The Empire of the Dead

by Tracy Daugherty

  “I’ll bring him back to you,” Bern said.

  The man nodded and bagged up the others. “You see something like this,” he said, “and you don’t know whether you’re meant to hold on to the tragedy part or the miracle part.”

  When Bern returned to Mrs. Mehl’s apartment with the cat food, he found the kitten, eyes closed and purring, in her lap. “I’ll just set this over here,” he said, and left the bag on the kitchen floor. The austerity of her place always startled him. The first time he’d carried her groceries up from the lobby, he’d expected Miss Havisham: Old World knickknacks, newspapers and spider webs in the corners. Instead, the space was mostly bare of furniture. A simple hutch displaying blue willow china. Two Eames chairs at a square oak table. A love seat with green and blue embroidered cushions placed neatly on each arm. The décor bespoke a straightforward, elegant life. It struck Bern as admirable.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Mehl.

  “Can I do anything else for you this evening?”

  “You can pour me a brandy,” she said. “And have some yourself.” She pointed. Bern located the bottle and two small glasses. “Herbert, my husband, got me in the habit years ago,” she said. “One small shot each night.” He drove a bus for a living, she said, until the morning his heart signaled it had done all the work it was going to do. “I miss him every day,” she confessed, taking a spot on the love seat. Bern sat in one of the chairs.

  “And you?” she asked. “I always see you by yourself.”

  “Long divorced,” Bern said. “But solitude isn’t so bad.”

  “I suppose not. Though you’re young yet, from where I’m perched. Getting old … loneliness isn’t the worst of it. I have happy memories. The worst is being useless. Knowing the world has passed you by with its brand new gadgets and manners. I can’t tell you the number of things I don’t know how to do anymore because the packaging has changed or the mechanisms or the requirements or—ach!” She raised her glass to Bern. “I’m less patient than I used to be because I don’t understand how people can be so shallow. I don’t like this in myself. It’s condescending of me, and I realize it’s because young people are simply inexperienced, and me—I’ve been through so much, I’m barnacled over and can barely move. But still.” She shook her head. “Simple things, like reading the book review. Do you know, last Sunday, in the Times, one reviewer said of a book’s author, ‘He seems the kind of man I’d like to have a beer with,’ as if this were a serious critical judgment, a sound way of evaluating a book’s worth. No. I don’t understand the world anymore.”

  She had confused several issues, Bern thought, but she was magnificent in her indignant melancholy. And her brandy tasted fine.

  “After Herbert passed, my nephew, Bob, took care of me and tried to keep me up to date. Then drink swept him away.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “A fine painter, Bob. Abstract stuff. Not my cup of tea, but even I could see the boy had talent, and everybody who knew anything about those fellows—Pollock, Rothko, the lot of them—drinkers, too, you know—said Bob was just as good as they were. Did he care? Oh no. No, no, no. Wouldn’t promote himself. Just wanted to paint, he said. The purity of the artist. Pah!”

  “Is his work available?” Bern asked to be polite.

  “Scattered from here to Kingdom Come. All over Manhattan, in peoples’ apartments, warehouses …”

  “And no one’s tried to collect it?” He was getting tired now.

  “Are you kidding?” said Mrs. Mehl. “He never kept track of anything. If I had the strength I’d try to find them. I’m sure, if his work was presented to a gallery, those rich old poofters in their penthouses would give him his due. Oh well. Too late now.”

  “Bob, you say?”

  “Bob Mehl. Could have made something of himself, believe you me. Instead, he left me all alone here with my cat. And then my cat ran away.”

  She stroked Jacob, who stretched his short hind legs.

  “There are a lot of galleries here in Chelsea. I’ll ask around,” Bern promised.

  A little civility at the end of the day. It did wonders.

  Pipes howled inside the walls as they usually did when someone turned on a steaming shower in a nearby apartment. The building was ancient, crotchety, full of groans against the naked weight of its occupants.

  Architecture, Bern thought. Did it ever really comfort anyone?

  Mrs. Mehl leaned forward to breathe the kitten’s fur. Bern washed out his glass. Gently, he pressed the old woman’s hands. He said, “Have a very pleasant evening, Mrs. Mehl.”

  “You, too, Mr. Bern.”

  The following morning, in his Eighth Street office, Bern sharpened pencils, preparing to make preliminary sketches for a small brownstone renovation. A new task, however humble, was always a joy. What was it Cezanne said? With an apple, I will astonish all of Paris.

  Raymond Davis, one of his colleagues, about Bern’s age—maybe a bit closer to sixty—poked his head in the doorway. “That’s it,” he said. “Finito.”

  “Raymond?”

  “They laid me off.”

  “Oh no.” Restructuring: a gloomy refrain in the hallways lately, as the firm brought more youngsters into the fold and enticed or forced retirements at the other end of the scale. Bern figured his time was coming soon.

  “What do you say, Wally? An early lunch? Join me in a valedictory shot of tequila?”

  “Well—”

  “What the hell, eh? For old times’ sake?”

  Since he’d had a malignant tumor removed from his right lung two years ago, Davis finished every spoken sentence with an unspoken Tomorrow we die.

  “Haven’t I been your pal?” he asked Bern now.

  “Yes you have, Raymond.”

  Davis said he had to make a stop at the Municipal Archives to check some lot numbers. One last job. “From there, we can walk to Chinatown.”

  “Chinese tequila?” Bern asked.

  “Let me tell you, you haven’t lived till you’ve imbibed Mandarin firewater.”

  Thirty minutes later, Bern stood with Davis in the security line inside the municipal building downtown. The female guard who inspected their IDs and took their pictures, a pretty black woman with long dreadlocks and a smile promising naughtiness, flirted with the male guard who oversaw the metal detector, a tall white man with a gut the size of a housecat. Amid their horseplay, the woman asked Davis and Bern, “What’s your business?” Her boredom was as palpable as the Lysol sting rising in waves from the clean marble floors.

  Bern stepped through the metal detector trouble free. Not Davis. No matter how many times he emptied his pockets of change, paper clips, and pens, he set off the alarm. The technology knew: something is wrong with this man. The guard ran a wand over his arms and legs and let him past.

  Inside the archives, a bald man in a bland uniform barked at people lining up for birth, death, and marriage records. While Davis leafed through books, Bern stood by a grimy window, dispirited.

  “No tenemos,” the bald man snapped at a confused Hispanic woman. She held a slip of paper covered with names and dates. Probably the only links to her past. “You understand me, lady? Go home.”

  Davis scribbled the information he needed into a notebook and motioned he was ready to leave.

  At the intersection of Park Row, Worth, and Mott, one of the city’s most guarded spots, ringed with traffic barriers and armed officers, the New York Ironworks advertised “50% Off All Rifles and Pistols.”

  From discussions of permit requests at the firm, Bern knew restaurant owners were trying to add extra outdoor seating in Chinatown—a push by the city for greater economic stimulus. In genteel neighborhoods, this could be an enhancement. Here, it blocked not only walkers but also deliverymen and cargo loaders. Add to this extra trash bins and the bollard posts erected after 9/11, and you had, Bern thought, an ambulatory crisis.

  Davis led him to a modest shop beneath the Manhattan Bridge next to plywood stalls ha
wking international calling cards and bus tickets. In the shop’s back room, accessed through a thin curtain Bern wouldn’t have noticed on his own, cigarette packs lined the walls. Shuanxshi, Yes, Seven Wolves, Marlboro. “Knockoffs,” Davis said. “Imported illegally. Cheapest smokes in the city.” He bartered with an acne-faced Asian boy over a box of faux Marlboros. Bern wondered how he had discovered this place; Davis had become increasingly reckless after his encounter with the scalpel.

  They found a dark bar beneath street level, down sloping concrete steps: forty-year-old American black-light posters (Bern recalled them from his adolescence—peace doves, Adam and Eve naked on a mountaintop), leafy incense. Davis ordered two shots of tequila and lit a cigarette.

  “Raymond, should you be smoking?” Bern said.

  “You going to be a scold, Wally? Is that why you’re all alone?”

  “Sorry.”

  “What the hell, you know? Who cares?”

  “How is your health?”

  “Don’t know. Feel like shit most of the time. What else is new?”

  “What are you going to do?” Bern said.

  “Beats me.” Davis raised his glass. Bern toasted him. “Eighteen years. And what? One day you’re here, next day poof. Ah well. I should never have gotten into this racket in the first place. I blame my dad.”

  “Was he an architect?”

  “Ham radio operator. Back in Indiana. He planted an enormous steel tower in our front yard so he could yak at Sweden. Or Australia. Damn thing threw a huge shadow on my bedroom wall. I was afraid it would topple, some night, in a thunderstorm and crush me. I think I’ve always longed for a safe space.”

  The tequila numbed Bern’s lips. He felt his mouth hover an inch or two from his face above the paper placemat with its cryptic Chinese horoscopes.

  “Dad thought talk was a nuclear deterrent,” Davis said. “Make enough friends worldwide, we’ll all be okay.” He threw back his drink. “What a nut. One more?”

  “No,” Bern said. “I really should—”

  “Right. You’ve still got a job.”

  “Low blow, Raymond. So do you, technically. Unless you want me to take those numbers in.”

  “Sorry, Wally.”

  “It’s all right. Shall we?”

  “I’m going to stay for another.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Davis grinned like a Halloween skull. Bern laid two bills on the table. “Okay. On me,” he said.

  “Wally. You trying to belittle me?”

  A crazy impulse—the alcohol and the incense: Bern grabbed the back of Davis’s neck and kissed the top of his head. “Take care of yourself, Raymond.”

  A walk to clear his mind, a chocolate shop for an espresso and a cherry truffle, a CD store (the only one remaining in this neighborhood). Some late-night music: Ahmad Jamal, Abdullah Ibrahim. And this nifty little item: Jordi Savall. Medieval ballads. Dreams of sacred order.

  It was a relief to ascend to the thin crust of legal amenities after witnessing the world’s actual business, the scrabbling, seething back-dealing underneath the streets.

  He passed an old water fountain, long out of service, in a locked-up city park. No more dipping into the public well, because no more public wells.

  A couple of subway trips and he found himself in Chelsea again: a gallery district. He remembered his promise to Mrs. Mehl. In a swift stroke, the thought of her made him lonely, a thudding sensation like losing his breath.

  The first two docents he spoke to had never heard of her nephew. The third place he entered, the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, displayed four or five Joseph Cornell boxes. An apple-cheeked girl with short black hair was quoting prices to two apparently serious buyers. Waiting, Bern observed the boxes: Celestial Navigation, a star map, sand, delicate clear drinking glasses filled with marbles, stamps, and driftwood. The Storm That Never Came, paper cutout sparrows nestled among grasses beneath a map of the constellation Scorpio and a textbook scrap demonstrating wind patterns. Bern wanted to crawl inside a box and cozy up to the universe. He overheard one of the buyers call the docent Nora. When they left, he asked Nora if the owner was around. He was not but she knew about Bob Mehl. “Oh yeah, his stuff was legendary,” she said. “Me and my friends at NYU used to hear about him. He didn’t have a studio of his own. He’d hang out in his friends’ lofts in SoHo, paint like a madman, two or three a day sometimes, and they were brilliant, just brilliant, and he’d leave them with people or give them away.”

  “Have you seen his work?” Bern asked.

  “Not personally, but everyone says they’re knockouts.”

  “Where might I find his paintings?”

  “Oh my.” She scratched her head. “I wouldn’t know where to start. A lot of his friends—that ’70s–’80s art crowd, you know—they’re gone now. AIDs. High rents.”

  ’70s–’80s! Bern had assumed ’50s–’60s—Mrs. Mehl had mentioned Jackson Pollock—but of course, now that he thought about it, it didn’t make sense that her nephew would be that old.

  “Okay, thanks,” he said. As he turned for the door, he was dazzled by the wings of an angel, sitting in one of the boxes along with a thimble, a gold coin, and a clear glass cube.

  That night, Mrs. Mehl confirmed that her nephew was younger than Bern imagined. She looked better late in the day than she did in the mornings before she’d had her breakfast and a session at the makeup mirror. Still, she complained. “Osteo and arthritis,” she said, rubbing her calves. The kitten lay on a cushion and lifted its head reluctantly when Bern approached.

  “Would you like me to make an appointment for you with the doctor?” he asked.

  “No no, all that fuss and nonsense.”

  Bern considered her sagging skin and the backs of his own rough hands. Maybe she was stronger than he thought. Stronger than he was. Possibly, kvetching kept her alive.

  Who could he complain to? Maybe he should get a cat.

  He realized that taking care of Mrs. Mehl these days was his best and most lasting achievement—certainly more substantial than anything he conceived at work. Well. Good enough, he reasoned.

  “Pleasant evening, Mrs. Mehl.”

  “You too, Mr. Bern.”

  * * *

  In the next few days—solitude isn’t so bad, really it’s not!—he tried a couple of other galleries with no success. One night, walking home, he passed an IRS office, stacks of 1040 forms in its window. That time of year again: reach for the coffee spoons, measure out your life.

  No dependents.

  Nothing to depend on.

  Really, it’s not so bad.

  Turning a corner, he glimpsed a newsstand headline: rockin’ sockin’ Earl Palmer had died. “Tutti Frutti,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “I Hear You Knocking.” Bern couldn’t count the tunes whose spines Palmer stiffened with his backbeat. It was years ago, during the Torah studies with the rabbi in Houston, that Bern had learned of the drummer. Each week, once the lessons were over, he walked home with other teens discussing their favorite songs. King David’s sexcapades aroused the boys, but not like rock ‘n’ roll.

  What a contrast! The barrenness of Rebekah followed by wet dreams of Dizzy Miss Lizzie. Bern believed the 45s he bought helped him find depths in the Five Books of Moses he wouldn’t have noticed otherwise: Hagar, Sarah’s abused servant, decked out like Lady Day. Strange Fruit in the Garden. Goin’ to Kansas City, surely the Promised Land. Sarah scoffed when the Lord told her she would bear a son: “Am I, a withered old woman, to experience pleasure again with my dried-up old husband?” And God’s flirtatious reply: “Do you think anything is beyond me—your Lord? On your knees, woman! Get ready!” Oh yeah! You give me fever!

  These days, you couldn’t buy a 45 single to save your life.

  Whenever Bern got home after meeting the rabbi, his grandfather, who had insisted on the lessons, saw the happy flush in Bern’s cheeks and knew something was wrong. The lessons must not be taking. If they were, they wouldn’t be
so exhilarating.

  Frequently, after dinner, he waved a photograph in Bern’s face—a sepia portrait of Bern’s great-great-grandfather, Jacob, taken in Budapest. No one knew when. A wheatlike, long white beard, a slender Ashkenazi nose, a round black hat. “His namesake wrestled an angel!” Bern’s grandfather admonished him. “He wrestled fascists in Europe! And you? You lie in bed at night, with that jungle noise grinding on the radio, and tug on your little petseleh! Aren’t you ashamed?”

  The picture of Jacob was one of his grandfather’s few possessions at the end. Bern recalled seeing it in the rest home just before his grandfather died, his last raspy gasps buzzing like a Passover plague.

  The old man had once traveled to Budapest and found the graveyard where family lore said Jacob had been laid. The headstones were inscribed in Hebrew; Bern’s grandfather, who did not read the language, had failed to foresee this eventuality. He couldn’t identify Jacob’s resting spot or even prove he was there. Ever since, he’d said, he felt more rootless than ever.

  Tell me about it, Bern thought. Earl Palmer dead. Jesus.

  At Fifth and Fifty-third now, he faced St. Thomas Church and recalled his first defiant moment as a Jew. It coincided with a feeling that he would live forever and always be loved. After Torah study one night, Bern and his friends were walking home down an oak-lined avenue. They passed a bland building shadowed by a spire topped with an iron cross. Bern stared at the place. It confused him, architecturally. Apparently a Christian church. He had never really noticed Christian churches, but he thought they all had, as a matter of course, stained glass windows. The windows here were smudged and plain. While he stood, a nun appeared on the doorstep, the wings of her habit flapping like a gull’s. She looked like Natalie Wood. Her beauty stunned him. “Wouldn’t you like to join us for mass?” she said. With the force of a tsunami welling up from Eastern Europe, Bern blurted, “Shalom!” Laughing, his friends ran down the street. The young nun smiled at him. “Shalom,” she said. “May the Virgin be with you.” That night he dreamed of an Ashkenazi Miss Lizzie with Natalie Wood’s big eyes.