Gone to the Forest: A Novel by Katie Kitamura Page B

from another man. (Which would have had
     nothing to do with her. A man saved a woman and he was only saving some idea of himself.
     A man was nothing but a continent of ideas. Whereas a woman lived on shifting ground.
     Therefore it was easy toslip between the cracks. They’d been
     warning her since she was a child. She couldn’t say she hadn’t been
     told.)
    There was no sound of feet. No slam of door. No anger. No stopping. It
     went on. What a body can take is always more than a body can take until it isn’t.
     Until the body says it can do no more. Her body went past that point and she knew
     nothing about it. Her head had disconnected from her body and was floating in space. Her
     arms and legs were next and then it was just her torso—she’d forgotten her
     torso, she had left it behind. With the wolf pack snapping at her heels. Snapping and
     then biting and then eating and she was gone.
    Outside, the mountain was decapitated by flame. The smoke cloud blotted
     out the sky. None of the men on the veranda looked at the mountain. They were otherwise
     occupied.

4
    I n the morning five men left and three stayed
     behind. The five who left woke early. They dressed by low light and went downstairs,
     whispering and motioning in silence. Tiptoeing in their socks. They found the old man
     sitting at a table on the veranda eating breakfast. In the background the volcano was
     still electric orange and the sky was still black.
    They came to the table with their boots in their hands and told the old
     man they were going. They had their own farms to attend to. The old man nodded. They
     thanked him for his hospitality. He offered them breakfast. It was a visible
     afterthought. The men said no. The old man nodded and turned back to his paper. News
     came to the valley late, the papers a week old by the time they reached the farm.
    The five men pulled on their boots and were silent as they went down the
     veranda steps. Once they got to the track their gait relaxed. When they got a little
     further one of them started to whistle. A tune from last night’s gramophone. Alittle snippet of song. The others joined in. They formed a
     five-part harmony and galloped down the road.
    Five men left and three stayed behind. Like Job’s comforters. They
     appeared at noon, each grasping a sheet of newspaper. They stood on the veranda and
     surrounded the old man. Who sat rooted in his chair. He did not consider himself to be
     trapped, he showed no evidence of that belief. But he remained surrounded by the men all
     day, unable to shake them off and wearing an expression of deepening outrage.
    Tom did not understand what was going on. Tom had not been on the veranda
     the previous night. He had been on the other side of the house. Confined to his bedroom
     with a severe case of indigestion. He spent the evening lying on the bed in a sweat.
     Every ten minutes he lurched to the toilet and emptied his bowels. Temporarily relieved,
     he dragged himself back to the bed, only to lurch up again shortly after.
    This kind of thing was always happening to Tom. The result was always the
     same: Tom was the only one who did not know. He woke in the morning and noticed that
     something was wrong. Half the men had gone and the men who stayed were different. They
     had changed overnight. They were emboldened and they patrolled the house like they had
     the owning of it. They were no longer shamed by the old man, by the house and the farm,
     but Tom did not understand why.
    He did not see the girl all day but that was not unusual. She slept until
     evening and did not like to be disturbed. Tom had often thought: a man could murder her
     in the night and the body would not be found until next evening. A man couldcreep into her room and take a cleaver to her head. Be away by
     morning, in a new country by noon. It could be done. There had been rumors of such
     things. They would spend days looking for a bloodstained native.
    Tom had a bad sense of