And after we hung up, I was still pensive, thinking of my mom in such a distant place, even more distant than before. The positive thing about travel though is that if you go away sufficiently far, at some point you start getting closer. And of course distance was conducive of deceit: for all I knew, mom could’ve still been at home, giggling on the couch, and not at all in Indonesia. Distances are tricky like that.
There is a secret I have, a really embarrassing thing: I worship Chapaev. Despite the jokes that are his later legacy and the revolutionary terror of his earlier days, these people, their horses, the Red Army, and all that elementary school-level propaganda is lodged deep in my heart, like a metal splinter. Horses and steppes and wars fought with sabers rather than guns. They probably did have guns though; wouldn’t they? Of course they had guns. It’s just this is not how I imagined it in my childhood or now, for that matter. Temporal distances are tricky as well.
Dealing with the dead is frustrating because you can never ask them anything—you could, but they wouldn’t answer. So I compose long conversations in my head, asking about the Red Army and how did it all really happen, what the dirt under the horses’ hooves smelled like, if they were crawling with lice, this sort of thing. If he really drowned in the end, trying to swim across River Ural, or did he fake it, tired of war and fame, tired of being a hero. If he decided to quit the revolution gig and instead grow pumpkins somewhere. I wonder if he’s still alive, even though he would be over a hundred years old, hundred and twenty, to be exact, but that doesn’t seem too old for a hero. Come and think about it, all heroes of the revolutions are relatively young in historical terms. And I’m left to my own yarns, recursive narratives I spin as I drink my tea and stare out of the window at the houses across the street and imagine Charles River far behind them. I squint and the buildings disappear and I can see in my mind’s eye Charles, thick and green, speckled with oil slicks like a multicolored serpent, and if I squint further, it becomes Ural on the shores of which my stories either end or begin—it all depends on a day.
Today, I wait for the rooftops to turn molten yellow and orange, like a pumpkin, and I imagine him emerging from the freezing water, dripping wet, his teeth clattering, and the right sleeve of his uniform dark with blood. Then he walks, like giants walk, each leap taking him over a hill or a small river, the blood drips spawning lakes and craters in his wake, leaving the earth steaming and scorched, scars that it will take centuries to heal in the unforgiving Siberian climate. The pine and fir forest that gradually rises around him does nothing to impede his progress as he pushes the trees aside like mere branches, and pulls his feet out of the sucking morasses of swamps with ease.
This is the thing that makes daydreaming so pleasant: one can keep the details vague and imagine tall firs and green meadows, serpentine rivers and lakes like mirrors, fields yellow with heavy nodding wheat—everything, everything. And his walk can take him anywhere, and today I imagine him walking like that, strides of a giant, a red star on his hat illuminating his way with a crimson strobe, across Siberia and past China, all the way to the Sea of Japan. I imagine him jumping off the edge of Kamchatka as if it it was a springboard, and then—Sakhalin, Japan. I watch him treading on islands and land formations as if they were mere stepping stones, all the way to the East China Sea where the islands grow a bit scarce and he has to swim a little. Then in the Philippines, he’s picking up his inhuman stride again, and there, finally, he reaches Indonesia. My mom said it was a paradise.
Coconut Girl is a myth common in Indonesia, my mom says. Suddenly, she is a folklorist who’s eager to educate me on foreign mythologies. She also emails me pictures of alien birds and large lizards—who is this woman?—and talks about where she would like to go next year. Right now, it’s a toss-up between Thailand and New Zealand. But for now she talks about the Coconut Girl and laughs, and I assume blushes a little, because it is really a dirty story. Girl shitting out stuff like that—of course, my mom doesn’t say “shitting out.” She says “excreting,” and that makes me giggle over the phone.
So, the Coconut Girl: there was a farmer named Ameta who found a coconut when it washed ashore. No one ever saw such things before on his island (called Seram). The next night he dreamt about planting it—a shadowy voice instructed him how to do such a thing. He planted the coconut and soon the coconut grew into a beautiful palm tree, and many flowers clustered between its feathered leaves. Ameta climbed the tree but cut his hand, and one of the flowers became stained with his blood. As such tales go, the flower stained with blood became a coconut that then became a girl, named Hainuwele.
Hainuwele, as it turned out, wasn’t just any coconut girl: every time she went to the bathroom, instead of regular human turds she dropped all sorts of interesting objects: earrings, serving dishes, coral statuettes, dinner plates, jewelry, stones, shells. Copper gongs and other treasures. And she gave all of those wonderful things to the villagers.
We all know how these stories go. Coconut Girl was the original Giving Tree, Rainbow Fish, and whatever other propaganda they’re feeding the kids nowadays. In her case, however, the story is truthful—after all her giving, she was killed, since we do not like those who make us feel grateful, and there’s no greater contempt than that for someone whom we owe a debt of gratitude. The Indonesian version tells it right.
I of course don’t tell this to my mom, because she would only get upset at my negativity. She thinks I’m cynical, but I am not. I’m normal. It is her who is abnormally naïve, and after all the crap she had to go through it is a small miracle that she manages to be happy, bouncy, and wanting to see New Zealand. “Will you walk the path to Mordor?” I ask her.
“A path to what, dear?” she asks, sweetly.
“Never mind,” I say. “Listen, I have to go.”
“Save your money,” she says. “International phone calls are expensive.”
I want to tell her that money has nothing to do with it, it’s just that I have to go to work, but change my mind. It doesn’t matter and she will never remember anyway. And as dad says, there’s just no point in arguing—I can stand being wrong as long as it makes her happy. I hope it does.
I take the subway to work, and while riding I consider the rest of the tale. Its sad sad end, especially.
So what did the villagers do to the girl who gave everything to them, the precious things she made come out of her own body? They dug a pit and pushed her into it, and then they danced and trampled the dirt over her. I can imagine a death like that— suffocation and lungs filled with mud, a broken sternum and ribs bristling with white shattered edges. Loss of consciousness and its black relief. Being buried alive not accidentally but intentionally. Hands grasping and failing, nails breaking.
Ameta found her body and cut it into pieces and buried it all over the place. Mom didn’t tell me why would he do such a thing—I can understand exhumation, but not dismemberment, but I’m sure he had his reasons and I’m just blinded by my own prejudices. Whatever the case, he dismembered her and buried her parts all over, and then they grew into various tuberous plants, yams etcetera. Mom is hazy on what exact plants they are, and she also said something about goddess and how people started having sex only after Hainuwele died. If I were in the mood, I would think how cool it is that the story manages to conflate the Eve’s apple with Jesus and throw in some creation to boot, but today I’m uninterested in Westernizing folklore and reducing everything to Christianity. Instead I sit and stare at my own reflection in the window across, as the subway train sways and hurtles itself closer and closer to MIT, my station, while thinking about how Chapaev fits into it and what would he do. He is an indispensable part of the Revolution—and as such, a creation mythology. The world he belonged to was forged in a celestial fire, a new world to which a very bloody creation myth was entirely appropriate, and heroes of the revolution were its sacrifices.
The mythology of the Red Cavalry is a pervasive one—no matter how many post-Communist years we accumulate, his image is always there, saved in the collective un- and semiconscioius, in jokes, old movies, books some of us had to read. They are the heroes, the martyrs, the creators. They are our Coconut Girl—without the fertility.
Why do I want to save Chapaev so badly? Two reasons: first, ambiguity of his death. If someone’s body is never found, you cannot really be sure that they are dead. Second, I want him to be alive so that he doesn’t end up like the stupid giving tree. We hate those who help us, and the only way to deal with that guilt is to kill them—like they did with the Coconut Girl, Hainuwele. Better yet if the benefactors kill themselves (we call it selfsacrifice, and this is our favorite) sparing us the mess. In my mind, heroes that live are a vindication, a heartfelt slap in the face of our collective greed. So I make him live, and I make him settle in Indonesia.
“So you made him an immigrant.” I don’t have many friends, except Veronica and Cecilia, two Brazilian grad students who are way too much fun for me, and I’m not even sure how to deal with them. But I just follow them around, awkwardly, and buy them drinks in any of Boston’s pubs if the opportunity presents itself. It presents itself after work today, and we all drink in the Bow and Arrow. Cecilia is downing fuzzy navels and Veronica is sticking with sweet wine; I drink Sam Adams, out of some guilty obligation of someone who knows they don’t really belong in Boston but appreciates the opportunity anyway. After a few, I tell them about Chapaev and Indonesia. They seem amused.