Gone to the Forest: A Novel (20 page)

A swell of nausea rises inside him. He leans closer to the old man. He listens to the silence. He counts it out—one, two, three—ten seconds, more like twelve. Fifteen. Can he be dead? Is this how it looks? He places his fingers on his neck and searches for a pulse. The vein is still and he presses harder and harder until he is almost throttling him with his hands. He
feels nothing, no whisper of a pulse. And yet the old man does not look dead.

It has been thirty seconds—it has been longer, he has lost track. He freezes with his hands on the old man’s neck. His head is spinning. He tries to recover his count. He loosens his grip and drops his hands. He clenches them together in his lap. To keep himself from grabbing the old man’s neck again. Please. Do not go. Now he wishes he knew how to pray. A sound as loud as a shotgun bursts out of the old man’s throat and Tom sees his body finally let go.

Tom sits by the side of the bed. For a long time his mind is blank. He stares down at the corpse. He reaches for his arm and then stops. He does not move. The old man’s face grows rigid. It happens in a minute. One minute or maybe two. He is human and then he is no longer human, he is a thing with its mouth open like a maw. Its eyes staring in shock at the ceiling. Its eyes having opened at some point in its death.

It is not a face for the dying. It turns out the face of death is not a face for the dead. Sickened by what he sees, Tom tries to close the jaw. He presses and presses and the open maw does not yield until he uses the heel of his palm and the knuckles of his fist and then with a snap the mouth closes. He reaches forward and presses hard on the lids, until he feels the old man’s eyes sink beneath his fingers.

Tom drops his hands. He stands for a moment and then quickly leaves the room. He passes the kitchen, he can hear Celeste working at the stove. It is the middle of the night but she is banging pots and pans—she is unhappy with him and
Jose, it is like when they were children. Now the old man is dead and who knows what will happen, what she will do with her dissatisfaction. Tom does not go into the kitchen. He goes to his room and gets into bed.

He does not actually sleep. He sits beneath the covers and stares into darkness. The old man’s death lying huddled in the corner of his brain. Whether it is dormant or expired he does not know. But it is quiet and the rest of his brain is like a desert or wasteland. It is like he has been emptied. He is not capable of stirring the death in his mind. He imagines that blankness is preferable.

Eventually, he exits the house and discovers it is dawn. Light appears on the horizon and he sees that the soil is green and the land stretches out in the direction of the sun. The land has been liberated. Its imprimatur is gone. Tom is in a daze. I will be in a daze for a long time, he thinks. That is the first thought that he has in relation to the old man’s death. A pop as he is set free. Then his mind is quiet again.

Past the gate he sees the girl, sitting underneath a tree. She is staring down the track. It is morning and getting warm. Tom thinks: she is going to run. She has done it before and there is nothing to stop her doing it again. He will tell her that the old man is dead and then there will be no reason for her to stay. They should both leave. There is no point in staying. But Tom does not think that he can leave, he does not think he is able.

He sits down next to her and she does not look up. They sit side by side. He sits and does not think he will ever be able to stand up again.

After a long silence, he speaks.

“Are you going to leave?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you thinking about it?”

She shakes her head again.

He nods and turns back to the road. He does not tell her the old man is dead. He tells himself that there is time for that later. He tells himself that there is time for many things, that one day he will love the memory as he never loved the man, one day he will be able to do this. But he does not see how such a thing will come to pass, the hope of ordinary things having grown impossible. Meanwhile, the death still prone inside him.

The girl came down to the road in order to escape the house. When she reached the gate and saw the dirt road—then she thought about going. She thought she should go now, while the road was open, while the country was quiet. There was nothing here worth waiting for. She did not believe in the farm’s safety. But then she had another instinct and changed her mind. Soon. But not yet. She sat down beneath the tree instead.

Now she looks at Tom. His heart quickens. He stares at the ground and says nothing. She reaches out and gently strokes his hair.

“I said to Jose that I would help tend the garden.”

He nods.

“We can grow things to eat. He said that he would show me.”

He does not move but waits. She strokes his hair again and
then she tells him that she will stay. She tells him that she is not going to go. She knows that Tom will never leave the farm. The truth is that she does not mind lying. She drops her hand back down to her belly. She feels it hard beneath her fingers and then her mouth goes dry. When she speaks it is without meaning to.

“He is not going to come.”

Tom looks up.

“Who?”

She ignores him and presses harder on her belly. She tries to press her fingers in. Her body has changed. The baby made of lead has turned her torso into wood. She cannot break or crack it. She tries. She makes a fist and sinks her knuckles in but it does not give or even splinter. It is hard as the polished surface of a table and solid throughout.

She shakes her head and looks at Tom.

“It is made of wood. It has turned into wood.”

How can she make him understand? He does not know what to say, he does not even know what she means. He has no way of responding. She reaches out and takes his hand and lays it on her belly. She tries to show him what has happened.

“Do you see? It is made of wood. I am turning into wood.”

It is solid as rock. He starts to think he understands what she means. But then there is a stirring. A kick of alien life. The lead baby stirring. They look at each other.

“Do you see?”

She says it again. Her eyes are hard. She thinks to herself that it is hopeless. She will never be able to leave. She will
be stuck dragging her wood belly back and forth across the length of the farm forever. It will kill her in the end. She asks him again. If he sees, if he can understand how it happened, how her belly turned to wood. He nods. He almost thinks he does see but of course does not.

They give up and stop talking. The girl sits and presses her hands into her wood belly. The wood begins to hum and vibrate. She turns pale. Tom does not feel the vibration. He is too busy staring down the road. He sees a cloud of dust. The sound of a motor in the distance. He sits up and peers across to the horizon.

With a roar an army truck catapults into view. The earth now trembling. The dust scattering in plumes behind the vehicle. A group of men hang out the side, holding machetes and AK-47s. The car careens across the road and the machetes swing. The girl lets out a strangled cry. Tom pulls her to her feet and together they crouch behind the tree.

The army truck continues to race forward. From the opposite direction, a horse and rider appear on the road, coming from the direction of the stables, heading toward the truck. It is Jose, who does not realize about the men. Who is about to make a terrible mistake. Tom almost cries out a warning but quickly the girl presses her hand against his mouth.

They watch as the horse moves down the road, the roaring vehicle and the galloping animal pulled together across the horizon. The truck now clearly in view. Tom waits for Jose to turn around, to veer and to run. He does not. He rides straight up to the truck and comes to a halt before the men. The horse
snorting and rearing as the truck engine idles. Horrified, Tom waits for the gunshot.

There is no gunshot. Jose points in the direction of the house. He says something to the men. A second later he is continuing down the road. The men shout something and he raises his arm in reply, then disappears down the track. The men give another cry. They gun the motor and the truck leaps forward. In the direction of the house. In the direction of where they are sitting. The wheels spinning through the dirt.

Tom stares at the vehicle. The truck now lifting off the ground as it races toward them. The girl reaches for his hand and grips it. Tears streaming down her face. It is too late, Tom thinks. It is too late. His knuckles white and shaking. He watches the truck and braces himself for what is coming. They both do.

They sit by the tree and wait.

Thank you to Ellen Levine, Clare Conville, Millicent Bennett, Dominick Anfuso, Martha Levin, Chloe Perkins, Meghan O’Rourke, Sophie Fiennes, Harland Miller, Geraldine Ogilvy, and Hari Kunzru.

©
HARI KUNZRU

Katie Kitamura is the author of
The Longshot
(Free Press, 2009), a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions
Fiction Award. She was creative consultant on the three-part documentary
The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,
featuring philosopher
Slavoj Zizek, as well as the sequel,
The Pervert’s Guide to
Ideology
. She has written for publications including
The
New York Times, The Guardian,
and
Wired
, and is a
regular contributor to
Frieze
and
Art
Monthly
.

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Also by Katie Kitamura

The Longshot

gone

to the

forest

katie kitamura

Reading Group Guide

Set in an unnamed colonial country,
Gone to the Forest
begins at a critical historical moment—the brink of a civil war. The novel opens when Tom, the only son of a rich landowner, discovers a radio mysteriously announcing news of a spreading rebellion. A series of tragic events follows, both on the farm and across the country—events that further strain the relationship between Tom and his father, and cause Tom to lose his already fragile grip on the only life he has ever known.

topics and questions for discussion

1.
Gone to the Forest
begins when Tom hears a
noise: the call to arms for the native rebellion on the radio:
“Now it is time for us to awaken from our slumber. Rouse
up, brothers! We will achieve our liberation and we will free this land!”
Could this message also apply to Tom and his relationship to his father, and by
extension, to the land? Why do you think the author chose to begin the novel with this
message? How does it foreshadow future events that take place? Ultimately, who do you
believe was listening to this radio broadcast?

2. Discuss the title. What kind of imagery comes to mind when you think of
the phrase “gone to the forest”? Who do you think is going to the forest,
and why? In your opinion, what does the forest represent?

3. Throughout the novel there are repeated descriptions of the way the
land functions in relation to the characters. Discuss how the old man lives in relation
to the land. Consider the language used to describe this relationship, such as
“the old man
swallowed up the land and filled it with native hands.”
In opposition,
consider the way Tom treats the land: “
He presses his limbs into the soil, as if they would grow
roots.
” Discuss the two characters’ vastly different relationships
with the land. What does the land represent to each of them?

4. Discuss Tom’s deceased mother and the role she plays in
Gone to the Forest.
Consider the following quote in your
response: “
Nobody was
surprised when she died. It took her twenty years to do it, and they were surprised
it took her so long. She had been dying the whole time. She was half dead when she
gave birth to him [Tom] and after that died by increments.
”