#leopard hoisting a rhino up a tree

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The People Apart: not a blog, a story.

The below is a flash fiction piece, from a longer series called “Other Peoples, Other Worlds,” but this one is lockdown-inspired. I am sharing it here as part of Mothers Who Make’s art exchange project, “Letters in Lockdown.”

Are you sitting comfortably? Do you have space around you? How near is the nearest person? Right beside you or an arm’s length away? In the next room, or maybe on the floor below? When you are at the right distance, the one with which you feel most comfortable, read on - I want to tell you the story of a people who spend their lives apart.

They live alone. Like herons they are to be seen standing by a river, or in a lane, or crouched in their gardens, on their own. Far back in their history it is said that they once touched. Once upon a time – and many believe it is no more than a fairy tale – there was an era when the people lived close to one another. Close enough to feel each other’s heat, for whispers to be heard, close enough to see the colour of each other’s eyes with ease. At this time touch was ordinary. People held hands, hugged, put chest to chest, arms slung over necks and shoulders, around waists, legs were stroked, backs rubbed. They touched faces. They put their mouths close to one another, sometimes so close no words came out. They said things to each other with their mouths closed but their lips touching.

           But this close time came to an end, for as the people who live apart know, touching leads to violence, sickness and to death. The close-up people shared, but they did not share everything with everyone. They could not agree on what was whose and how much each should have, or for how long they should have it. They made vows, promising to share everything with one another, but they broke them. Even though they were so near, they did not hear each other clearly. With their closed lips they touched each other and did not understand the messages that passed between them. They tried to share their very selves, their bodies, with each other, but in doing so they forgot whose body belonged to whom. And so their touching became violent. Not strokes but blows. They clawed, pounded, punched and tore. They killed each other with hands tight around each other’s throats, or using knives, dug into the skin that they had stroked.

           But worse perhaps even than the conscious killings of the close people, was when they killed each other by mistake. They did their lip-touching, skin-stroking, hand-shaking, breath-sharing, and they grew ill. They infected one another. They died, all because they could not bear to live apart, even by a short distance. They died until there were only a few people left, and these began a new way of life. Or so the story goes. Others believe none of this – they think people have always lived apart and these stories are just told to frighten them. For it is obvious that drawing close is dangerous and touch cannot be trusted. 

            Each person lives alone, in their own home. Their homes are simple, small dwellings, suited to solitude. Each home is surrounded by a moat of land, a garden that extends from the house on every side. In their gardens they grow food as well as flowers. Between each garden runs a path of generous width, so that it is possible for two people to stand at the outer edges of their land and still to be at a safe distance from each other.

           Whilst self-sufficiency and autonomy are prized above all else in their society, it is recognised that some exchange of goods and services is unavoidable. At one corner of each garden, outside the garden fence, is a wooden box, big enough to hold not only letters but other items that the owner of the box wishes to swap or share - paints, paper or ink, for example, for they are great writers and painters. Speech when it occurs is always public, conducted across the paths at the ends of their gardens. Anything more intimate takes place in writing. They have no actual currency, wishing to minimise the number of physical objects that pass between them, held by one hand, passed into another. However, they keep long and detailed records of their exchanges, which are kept on scrolls of paper, slid into a fabric pocket in the lid of every box.

           Of course they know that, like other lonely animals, like bears, black rhinos, leopards, there is a moment in their lives when they must come together if life is to continue, and future generations born. Whilst courtship can commence between gardens, with a glance across the pathways, it is continued in correspondence. They enter into arranged couplings, yet the arrangements are made by no one but themselves.

           Besides each box, in each garden, is a gate. Usually this is opened only for the purpose of collecting items from the box, or delivering an item to another box. But there are a few other moments in their lives when this gate opens. One of these is if a coupling has been arranged.

           The couplings take place at night. One person will meet the other at their gate and is allowed inside. Each meeting is preceded and then followed by a great act of cleansing. They come together, they touch, and then they wash away all touching. If a child is conceived after a coupling then the person bears and births her child alone. Often it is the one who has birthed the child who raises it, but not always. Once the child is born it can be agreed, by letter, which parent will take it into their home.

           Then comes another moment in their lives when the gate at the edges of their gardens open: if a person has raised a child, once the child is old enough to live alone, they leave. There is no set time for this, but it is often after about ten years – a much longer period of care than many species offer to their young. The young person then goes to find their own home, with their own garden, gate and box.

           One of the first things they will do when they take up their life alone is to begin to work in their garden, and specifically to dig, for in every garden, every person has a hollow and, beside it, a small hill. Let me explain.

           Despite the lengths to which the people go to protect themselves from the dangers of touch, they are not afraid of death. They are matter of fact about it because they know that when it comes it will arise only from themselves, not forced upon them by another, their death meeting them at their own time. Every day it is their practice then to work on their hollow and their hill. They prepare this place within their land for their life’s end. They die alone, lying in their hollows. This is not a tragedy. Their loneliness is not a sadness to them – it is a way of life.

They are watchful across their gardens. They are respectful, never prying, but acutely mindful nonetheless of the movements of their neighbours. They know when someone has died, when they no longer collect things from their box, work on their garden or stand beside their gate. When this happens one of the others will enter through the gate of the one who has passed away and complete the burial. The neighbour fills in the hollow with the hill. Afterwards the land is level again – no hollow, no hill. Then they go into the deceased’s home, and by the door there is a white flag. They hoist the flag to let others know that this home is now empty and a new person can take up residence. Near each hill and hollow, each person also builds a bonfire. Onto this bonfire the neighbour will gather possessions, ready for release - letters, clothes -items that it is hard to clean or that are intimate to the deceased. The bonfire is lit and the possessions of their life are burned away. The home is cleared, ready for the new person when they arrive.

           There is an occasion, once a year, when the people who live apart, come together. They leave their gardens, and like trained dancers file down the pathways, keeping the precise distance that they know so well within their bodies - the distance which will keep them safe. They know it by sight. They know it by sound. They can measure and adjust their pace by listening to the footfall of the people in front of and behind them. In this way they walk smoothly to the plains.

           At the plains they stand like carefully planted trees, beyond each other’s shadows, none encroaching on the other’s sunlight. There, at the edge of the plains, years ago their ancestors built a huge amphitheatre- a giant hollow in the earth, and beside it a huge hill. Onto this they file. It is vast enough to encompass the distances that they must maintain from one another. The hill has ridges built into its side around which the people arrange themselves to view the spectacle.

           By letter, beforehand, the performances have been arranged. Alone they have practiced and rehearsed, in their homes and gardens. Then, at their annual gathering, their pageant, they stand and sing. They play. They perform great speeches, penned alone and on this day shared aloud. The performances are passionate, profound, but never wistful. Never do they show any self-pity or longing for things to be other than they are. The taboo on touch is strong enough within them that it holds. They weep. They laugh. They cheer. They clap. They stay till dusk. And then, without regret, they turn and they return, as if in migration, each to their solitude.

           It is worth stating that they are not all the same. Whilst they observe the same distance there is great diversity across their gardens and their homes. A huge range of styles and designs. Their letters, their quiet outpourings and endless daily poems and paintings are likewise eclectic. Their presentations at the annual pageant are wide-ranging – comedic, epic, lyric, experimental. They have no such thing as the internet, no world wide web. Although a life online does not necessitate touch, it also does not arise from an imagination and a culture constructed around solitude. They see no need for phones or digital connection.

           Will they live happily ever after? Are they even happy now? Are bears happy, or other solitary animals that we know of in this world?  I suspect happiness may be an idea that comes from touch, or at least our idea of it is so informed by this that we cannot understand a happiness that is so different in meaning to the close, sweaty, heart-thumping, kissing kind we know and to which we are committed.

The truth is I do not know if they are happy, for I am one of those people in whom they don’t believe – one of those that need to touch, and to be touched.