The Body Falls Apart: A Short Story
He felt overcome with fear but in fact his body was calling out to be loved
The sparse and unwavering earth, which was now strewn above where his home had formerly been; and himself trembling in the cool autumn air, the ground wet and silver, all mixed up as if the earth were regurgitating itself. So then he had no home and went looking for one. As he trekked through the forest the trees saw him in their unmoving unblinking scattered eyes; in the winter along the mountains the snow had fallen sensuously and he spotted delicately outlined lips, a bust, a soft stomach, a woman’s spread thighs. At Edoock, which sat by the sea, a steep terraced staircase led down the cliff face to the water. He stood atop it and imagined flinging himself down, feeling within himself a rumbling peremptory undisobeyable force — he himself the mudslide. The stairs to the ocean would be buried; he would clot the water; and then be worn away slowly after weeks and months and years.
The longer he was without a home the more he felt that he was losing his mind. He began to have hallucinations that parts of his body were going out of existence. For instance, looking in the mirror of a cheap boarding room in Clouham, he could see that he had no chest, no shoulder, no eyes. But despite his need for a home, everywhere he went he was dissatisfied. In his eyes everything was fleeting, infected with death, and this made everything ugly, including himself. He always ended up leaving for another city as soon as he was able. He felt overcome with fear but in fact his body was calling out to be loved.
It was on an island in the middle of the night that he met her, not far from the shore, alongside a single tree that stood there. The place where her head should have been was partially hidden by clouds, but he could still see that she had no head. And he cried looking at her, felt that he loved her, felt that she had been revealed to him like a secret.
Death had loomed in front of him for many years and he wondered if she was death. He wondered if he was going to die without a home. “A home is not what you need,” she said, reading his thoughts. “If you will conquer your fear you will see. You have become so afraid of death that for you there is nothing but death. You are at home nowhere because the mudslide is always waiting. And it is. But you have very little, and you shouldn’t waste it on fear, which only hurts you, which only eats everything up and gives you nothing.” A fog settled between them and he could see nothing. When it lifted he was alone.
One day he returned to the place of his former home. There was nothing there; the ground had long ago healed itself; there was not a trace of his former home or of human existence. Except that high on the hill he had spotted something glinting in the sunlight. He made his way up the mountain and at the top he found a pantheon had been built at the spot where the mudslide had started. Upon entering it he found that it was filled with people milling about. On the other side there was an altar, and he felt he had to make his way over to it. He made his way through the crowd and reached the altar and found the headless woman waiting for him. He tried offering her his head but she would not take it. In anger he threw his head to the ground and it smashed into tiny pieces. Clouds began to gather about his bare neck.
He woke up in a hostel. So it had been a dream. Some people were chatting in the dim light of the bathroom so he went outside. The stout buildings loomed over the empty street. How could it be that there was no one? he thought to himself. Even at this hour, how could it be that there was no one? How was it possible for a street like this to ever be empty. Were people not so unruly that there was always someone going somewhere. But then he realized that he was the one who was giving the street to consciousness.
