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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780930324865 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2004 |
| Series: | Complete Works of Cecile Pineda series |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.27(d) |
About the Author
Cecile Pineda received a National Endowment Fiction Fellowship to write The Love Queen of the Amazon, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Read an Excerpt
Redoubt
A Mononovel
By Cecile Pineda
Wings Press
Copyright © 2004 Cecile PinedaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-176-4
CHAPTER 1
redouter (Fr.) (r du-té) v.t., To dread. To fear.
I have been here since the beginning. The road – if there were a road – leads nowhere. There are no ships in the desert. If there were oars or skiffs, they are gone, long since, along with the ghosts of the desert antelope. Their bones lie uninhabited everywhere. The harsh light of the sun has bleached them of any color. Nothing moves. There has been no rainfall in over one hundred years.
My position occupies the last line of defense on the frontier. I am charged with holding my ground, defending against the enemy. The redoubt stands, a dugout of reinforced concrete, its footings sunk in sand. The loophole hatches (there are two) can be raised or lowered at will by virtue of a mechanism of springs and counterweights. From within, I watch.
I know exactly where I stand. All around lies hostile territory. I have what weapons I need: compass, sextant, chart box. Detailed maps displaying latitude, longitude and topological formations. A gnomonic chart – of my own devising – showing my position as the polar center from which all points radiate. I take my readings, make entries in the logbook. Vigilance is the first order of defense on the frontier. The least shift of attention, a temporary lapse, merely momentary, may provide the fatal loophole, the opening in the skin, insignificant perhaps, unnoticed even, from which death may ultimately result. Strange things have happened. A paper cut merely, and the body fails. Communications falter. Infection spreads. There is irreversible collapse.
I live as best I can. By day, I keep to my routine: set the time, stow the sleepsack in the overhead loft. Crank open the hatch covers. Apply oil from time to time to keep the mechanism functioning and noiseless. Fumble – always manage to fumble – in one pocket or another for the key before positioning the leg iron. Fasten it securely. Prepare to take up my position from the night before. Raise the binoculars. Observe. Read my distance from the frontier, my proximity to the Capital. Or, in another manner of speaking, how close to the frontier, how distant from the Capital. I am alert to the slightest movement, armed against any occurrence, foreseen and unforeseen, charged with holding my ground, watching for the enemy. I have my instruments: compass, quadrant, sextant. I have my binoculars and I keep to my routine. It seldom varies, seldom. In the desert, nothing varies, even the sky, high, indifferent, cloudless without let-up. In this landscape there is nothing. Nothing and next to nothing. Endless days. Days without event. And yet. And yet. There is much to consider. Light. The shifting of light for example. Careful note must be made of light. Air currents. The movement of wind. Temperature. Relative humidity. Barometric pressure. Nebulosity: cirrus, cumulus, stratocumulus, or cirrostratus or cumulonimbus. Proportion of sky covered at dawn, at noon, at sunset. Day by day, month by month, year by year. Relation to temperature. Ombrothermic curves. Plotting their coordinates.
Empty routine? Hardly. Everything – in the relative scheme of things – everything has its purpose. Sand, for example. The movement of sand. Of critical importance. What is there if not sand? Not sea – or sky for that matter – yet it moves. Waves, waves rising and falling: crests and troughs – like breathing. Yes. A kind of breathing, mounding, yawning, prey to the ribbed patterns of maverick winds. Plowing surface under surface. Moving, never fixed.
The days here pass without respite. The dawn winds fan the night's chill air over the desert. By noon, the sun's heat sets the sands to gasping. The sky remains cloudless, harsh and uncompromising. Each hour of the day is like the hour of any other, always the same, or very nearly always. My routine never varies from sunup to sundown ...
... never? without variation?
Perhaps there are momentary lapses, I admit, momentary lapses when the eyes falter, when the eyelids dream. Nothing deliberate. Not in any way deliberate. A momentary lapse. An insignificant falling off, say, of attention ...
... a dream? A dream, perhaps?
Probably not. Probably nothing so deliberate. No warning beforehand. No warning when it is about to occur.
More a sensation.
A sensation at best. A falling. A kind of falling as if it ... as if I ... as if, in the relative scheme of things, hostilities, redoubt, nothing mattered. All, all had become no more than sand. Always there, yes, but never the same, never quite the same. Millions of grains, of particles, propelled by forces, some of them unknown as yet: wind, weight ...
... and water?
And water, imagine. I could hear it lapping, lapping. Feel it rocking against the pilings. A momentary lapse. Perhaps not even a second. A fraction measured by the imperceptible drooping of an eyelid, recognized when, only a moment afterward, I opened my eyes. All was as before. Identical. The redoubt, the loophole hatches – still raised. It is not dreaming. I know only because afterward, when I open my eyes, I have no memory of dreaming, not in the strict sense. Not dreaming, not so much dreaming as a sensation, more a sensation as if I ... as if a woman waited, crouched at the oarsman's bench, the oars shipped, idle in the oarlocks.
– Where are you going?
And she ... no indication. A woman, a woman, certainly. Veiled. Dark. Dark clothing. Not quite black, or perhaps faded by the sun. No face. None discernible at any rate. Only the hands visible. Chalk-white – veins knotted like ropes – tightening over the oars.
– Not who she seems, not as she appears.
Who? Who then, I ask myself. Someone remembered? From another time, perhaps? Or someone unmet, as yet unnamed, hands veined thick as ropes. Bandaged. Against wound, perhaps? or gender – the dark welling?
– Where are you going? I asked, but could get no indication. Only the voice of the water, lapping, lapping against the pilings, the oars groaning in the oarlocks. A sign? I ask myself from where might it have come? Might it be a warning, a warning of things to come? Of what?
It has been calm in the desert of late. No visitors. None of any consequence. Of invasion, perhaps? But there have been no signs of hostilities, none of late at any rate – with the possible exception of the occasional volley of gunfire at sunset.
Strict vigilance is the rule on the frontier. I take my bearings. I keep to my routine.
Not always.
Not always then; not all the time. Sometimes I keep a tally of my dreaming ...
... if you dare to call it dreaming....
Not dreaming so much. Strange accounts of the body while it sleeps, the skiff that time riding at anchor, the wash of water against the pilings, the woman swathed in black – or some burned out color, faded by the sun. Or dreaming of night, for example. Waiting for the moment when the light exhausts itself, the last infinitesimal glimmer before the dark when the sky – what I can see of it – takes on its final color, not color in a strict manner of speaking, more a gloaming, the last reach of day before the night. A door closing, a temporary respite. Time to lower the loophole hatches (there are two), to light the lamp. To sit at the field commander's desk recording entries in the logbook. Latitude in the latitude column, longitude in the longitude column. Or amuse myself watching wild dogs snarl at the play of shadows my hands cast upon the walls. Start to the cry of some furred desert animal surprised by the talons of the owl.
At such times I wonder: can it be the war is over? Can hostilities have ceased? Say, in the distance a messenger were to appear, running over the dunes. And say he held a staff aloft. Say the handkerchief that fluttered there were white – if there were wind that day to make it flutter. Would I recognize it as his mark of office? could a truce have been declared? As he approached, say he were to shout something vaguely unintelligible. Would I recognize the password? and how would I respond? would I receive him? would I ask him in? share my meager supper when I have so little for myself? No, no, one can safely count on it; the war will last indefinitely, else why would the redoubt be here? And it is here, make no mistake. Oh, there have been brief disturbances, volleys of gunfire at nightfall, but no sign of the enemy, no visitors of late. No movements, certainly. Only endless days inhabiting the desert, days of the scorpion or of the hawk. On the other hand, standing at attention, sunup to sundown, shackled to the wall, it is not difficult to imagine that time is the enemy, time itself. Each movement, each suggestion of movement subject to doubt. The deprived eye hungering for occurrence. Sunup to sundown. The mind pleading for the unexplained event, seeking to magnify all possible implications. A trickle of sand, say, observed in a hollow between dunes, perhaps a million grains of sand, perhaps a million million, and yet, in the event itself, the avalanche of sand, one might almost hope to recognize the first telltale sign revealing the presence of the enemy beyond one's limited field of vision – or the hidden stakeout of a scout.
Sometimes I imagine rout. I let myself imagine dust, dust at first, little more than a plume, turning, twisting. Innocent, frivolous even, curling in the sunlight. A filmy thing, swaying this way and that, a dust devil perhaps, swirling, undulating in the desert air. Only dust whirling higher, higher still. Or hear perhaps that distant humming that precedes a swarm of locusts, yet the sky remains cloudless without let-up. Louder now. War cries! Ululations! And now, spilling over the dunes, thousands upon thousands, the terrible desert women, their flounces ablaze. Scarlet, carmine and vermilion, sweeping over the dunes, rattling their terrible bone sacks. Chatter of knucklebone, vertebrae, dismembered hooves of the small, swift desert antelope, louder, louder still. I imagine wave upon wave of them, their bodies streaming. Flash of arrows, silver in sunlight. Too blinding, too quick to die of it. Is this how it will end? The wave of red bursting in the throat, choking in the tide of one's own blood. Not like bleeding. No. Nothing like slow bleeding.
Vigilance. Constant vigilance is the daily rule on the frontier. There have been moments of late, dust storms, for example, when the sky becomes occluded with a powder so fine, composed of particles so infinitesimal, the air appears to breathe, as if it could expand, contract, a golden mist where nothing is discernible. A man, say, at ten paces would be indistinguishable. The sun hangs impotent in the low horizon, of no more significance than a tarnished coin. Only by lowering the loophole hatches (there are two) is it possible to wage even what losing battle there is against the dust. Yet raise the binoculars however much I will, stand pressed to the wall, as close to the opening as is ultimately possible, scrutinize the landscape without let-up till the eye rebels and sets up a dancing of its own, there is no sign. Were there movements, would I not detect columns of dust rising, trails of sand lifting in the wake, say, of vehicles struggling over the dunes? There are none. Or evidence now and again of heavy ordnance abandoned or destroyed, or artillery left, charred and gutted in the desert? There is none. Even now certain hills must be riddled with earthworks, mazes of tunnel works, or dugouts. Trenches, lines of defense, redoubts, no doubt other redoubts, perhaps identical or nearly identical to this one. There is nothing. Not a day goes by without raising the binoculars, keeping the lenses free of dust, readjusting the angle of rivalry a hundred times, a hundred hundred times each day. Yet sweep these dunes as I am wont to do, sweep them over one hundred times, one hundred hundred times over, till the eyes refuse, till the ducts tear over, till the mind itself rebels, there is nothing, nothing remotely to suggest, no evidence whatever to support the presence of the enemy. And yet ... and yet ... he must be there. Why else would the redoubt be here? That is the obvious thing, of course. And the redoubt is here, make no mistake. If I stand pressed up against the wall, the loopholes allow me ten, say fifteen degrees, fifteen degrees of parched horizon – a strip of time, a slice of light. I call it Day. I wonder. Perhaps somewhere there are redoubts of alternate design with loopholes which admit as many as twenty, or perhaps even twenty-five degrees. What would I call day then? As it stands, I am forced to strain to see, however close I press my eyes to the eyepiece. I force myself from crying out. Outside the dunes lie trembling, stung in shimmery light. Sometimes encroaching, sometimes retreating. I want to shout, Hold still. Hold still, if only for a moment, long enough for me to take my bearings, before once more taking up your fevered play. The rocks, the hills, the hollows swim. The very air appears to oscillate in measured beats, to pulse, a scintillate thing.
From within, I watch. I have what weapons I need: compass, sextant, chart box. Detailed maps displaying latitude, longitude and topological formations. All around lies hostile territory. I take my readings, make entries in the logbook. I know exactly where I stand. Chained to the wall. In a dugout of reinforced concrete, with footings sunk in sand – a central point, from which all points radiate.
Sometimes, for one syncopic moment I imagine it could dance, wrench itself free of its moorings, join the fevered movements of the air, swirl in drunken excess with the light, lose its senses utterly. It is not always easy to part the mirage from the real. Not always. Or in another way of speaking, the real from the merely imaginary. And who hungers for such things anyway when they bring a stinging to the eye? At least in that respect, the desert is good. It sucks up unnecessary moisture. Every moment counts. Too hot to dream. I am grateful. The leg irons secure my position, come what may, keep me firmly rooted to my ground. And yet ... and yet ... there is a kind of slumber, a breed of forgetfulness, as if memory itself dried up with the stream beds. Caked over and forgot the sea. That is my greatest caution, that in such a moment, loosed from my moorings, the enemy might appear. Perverse thought. The mind's slumber, out of place, suspended, unprodded by the dread of time, time unarmed, shorn of any bearings, with nothing to remind. No dailiness, no going about one's business. Nothing like domestic living.
Or perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps the redoubt occupies the first line of defense, the in-most line, the very first perimeter, closest to the Capital while all the while I mistakenly supposed it guarded the frontier. Perhaps for this reason the enemy is absent. Can it be it is the Capital I guard, one unit among the many thousands that must ring the Capital? No way of telling. No matter. In the relative scheme of things, in the long view at any rate, frontier or Capital, it is the Capital I guard. I am grateful. There have been no signs of the enemy, no visitors. It has been calm, calm without let-up – except for the occasional volley at sunset. I remain fixed at my post, maintain my vigilance day after day, press the binoculars to my eyes. Oh, there are distractions, momentary lapses, momentary at most. The air shimmers. The vision tires. Sometimes there is a closing of the eyes. Only for a moment. I almost never dream.
The woman that time?
The woman, crouched between the oarlocks, the boat riding at anchor, a momentary lapse, merely momentary. In the endless days which pass without event, the keenest vigilance is required. Not every day is marked by its trickle of sand, or the lengthening of a shadow, observed, or unobserved. The days here pass without a murmur. Sunup to sundown, one day succeeds another. The hour, the light of the sun, the weight of the air, the movement of the wind, all, all are predictable or very nearly predictable. At nine a bird will sing, perched on a branch of creosote. At noon, a dune will have allowed the heat to begin its work. There will be a trickle of sand. By four, the desert has begun to stir, making preparations for the night. A wind will come up, a breeze at first, a sighing of the air currents, barely noticeable. By six, it comes roaring through the loopholes, whistling against the knife sharp ridges of the hatches. The dunes will boil up, the dust, like as not, obscure the sun. I will be forced to lower the mechanism against the suffocation of the sand. I will unlock the leg irons, light the lamp. Place the key once more in one pocket or another where I can pass the time fumbling for it on the morrow. Open the field commander's desk, unclasp the log, flip open the pages, run my index over the findings, every one the same, the same or very nearly. One reading succeeds another. Temperature; wind velocity; relative humidity (there is hardly any – not quantifiable at any rate), and in the box labeled Observable Phenomena repeat once more: 'at nine a thrush perches on the thorn tree, at noon the dunes begin a stirring as they turn over in their sleep' (for they sleep by day and labor in the night),''at four the wind sets up a soft soughing. By nightfall I will have to secure the loophole hatches against the roar.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Redoubt by Cecile Pineda. Copyright © 2004 Cecile Pineda. Excerpted by permission of Wings Press.
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