Who, Me?
Page 29
“Muerto. Pobrecito,” (Dead. Poor thing,) he answered, bowed his head for a moment, murmured some sort of prayer, blessing, something to himself, then surveying her, the scene, the reality of the scene, her inability to cope, and suddenly he went into action, “Quedate aqui y yo haré todo lo necessario.” (Stay here and I’ll do whatever is necessary.)
Wondering what was necessary, Police, an ambulance, passports, los documentos?
And then?
The light was going so quickly. The sky peppering with dark, the seeds of dark sprouting all around here, the park lights going on. Looking at the Honey Locust tree down below her with all its wealth of seedpods. If every one of them were planted and took root, in one year you’d have a whole forest of Honey Locusts.
Everything in the world so overdone, thousands of sperms, thousands of seeds, some insane divine vote in favor of an overabundance of life.
So, she thought, looking up and letting her mind question the darkening sky, so why limit us to seventy, eighty, ninety years . . . why should Galapagos turtles have three hundred years and we less than a hundred?
No answer. Not that she expected one.
But the sky seemed to always be speaking in ancient times.
AND I SAY UNTO YOU . . .
No one saying anything unto her at all.
Suddenly not caring, not even wanting an answer. Sitting down next to Richard, the body that had “contained” Richard, hoping that whatever Mr. Lopez with his silly little dog was going to do, that he’d do it fast, feeling the chill of night coming on now, thinking what a miracle it was for the little ball called Earth to contain an atmosphere that enabled it to produce afternoons the way this afternoon had been, surrounded by space that must have been (she didn’t know) hundreds of degrees below zero, which, she felt, was going to be the temperature of the rest of her life, however long or short that might be.
How about casting Jimmy Stewart in the title role? And Martha Scott as Pat? Or Donna Reed?
(Oops! Really dating myself here.)
But wouldn’t it be fun to be like my old pals Bill Blatty (The Exorcist) or Jim Cash (Top Gun) or Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles) for a change?
As if “making it” were eternity . . .
I should have learned by now, from the Atacama Desert, right? Not only the immensity of the universe, but the total transience of Man: the faces, personalities, lives of the people behind the spear-heads and arrow-heads—a skull here, a skull there—the earth as a gigantic cemetery, n’est pas?
Thanatopsis . . . Thanos . . . death . . .
Like Henry James said meditating at the grave of his brother, William James, after he’d come back to Boston after years and years in Europe, meditating, meditating, meditating . . .
Basta! Enough!