Beyond Swine

The skin below his eyes raw, wind-whipped and swollen, impossibly made taut by the recession, dissolve, whatever of that soft tissue which typically made his face boyish. He looked like a human skeleton dressed up as a pig. Still, he smiled, laughed, not even the seductive breaths of death down his neck could break that congenial humor. He smiled and the teeth in his head again flashed that look of a skeleton.

“See, I told you.” He said.

“Told me what?”

“That Mill was right.” His smile opened. I could see his upper and lower teeth completely. It was revolting and tragic, decay traced over that sweetness of his spirit which remained a glowing light, contracted, ancient, perhaps eternal. His diminished flesh seemed only a thin and threadbare fabric, thrown over the light to demarcate its shape. Now the seams glowed, the small light shown through the threading. It made my bones ache.

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I’d rather be a happy pig. Show me warm mud and food scraps—I’m there. Off this damn mountain.”

“A happy pig is still a pig,” his nasally seaside accent cooed.  

“A dead man is not a man.” My voice was limestone scratched on slate.

I’ll never forget that face he made. The skin around his eyes sucked back into his orbital bones, whole round eyeballs bulging, his head then cocked, his smile broadening, he said, “I’m not dead.” It was like seeing a ghost deny its dimension.

“That’s true.” I tried to smile. Somehow I could smile when there was still food. Just the promise of half an almond at the end of the hour was enough to keep my head up. That little greed, contracted from days of squandered pizza rinds and fruit bruises, reduced simply to gratitude, kept me lit like a dying torch. Without the promise of even scant satiation, the tiny shrunken greed collapsed into bitterness, self-pity, despair.

“And what about him?” I said, nodding to Tal, his long body piped over the rocks like a loosely rolled sail. “Is that still a man?”

Alon panned his eyes to Tal, shook his head, let it fall. After a moment he returned his glance to mine. “Yes,” he whispered. “That is still a man.”

For a moment, watching the massive medallion moon—platinum, magnified by atmosphere—slide above the mountains, we forgot our hunger and remembered our humanity. Now full, it’d been new when we lost the trail. 

°

We’d been mounting a high saddle, the approach signaling the severity of the climate, not a tree or shrub along it. Fits of wind raked the mud out from between the crags and slung up slurry.

Tal, the biggest among us, had a staff in his right hand, an old external-frame pack, and Alon’s day-bag slung opposite, hanging off his chest like a child with an attachment disorder. Alon joked and called him “Super-Dad,” although he looked more like a bohemian wizard. He plodded up, his free arm crossed over his face as a shield, pausing every ten meters for a breath out of the wind, our backs propped against the leeward faces of the boulders.

Once, during such a pause, he at last discussed his father. I’d wanted to pry since the other Israeli’s mentioned it back in Caleta Tortel, but there never seemed an appropriate time until that mountain shaved our banter to its bones.

“And how do you feel… do you enjoy being the son of such an important man?” I inquired. 

“He was always an important man to me, because he was always my father.”

“Of course, but he wasn’t always the Secretary of the Treasury.”

His usual amiable smile faded. So did Alon’s. The two of them had a wordless line between them. 

“I liked it better when he was a professor.”

“What was his subject?”

“Philosophy.”

An eagle held overhead like a kite, way up atop an auger of air. Hung there like it was the hand turning the bit. I pointed it out and the Israeli’s admired. Tal laughed, said something in Hebrew to Alon. Alon squealed and gave Tal a peck on the mouth. I felt safe to press further.

“Were there any classical proofs or opinions he liked to discuss?”

Tal’s open mouth closed. Again, I’d pulled the plug on his tirelessly treading tranquility.

“I remember one in particular.”

Alon grinned at that, tore out the side of an apple with his teeth. Chewed it in one cheek. Spat out the seeds.

“It’s by John Stuart Mill. I wonder if you know it.” 

“Tell me,” I said.

“It goes: It is better to be a sad human than a happy pig.” 

“Ha!” Alon laughed. “It’s true.”

“Better to be a miserable Socrates,” Tal added, “Than a merry fool.”

“I disagree,” I said.

“Same,” said Tal. “And he told me that when I came out to him. You can imagine? Wow. Really.” 

Alon grinned over his apple, sucking down its juices. Torrents broke over my head, pulled my hair. I struggled to swallow.

“But you’re not miserable.”

“Because I refuse to be,” Tal smiled unabashedly, “And the best part of being a pig, is you seldom remember that you’re a pig.” 

Alon spoke with the apple in his cheek, grinning, “Except when the miserable human kicks you.”

“Aha, that’s right.”

His father was a real bastard; I knew that before I knew this story. I’d Googled him. He was one of Bibi’s goons.

“I’m sorry,” I said, I didn’t know what else to say.

“For what?” said Tal. “The whole world is my pen!”

He stood up and the wind caught his bags like sails—jib and main—capsized him and his staff like a mast snapped in two. Got up laughing and led us, under the wind’s nudging, miles off the scarcely marked trail to the wrong saddle which led to the wrong valley, in whose bosom the largest man broke first, starved first, and was now sure to die first.

°

It was an evening of false-darkness, the full moon fully risen, the dark pooling, encloaking everything, but the moonlight defining all contours. I could see Alon’s profile. He looked worse in the hollow dark. We had a little fire going.

“We could die here and it would just be an obituary in our local presses. He dies and it’s front page of the Jerusalem Post.”

The embers crackled. Alon chewed through his reflexive response without speaking it. Took his time.

“You’re obsessed with death,” he suggested.

So his optimism is the last to go, I thought, Even after his alacrity.

Then he laughed.

“It’s really so Jewish. A son paying for his father’s crimes.”

It didn’t seem Jewish to me. Thutmose II wasn’t Jewish. Jesus—well, Jesus was a Jew. I tried thinking of all the famous Jewish sinners with unfortunate sons. I got as far as Madoff; in truth a tribeless man.

“You know the last time when there were peace talks his father made sure Israel didn’t loosen its squeeze on food and water sources?” Alon laughed for dramatic effect. “And now look at us.”

I think minutes passed. The moon didn’t detectibly move. My heart was beating so slowly. I couldn’t even feel the fire’s warmth. Just watched it wriggle and recede. I felt like a caterpillar transcending to a cocooned state. Had the disappointing feeling I’d emerge a moth. Or a fucking winged pig, for all their legend, flightless as a Dodo.

“But he chose this,” I said finally.

“That’s true.”

I believe Tal would’ve died that night, before dawn from the cold, but I found an old forgotten protein bar, flattened like a pop can, at the bottom of my bag when I was looking for a piece of spare cord. There was a moment after I first found it, my back to the fire, when I thought of crawling off in the night and keeping it for myself. It was their poor sense of orientation that led us here. They’d been soldiers. Still I hadn’t trusted their senses over mine; it was a wish to remain unified, communal, that made me follow. And so the judgment boomeranged back to me. I remembered before, those little routines we’d had. Sharing halved avocados spooned out in rotation with a single utensil. And the truly precious ritual: coffee. Alon’s mother had mailed him a pound of fresh Italian espresso beans. A couple times a day, along the road with our thumbs cocked, by a stream, below an ancient Alerce, we delighted in the ceremony of espresso. The two Israeli’s moved as one four-armed figure, assembling and lighting the little pocket gas stove. His efficient percolator that packed down with its twin steel espresso sippers to the size of a Rubik’s Cube. And then this luxury, maybe we were sticky with sweat and bitten, stinking clothes, a night on the ground behind and another ahead, this luxury, the rich and sultry elixir, framed by the dignity of the twin cups, by the ceremony of our sitting, crouching, laughing, unloading, would catalyze some kind of transcendence to or reaffirmation of that which we claimed to be: civilized men. In our circle: sipping, remembering something from home, a question you meant to ask. A dumb joke, a line by such-and-such character from yesterday. Mmm, we used to be men.

Now shaking there in the night, cold, vibrating with that greed awoken from hibernation, awoken instantly and dominant, I blamed them. But the darkness was false and I feared Alon could see my trembling, that he might suspect me, the source of my rejuvenation. I was willing to let him die, yes, I believe I was willing to let them die, but only if they did so believing me their friend. To be deservedly condemned by a man as he dies is to be judged irredeemably.

Alon and I each had one bite. I sucked on it for an hour until it was the size of a paper acid tab on my tongue. I twitched, staving off that rabid greed returned. The rest, we simmered in water over the fire until it made a pasty stew and fed it to a semi-conscious Tal.

A spark of morning strength led me to the next miracle: a Pudú in my poorly improvised snare. “The hungry pig smells better than the contented one.” Again, the boar’s share went to the big important man. Alon and I split the gilt’s. But the little strength it gave us enabled further scouting.

The next morning, fate found Alon the hero. He’d met a Dutchman in the forest. He told me it went like this:

The Dutchman: Salam Alaikum.

Salam Alaikum. What are you doing here, off the trail in the forest?

I was looking for a private place to shit. Why are you here, off the trail?

My friends and I are lost. He laughed, I imagine. We’ve been dying.

Well, you’re not dying anymore.

How did you know I’m Israeli?

Your face. There are loads of you down here. And your Teva’s. 

A helicopter came and airlifted Tal. Alon went with him.

“Are you human enough, now?” I asked Alon before he departed. “Now that you’ve hurt beyond a swine’s capacity to hurt?”

He fluttered his eyes, inhaling through his nostrils like a guru.

“Every entity is shaped by its capacities,” he smirked.

“You been thinking that up these last two weeks while you sat there dumb and grinning?”

“Hey,” Alon levered, “Tibetan monks get years alone in their caves. I had two weeks with you always talking.”

We hugged and our ribs clinked together. In a day, I heard, Tal was talking and laughing again. I guess it was a big story back in Jerusalem. They didn’t mention the boyfriend.

I insisted on hiking out on my own two feet after the Dutchman gave me food and a topographical map. He was a model Dutchman: tall, blonde ponytail, probably at one point learned to kite-board in the Yucatan.

°

Getting out took another day-and-a-half. Every step was fucking miserable, my legs weak, pulling up my pants every few steps, cursing my suicidal pride, wishing to be a satisfied pig, pen be damned. Reached the Carretera Austral during peak heat. I’d gnawed through the Dutchman’s charity and my stomach slackened and squeezed, seizing like a fist. Sharted and shrugged, fuck it, fuck all, feed me. Stood there on the gravel roadside with my thumb bent for an hour before a van pulled over. A couple god-fearing apple pickers. Young men, younger than I. Sprawled out in the seatless back with the buckets of lime and scarlet bounty and they said “Come. Es para usted.”

Buried my face in the fruits, crushing core and stem and apple anus, mashing mealy flesh, bruising my cheeks; gums cut by my own haste. Not high or low, just a pig, a void, just desire, shrinking. Hit one moment of glory, fleeting as a breath. Then desire was gone and I lay on my back, a miserable man. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You were Here,” came on the radio. It seemed an interfering glitch from a past life. Reset my universe. The Chileno in the passenger seat turned around to face me, smiling. A kid, an angel really. “Conoce? Es Pink Floyd!”

“Si,” I rubbed my belly, smiled. “Conoco.” Then I chuckled. I’d been so near death and now look at me! I laughed at god, tauntingly. Then harder, the mocking laughter rising and falling torrentially. To be a man. Writhing, belly pregnant, mouth full of mash and my near-dead stink escaping like roused pigeons. Still now, I’m surprised those good catholic boys didn’t find me an exorcism. I almost died! And now look at me! A miserable man wanting on the fore side of the meal, a pig rolling, squealing, satisfied in his own putridity on the aft.