Songs of the Dead Read online

  The squirrel trying to bite me made me think of animals acting in ways you wouldn’t normally expect, and that made me think of Old Yeller. That made me suddenly curious about how rabies works and sent me to the encyclopedia, which I brought onto the deck. Rabies, I learned, was a virus passed from creature to creature by saliva (this latter I knew from the book and movie). Creature A has rabies, and bites creature B, or less frequently, slobbers on creature B. The important thing is that viruses in creature A’s saliva enter creature B. The viruses move quickly into B’s nerves, and from there they inhabit B’s spinal column and brain. Creature B will not show symptoms for a few weeks or even a few months. But once the viruses reach the brain, they reproduce rapidly, and soon inhabit the salivary glands. By now creature B will show signs of illness. In humans—and we’ve no reason to believe anything else for nonhumans—these include headaches, fever, irritability, restlessness, and anxiety. Within days these symptoms progress to cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, confusion, and agitation, leading to delirium, abnormal behavior, hallucinations, and insomnia. All of this is accompanied by muscle pains, salivation, and vomiting. At that point symptoms diverge into two distinct classes. In what’s called “dumb rabies,” creature B retreats steadily and quietly downhill, with some paralysis, to death. In what’s called “furious rabies”—and this is what Old Yeller had—the creature begins to experience extreme excitement and is hit by painful muscle spasms, sometimes triggered by swallowing saliva or water. Because of this the creature drools and learns to fear water—thus the frequent references to rabid creatures being hydrophobic. The creature will also be- come extremely sensitive to air blown on the face. But there’s more. During that final furious phase, the creature may, without provocation, vigorously and viciously bite at anything: sticks, stones, grass, other animals. This stage lasts only a few days before the creature enters a coma and dies. Once infected, death from the disease is almost invariable.

  I remember at that point putting down the encyclopedia, leaning against the deck railing, and staring at the light blue sky above the brown and gray and smoky blue and white of the distant Rocky Mountains, and I remember thinking about volition, free will. Of course I didn’t use that language—I was precocious, but volition would certainly not yet have been part of my everyday vocabulary—and I couldn’t have clearly articulated any of this, but I got it. I understood—or rather asked, which is almost always more important than understanding anyway— “Who’s in charge? Who is actually doing the biting? Is it Old Yeller, or is it the virus?”

  The virus knows that if it is to survive the death of its host, it needs to find a new host, which means it needs to get Old Yeller to slobber on or bite someone. Thus the painful spasms on swallowing and the excessive salivation, which combine to lead to the drooling. Thus the furious biting.

  In some ways central to this discussion is the question of whether you perceive the world as full of intelligence, and so do not hesitate at the possibility of viruses knowing, viruses choosing; or whether you believe viruses act entirely unthinkingly, mechanistically, and so at most you’ll allow viruses not to know, but to “know” that they need to find a new host. But in some ways that question doesn’t matter at all, because in either case the viruses cause Old Yeller to change his personality, his behavior toward those he loves. Or perhaps loved.

  The central point of R.D. Laing’s extraordinary book The Politics of Experience was that most of us act in ways that make internal sense: we act according to how we experience the world. If, for example, I experience the world as full of wildly varied and exciting intelligences with whom I can enter into relationships I will act one way. If I experience the world as unthinking, mechanistic, and composed of objects for me to use, I will act another.

  Clearly the virus changes its host’s experience, at the very least by causing pain and hallucinations.

  Now here’s the question that struck me so hard on that hot summer afternoon: as Old Yeller snarls and snaps at those he so recently protected, what is he thinking? If I could ask in a language he could understand, and if he could answer in a language that I, too, could understand, what would he say? Is he terrified at this awful pain, and is he, because of that pain, lashing out at everyone around him? Is he confused? Is he asking where this pain comes from?

  Or does he have his behavior fully rationalized? Has he—or the virus—created belief systems to support this behavior? Is he suddenly furious at the thousand insults large and small he has received from those who call themselves his masters? Certainly throughout the movie the humans—especially his “owner” Travis—have treated him as despicably as we would expect within this culture (where do you think I learned to mistreat animals?). Does he perceive himself as suddenly seeing things clearly, and as hating these others and all they stand for?

  Or is he delusional, snapping not at Travis standing in front of him, but instead protecting him as he did before and biting at the rabid wolf who gave him the disease? Is he seeing phantoms dancing before him, just out of reach, so each time he lunges, it is at someone who is not there at all?

  Or maybe Old Yeller fights with every bit of his emotional strength to not lash out at the humans who are his whole world, these humans for whom he has already many times offered his life. Maybe he feels like he has picked up some sort of addiction, a compulsion, and he just can’t help himself.

  Or maybe the virus has insinuated itself into his brain in such a way that Old Yeller now perceives the virus as God. He hears its commands, and knows he must obey. Maybe this God tells him that he must convert these others to this one true religion, and that in doing so both he and they will achieve everlasting peace and joy—and a release from the torment of this world. Maybe he perceives himself as thus giving these others a gift.

  We act according to the way we experience the world. The virus changed Old Yeller’s experience of the world. When Old Yeller acts—or when any of us act—who’s in charge? Who actually makes the decisions? Why does Old Yeller act as he does? Why do any of us act as we do?

  I always thank my muse after she enters me and gives me her words. Sometimes I ask her what she wants. Sometimes she tells me. Sometimes I don’t understand. Sometimes I do.

  I am asleep. I am dreaming.

  I am standing on a lawn holding a heavy mallet. Have you ever seen or played the arcade game Whack-A-Mole? In this game you stand in front of a large grid with holes in it, holding a plastic hammer. Plastic “moles” pop up from random holes, and your goal is to whack them as quickly as you can. As the game progresses they pop up faster and faster. This is what I dream, except that instead of moles popping up, it is men in business suits, it is politicians, it is CEOs, it is scientists. As fast as they pop up I hit them with my mallet, which in the dream is not plastic, but solid wood. I hear my muse’s voice, soft, a whisper in my ear, “Keep smashing cannibals. Keep on smashing them.”

  I wake up laughing. I’ve had this dream many times before. At first I didn’t understand it, but now I do.

  The morning after our third night together, Allison introduces me to Jack Forbes.

  We’re in her bedroom. I wake up laughing from my dream of smashing cannibals. At this point I’ve had the dream only a few times, and I don’t yet understand it. I tell it to Allison. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t say a word. She holds up one finger, gently taps my hand, and gets out of bed. I look at her long legs beneath the t-shirt she’d worn to sleep. I like what I see. She leaves the room, then returns a few moments later, holding a slender, brightly-colored book. She gets back in bed. Finally she speaks. “Your dream made me think of this.” The book is Columbus and Other Cannibals, by Jack Forbes. “This book blew apart my world. Forbes really filled in some holes for me.”

  I move closer. “I like filling in holes for you.”

  She’s on her stomach. She smiles and shifts her weight so her left thigh pushes against me. “I like you filling in holes for me. As often as possible.”

  I push b
ack. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Forbes?”

  She rolls to face me. Her knee touches mine. “His take on the dominant culture’s destructiveness is different than anything else I’ve seen. The problem, he says, isn’t merely that this culture socially rewards destructive behavior—the acquisition of wealth, for example, at the expense of the community or landbase—or that it creates greedy, traumatized, unrelational people through childrearing practices, schooling, and so on. . . .”

  “Although both of those are true.”

  “Absolutely.”

  That single word—absolutely, and all it implies—makes me move closer still. The skin on the front of her thighs is soft against mine.

  She continues, “The problem is a disease that causes people to consume the souls of others, a spiritual illness with a physical vector.”

  I nod, push in closer still. My hand rests on her hip.

  “Reading Forbes made the complete insanity of the dominant culture more comprehensible to me. I mean, saying that people are merely greedy just doesn’t cut it. What’s the use of retiring rich on a planet being killed?”

  “So you’re saying the behavior makes more sense when you see it as a symptom of a disease.”

  “If I have the flu and I cough, and the little germies float through the air and happen to land in your mouth, and if those germs survive and reproduce inside of you. . . .”

  “You shouldn’t use the word inside around me. You’ll distract me.”

  “You shouldn’t use the phrase around me around me. Besides, you’ll be there soon, if I have anything to say about it.”

  “You do.”

  “If those germs survive then you might get the flu. You might start coughing, get a fever, chills. Well, if I have the cannibal sickness and I cough and you pick up the germs, you might turn into a cannibal, too. You’ll begin to consume the souls of others.”

  “I’ll become a capitalist.”

  She catches her breath and smiles. She says, “I can’t believe. . . .”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  “What?”

  She puts her lips together for a moment before she says, “Bingo. You become a member of this culture.”

  Seriously now, is it even remotely possible for life to get better than to be lying next to a beautiful, intelligent woman who’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt that reads, “Every time a developer dies an angel gets her wings,” with whom you’re having a conversation about things that matter?

  Evidently it is, because she begins to read to me. She holds the book in her left hand, making certain to never let it come between our faces. “‘Many people have examined the subjects of aggression, violence, imperialism, rape, and so on. I propose to do something a little different: first, I propose to examine these things from a Native American perspective; and second, from a perspective as free as possible from assumptions created by the very disease being studied. Finally, I will look at these evils, not simply as “bad” choices that men make, but as a genuine, very real epidemic sickness. Imperialists, rapists, and exploiters are not just people who have strayed down a wrong path. They are insane (unclean) in the true sense of that word. They are mentally ill, and, tragically, the form of soul-sickness that they carry is catching.’”

  “So it’s not a metaphor.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “And it strikes me,” I say, “that just like germs grow well in certain physical environments and not so well in others, that certain social environments will make conditions ripe for irruptions of the cannibal sickness, too.”

  Another sharp breath, another smile.

  “What?” I ask again.

  She blushes, looks at the book, blinks twice, flips through the pages, and reads again, sometimes pausing to look at me, not for emphasis, but just to look. “‘The wétiko disease, the sickness of exploitation, has been spreading as a contagion for the past several thousand years. And as a contagion unchecked by most vaccines it tends to become worse rather than better with time. More and more people catch it, in more and more places; they become the true teachers of the young.”

  I look into her eyes. “This is really good.”

  “Do you want me to keep going?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Do you think I’m overdressed?”

  “God, yes.”

  She removes her shirt. Her breasts are small, perfect. Her skin is pale. I touch small moles and freckles with my fingertips. She shivers, smiles, says, “I’m so happy.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Now,” she says, “back to the apocalypse: ‘It is very sad, but the “heroes” of European historiography, the heroes of the history books, are usually imperialists, butchers, founders of authoritarian regimes, exploiters of the poor, liars, cheats, and torturers. What this means is that the wétiko disease has so corrupted European thinking (at least of the ruling groups) that wétiko behavior and wétiko goals are regarded as the very fabric of European evolution. Thus, those who resist wétiko values and imperialism and exploitation . . . are regarded as “quirks,” “freaks” . . . who could never exploit enough people to build a St. Peter’s Cathedral or a Versailles palace.’”

  She’s still on her right side. I say, “Do you mind?” and then I gently push on her left shoulder. She follows my lead and lays back. I slide slightly down, and over, to gently kiss the flat space between her breasts.

  Her answer is a soft, inarticulate sound. I feel her shift as she puts down the book.

  “Oh, don’t stop,” I say. “More.”

  As she reads, I focus on what she’s saying, and also on the taste and texture of her skin. I feel her belly against my chest, her thigh against my belly. I open my eyes, see the movement of her blood in the soft space just below her sternum. I hear her voice, “‘We must keep all this in mind because if we continue to allow the wétikos to define reality in their insane way we will never be able to resist or curtail the disease.’”

  She stops, takes a deep breath, then continues, “‘I believe that this form of insanity originated long ago in several places, but principally in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Subsequently it appeared in India and northern China and much later in Mexico and Peru.’”

  I move down, small kisses below her rib cage.

  “‘To a considerable degree the development of the wétiko disease corresponds to the rise of what Europeans choose to call “civilization.” This is no coincidence.’”

  I turn my face sideways, rest my head on her belly. “No coincidence at all.”

  “‘Over and over again we see European writers ranking as “high civilizations” societies with large slave populations, rigid social class systems, unethical or ruthless rulers, and aggressive imperialistic foreign policies. Conversely, societies with no slaves, no distinct social classes, no rulers, and no imperialism are either regarded as insignificant (not worth mentioning) or primitive and uncivilized.’”

  I begin to kiss her again, and again move slightly down, then down farther, then farther still. She rises to meet me.

  I hear Allison flipping pages, then I hear her voice again, slower now, as though she’s having a hard time concentrating, “‘The overriding characteristic of the wétiko is that he consumes other human beings, that is, he is a cannibal. This is the central essence of the disease. In other respects, however, the motivation for and forms of the cannibalism may vary. . . .

  I pull slightly away, stop what I’m doing. “Yes,” I say.

  “Yes,” she says. “Don’t stop.”

  I start again to softly suck.

  Her voice, slower still, “The wétiko psychosis is a very contagious and rapidly-spreading disease. It is spread by the wétikos themselves as they recruit or corrupt others. It is spread today by history books, television, military training programs, police training programs, comic books, pornographic magazines, films, rightwing movements, fanatics of various kinds, high-pressure missionary groups, and numerou
s governments.” She turns the page. Then, “Native people have almost always understood that many Europeans were wétiko, were insane.”

  I lift up slightly again, say, “Most nonhumans know that, too.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  I begin again.

  “No,” she says.

  I stop.

  “Look at me.”

  I do. I like what I see.

  She laughs. “No, up here, at my face.”

  I do. I still like what I see.

  “I can’t tell you how nice it is not to have to pretend with you.”

  I shake my head, the barest movement.

  “I don’t have to pretend I’m not as smart as I am so you won’t find me intimidating. I don’t have to pretend I don’t hate this culture so you won’t think me crazy. And I don’t have to pretend I want you, because I really do. All of me. I’m not divided: brain here, body there; body here, brain there. I’m all here. No hesitation.”

  I smile.

  She says, “You help me remember I’m an animal.”

  I keep smiling. I don’t say anything.

  She doesn’t either. We just look at each other. Finally she says, “I didn’t mean to interrupt. . . .”

  “Interrupt away,” I say. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  seven

  beauty

  I remember the first time I told Allison she was beautiful. She shook her head, and said, “No, no. Don’t go there.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d said. I apologized anyway, to be safe.

  “Oh, no. I’m the one who’s sorry. Thank you. That’s nice. I just have a hard time engaging with the whole concept of beauty. It seems so random, with all the eye of the beholder stuff, and with what’s considered good-looking in one era being the next era’s horror.”

  “What does that matter? I think you’re beautiful, isn’t that enough?”