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    Redoubt: A Mononovel
    Redoubt: A Mononovel
    Redoubt: A Mononovel
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Redoubt: A Mononovel

    By Cecile Pineda

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    About this ebook

    Structured like a jazz riff, this novel addresses questions of conception and birth, gender, war, and the slouch toward apocalypse.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWings Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2004
    ISBN9781609401740
    Redoubt: A Mononovel
    Author

    Cecile Pineda

    CECILE PINEDA was the founder, director, and producer of the Theatre of Man, 1969-1981. She is the author works of fiction and nonfiction, including Face, Frieze, The Love Queen of Amazon, and Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World, among others. Her novels have won numerous awards, including the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California, a Neustadt Prize for International Fiction nomination, and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She is professor emerita of creative writing at San Diego State University.

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      Book preview

      Redoubt - Cecile Pineda

      Space

      I.

      redouter (Fr.) (r du-té) v.t., To dread. To fear.

      Ihave been here since the beginning. The road – if there were a road – leads nowhere. There are no ships in the desert. If there were oars or skiffs, they are gone, long since, along with the ghosts of the desert antelope. Their bones lie uninhabited everywhere. The harsh light of the sun has bleached them of any color. Nothing moves. There has been no rainfall in over one hundred years.

      My position occupies the last line of defense on the frontier. I am charged with holding my ground, defending against the enemy. The redoubt stands, a dugout of reinforced concrete, its footings sunk in sand. The loophole hatches (there are two) can be raised or lowered at will by virtue of a mechanism of springs and counterweights. From within, I watch.

      I know exactly where I stand. All around lies hostile territory. I have what weapons I need: compass, sextant, chart box. Detailed maps displaying latitude, longitude and topological formations. A gnomonic chart – of my own devising – showing my position as the polar center from which all points radiate. I take my readings, make entries in the logbook. Vigilance is the first order of defense on the frontier. The least shift of attention, a temporary lapse, merely momentary, may provide the fatal loophole, the opening in the skin, insignificant perhaps, unnoticed even, from which death may ultimately result. Strange things have happened. A paper cut merely, and the body fails. Communications falter. Infection spreads. There is irreversible collapse.

      I live as best I can. By day, I keep to my routine: set the time, stow the sleepsack in the overhead loft. Crank open the hatch covers. Apply oil from time to time to keep the mechanism functioning and noiseless. Fumble – always manage to fumble – in one pocket or another for the key before positioning the leg iron. Fasten it securely. Prepare to take up my position from the night before. Raise the binoculars. Observe. Read my distance from the frontier, my proximity to the Capital. Or, in another manner of speaking, how close to the frontier, how distant from the Capital. I am alert to the slightest movement, armed against any occurrence, foreseen and unforeseen, charged with holding my ground, watching for the enemy. I have my instruments: compass, quadrant, sextant. I have my binoculars and I keep to my routine. It seldom varies, seldom. In the desert, nothing varies, even the sky, high, indifferent, cloudless without let-up. In this landscape there is nothing. Nothing and next to nothing. Endless days. Days without event. And yet. And yet. There is much to consider. Light. The shifting of light for example. Careful note must be made of light. Air currents. The movement of wind. Temperature. Relative humidity. Barometric pressure. Nebulosity: cirrus, cumulus, stratocumulus, or cirrostratus or cumulonimbus. Proportion of sky covered at dawn, at noon, at sunset. Day by day, month by month, year by year. Relation to temperature. Ombrothermic curves. Plotting their coordinates.

      Empty routine? Hardly. Everything – in the relative scheme of things – everything has its purpose. Sand, for example. The movement of sand. Of critical importance. What is there if not sand? Not sea – or sky for that matter – yet it moves. Waves, waves rising and falling: crests and troughs – like breathing. Yes. A kind of breathing, mounding, yawning, prey to the ribbed patterns of maverick winds. Plowing surface under surface. Moving, never fixed.

      The days here pass without respite. The dawn winds fan the night’s chill air over the desert. By noon, the sun’s heat sets the sands to gasping. The sky remains cloudless, harsh and uncompromising. Each hour of the day is like the hour of any other, always the same, or very nearly always. My routine never varies from sunup to sundown . . .

      . . . never? without variation?

      Perhaps there are momentary lapses, I admit, momentary lapses when the eyes falter, when the eyelids dream. Nothing deliberate. Not in any way deliberate. A momentary lapse. An insignificant falling off, say, of attention . . .

      . . . a dream? A dream, perhaps?

      Probably not. Probably nothing so deliberate. No warning beforehand. No warning when it is about to occur.

      More a sensation.

      A sensation at best. A falling. A kind of falling as if it . . . as if I . . . as if, in the relative scheme of things, hostilities, redoubt, nothing mattered. All, all had become no more than sand. Always there, yes, but never the same, never quite the same. Millions of grains, of particles, propelled by forces, some of them unknown as yet: wind, weight . . .

      . . . and water?

      And water, imagine. I could hear it lapping, lapping. Feel it rocking against the pilings. A momentary lapse. Perhaps not even a second. A fraction measured by the imperceptible drooping of an eyelid, recognized when, only a moment afterward, I opened my eyes. All was as before. Identical. The redoubt, the loophole hatches – still raised. It is not dreaming. I know only because afterward, when I open my eyes, I have no memory of dreaming, not in

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