A Jest of God

by Margaret Laurence

  “It’s a crazy time of night to come down, Hector, but I’ve been so worried lately – about Mother – and I couldn’t sleep, and I saw your lights on, and –”

  My voice ends, and I’m standing here, tall as a shadow, transparent, shivering. Then I don’t care. Only one thing matters. Let me come in.

  “Let me come in.”

  That was my voice? That pridelessness? It doesn’t matter. Suddenly it doesn’t matter at all to me.

  Hector Jonas looks puzzled only for an instant. Then, with some decision to accept without question, some exercise of faith, he smiles as though everything were ordinary.

  “Sure. I know just what you mean. I’ve had insomnia myself the odd time. It’s murder. Come on in. I don’t believe you’ve seen the Chapel since I did the last renovations, have you, Rachel?”

  “No. I haven’t. I don’t think I’ve been in here since – oh, for a long time.”

  “Show you later,” Hector says. “Come in here for right now. You look kind of peaky. I think you need a drink.”

  The sign on the door says Private. The work-room. Now utterly changed since Niall Cameron’s day, when the green and blue glass bottles stood hunched together, unsorted and dis orderly on the long cabinet, when the dust furred the corners and windowsills, and when the book stood just there, among the cluttered paraphernalia and the cosmetics of death, a drab olive leather with the scarlet letter A, but in this case meaning Accounts, like the roll of Judgement. How can I remember? I couldn’t have been in here more than a couple of times in my entire life. He always said, when I hovered, “This is no place for you.” And I imagined then that it was the efficacy of the dead he feared for me, not knowing in what way they might grasp and hold me, and I wondered how he himself could stay among them, by what power, and I feared for him, too. For a long time, whenever she said “Your father’s not feeling well,” I thought that was why – because he’d caught something, a partial death, like a germ, from them.

  Now the place looks like a portion of a hospital. Glassed-in cases where the neat potions rest, and cabinets with the dull clean glow of stainless steel. On the one wall, a jazzy coat-rack arrangement, black metal tipped with plastic bulbs of red and yellow and blue. Two white doctor-jackets are hanging there, so that Hector can perform this aspect of his duties in a sanitary way.

  “Here –” he hands me the glass of rye and water, and beckons me to a chair, the only one.

  “Where’ll you sit, though, Hector?”

  “Oh, I’ll just perch here,” he says, going to the long high table, like an operating table, which stands in the middle of the room. He hops up like a dwarf, a kick of his short legs, and then he’s sitting there, his eyes owling down at me.

  “What’s the trouble, Rachel? Anything I can do?”

  “Oh no – it’s nothing, really. I suppose I’ve been under a kind of strain at school. And Mother’s health, you know –”

  “Mm,” he says, as though he disbelieves every word I’ve said.

  “Tell me about the business, Hector. You’ve improved things a lot.”

  He looks delighted. This is his pet topic, clearly. And yet he was willing to listen to anything I had to say. He would have heard me out.

  “Think so?” he says. “It’s all a question of presentation, that’s what I say. Presentation is All – that’s what I believe. Everybody knows a product has to be attractively packaged – it’s the first rule of sales – isn’t that so? Well, this is a little tricky in my line of trade, as you can well appreciate.”

  “Yes. Yes, I can see your difficulty.”

  “It’s not so much a difficulty as a challenge,” Hector says. “What you got to decide is – what am I selling? I mean, really, when it comes right down to it, in the final analysis – what am I selling?”

  “Death?”

  “Come, come,” he says disgustedly. “Who wants that?”

  “Well, a denial of death, then?”

  “Who can deny it?” Hector says practically. “It happens.”

  “That’s so. All right, I give up.”

  “Basically, I sell two things,” Hector says, holding up two fingers. “These are as follows. One: Relief. Two: Modified Prestige. That is where I am different from the other two funeral directors in this town. They don’t know what the hell they’re selling.”

  “Relief? Modified Prestige?”

  “You don’t get it?” he says happily. “Right. I’ll explain. You take the average person, now. What’s their first reaction when one of their loved ones kicks off? Can you tell me?”

  “Grief? Remorse? Sorrow?”

  “Sure, sure, but all that comes later. Their first reaction, take it from me, Rachel, is panic – what’ll we do with the body? Just like they’d murdered the guy. Or lady, as the case may be. The prime purpose of a funeral director is not all this beautician deal which some members of the profession go in for so much. No. It’s this – to take over. Reassure people. Leave it all to me. I’ll handle everything, from the hospital or home removal right down to the last car away from the cemetery. The family doesn’t have to worry about any of the details, see? Relief. You got to get this across to them. You take Calder’s Funeral Home, now, at the other end of town. He actually tells people how nice he can fix their dear ones up, and all that, and he goes through the coffin catalogues with them. Depressing, I call it. Of course it does have some appeal to the older type of person. It’s the old-fashioned approach. Some people still go for it. My clientele are mostly the more modern type of person. They want to know that everything’s been done properly, of course, but the less they have to do with it, the better.”

  “Death’s unmentionable?”

  “Not exactly unmentionable, but, let’s face it, most of us could get along without it.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  I’m laughing more than seems decent here in this place and yet I know it’s absurd to hold back, as though there were anything hushed or mysterious here.

  “Well, sure,” Hector says, nimbly bouncing down from the gruesomely hygienic table and re-filling my glass, a lot of whisky and a little water. “Sure, I get what you mean, but you take your average person, now. It’s simply nicer not to have to think about all that stuff.”

  “The skull beneath the skin?”

  “Well, you might put it that way, I guess. Relief, see? You can rest assured, I tell them, that every last detail will be taken care of. You don’t have to decide on a thing. I give them three price ranges, and after that, it’s out of their hands. None of this unpleasant business of having to dicker between oak or pine, or will it be velvet-lined or only nylon shining? A package deal is the answer to that.”

  “You have it all taped, Hector.”

  He gives me a hurt glance, his pudgy face reproachful.

  “I’m not callous,” he says. “But when all’s said and done, if you’re gonna stay in business, Rachel, you got to think businesslike.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply –”

  “Skip it,” Hector says, dangling his legs in their crumpled brown over the edge of the surgical table. “It’s okay.”

  “What about modified prestige?”

  How surprised I am at how easily I’m talking to him. Yet in all the years he’s been here, I couldn’t have carried on more than a dozen conversations with him, and those were mainly concerned with the terms of our tenancy, or repairs.

  “Oh, that,” Hector says. “Well, a death in the family puts you in the public eye, for the time being. People look at you, and notice what goes on. It doesn’t continue for very long, of course – that’s why Modified, see? But while it lasts, you got to consider it. Your average guy, now, will want his dear one to have a funeral about which people will pass some favourable comment. Everything went off well at the Dinglehoofer funeral, didn’t it? Floral arrangements looked very nice, didn’t you think? Stuff like that. So it’s got to be good taste, see, good taste all the way, with just that little ext
ra something to distinguish one from another – like, let’s say, wreaths of all-white gladioli, in season. Just some feature which people can spot and make some remark upon. Depending on price range, too, natch.”

  While Hector is talking, my eyes are searching the room, and yet this is senseless. Nothing is as it used to be, and there’s nothing left from then, nothing of him, not a clue.

  “Did you know my father, Hector?”

  “Sure, I knew him – you know that, Rachel. Not what you’d call well, but I knew him.”

  “He didn’t know what he was selling, did he?”

  Hector jumps down once more and scurries around, pouring us both more rye. I must go back upstairs. Yet I’m leaning forward, waiting for what Hector will say.

  “I don’t guess he ever really was selling anything,” he answers uncomfortably. “Don’t get me wrong, Rachel. He was a good guy, your dad. I thought the world of him. But not so much of a business head, was my impression. I could be wrong.”

  “No, you’re not wrong. Why do you think he stayed, Hector? Did he like them?”

  My voice has gone high and attenuated with some hurt I didn’t know was there. The one long-tubed light burns with a harsh whiteness. Everything is the same as it was a moment ago, and yet the room looks all at once different, a room set nowhere, the stage-set of a drama that never was enacted. The steel is stainless, stained with the fingerprints of shadows, and behind a glass barrier the bottles and flasks bear legends which never could be read. I am sitting here, bound by my light wrists which touch the dark arms of this chair, bound as though by wires which may become live. And on the high altar squats a dwarf I’ve never seen before.

  Rachel, Rachel. Get a grip on yourself. Hector is looking only mildly astounded.

  “You mean – did he like the stiffs?”

  I hope my face conveys my gratitude. Good for him, for me. Just what I needed, some astringency.

  “Yes. The stiffs.”

  “I wouldn’t have said that, exactly. It was a quiet life, though, and he liked being on his own. He wasn’t much of a man for company, was he, your dad?”

  I set my glass firmly down on the cabinet.

  “He drank because he was never happy.” I’m speaking aggressively, almost furiously. “That is why.”

  Hector’s eyes are lynx eyes, cat’s eyes, the green slanted cat’s eyes of glass marbles. Why is he looking so?

  “I don’t know that I’d entirely buy that one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing much. I never knew him well. I couldn’t really say. Look, don’t get me wrong. He probably did less harm than your average guy, I know that. But I would bet he had the kind of life he wanted most.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes.”

  Hector Jonas, who has for so long plied his trade below while I tried to live above. Comic prophet, dwarf seer. The life he wanted most. If my father had wanted otherwise, it would have been otherwise. Not necessarily better, but at least different. Did he ever try to alter it? Did I, with mine? Was that what he needed most, after all, not ever to have to touch any living thing? Was that why she came to life after he died?

  If it’s true he wanted that life the most, why mourn? Why ever cease from mourning?

  Hector Jonas leaps elastically down from the table like a small stout athlete from a trampoline.

  “I never showed you the new Chapel. C’mon. This way. Bring your glass along.”

  He grasps my hand, and I’m tugged zig-zag along a corridor, into the depths. Then a door. He opens it with a sweep and a fling, as though announcing the heaped and laden treasure of every pearled Sultan that never lived. But he’s forgotten the dark, so I can’t see even a gem of his riches. He gropes and swears.

  “Where’s that goddamn light? Excuse my French. Ah, here we are.”

  And there is light. The light is blue, of all things, and faint. The chapel in the blue light is as squarely shaped and unhaunted as it would be at high noon. The pews are blonde wood, of an extreme sheen, and at the front there is a platform of the same sleek blonde, the right height for placing the burden without undue strain on the pallbearers. I am astonished that there is no handy trolley or conveyor belt, but I don’t mean this meanly. I would have once, but now I’m almost gay here. On low tables at either side are set candelabra as many-branched as trees, and the wax tapers in them are violet and peppermint green. The walls are done in simulated pine, paper printed with wood knots.

  “I’d hate to tell you what it cost me,” Hector puffs, leading me like a bride up the aisle and taking a swig from his glass as he goes, “but it was worth every cent of it, if I do say so myself as shouldn’t. Look at that wood. Beautiful grain. Beautiful. Real veneer.”

  We reach the front, and I collapse on to the hard mourners’ bench where the family is meant to sit.

  “It’s lovely, Hector. I never knew you’d fixed it up so.”

  “Not bad, eh?” he says, gratified. “Of course, not everyone wants the service here, but more and more do. Church funerals are going out.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “Too harrowing,” Hector says, sitting beside me. “Tend to bring up all kinds of things – heaven, hell, stuff like that. Great strain on the nerves of the bereaved. If you believe, it’s a great strain, and if you don’t believe, it’s even worse. However you look at it, it’s a real ordeal. That’s why people like this place. Tasteful, and the service is short.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “I must show you,” Hector says, his voice now beaming, “I got a really super-dooper automatic organ.”

  Daftly, horrifyingly, I want to say – how splendid for you, and I hope your wife appreciates it. Once at college I heard a joke about an angel who traded his harp for an upright organ. I’d like to tell this to Hector. Naturally I won’t. Rachel Cameron doesn’t talk that way.

  “It’s there, see?”

  He points, and now I see the giant out-fanned music pipes, extending in a vast screen along the front wall. Each pipe is a different height, and at the top they are painted to resemble Corinthian columns.

  “It plays several things,” Hector explains. “We got Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring for – well, you know –”

  “The carriage trade.”

  “Yeh, that’s it. Some people wouldn’t know Bach from the Basin Street Blues. I wouldn’t, myself, matter of fact. But they think it’s very dignified and serious-minded, so we get quite a run on it. I won’t play that for you, though. I’ll play my favourite.”

  “My God, Hector, you can’t play that thing at this hour of night!”

  “Don’t you fret, Rachel,” he says. “It’s got three tones, and when it’s on Soft, it’s really soft and I don’t mean maybe. I can positively guarantee you it won’t be loud enough to wake the living, ha ha.”

  With that, he’s off, searching for levers to press, magical buttons to touch. He darts back, stations himself again, and slides an arm around my shoulder. I don’t protest or move away. I don’t care. We sit together on the glossy bench in the bleak blue light, and it’s gone three in the morning. Then the music rises, slowly.

  There is a happy land

  Far far away –

  “What d’you think of it, Rachel?”

  “Marvellous. I think it’s the most marvellous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Every word. Truly.”

  “My gosh,” Hector says. “Think of that.”

  Where saints and angels stand

  Bright, bright as day –

  The blue light, and the chapel purged of all spirit, all spirits except the rye, and the sombre flashiness, and the terribly moving corniness of that hymn, and the hour, and the strangeness, and the plump well-meaning arm across my shoulders, and the changes in every place that go on without our knowing, and the fact that there is nothing here for me except what is here now –

  “Rachel – g
ood Christ, are you crying?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. I’m – I’ve had a certain amount of trouble, this past while.”

  Hector is patting my shoulder, and making clucking noises deep in his throat.

  “There, there. Never mind. It’ll be all right.”

  I don’t deserve such comfort. Tomorrow I’ll be ashamed. But not now.

  “Listen,” he is saying. “I don’t know why I should say this, but you know what happens to me? At the crucial moment, my wife laughs. She says she can’t help it – I look funny. Well, shit, I know she can’t help it, but –”

  I look into his face then, and for an instant see him living there behind his eyes.

  “That’s –”

  “Yeh, well there it is. Who would have thought it, you and me talking away like this? You better go on upstairs now, chickadee, or you’ll be a dead duck.”

  “Yes.” I stand up, pull myself together, gather the fragments. “I’m – look, I’m sorry I came down, Hector. I don’t know why – I don’t know what I was thinking of –”

  Go on, Rachel. Apologize. Go on apologizing for ever, go on until nothing of you is left. Is that what you want the most?

  “No – listen, Hector – what I mean is, thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he says. “The pleasure was all mine.”

  The music is paling. The mechanism has almost run its course. The tune is wry in the cold chapel, gapped with silences.

  There is a – far far away – where saints and –

  bright, bright as –

  The carpeted stairs have to be climbed one at a time, only one. If she wakens, all I have to say is hush. Hush, now, sh, it’s all right, go to sleep now, never fear, it’s nothing.

  EIGHT

  His parents have come back. They came back a week ago and now I haven’t seen him for a week. I saw him almost every night while they were away. No – that’s not quite true. Out of fourteen evenings, I was with him for eight. But anyway, that was more than half. And now I haven’t seen him for a week. What did I say? What did I do or not do, to put him off?