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Wednesday, August 24, 2005 |
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Annals of Personal Apocalypse
In the dream, on the news I heard an American politician insult an Asian country. The anchorman continued to other topics without hesitating. Behind the house, the tigers paced. I heard a sound. I looked out the front window as the first planes came over. For a moment I thought of passenger pigeons, how they were said once to have been so numerous that flocks of them passing overhead darkened the sky. These were warplanes, however, and they flew in orderly rows, phalanxes of aircraft so dense and so neatly organized they appeared to be rows of Morse code--or, no, precisely like the tables of hexagrams that fold out on card stock at the back of the Bollingen I Ching. And before long the eastward-moving rows extended from horizon to horizon. Soon soldiers on the ground were going from house to house taking prisoners, even killing those who resisted. In the dream I had a husband and a little girl, a sweet fragile child of 6 or 7. My husband in the dream was played by Mike Farrell (who played the bland, sweet-tempered B. J. Hunnicut in the M*A*S*H television series years ago). We prepared to flee but only my husband made it out. My daughter and I were trapped in the house, and soldiers approached from across the field. She and I went from room to room, hiding. In my heart I said sorrowful good-byes to our cats and dogs and llamas; I glanced over our packed-up precious possessions and family photos and released them. We crept up one staircase after another, always moments ahead of the soldiers. I was afraid the child would make a sound, not understanding the peril, but she was so good and silent, even though she seemed unfrightened. Once or twice as we moved about she darted away to do something playful--to swing from a rafter, say--and when I asked her why she would answer, "I just wanted to see how that felt." Higher and higher we climbed, until in the highest attic room we found only a bed's boxsprings on the floor. I lifted it and we crept under, folding our bodies to fit between the wooden supports. Soldiers entered the room. We held our breaths. I expected them to fling over the springs with violence and expose us, but they did not. They left. We had escaped them. We lived on quietly in the house, without leaving, for some months. I saw a report on TV about families of the killed and imprisoned. In the film my husband stood at the back of a group of mourners, looking anguished, certain we were dead.
A former neighbor who was now with an underground of escapees discovered us and promised to smuggle us to safety, to where my husband was waiting. But she took only the child. I was delayed, and then the soldiers found me. I lived for years then in a prison camp. The movie ended--the dream has become a movie I am watching with my son. It's a harrowing ending. He gets up to leave and I say, "Wait. Watch." And sure enough there is an epilog. We see the woman, emaciated, with shaven head, but all smiles, arrive before a building where her husband and child run out to greet her with embraces. |
