The Truth About Death

by Robert Hellenga

  “Yes and no. They didn’t trust them, but they gathered on the green to watch the juggling and tumbling and to listen to talk of life at the king’s court and songs of faraway lands.”

  Julian waited for another question. He looked at Sara.

  “Well, what happened?”

  Not much to go on. “One of the minstrels …” He trailed off, but then continued. “One of the minstrels was the favorite of Seremonda and Duva. His name was Joachim, and he was more reckless and gay than the rest. He was the last to arrive in the fall, dressed as a she-wolf, and he was the first to disappear into the forest in the spring. ‘Ich am of Faerielonde,’ he sang to the villagers, plucking a lute made of seven different kinds of polished wood and strung with gold and silver strings that glistened in the firelight.

  “Ich am of Faerielonde

  And of the holy londe

  of Faerielonde.

  Good sirs, pray ich thee,

  Come and dance with me

  in Faerielonde.”

  Julian half sang, half chanted, improvising a melody. He summoned the villagers into a ring, children, parents, grandparents. They danced to Joachim’s music, some of them, like the schoolmaster, against their will. Seremonda waited for the schoolmaster’s son, the first love of her heart; but Duva, who lay close to Julian’s heart, was the first to join the magic circle. And when the dancing was over, and Joachim disappeared into the darkness, Duva went with him; and Julian knew that wherever her road led her that night, he could never call her back.

  “By the time they reached the edge of the forest they could hear the villagers calling after them; but soon their cries became indistinguishable from the cries of the waterbirds nesting along the banks of the river.”

  “What about Seremonda?” Sara asked. “Doesn’t she go too?”

  It was her story too, of course; but she didn’t suit Julian’s present purpose.

  “Just listen, will you? You always want to know everything in advance. They stopped to rest for a while—okay?—when they got to the river. They could hear the alarm bell tolling in the distance, but Joachim knew that the villagers wouldn’t pursue them into the forest at night. Pretty soon, though, they heard footsteps; not the clatter of heavy boots on the cracked paving stones, but the slap of small shoes.”

  “Oh, Papa.”

  Hannah smiled. She was lying on her side, one hand on Julian’s. Father Neumiller grunted in the back of the room and began to fiddle with his briefcase.

  “Was it Seremonda?”

  “Of course. But do you know what? Joachim was very angry with her. He said that she was too old to come with them, that she would be unhappy; but she wouldn’t go home, so they slept on beds of leaves and pine needles and breakfasted on nuts and berries before setting off through the forest, following the course of the river as it curved toward the east.”

  Father Neumiller’s scowling face emerged into the light. He offered a hip flask to Julian. Julian took a swallow and gave the bottle to Hannah. Cheap brandy. He wanted her to sleep before the doctor returned. She dribbled the brandy down her front. Julian dabbed at it with a Kleenex, and then he brought the minstrel and the children to the far side of the forest, where there was a great gate and gatekeeper who thrust his lantern in their faces. “ ‘What have we here?’ growled the gatekeeper when he saw Seremonda. ‘You minstrels have no mercy.’ But he gave them chunks of bread, which they toasted at an open fire, and cups of hot wine, which they stirred with cinnamon sticks. On the far side of the river rose the Mountain of Lights.

  “The children clapped their hands,” said Julian, clapping his own, “and watched in wonder as the lights that gave the mountain its name began to appear, blue-white and amber, flickering like candle flames, whole constellations of lights dancing in the dark as if the stars themselves were dancing in the deep dome of heaven.”

  He added a song, which Joachim sang as he escorted the children over a bridge spanning a steep chasm:

  “Love of a distant country,

  My whole heart aches for you;

  O children, more beautiful than the stars,

  Lights on the mountain,

  The fields are harvested, the woods are hewn,

  By those who never return.”

  The mountain itself seemed to take up the song with a thousand echoing voices.

  “No one grew older in that land, and the four seasons were at the command of the children, who swam in summer, and sprang in spring, and fell in fall, tumbling down the mountain like rockslides.”

  Where am I now? wondered Julian. Given enough time, he thought, it would be possible to work out the metaphysical details, to reconcile discrepancies. But there was no time. Tears had begun to sparkle in the corners of Hannah’s eyes; Sara was shuffling her feet; Father Neumiller would soon be drunk and loquacious. And in the doorway stood the doctor, gently squeezing a hypodermic needle in his huge hand. A drop of clear liquid ran down the silver shaft of the needle and caught the lamplight as it fell, like a tear, or a star.

  “On the west slope,” said Julian, turning back to Hannah, “the children wondered about the wide world beyond the forest, which they could see from the very top of the mountain, where they danced on holy days at night, carrying little torches.” So much for the lights.

  Father Neumiller’s hand reached out of the darkness and caught the doctor’s arm. “Let him finish.”

  “I told you not to undo her,” said the doctor, but his voice was tired rather than angry.

  Julian held up his hand, palm out, motioning the doctor to be silent. Hannah was lying perfectly still. Julian filled the high halls that honeycombed the mountain with the music of sackbuts and shams, rebels and krumhorns, lutes and tournebouts. He set Duva a-dancing in courtyards overlooking orchards and vineyards and green gardens laid out in neat rows and watered by mountain springs like the garden of Alcinöos. But he hung the songs of the minstrels like heavy weights on the heart of Seremonda. He was clearing a path for her return.

  “She grew pale and did not dance with the rest but sat apart in inglenooks, in silence and shadow, in fire and fleet and candlelight. Joachim did what he could to comfort her with counsel and cheer, marvels and magic, pranks and presents. He brought her a pear-shaped lute with seven pairs of gold and silver strings and taught her to play, to bind sadness in song; and soon she was strumming stately sarabands, plucking proud pavanes. The other children gathered round her, and Duva led the dancing. Seremonda’s heart grew whole, but she did not forget the wide world in the west, her heart’s home, and the schoolmaster’s son, the first love of her heart, and a terrible longing seized her, the same longing that sent the minstrels migrating like birds back to the wide world and beyond. When they began to gather in groups, talking of travel to faraway lands, she asked Joachim if she and Duva might not go too.

  “ ‘You shall come with me,’ he said, ‘for love calls you back to the things of the world.’ ”

  Alas, thought Julian, for Duva must stay behind; “But Joachim said, ‘Duva will not wish to leave the mountain.’ ” And indeed nothing would persuade her to return. Seremonda became quite cross with her, but to no avail.

  It suddenly occurred to Julian that she might travel farther east. They might all meet at the king’s court in the west. The world is round, after all. But he let the opportunity slip through his fingers. Duva remained on the mountain. Joachim and Seremonda departed, dressed as wild animals, keeping the river on their right.

  “Seremonda forgot the sharp pain of parting as she drew nearer and nearer to her old home, which they reached on the third day at nightfall. They drew the villagers into a circle. ‘Ich am of Faerielonde,’ Joachim sang, and Seremonda plucked the gold and silver strings of her pear-shaped lute. One by one the children joined the dance, followed by their parents. Seremonda’s mother and father joined hands with the rest, and the schoolmaster’s son too, the first love of her heart. The priest blessed them reluctantly before stepping into the magic circle. Only the scho
olmaster remained in the darkness. But Seremonda joined her voice, high and clear, with Joachim’s till the schoolmaster too stepped forward into the warm glow of the firelight.

  “Only a few embers were glowing in the dark when the dancers, released at last from the spell of the music, looked round at one another, astonished at the fullness of their hearts, while above them, turning on the silent axletree of Heaven, Boötes the herdsman followed his flocks across the pastures of the sky.” Enough, enough. Julian looked around him at the circle of listeners.

  Sara was the first to break the silence. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  The doctor stepped forward.

  “She’s asleep,” said Julian. “What do we do now?”

  Father Neumiller offered the flask, nearly empty, to the doctor. “Have a drink of this.”

  “Thanks.”

  The doctor finished the brandy. He pointed the hypodermic into the air and squeezed firmly. A fine spray hung in the light for a moment over the lamp, like the Milky Way, and then went out.

  “Amen,” said the priest.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes?”

  “What about Duva?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake.”

  “It’s just a story, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s just a story.”

  POCKETS OF SILENCE

  Shortly before she died my mother made a tape for us, several tapes. She had some things she wanted to say, big things, little things. It was kind of a mystery. I mean, I don’t think she had any big secret sins to confess—her sins always rose to the surface right away—so what could she possibly have to say that she hadn’t said, or couldn’t say to our faces? After all, we weren’t one of those families that couldn’t talk to each other or express our emotions. If anything, we were at the other end of the spectrum.

  “I just want to be able to say things as they occur to me. I don’t want to have to call you. So many things come to me during the day, and at night too, especially at night; so many happy memories—some unhappy ones too—but mostly happy. I want you to have a record of that. So many things to say to each one of you, and all of you.”

  So Papa set up a tape recorder by the bed. An amateur musician, he had lots of recording equipment and made quite a production out of it.

  “Why don’t you just get me one of those little cassette recorders?” Mama asked; but Papa had to do things in a big way. He set up his four-track tape recorder on the stand next to the bed where Mama kept her medication. He bought two new low-impedance microphones and tried out every possible permutation of microphone locations and settings on the tape recorder. It was his way of working off some of his frustration.

  “Testing, one two three four testing. Now you do it.”

  But Mama didn’t want to do it. “I feel like I’m onstage, on the radio.” One mike was on a boom that swung over the bed. “I want this to be private.”

  “Testing, one two three four testing.”

  And the tape recorder would repeat, “Testing, one two three four testing.”

  The finishing touch was a remote punch in/out switch that Mama could keep on the bed beside her so she wouldn’t have to twist around to start and stop the recorder. All she had to do was punch a button.

  “I’ve always wanted one of these anyway,” Papa said. “That’s how professionals correct their mistakes. If you’ve got a sour note, you just play along with the tape, and when you get to the sour note, you punch in and then out and it records right over it.”

  Once Papa had everything in place Mama felt better. She had an object in her life, what remained of it. A mission. Something to be accomplished. Something that could not have been accomplished under any other circumstances: the recording of a happy and productive and sometimes turbulent life under the pressure of death. Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance; what was unimportant would recede into the shadows.

  Mama kept the tapes right on the bed. She didn’t want us to listen to them while she was still alive. But during the long summer afternoons we could hear the tape recorder clicking on and off. Sometimes, if I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I’d hear the familiar click and put my ear to her door, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying, only the faint murmur of her weakened voice.

  She filled up half a dozen seven-inch tapes. Seven hours. And when she’d said what she had to say, she stopped talking. A week later she died, and ever since her death the house has seemed strangely silent, even when Papa was playing his guitar and we were all singing.

  It was over three years before we worked up the courage to listen to the tapes, which had been stored on a shelf in the dining room closet next to the Waterford crystal that we never used anymore. When I say “courage” I don’t mean that we were afraid of what we might hear; I mean we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to bear it, especially during the holidays. But we’d had a wonderful Christmas, and we were feeling strong. Papa had suffered some business losses, but things were looking up; I was a senior at Kenwood High School and would be following my sisters to the U of C, which everyone said was just as good as Harvard and (more important) close to home. Molly was in graduate school at the University of Michigan, Mama’s alma mater. Meg had married and was expecting, and her husband, Dan, was just perfect. Handsome, romantic, practical, talented. Papa had been teaching him to play the harmonica and he learned so quickly that they’d made a tape together—Papa on the guitar, Dan on the harp, Meg and Molly singing the blues songs that had embarrassed us as children, and that still embarrassed me:

  Mr. Jelly Roll Baker

  let me be your slave

  when Gabriel blows his trumpet

  you know I’ll rise from my grave

  for some of your jelly

  some of your good jelly roll

  you know it’s doin’ me good

  way down deep in my soul.

  It was New Year’s Day. Meg and Dan would be driving back to Milwaukee that afternoon. Molly would be at home with Papa and me for another couple of days before going back to school. It just seemed like the right time, and I don’t think anyone was surprised when Meg brought one of the tapes into the living room, holding it tight against her big swelling belly.

  Papa got up and without a word began to thread the tape; Meg poked a couple sticks of kindling under the smoldering logs in the fireplace and then sat down next to Dan at the piano and filled up the silence with a chorus of “Fum, Fum, Fum,” Mama’s favorite carol: A venti-cinq de dicembre, fum fum fum. Molly and I were sitting at opposite ends of the couch, the bottoms of our bare feet pressed together.

  Papa switched on the tape recorder and there was a moment of silence so intense that the dogs, snoozing in front of the fire, perked up their ears. (If Mama had been there she’d have made them lie down on their own rug under the piano.) Papa hurried across the room and into his chair.

  I suppose we each brought different questions to that moment, even Dan, who had never met Mama, but who’d heard enough about her, and maybe we were in fact a little apprehensive. What was going to emerge as truly important? What was going to recede into the shadows?

  I didn’t know what the others were thinking, but I was wondering about the Italian novelist—a visiting writer at the University—that Mama’d had an affair with. I knew that Mama had misbehaved, but no one had ever explained to me exactly what had happened, and I was still curious because I couldn’t fit it into the picture I had of our family. Papa and Mama had had plenty of differences, which they never bothered to conceal from us; but on the whole our family life had been shaped by the love they’d felt for each other and expressed, physically, all the time. Neither one had been able to walk by the other without giving a little pat on the backside, and they had always taken naps when they couldn’t possibly have been tired. So where did Alessandro Postiglione fit into the picture? Was he one of those things that was goin
g to assume its true importance? Or was he going to recede into the shadows? I didn’t know why it seemed so important; but it did.

  We waited, and then waited some more. Papa got out of his chair and made some adjustments. Still no sound. He ran the tape forward for a few seconds and tried again. Still nothing. The big reels turned in silence. Papa ran the tape forward again. Nothing. He turned it over and tried the other side. Still nothing. Meg got up and brought the rest of the tapes from the dining room closet. They were all clearly labeled: HELEN’S TAPE-AUGUST 15–16, 1968. HELEN’S TAPE-AUGUST 17–18, 1968. HELEN’S TAPE-AUGUST 19–22, 1968. And so on. Papa tried one after another, but there was no sound.

  I’d never seen Papa—or any adult for that matter—really lose control before. It didn’t happen all at once, but you could hear it coming. He spent the rest of the day at the tape recorder, trying this and then that. If you’ve ever hooked up a sophisticated stereo system you’ll know that in cases like this there’s usually some button that needs to be pushed, or a knob that needs to be turned, or a patch cord that’s plugged into the wrong hole. It’s as simple as that. But Papa exhausted all the possibilities. The rest of us, sitting in the kitchen, could hear him cursing softly, nonstop. Occasionally there was a blast of sound as he tried some other tape, or turned on the tuner, but he couldn’t coax any sound out of Mama’s tapes, and finally he cracked. He didn’t break anything; he just started screaming—shouting, swearing as loud as he could—and then he started to cry, really cry, huge rattling sobs as he stumbled up the stairs.

  Meg and Dan left for Milwaukee at about three. Dan had to go back to work the next morning. Molly and I emptied the dishwasher and filled it again and washed the dishes that wouldn’t fit in the second load. We put the turkey carcass in the stockpot and covered it with water. Molly scrubbed down the butcher’s table with bleach, the way Mama used to do, while I put the spices back in alphabetical order. And then we took all the jars and lids out of the closet in the butler’s pantry and matched them up. It was like trying to match up socks; there were a lot of odd jars and a lot of odd lids left over.