Wide World In Celebration and Sorrow

by Leon Rooke

  The mourners at Heidegger’s funeral set out a cage, filling it with food, to lure the bird. The eagle gave the receptacle a contemptuous glance, then craned its neck to include everyone. It next spread what all agreed were gigantic wings, and flew to a high limb, straightaway, powerfully, despite its age. As it flew, those on the ground watching it were struck with a strange notion: this frightful fowl was a mythological creature. None knew how they knew this: the truth just came to them, and to all simultaneously. Nor was it here out of respect for the philosopher, no matter how tall he stood among other philosophers or how high his stature in the world. One by one they drifted back from the hole in the earth into which their luminous philosopher was to be interred. If they would be a part of these proceedings at all, they would be so from afar. From the safety of distant headstones, the slopes of adjoining fields. Better yet, delay the services until tomorrow, when perhaps the eagle chicken would be gone. Why wouldn’t it go? Poles always went home sooner or later.

  The animal kingdom was not a kingdom revered by the master, as was clear from his opus. Chickens, for God’s sake, did not think. Perhaps not even mythological ones. If you wrung this bird’s neck, it would thrash about on the grass for a good while, but these convulsions did not signify thought. Moreover, while the bird might indeed be the world’s oldest bird, while it perhaps might be regarded as the essence of bird, of chicken elevated to its highest plateau, as the master himself had said, To raise the question is to leave the question. To answer the question is to have departed from the question as well as the self that responded to the inquiry. Thus does the present ever awaken the future, and thus is the question’s answer of no significance. The essence of being is the not-yet being. Presumably, this applies to the bird as well, whether or not it is mythological. Basic phenomenological epistemology may deduce no otherwise.

  Through all of this dialogue, the bird sat at roost in the bough of its high tree, chuckling. Discourse on such a plane had ever lifted his spirits. The search for truth, the bird thought, epitomizes, makes real, the darkness in which the seeker searches. Mythological creatures included.

  The eagle spied the dog again, lying near another gravestone, rolling in the grass, scratching itself. A creature of habit, thought the bird, smiling to itself. That was the life. No random treks into time and nothingness. No stressful encounters with people who thought you were a chicken or wanted to stick you in somebody’s smelly coffin. Just a lazy, relaxing stroll around the graveyard, a chat with the old, dead master who likes to be kept up on current events. And outside of that, few cares, zero responsibilities, no burden or being the emblem of a race of people who don’t know what’s good for them.

  But after a while the dog’s doggedness bored the bird; it held no curiosity for the bird, any more than Elfriede did, crossing the high ground from the church in her black dress, her hat, her red lipstick. The bird laughed, seeing the pistol shaking high in the woman’s hand. A Luger? Yes, a Luger. And what, thought the bird, will you do with that? Do you mean to shoot me? Then have at it, my good woman. Take careful aim. But think twice, darling Elfriede, for with the smallest squeeze that Luger shall blow up in your face. The bird ignored the advancing Elfriede, and with dark eyes studied the philosopher’s grave, probed the craftspersonship of the box containing the twerp. Being and time, it thought, time and being. Well, my good sage, what do you make of it now, eh? A waste, you would say? Death as unsporting game? Better you had poured your genius into something useful like The Art of Cookery, forsaking hyperbole and neologism, phenomenology, existentialism. Forsaking your war against nihilism. Or for that matter, and for what it’s worth, your beloved Greeks whose civilization certainly had its nasty portion. Plato, if the bird recalled accurately, had not found slavery wanting. He, too, had less than sanguine ideas on breeding. The past flows in with us here, does it? Well and good. More power to it, my scribe.

  The bird paused. A shot, still ringing in the bird’s ears, had fanned the leaves nearby. The bird cocked its head, glaring down at the murderous Elfriede. No doubt about it, she was one for her age, as had been her sage husband. Another bullet whizzed by, stirring the bird’s feathers. She was a better shot than he had supposed. She had a calm hand. So, alright, pull the trigger a third time and see if your Luger doesn’t blow up in your face. The sun caught the barrel; the bird could see the shining coil inside the barrel, and see his own haggard image reflected therein. He could see his own grim eyes. Damn. The bitch had him dead in her sight; he would be the world’s oldest dead bird any second now, if his calculations proved wrong. Fair enough. He was not a bird that knew everything. The Maker had not poured unlimited wisdom into his ears. Damn, wrong again, the bird thought, crouching on its legs to spring just as he sensed the Luger was scheduled to sound a third time. He had no business here anyway, just out on a toot. Just keeping up appearances, when maybe he should have stayed in Kraków. Confined himself to the Wawel’s towers. Damn and double damn. The woman was determined; he’d have to be a whiz kid to make it. If he didn’t, the Poles would be up Shit Creek.

  The bird lifted, lifted off – just flung himself helplessly, blindly, into the oppugnant air. Swimming through jelly, was how it seemed. He felt ridiculous. As if he’d been reduced to an ignoble state where a bird had no dignity at all. Huff and puff. Flap, flap. Mush in his legs, lead in his wings, his brain leaded too. God help me, the eagle thought, where did my youth go? Did it just vanish? To have my youth back and not creak along like a dipshit, groaning boat! To have that old spring in my legs, that raw instinct, that killer mentality. Oh, the wonder of those infantile days when he had been the terror of all European skies. Now it was all serendipity.

  The eagle lifted and as he stumbled, gasping for the heavens, his eyes pivoted over to where the dog lay on all four paws on its dead master’s grave. Now that was the life! That was how life should be. Tongue lolling, the dog now snapping at fleas as she regarded his passage with envious – but, even so – not unsympathetic eyes. We are cousins, yes, the bird thought – lifting slowly (it’s just that I no longer have that old get-up-and-go), hitting thumpy currents of wind as blood dripped from his mouth. No news there. He was a Polish eagle. He always had been.

  The dog rose up on her front legs, contemplating the bird riding the air. Imagine, the dog thought, to soar like that, to be here and gone in the blink of an eye. But the life had its rub, of course. Imagine having to nest on cliff tops, to piss away your time in trees, to eat rodents, to sleep on sticks, to look like that! The frosty, cold nights you must endure rain, sleet, snow. The chilling winds. All in all, the dog thought, so much easier on a cur it was to be a dog. The solitude up there would get to him. What crotchety, oddball creatures they are, the dog thought, as the sound of the beating wings faded and the thing itself speared into the sky’s nothingness.

  WHY SO OFTEN YOU ARE AT A LOSS FOR WORDS

  A dark night. Two men meet on a street corner in Rusty Cove, Nova Scotia.

  “Got a light?”

  “You bet.”

  “One of these days you won’t be able to smoke even in your own house.”

  “Like that in some places now. Amherst, Massachusetts, for instance.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Quite a storm we had. Blackouts up and down the entire east coast.”

  “Yep. Italy, too.”

  “One little twig. In Switzerland, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Hard to believe.”

  The men light up. Smoke.

  “My name’s Jack. What’s yours?”

  “I’m a Jack also.”

  “How about that! The two Jacks! What’s your line, Jack? Me, I’m in divots. The divot king, you could say.”

  “The king, that’s good.”

  “So what’s your calling?”

  “I’m in dry goods, you might say. Words.”

  “Words? How’s that, Jack?”

  “I’m what you might call a word terrorist.”

  “We
ll there you got me, Jack. Al-Qaeda, you mean?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “So what do you do? In the practical realm, I mean.”

  “Oh, different things.”

  “Like?”

  “Like, well, how to say it? I place words inside tin cans, ceramic jugs, lard buckets, any common household receptacle, really.”

  “I’m mystified, Jack. Where does the terrorism come in?”

  “A word terrorist plants a little bomb inside there with the words.”

  “Inside the receptacle?”

  “You got it.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, you get a big explosion.”

  “I feel I’m missing something here.”

  “Take a word. Whatever word or words you’ve got in your receptacle. When your tin can – I prefer tin myself – when your tin can explodes, goes sky-high, there goes your word.

  There it goes, gone forever. You’ve got a thousand little pieces, usually burning. I mean, if you use a fire bomb naturally those pieces are going to burn. It’s the best way we have of killing certain words. Then there’s the wind factor as well.” “Heavy work!”

  “Stressful, certainly. A guy could lose an arm.”

  “I guess you’d have the odd little letter floating around, though. Say an ‘e’ or a ‘y’ lands in a puddle. There’s that letter looking up at you, asking, ‘What happened?’”

  “I can see you’ve got a feel for the job.”

  “You think so? Gee. But, well, divots, you know. Not quite the humdrum thing some people think them to be. An open door into the world, that’s how I see divots.”

  “Not quite sure I know what a divot is.”

  “Me, too, Jack! I was that innocent, when I went into the business!”

  “The same here. But now… well, some words refuse to die, Jack. Explode that sucker a thousand times and there it is back in the morning stronger than ever.”

  “Yeah? Like what? Give me a fer instance.’”

  “‘Love,’ that’s the classic one. Man, that one is a killer.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “‘Foible,’ that’s another. That is one tough word.”

  “Damn, I don’t think I’ve ever used it.”

  “You hear it a lot, in my line. ‘Foible.’ That baby keeps me up all night sometimes.”

  “Foible. Who would have thunk!”

  “Yeah, it’s a zinger. Here, have one of mine.”

  “What’s that brand, Jack? Gauloises? My goodness!”

  They light up. Smoke.

  “Packs a lot of memories, this Gauloise, Jack. Thanks.”

  “Good memories, I hope.”

  “Oh, the greatest. My first wife was… was—”

  “French?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. She was a Gauloises. Francine Gauloises. I’d fall into a swoon, just hearing her name. Music to my ears, that was Francine Gauloises. So what are some of these words you’ve killed?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You know. Some of those you got rid of.”

  “I can’t do that. How could I do that? That is one crazy notion.”

  “You mean… because they really are gone? They no longer exist, so you can’t tell me what they are?”

  “Exactly. I wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “You’re looking a little uneasy. What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that lately I haven’t been myself. Sometimes I stuff a word in the tin can, grab a handful, I’m not even looking. Boom, there they go.”

  “You’re committing a ‘foible,’ eh?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  “You keep that up, sooner or later you and me couldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “True.”

  “If all of you word terrorists blindly stuffed in words, before we could blink, silence would reign.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “All over the earth, silence.”

  “Yup.”

  “And wouldn’t that eventually kill all those words you say won’t die? What was it, ‘love’?”

  “Yeah, that was one.”

  “Your sweetheart looks at you, she can’t even tell you what’s going through her mind. A kid wanting ice cream would have to point. Hell, you wouldn’t even be able to call your dog.”

  “There’s a responsibility, I couldn’t agree more.”

  “I’m getting upset. You can’t even call your dog, that’s really rotten.”

  “We’re getting it together. Try not to worry.”

  “How many of you word guys are you? How many?”

  “In our language? A few billion.”

  “And I bet some of you don’t even use the – what was it you said? – the common receptacle. Damn! I ask for a light from a guy, I share your Gauloises, here I am shaking.”

  “Calm down. Say silence did reign, it would have a plus side, wouldn’t it? Think of all the benefits.”

  “Benefits, sure. But can a guy call his dog?”

  “You and dogs! No need going haywire over a pooch.”

  “What, you don’t like dogs? Look, here’s a question for you. I’m in the dark on one small point. Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah, why? Why kill the words?”

  “That is a damned silly question. You know? That is damned silly.”

  “It’s a good question.”

  “It’s insulting is what it is. It’s the stupidest question I ever heard. Do I ask you why you make divots?”

  “Now who’s being insulting?”

  “Hold the phone.”

  “Phone?”

  “Sit tight a minute.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Cover your ears.”

  “What?”

  “Ears. Long fuse.”

  The two men cover their ears. Small explosions go off nearby. Tin cans, fragments of burning paper, are seen tumbling high in the air.

  “Hot dog!” says Jack the assassin.

  They run over to where the paper scraps are falling.

  “Total success!” he says. “A dozen or so, gone forever. Jesus, that was pretty!”

  “Was whatayacallit in there?”

  “What whatayacallit?”

  “That word we were talking about.”

  “‘Foible’?”

  “No. That other one.”

  “Who knows, Jack? Who can say? Well, I’ll just retrieve my tin cans, then I’m off.”

  The second Jack hangs by. He thumps out a – whatayacallit thing – from his pack, puts it in his mouth, then remembers he doesn’t have a whatayacallit? Waves can be heard splashing against the pilings down at Rusty Cove. The entire east coast remains in the dark. Maybe Italy as well.

  Me, too, Jack thinks.

  Time to go… where?

  Walk the… whatever it is called.

  THE YALE CHAIR

  One Foot and I and our beset tribe found ourselves on the lam through the Dakotas, and many yesteryears removed from those encounters here I am alone floating upriver on the Nile. The Nile? They said it was the Nile and took my passage money with nothing back. At night this was, off a black pier. You walked a shaky plank and hoped it was a boat at the end. Stay in line, they said. No bickering. Yes, princess, I will assist you with that trunk. You don’t mind I drag the bitch?

  The river banks were a dark entanglement, as I remembered, but in fact you do not see much when you are slung over the deck and sick to your very footsoles still from the crossing. Down below this was, where you could see nothing of what might be out there, including entanglements.

  Some wondered what we would do, what would happen to us when we landed, and where we might land – the captain being vague, in fact silent on this issue, though I did not inquire myself, being more the willy-nilly type who goes where gunshots, fate, or romance decrees she must. My main concern was my wardrobe, a
nd for that matter it still is, so long as I have my head, because my wardrobe with my tattered princess dress is all I have brought with me from my marriage to One Foot in the Water.

  One Foot. Oh, One Foot! One Foot is in retreat from civilization’s memory now, but once he was the famous leader of his people and husband married to the beautiful princess in her boned and beaded dress. I say this proudly. A certain dispersement of beings brought him all the way to Yale University on a professorship, which by one measure was that point in our lives where ascent and descent, happiness and unhappiness, had their bridge. A Chair this was called, the Jefferson Chair! But the hellhag bride was discovered aswim in her princess dress on the savage’s arm and every weathercock and slubbergut mobbed the streets and we were shouldered back to the train. Scat! Never let us see your faces again! Or else!

  Which was how we found ourselves again in aim for the Dakotas, our entire tribe in the meanwhile out there in a state of collapse and desuetude without their leader One Foot to harangue them or muzzle the extreme faction bent on the suicidal cause.

  But all this trading of the aged news is discouraging to me now, as it might have been then, for we were both without our sap and listing in the wind after our long flight from the Chair zealots.

  Our child arrived during the return journey from Yale and the commotion surrounding this natural event put great strain on every person in the six cars constituting that train, especially following an episode with a man who called himself Luther. This man flung burning fuel at my husband – this in the form of a torch that some attested appeared flaming from his very mouth – and did his best to slit our throats during the conflagration and hubbub, with everyone shouting and sliding fast as they could through the windows of the train which was hurtling at topmost raucous speed across the continent.

  It was the swaying of these cars, I believe, and the constant clickety-clack, the heavy air, the stink of boots, which brought on our child’s early birthing. I was already sore from the sticks hurled at us at Yale and hearing so often the Whiffinpoof song in rendition by groups of boys assembled on each street corner, and confused from the beginning by the endless talk of the Chair, the Chair.