, trapped as he was inside the military vehicle that drove him to Nova
Brescia.
Yet, he did not even think
of desertion or betrayal as he left the hospital and his commitment to the
army. He had seen too many horrors and infidelities at the front. He knew the
war would go on and take another form in the future. War was the price of the
freedom to choose one’s way of life, but even then, life ended by death, albeit
self-imposed by war or naturally. Mortality was the human condition in the
world and transience its constancy.
Rowan could now sense the
paradoxical change he had undergone after his self-abandonment to Ruth and his
consequent commitment to the army. Joining the army was also a compensation for
his guilt towards Ian Thorpe. Yet, commitment to Ruth’s love protected him
against the ambient nihilism imposed by war in stark contrast with the warring
soldiers’ almost unconscious defiance of danger.
After the term of his
recuperation in the military hospice in Nova Brescia, Rowan decided to join the foreign NGO
development scheme. He would use the negotiation skills he had acquired as a
military envoy to maintain coordination among the different NGOs based on
consensus. He would negotiate the sustainable use of the primary resource of
water between border-countries on either side of the wide winding river. The
river would become the custodian of the demilitarized water-table.
Dr.
Emily Bilman is
a widely published and anthologized author of poetry, literary essays, and
short stories. Her PhD dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry, was
published by Lambert Academic in 2010. Slatkine & Cie published La rivière de soi (2010) in Geneva. Modern Ekphrasis (2013)
came out by Peter Lang Academic. Her other poetry books, A Woman by A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018), Apperception (2020), The Undertow
(2023) were published by Troubador Books, UK. She won the Polaris Contest with
a sonnet entitled “Pathfinder” scheduled to arrive on the moon with NASA
time-capsule in 2024. http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman
