The Drought


“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
…
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving.
…
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”
- T. S. Eliot, “Gerontion”

“I ask if you can stand it that time is today and now and this very instant.”
“Then I accept the worst and go into the core of death and for this I'm alive.”
“We are creatures who need to dive to the depths in order there to breathe.”
- Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life

Sylvia looked blearily through the branches at the dusty sky and the sun’s rosy promise creeping up from the trees. Her eyelids flickered, and the image disappeared.
“Don’t go to sleep, silly.” Devin whispered, jostling her gently. “We’ve almost made it. The sun’s just starting to rise.”
She groaned and blinked at the sky, then looked over at his profile, fuzzy, and staring straight up. She shut her eyes and tried to extend her body outward, to sense everything around her. She felt the awkwardness of his arm under her neck, the scratchy discomfort of the pool chairs, and most of all the expansive sky and the sprawling, enlivening presence of the ocean a few hundred yards away. She inhaled it, and opened her eyes again, felt her body full of herself, the moment.
“Come on,” he whispered, when she was nearing sleep once more.
She squinted, trying to bring his face into focus. “What time is it?”
“Like 5:45. Come on. I want to show you something.”
She inhaled sharply, and sleep fell off like a blanket. “Where are we going?”
They trod along the beach as the sun mounted its attack on their unprotected flesh. Sylvia imagined she could feel her skin burning. She was in touch with each bead of sweat that formed on her forehead, on her chest, on her back. She was sure they had walked miles by now, but Devin didn’t stop, didn’t speak. She quickened her pace.
Gradually they turned from the ocean’s edge to the rough, sinewy trees separating the houses from the sand. Sylvia thought of the Bible. She knew she was entering a parched, bleak land, a land of desperation, before creation. No words, no time, no water. She followed him out of some unknown, urgent delirium, walking sideways around desiccated trees and up steep sand hills that slid under their feet. Finally they turned back.
“Sorry,” Devin said, when they came out into the direct sunlight. “I couldn’t remember how to find it.” She remained wordless.
When they reached the ocean they jumped in, waves crashing and covering them, baptizing them in salt. Sylvia saw Devin walk back to shore, but she ran farther out, stomping through the rough, shallow water. She was waist deep when she looked back to see Devin standing, staring at her. She ignored him, and dove under a wave that sent her swirling, head tangled in legs. Direction was lost. She opened her eyes to the stinging water, and swam forward, hitting her head on the sand. When the wave withdrew she was splayed in the shallows, obscurely satisfied by her fall. A vital defeat, she thought, to be overtaken that way by the sea, the sand, the salt: to touch the pure essence of the earth’s parched desperation and chaos.
Devin’s palm branded her shoulder as he turned her away from the ocean and pointed at the sand stretched before them. “Look,” he said. “It just keeps going. There’s no way of telling where one thing ends and another begins, or how far anything is.”
She felt that she knew this, that she had always known it, and that all knowledge was buried deep inside her. She felt both aged and timeless; it terrified her, and she relished it. “I think God must be like that,” she said. He stared at her for a moment, and they began walking back.

Sylvia answered the squeak of her telephone as she tramped through the brutal January snow.
“Hey,” Devin’s voice crackled. “I want to see you. I have to tell you something.”
She frowned. “So just tell me.”
“I’m leaving. I stopped going to my classes.”

She leaned towards him across the long wooden table. “Do you really think you’re going to find something to satisfy you?” she demanded.
He sighed, and the years they’d known each other flashed in front of her. “Don’t ask me that, Sylvia. But there has to be something out there that’s not bullshit. I’m working by process of elimination.”
“Well I’m not satisfied here either. But I’m not leaving.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Hey,” she rushed in, her throat suddenly dry. “Do you remember in middle school, waking up excited, ready to do everything all at once?” She felt the sun beating on her temple once more.
“What? Sure, I guess. I still feel that way sometimes.”
“I don’t. I can’t think of anything to make myself get up.”
“Oh. That’s bad. Really bad. Isn’t there anything you enjoy?”
“When I’m in a good place, I love writing, reading, all of it. When I’m not…”
“It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just any little thing, any simple pleasure.”
Sylvia shrugged and drew back from the table. ‘No,’ she thought. ‘No, you don’t get it. The little things… no. I’m talking about chaos. Answerlessness. Desolation.’ But she remembered.
‘It just keeps going. There’s no way of telling where one thing ends and another begins, or how far anything is. I think God must be like that.’