I see lips!
I see them too!
Lips through the ice!
I see a face! A nose!
It’s you!
Then Polina’s heart stops beating. Complete silence. No more vibration of the drum head.
I can’t move any more.
Try to push through the crust somehow!
I can’t.
Sometimes the impossible stays impossible. Polina’s strength of will is no weaker than the others’—she has simply arrived too late, and tardiness has consequences. The lips visible through the crust of ice begin to fade, the face begins to lose its shape, and the nose and eyes disappear by degrees.
Shlomith.
What?
I don’t believe this any more.
What?
I see white.
I see white too!
No. I see a different white. The white where we were before.
You can’t be serious.
I am.
How do you know it’s that white and not this white?
Guess.
It doesn’t pulse?
No, it doesn’t pulse. Does the white where you are pulse?
No, not any more.
Well, go on and guess. How do I know that I’m there again?
Does it feel different?
I don’t feel anything.
So tell me already! I don’t know!
There’s something here.
Someone’s there?
Yes.
I can’t see anything.
I guessed as much.
Far in the distance Polina sees a heap that is undeniably human: a small, dark-haired child. When Polina squints hard, she thinks she can tell that the heap is a girl and that the girl is wearing a red dress with white circles. The girl has started to draw Polina toward her. Closer, tugging and tugging, because the girl needs help. The girl won’t survive without her.
Polina, what’s happening now?
But Shlomith’s cry doesn’t reach where Polina is, far from the snow, far from Shlomith. The farther Polina goes, the faster her jellyfish body begins to change, begins to return to the way it was, begins to become more determinate and full. It is as if someone decided to splatter color inside the weak outlines, Polina’s own creamy white and slightly atopic skin, and vivid red lips. All the receding details rise to the fore and take on their natural shades again: the areolae their pinkish beige, the crimped hair its mahogany brown. Varicose veins bulge from her shins and begin to turn blue. Lumps of fat appear on her ample belly, and a straight navel squished by the lumps slides into place like a slice of a knife.
The closer Polina comes to the girl, the more dreamlike her previous memories of the seven of them become. Shlomith, Maimuna, Wlibgis, Ulrike, Rosa Imaculada, and Nina with her pregnant belly cease to exist. The places Polina has visited to see off her otherworldly sisters, the half-worldly spaces, are wiped away and disappear.
Shlomith sees her friend receding from her and can do nothing. The Polina in the snow bank is as dead as a stone, and the rippling jellyfish Polina missed her death and must therefore return.
All that remains is the snow, the body, and Shlomith who has to continue on her own, who whispers into the emptiness, perhaps more to herself than to anyone:
Farewell, Polina.
BLACK: THE WAY OUT
Shlomith, farewell!
I felt it the moment the applause ended, although I didn’t immediately understand what it was. It was you, hunger. You wanted to cancel our agreement.
Just a moment ago I thought I was part of something greater than myself. Then my presentation ended. I began to cry, which was a surprise to everyone including me. For a moment I felt as if I was crying for all the sorrows of the world, mine and yours. Then it was over. The invisible curtain between me and the world closed again, and I was left alone.
You kept me alive for so long. I’m thankful for that, of course. Without life there is nothing, and nothing really is nothing. This can be difficult to understand, but that’s just how it is: without you, hunger, I wouldn’t have existed for so long. You helped me carry on.
If I could still feel sorrow, I might be sad for you. You gave me your all, you fought by my side, but as soon as the task was complete, I was ready to abandon you. There’s only one way out: surrender, healing, and enlightenment. That was what I had claimed a moment ago.
My assistant, Katie McKeen, quietly stole up and draped a loose black caftan over me so I wouldn’t catch cold. I’ll never cease to admire how considerate she is, and the way she blends that with an energetic, irrepressible, and brisk yet discrete practicality. Katie can clothe a naked person just like that, with everyone watching, without calling any attention to herself. Still she doesn’t treat me like a mannequin in a display window. She bears the caftan before me like a fine tablecloth, shakes the tentlike garment open, and gently passes it over my head. She pulls my trembling arms through the sleeves and looks me in the eyes. I nod: Thank you, Katie. She slips my feet into downy soft slippers, pats me encouragingly on the shoulder, and retreats behind the curtain to wait.
I have drained myself to the point of death in order to reach the heart of it all.
For the past forty-five minutes, I’ve uttered statements that half of me sincerely believes. That’s no small deal. Some people spend their entire lives saying whatever crosses their minds. I, on the other hand, have had the opportunity to take the measure of my thoughts and deeds. That’s why I can endure half of me protesting and shouting, “Stop, you idiot! Get down off that stage!”
Did this come as a surprise to you? Why is it so difficult for you to understand that everything, absolutely everything, is subject to suspicion as long as there is life, and still a person can be one hundred percent serious, one hundred percent in love, one hundred percent faithful?
We can cancel our agreement, I can accept that. But give me one more moment. I want to say my goodbyes in peace.
I would say: I love you, Katie McKeen. If I
