Because—
Because in another version, one that seems equally plausible, this feels like a downstairs guestroom, feels like the place in which I'm recuperating from whatever it is that I'm recuperating from, sleeping it off, I don't know quite what that might be, call it a reaction, an allergic reaction, sure, why not, or maybe food poisoning, maybe age poisoning, it happens every day, everywhere, the world after all isn't as filthy and mortal as it looks, no, it's a lot filthier, a lot more mortal, it's a pigsty and I've been very tired lately, my immune system weak as a whimper, it feels like I may have been conked out for hours, weeks, anything is probable, which is to say nothing is, several months, several seconds, the principles of time no longer quite holding here, from what I can tell, for all I know I'm still dreaming, or maybe I never went to sleep, sure, why not, or maybe it only felt that way, but, whatever the case, my limbs are logs and I can't open my eyes, or I can open my eyes but it feels like I can't, I certainly don't want to, if that makes any difference, I doubt it does, open or shut them, it's all the same to me, I want to say, because I remember someone talking to me, and this may have been some time ago, and this may have been the dream or may have been the other thing, in either case we were in a bar, no, a bistro, no, someplace else, yes, and this voice said the brain is brilliant, look at what it can do, because who needs hope when you have a corpus callosum—
Because—
Because in another version, one that seems equally et cetera, I want to say I haven't been asleep at all, no, and so perhaps this is simply what is going through my mind, what was going through my mind, as Moira reached for the door handle of her desert-sand Corolla and someone reached in and extracted all the bones, large and little, from her legs — femur, tibia, fibula — and, just for a moment, just before her lower torso folded up under me like an empty skirt, I want to say she commenced recollecting someone else's story, sure, why not, it happens every day, everywhere, the world after all isn't as rich in narratives as it looks, no, it's more so, it's a book of books, my sister's, conceivably, conceivably Sarasa's story, I don't know why I think that, I don't know where she is, I don't even really know who she is, which is to say we've never been especially close, we don't keep in touch much except on birthdays, on birthdays and sometimes Christmas, and even then it feels like I've just picked up the phone and dialed a stranger's number and decided to take a stab at conversation, she always leaves messages when she knows I'm not in, but she's not here, that's certain, not in this room, I want to say, not in this city, probably not even in this country, no, it couldn't have been my own story, in any event, no, that's definite if nothing else, whosever it is, wherever it originates, because it was a bittersweet love story, you see, and I have none of those, bittersweet or otherwise, I wish I did but there you are, look at me, look at me, you want this but you get that, repeatedly, and the story in question, this new story, I want to say, launched with the words shortly after they were married, a lovely opening, full of potential, someone else's voice whispering somewhere far behind my eyes, never, ever, in Moira's estimation, a propitious sign, shortly after they were married, it began,
November
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12.08.76. Shortly after they were married, Victoria and Albert visited Florence and were taken by the city's incredible architecture, especially Brunelleschi's dome atop the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore with its
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12.09.76. Did you know, Taru, that Mandalay didn't start as a small settlement like most cities? Instead, the story goes, Buddha, passing through the area, pointed to the hill where much of Mandalay now exists and foretold on that site a great capital of his religion would blossom. On January 13, 1857, King Mindon issued a decree to fulfill that prophecy. The former royal city of Amarapura was dismantled
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12.10.76. In 1892, the year he married and moved to Vermont (Vermont, of all places!), Rudyard Kipling composed his famous poem “The Road to Mandalay”—although the only city he ever actually visited in Burma was Moulmein, on the southeastern coast of the country, hundreds of miles away from, and nothing like, the place he wrote about.
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12.11.76. I'm sitting on a wooden stool on the thatched porch of a food hut on the river across from Mandalay hill, eating a bowl of chicken curry for lunch. The chunks of meat are dark brown, stringy, stiff, dry. I had to use my shirt to wipe off from my communal chopsticks whatever the last guy was eating before I could use them. This afternoon I'll visit Sutaungpyai pagoda at the top of the hill. Hens are zigzagging across the road in front of me like agitated women with feather petticoats lifted among people clattering by on bikes. A shorthaired beige dog squats, scratching his ribcage absentmindedly with a hind leg, staring straight ahead, as if the locals were moving in a less interesting dimension than the one he inhabits. On the bamboo wall beside me, three greengray lizards, eyes shut, frozen in a breathing knot. If I reached out, I could touch them.