by Julia Holmes
Don't say another word, Mother! Mother, do not speak another word!
Sunlight crept up the sides of the buildings along the grand avenue, their enormous shadows were cool, dark blue pools . . . inviting. I pressed my forehead against the park gate. I used to spend hours just like this, leaning against the bars of the gate, waiting for women to pass so that I could pretend to mistake them for my mother. I hadn't been on the grand avenue in many years, per Bedge's orders, but when I was young, Mother and I made the trip together once or twice. The man in the black jacket would take us, out of the park and into the wilderness. Throughout the city in those days, new buildings, both homely and spectacular, were springing up everywhere, all cut from the same gray rock, the strong, desirable stone mined from the Enemy's Territory. Who could imagine a world without buildings, regular as mountains, gray and brown, always frowning in the distance. But they were once rare and rarely seen, and one had to wade through a world dense with trees. The man in the black jacket dug in his pocket. He handed me one of the city mints, and he took one for himself. I popped the mint into my mouth, prepared for its unpleasantly medicinal taste; though I was a small boy, I had already acquired a taste for the city mints. Mother stood beside me, holding my hand.
The man in the black jacket pointed to an immense building still under construction and said, My masterpiece! I clicked the hard mint thoughtfully against my teeth. As we watched from the opposite side of the street, workers ascended their ropes. The man in the black jacket pointed here and there, explaining everything to my mother and me. Mother had already explained to me that there were people in this world who lived in the tiny houses crushed together on irregular plots, and there were the people with more staircases than they knew what to do with, and then there were people like us, who preferred to spend their lives outside. (As a girl, my mother had watched her own parents being crushed to death by the little house they had grown to love and trust.)
The man in the black jacket pointed toward the heavens. Watch this, he said. Dangling high above the street, the workers pulled on their thick leather gloves and attacked the rock with everything they had: chisels, drills, hammers.
These are just finishing touches, said the man in the black jacket contentedly.
Soon the building would glow with the mysterious light I often observed from the park. I imagined the smell of roasted meat drifting out past the workers and into the open sky as the building came to life beneath their hands; on a narrow table by the window, I pictured a man's crisp white handkerchief . . . imagined the gentle, water-soft scent of apples ripening in a bowl in the open air, then the racket of keys and coins thrown onto a little plate by the door. (When a man comes home, he empties his pockets onto a little plate.) I'm home! he shouts deep into the building, and then there are the happy sounds of human life. A woman's voice—very quiet, very LOUD, very quiet, very LOUD—makes the man laugh, or sometimes it makes his blood boil.
My heart swelled with longing for an intimate study of this kind of scene, for closer quartering with these elusive beings. I considered that these workers must be artists, artists who broke through relentlessly to the human happiness that was sleeping in the rock as honey sleeps beneath the pollen-dusted, warm bees, and through their work the buildings were converted from unremarkable gray blocks of stone into living things. I looked up at my mother.
These buildings are alive! I said. Like trees. She cut me an angry look and tightened her grip painfully on my hand. They are not at all like trees, she said sternly. Trees are living things. She knelt beside me and whispered into my ear, These buildings are graves, and these men gravediggers.
Mother, of course, made quite an impression on me.
As we walked back toward the park that day, the man in the black jacket and my mother talked about various construction techniques that he hoped to refine, others he hoped to eliminate entirely. We walked along the big bland avenue, smooth and cool in the shadows of the buildings. People coursed in and out of the buildings, and my chest tightened with fear for those who were about to go in, and I sighed with relief for those who had just egressed . . . the undead, the walking dead, suddenly back on the crowded streets with us. I held my mother's hand and tried to imagine us entombed in one of the inside rooms—her chopping fruit on a piece of hardwood, me at the window shouting for help.
The man in the black jacket walked with us and spoke to my mother in low tones. I listened to my own thoughts, tried to memorize his smell: ghostly pipe smoke and sweet buttery soap. People nodded politely at him as we passed. Up and down the street, I noted configurations that resembled ours—children walking hand-in-hand with adults. I contemplated reaching out casually with my free hand to take the hand of the man in the black jacket, but just then, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Why was my mother spending so much of her time—time we might have been spending together—with someone involved in such an unsavory enterprise, one of which she clearly disapproved?
When she returned from her afternoons with the man in the black jacket, usually bearing some little gift for me, some apples or a little knife or a warm scarf, she was given to solemn, distracted, almost mystical conversation. I gave her my full attention. I listened carefully, tried to glean the important lesson, but the less I understood, the more her voice seemed pure and urgent . . . the indisputable sound of my mother speaking to the universe and me, as if we were one and the same: You will never suffer as I have suffered, and she would take my hand in one of her broad, strong hands.
I was standing in front of the still-grand building, the man in the black jacket's masterpiece, and daydreaming about the past, when I realized that quite a few people had gathered and were eyeing me uncomfortably. I nodded reassuringly—I wasn't there to arrest anyone. Finally, I raised my voice: Disperse, disperse! But they stood and stared, and as they stared I felt an old pressure building in my brain. I heard the flutter of black wings, the spectators and I turned to look up the street: the Brothers of Mercy were coming. As sinless as children, they smelled like children, as they wrestled me effortlessly to the ground and then hoisted me into the air. I kicked and shouted, I screamed Bedge's name. They were hustling me toward the river as if I were an infected corpse from the Age of Plagues, and when we reached the city dump behind the old prison, they hurled me onto the garbage heap with all their strength and turned back toward the city, their black garments whipping in the wind, and then they were gone.
But I was soon surrounded again—a group of career garbagemen made their ominous circle around me.
Brothers, I said, watching them carefully as I sat up and made a show of straightening my policeman's cap. They stared, blew smoke. One of them stabbed his garbage-stabber absentmindedly into the earth. Another coughed violently into his collar, startling birds into the air. The sky was inking up with birds, clouds of black-winged birds, the low grumbling heavens, the oily silken rustling: I felt sick. General conditions can change without warning: in one moment, the world hangs in the brain, fond and familiar as a painting of one's own, and in the next, garbagemen rip you from your dreams and filthy birds are cutting the face of day with their vectors. I could hear a train in the distance, departing for the Sheds.
I'm a policeman, I said unsteadily, and stood, backing away from the garbagemen—so long as I stayed moving, however slowly, I wasn't in their jurisdiction, and they knew it.
The city dump, which I had never visited, was a revelation—I wandered the heaps of refuse, steering clear of the workers who were raking trash from pile to pile. What a wealth to be found! I found some fresh canvas with which to line my boots—I wondered if I might find the incomparable gold of new warm boots hidden in one of the piles.
But I was distracted by the unpleasant odor of the Brothers of Mercy, which was all over my jacket. I went to a hidden spot along the riverbank and dunked my jacket into the oil-slicked and scummy water that pooled between the rocks. I removed my jacket only when exchanging it for a new one, and
it seemed to me I'd had this one for several years. I squeezed the black water from it then slapped it clumsily against a rock, just as I'd seen the laundrymen do, all of my life in the park.
* * * *
Ben
He had spent the day with the tailor, consumed three pots of the old man's acrid, watery tea, eaten an entire tin of stale cookies, and grinned numbly through hours of ancient, endless, looping tales ("In those days, Ben, they called us clothmen . . .") only to lose his nerve when the tailor asked if there was anything he needed. “I'm fine,” he'd said. “Doing well, thanks,” and made a point of misbuttoning his black jacket, as if to politely contradict himself.
On his way back to the Bachelor House, Ben cut through the park, joining the evening drift of families headed for home, their frustrations domesticated by the sheer elemental force of a beautiful, perfect day. The shadows grew long; bachelors and young women hurried in the opposite direction, out for the night. He could smell the cologne and cedar soap of bachelors’ best intentions; the women left him in a wake of cool perfume.
Ben climbed the stairs to his room, impatient to be free of the black suit, to fall across his narrow bed and sleep and sleep and sleep. He kicked off his boots and saw that the other bachelor's door was open—he froze in horror. He was probably bound by law to say hello. The gap between the door and frame glowed with obligating light, but he wanted only to lie down and to think—think clearly—about things. He crept past the door toward bed.
"Hello?” Snared! There's no escape from a friendly greeting. “Hello?” the voice said again.
The bachelor was sitting on the floor, his pale pants rolled up to his knees. He was painting his ankles with a fine-haired brush. On his left leg was a pair of old-fashioned ships carving through blue swells. The right leg was the site of a conflict between two armies, one massive and clumped on a ridge, the other undermanned and dispersed, scattering into the pine shadows to escape a hail of bullets. Ben recognized the famous battle immediately. The bachelor painted. Ben watched uncomfortably from the door. The bachelor's hair was uncivilized, his lips tannin-dark with wine (a bottle stood nearby). He was gaunt, intent; he shifted his gaze and stared at Ben.
Ben stared back, frowning slightly. The bachelor studied Ben's suit. “My mother,” said Ben quickly.
"I'm very sorry,” said the bachelor and put down his paintbrush.
"I'm Ben,” said Ben.
"Finton,” said Finton.
Ben laughed nervously. “They reassigned my mother's house while I was away, so . . ."
Finton's room was pleasantly dark, dark with hardwoods and two walls of old books. The window stood open, admitting the evening air. The drawings pinned on the far wall lifted occasionally in a breeze. Ben edged between Finton's bed and a piano that took up nearly a quarter of the room to study one of the drawings—a man despairing on a black island observed by three skeletal horses; the mast of a wrecked ship piercing the surface of the dark green sea.
"It's a self-portrait,” said Finton. “Marooned, as it were."
Ben thought of his paintings across the hall. “I paint,” he said apologetically.
"Really?"
"I guess I'm interested in repetition, not the epic sweep."
"It's all the same,” said Finton.
"But these are so good you could work for the city."
"Why would I want to do that?"
The awkward silence descended again; Finton looked relaxed, almost bored. Ben rested a hand on the piano.
"Would you like me to play something?” asked Finton.
"I could listen to a short piece."
"Is that what you want?"
"Of course,” said Ben, feeling trapped.
Finton directed him to the armchair in the opposite corner. The arms of the antique chair were of carved mahogany, the seat and back upholstered in rich green velvet. “This is nice,” said Ben, taking a seat.
Finton bowed slightly. “It is yours to occupy any hour of the day."
Ben smiled shyly. It was an unbelievably comfortable chair. Finton began to play. The walls of the room had been painted a dark, deep green, Finton's drawings hung in gallery columns. The oiled-wood desk, Finton's neatly hanging sweater, his corduroy slippers, the stamped spines of his books. Ben started to feel better. The open window let in the evening breeze, the scent of rosemary and lavender growing in the window box came and went. Finton played one of the classical movements, music borne of the days that preceded them, the heartbreaking times that had preceded them, days so dense with tragedy that they might live five hundred of these easy years yet never understand.
Ben studied a photograph propped on the windowsill. Finton standing in a beautiful pale suit, his polished shoes smooth as black stones in the bright, short grass. Finton held a rifle casually in his right hand, the barrel angled at the green earth. Ben could see the shapes of other men in the background.
"Where's this?"
Finton continued to play. “Afternoon hunt. Listening Party."
"You've been to a Listening Party?"
"Last of the season. The very best."
"And you didn't . . . you didn't find a wife?"
"Nope."
Ben sat in worried silence. Even a stone can find love at a Listening Party. A man lucky enough to make the guest list might easily relax into the conviction that he was as good as married.
"Don't worry,” said Finton. “I didn't want to meet any-one, but I'm sure you will."
Ben stared at the photograph, suddenly desired a change of subject. A pair of patrolling boots stood in the corner. “Were you a soldier?"
"Ancient history,” said Finton. “So was my father, and his father, and so on. I thought I'd learn something interesting."
"Me, too."
"All we ever did was play cards in the mud and make ourselves crazy, listening, listening, listening. . . ."
"Where were you?"
"Upper Ridge Patrol."
"Me, too. Like my father. But after Upper Ridge, he volunteered for Advance Coastal."
"Highest casualties."
"He went down with his ship."
"Fathers,” said Finton, as if in disbelief, and shook his head.
"And did yours . . . ?"
"Come back? He did. And in exchange for his service, he was offered the vaunted post of Dog Inspector, for life. Uncomplaining to the end, he spent his final years in close communion with the balls of dogs, the best balls of the best dogs—policemen's dogs. Cheek and jowl!” said Finton and laughed, which struck Ben as inappropriate under the circumstances (the discussion of the memory of one's own father), but he was in no mood to argue with a new friend. He watched Finton's back as he played. One way or another, he would soon have a fine pale suit. He imagined himself standing in Finton's room, buttoning and unbuttoning a beautiful jacket. “What do you think?” he might ask. “Very sharp,” Finton would answer sagely, looking up from one of his books.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Father's Tale, Part 1
The world was once pure: animals tilted their perfectly formed heads to listen to the workings of the great clock, the churn of the crystalline waters over the sunlit rocks. All was well. Then a twig snapped. Something was coming. It was I. I was traveling in my characteristic way: lumbering, unstoppable, crashing through the fragile woods.
We had been on patrol all summer without encountering any sign of the enemy, much less the Enemy himself, and I had come almost to enjoy our missions along the Upper Ridge, from which we had command of the entire countryside, the broad black harbor fading into open sea at one end and contracting into the fat vein of the city port at the other. We marched in silence. I wandered among my own thoughts. I was thinking about the gloomy lane of old poplars that lead to my grandfather's house, the rusted iron pots that hung ominously from the ceiling—my senses took note of the contrasting lightness of our combat-issue tin cups, the clatter of them bouncing on our packs as we trudged al
ong the ridge without stealth (another memory rescued by association!). If Ben has a son of his own one day, I'll take my turn at playing the wild-haired old man living in a shack outside the city, obsessing over the Enemy, hoarding food against the Enemy, sorting bullet casings in the pitch black of cabin night, waiting for the Enemy to come at last, just as my own grandfather did.
The river slogged far below us and out toward sea. To think that I had spent most of my life in the city gazing across the water to this very spot, contemplating the silhouettes of these major and then-distant trees: the tall pine shadows planted in ruthless lines long ago by the settlers—those mysterious beloveds, those incomparable villains. Who were they, who were they?
"Ah, who are you talking to?” someone called out.
"No one,” I answered immediately.
"You looked like you were talking to someone,” said my fellow soldier, smirking.
"Just thinking,” I said. “You should try it sometime."
We lashed things more tightly to our packs and marched on—I went back to the life-saving slog of remembering. My father brought his father to our house every Sunday for dinner. My grandfather swore that his wife, my grandmother, whom he had always disdained as a “deep thinker,” had chosen to retire early to the Sheds. My mother regarded him coldly, politely, as he spun his lies; she kept his glass full of the rancid gum liquor he loved, and he was soon fumigating my face with his tirades against the Enemy, whose men were “as lithe as cats” and whose women were “as brawny as men.” He leered at me, listing in his chair: “Now, listen. This is serious. There you are—finger on the trigger—facing the Enemy. But, wait—what are you going to do? ‘Cause, is it a man or a woman? What do you think?” I would stare silently into the food on my plate, brace myself for what the old menace would forge next in the furnace of his rotten mouth, into which he loved to shove the hot plum and cream my mother brought to him. “And, see, that's just it—why are you thinking? Don't think, Son. Just shoot it.” I touched the handle of my knife, intending to kill him with it when I was bigger and stronger.