In the Absence of Clocks

Mapping the Republics of the Dead

18 Mapping the Republics of the Dead Many children escaped occupied Ukraine, but each in a different way. Wadded silk blooms from the fisherman’s hand, an escape map, traced with blue, routes that match the old man’s wandering veins. Here, he points, I was married. There, I harvested the winter’s wheat. The map is of a ghost country. The Black Sea burns marine; it insists south, south, south. At each village his finger stops. Here, I lost my son. And here, my little dove, drowned. Beneath his finger, the two-headed river is a monster. It quiets me. But your silence is worse than any river, he laughs. I tell him of the places my father has forgotten, how I am to cross the country, north toward Kiev. So, for this man you will map the republics of the dead? He laughs again, offers me a cigarette and a caramel— asks me to choose. The cigarette I think, but no, look into his father-colored eyes. It’s the caramel. ...