I
Ever since Irene decided to stay in New York I’d taken up with her younger sister, Natalie.
I found Natalie to be a more realized woman than Irene, who in hindsight resembled more of an apparition than an actual human being.
Now and then I’ll dream of Irene. In the dream I’m a free-diver on the seafloor exploring a wreckage, and the urge to resurface stands, then only when I crown the sea will I wake up.
On nights like these I’ll lay next to Natalie and listen to her breathe. Occasionally she will speak as though some benevolent angel were trying to break through the diaphanous coal-glow of her sleep, in bouts of vowels and consonants, and I will get the sense of grace imputed unto me, a man who had long ago deemed himself unforgivable. In nocturnal bliss I'll gaze into her open mouth, and imagine searching the infinite sprawl of her being, as might an archaeologist a lost civilization, one whose temples and town squares and coliseums remain pristine, and as I step lightly silently triumphantly through the center I’ll feel more and more at home as though I were reborn.
II
Another thing about Natalie is unlike Irene she eats meat; so breakfast with her isn’t split by inquiries into the ingredients of each dish.
We drink cow-tit milk and aborted chicken feti as I have an odd idea.
“What if babies only cry because they are unhappy at being born again?”
-This is a continuation of talks we started after the Bordo Thodol-
Natalie looks up from her pate and beholds me.
“What if SIDS is a phenomenon of infants who managed to return to wherever?”
“Infant suicides”
“That would make miscarriages superbright fetuses who knew what was coming and decided against it.”
“Raged against the light.” I say.
“Maybe God uses the reincarnation system to purify souls”
“Like filtering”
“In order to separate the truly damned from the elect.”
“Maybe that’s why it’s taking so long for the Second Coming?”
We quietly fork our food.
“Remember that movie we saw with Sam Rockwell?”
I say yes.
“That baby bawled like a baby, bawled so much drove his mother bats. That baby turned into a compact parcel of evil. There was a baby who did not want to live but was too dumb to return to… wherever.”
III
After we’d left work we met at the beach. We laid beside one another; and I witnessed the blue dome which caps all things on the surface of the earth; it was more substantial than the earth underneath as though it carried something inside of itself, as though it were pregnant with souls and struggle. And I noticed these fleets of crystallised specks which travelled like insects in the sky. I asked Natalie what they could be and she said:
“They’re the souls for the next womb in traffic with souls going out”
Then I knew. I knew that she held the answers. That the only reason I was allowed to know anything was due to her, because I loved her and she loved me, and consequently, our connection into the unfathomable invisible world was stronger. With her I knew what I knew and it was as we spoke that truths rose to the surface of reality like oxygen-bubbles on the surface of a lake from an underwater creature. In this world where everything was up in the air, vague and complex, I knew that we were right, and that somehow we were saved, and as long as I stayed with her, and not mess it up than this could be our last life.
