She was flipping through a coffeetable book looking at photographs of snow-steepled mountains, children playing in front of yurts, herds of horses racing across the steppes. "I'd like to go to Mongolia," she said dreamily.
He was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, or paying bills, or cleaning his glasses, she didn't know what. He cleared his throat. She heard the sound of rustling as he unwrapped a throat lozenge; he was addicted to them.
"You can't go to Mongolia," he said.
"What?"
"You can't just go to Mongolia, people don't just go to Mongolia. It's a complicated place. It's primitive, it could be dangerous."
She had paused at a photo of five tribesmen mounted on shaggy horses. Some kind of festival. The riders wore lavishly decorated cloaks and carried silken banners. Crimson tassels hung from the horses' bridles. The sky was deep blue—cerulean, she thought that color was called. The men looked fierce and happy. The horses' tails streamed in the wind.
Can't just go to Mongolia. She heard him as from a great distance, though he was just across the room. His words dislodged a small stone that been pressing against her heart for 18 years. The stone dropped, clattering and echoing as it fell. She waited for it to strike bottom, but the space within her was bottomless, it seemed. She felt queasy. There were hoofbeats in her ears. She saw her marriage clearly for the first time--a pale river flowing through a featureless valley. For years nothing had altered or obstructed its placid current. The beat of hooves grew louder, and now she could hear the wild flapping of banners, the ecstatic shouts of riders as they urged their horses on across the great grassy plains of Mongolia.
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2 comments:
Tai, you've done it again. It's amazing to me how quickly this piece captures and entire marriage gone wrong. It feels complete in this way, like I understand completely why their relationship is broken. Even the little detail of his throat lozenge addiction makes sense. Once the stone drops, she'll never be able to him unwrapping a lozenge again. The images of the tribesman are beautiful, especially because you bring them back in the end in such a poetic way. Great work.
The throat lozenge and the stone! It's like he's been sucking at her heart. She seems to be in a position to throw out random comments based on pictures in a book because she has already felt so defeated by his responses during the course of the marriage--almost like a little child who says, "I want to go to Jupiter." His response is parentally predictable to her, so she has nothing at risk. Or it could be a passive-aggressive way to pick a fight. In any case, it's a very interesting scene that captures the complexities and sadness of a long-term dynamic--the snubbed dreams and lack of communication. How quickly you move into and out of it and figure all that out!
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