Heloise and Bellinis
Page 10
Now they were back again on the same street, standing as they had at the end of those first two weeks, the first time they came out of Harry’s Bar, when they idly strolled until they ran into Private Tom Margitai and he lent them his jeep.
They walked to the corner, and then for no apparent reason Heloise started running ahead of George, Perhaps it was her way of giving joyful expression to the happiness she felt. She quivered as usual on the high heels of her dusty black evening shoes. The way George watched her, he might have been a faithful Labrador staring after his master. George did not follow after, nor did he try to stop her. He felt drunk with happiness and with fatigue as well. He wished he could keep everything just the way it was at that moment— himself, Heloise, the dusty street, the blue of the sky and the green of the trees. He could have spent the rest of his life just looking at everything around him at that moment.
There was a sudden blinding flash of light to the east. For a brief instant everything around him, and Heioise ahead of him, turned as white as the glaring snow of a sunlit glacier. In a fraction of a second the blinding light seemed to annihilate all color just as surely as darkness would have. George did not complete this train of thought, because something caught his eye. It was a small white spider that had shriveled on a bright rock. It was just like the one he had seen one night on his bedroom ceiling. That was in 1988; he was a child then and was vacationing with his aunt in the country near Udine. It happened only a few seconds before the big earthquake.
This spider turned into a tiny ball vivid against the blinding surface of the rock. At that very instant Heioise turned round to smile at him. They silently looked into each other’s eyes for an endless moment, as if an irresistible force held them apart. George could barely move his arms and legs. A violent hot wind sprang up, driven forward by a black cloud out of the east, the direction of the blinding light, A gigantic wall of sand swept the horizon, roaring like a thousand sea waves.
And the cloud brought fear in its wake.
“Heioise!” George shouted. He made a superhuman effort to reach her.
‘“Georger She moved toward him. She held out her hand, and George took it. The two of them were swept up from the ground by the fury of the incredible storm. The light was almost gone, and a terrifying darkness was swallowing all the colors of the world.
George held tightly to Heloise’s hand as they whirled through the air. With an immense effort, he drew her near and wrapped his arms around her. He pressed his lips to her ear and shouted over the roaring wind: “I love you!.”
She just had time to reply. “I love you!” Then the heat melted everything. The bushes that swirled around them caught fire, and their torn clothing burst into flame, but they felt no pain whatsoever. And they were not afraid. Instead they felt an unexpected calm, a fortifying strength in their inmost parts, the bosom out of which we all are born. And that was their last sensation in this life.
THE END
CONCLUSION
The big cracker went off on the Beirut heights on October 10, 2002. In a matter of minutes, four hundred million people and sixty camels were dead.
For humankind it triggered the wise beginning of a long era of peace.
The camels probably could have done without it.
THE LAST INTERMEZZO
Dear Abelard,
So ends my manuscript, and if you are still with me, then, come what may, 1 know 1 have one reader at least.
In my last letter, I want to direct your attention to something that has never engaged your mind or your imagination. Death. I want to talk to you about death.
In the last couple of years before my father died, little things would come into his mind suggesting that the end was not far off. When we had breakfast together above Harry’s Bar in Venice, he often seemed quite happy to discuss arrangements for his funeral.
“Listen, Arrigo,” he would say, “I don’t want any mass or priests when I die. All I want is a gondola with shiny brass fittings. I want a fir casket like poor people. That’s how I want to be taken to the cemetery.”
I would say, “All right, Dad.” And I would also say, “There’s plenty of time yet.”
“Not that much,” he would answer. He would forget that we had probably had the same conversation just the day before. And we might repeat it even two or three times in the same week. He had used his brain so much all his life that he was fully aware of the fact that he was getting arteriosclerotic.
“My brain isn’t working today.” he would say, “but remember that if I say anything about Harry’s Bar, I’m sure I won’t be wrong about that.”
And he was right too.
Two years later he had a terrible flu and sent for me. “Arrigo, it’s not that I want to die, but I’m dying all the same. And nothing can be done about it.” Then he asked me to get some olive oil and warm it up.
“Now oil me like my poor mother,” he ordered. I rubbed the warm oil very slowly over his whole body. It was the first time I had ever seen my father naked, but it had no effect on me. I turned him first on one side and then on the other, until his whole body glistened with oil.
“Now I’m fine,” he said.
It was another two months before he died. The funeral was just as he wanted it, except that there were seven gondolas instead of one, and four gondoliers rowed the one carrying his body.
I have had absolutely no warning signals, but I’d still like to take advantage of the end of this story to talk about my last wishes for the day I die. I might just as well start talking about it with you.
Well, my one great wish is to be remembered by the florists. What usually happens is that the deceased is not consulted and the family discourages floral displays by telling people “no flowers, but good works.” This wretched little phrase is meant to foster good deeds that will eradicate those little stains that in the course of a lifetime inevitably will have soiled the pure soul of the dearly beloved and help him win plenary indulgence for all eternity.
Nothing could be further from the truth. A florist’s curses are far more powerful than the distracted prayers uttered by the proteges of Saint Vincent de Paul.
So I categorically insist that the following words be printed in my death notice: “Lots of flowers and no good works”—-and my death will be remembered for years as a red-letter day in the forsythia-and-gardenia trade. Don’t worry about the salvation of my soul. In the years I spent in boarding school I accumulated thousands of prayers and enough indulgences to cover the sins I have already succeeded in committing, the sins I may yet manage to commit, and a great many more besides.
The spiritual exercises we did once a year at my priest-run school, for example, were always worth one plenary indulgence. Moreover, I did them at least three times. I followed all the rules—i.e., 1 didn’t speak for three days, and 1 paid close and terrified attention to the preachings of a Jesuit who had been specially selected for his skill in describing the unspeakable torments of the eternal griddle. You heard things that would have made the toughest killer tremble in his boots. Solemn anathemas were rather wasted on us, because our sins hardly went further than coveting somebody else’s girlfriend. Luckily for me, as I mentioned before, the memory of the blond hairs of Cousin Wanda’s groin that time we were sailing at Torri del Benaco always outweighed the idea of taking out a soul-insurance policy with Lloyd’s of Vatican City.
I do not remember who at the time told me how babies were made. All I remember is that one day a priest at school asked me if! knew. I said no, because I was afraid I’d have to do a penance. So he told me an incredible fairy tale that got off to a roaring start with bees and pollen. Afterward he asked me if I would like to enter the priesthood. All I could think of was what my father’s reaction would have been, so I said that I would have to give the matter some thought. Then I decided to talk to my friend Jacky Ivancich; he’s an ambassador now. 1 knew the priest had told him the story of the birds and the bees, and I thought it was time he learned the truth abo
ut how babies were conceived. I remember that he was quite hurt, chieiy by learning that the priest had been lying to him.
It is obvious that everything ever written about the afterlife, or rather the afterdeath, is pure fantasy. Take Dante, for example. There is nothing at all believable in his Comedy. There is no denying, however, that he didn’t omit a single person, friend or enemy.
If you had to imagine a place that could contain all the men who, as their widows put it, have gone on to a better life, it would be difficult to conceive of a place where bodily sensations still survived.
The body dies at death; that’s all there is to it.
So ail that fire and ice and burning, and all those stories about the physical pain and joy of the life beyond, are certainly self-serving fibs.
Take a minute and think about the incredible “colossal” show that will be brewing up a few years from now in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. What with angel trumpets blasting and stern drums rolling, everyone who has ever lived will come in trembling submission to divine judgment.
It is quite obvious that whoever took down the words of the Prophet never owned a restaurant. If he had, his first concern would have been where to install the washrooms. Joel or whoever it was doesn’t even mention the matter and leaves his reader in total darkness about a matter of the utmost importance. Think about it; billions of people in the same place, and the overwhelming majority of them probably have the runs, they’re so frightened, but not one toilet. Joking aside, the story doesn’t hold up.
I think you might imagine the only thing to survive would be a kind of collection of our individual thoughts and feelings, which would have a better chance of coagulating into some kind of whole depending on how deeply we were able to desire and feel things.
What I would like very much is a wide expanse in the heavens where all the good thoughts could come together, and another expanse, a little lower down and a little less heavenly, where all the bad thoughts could get together. Stop. This is my premise, and no one can disprove it—least of all you, materialist that you are; you’ve never given a thought to such things. It is my view, then, that George and Heloise, or rather their thoughts, quietly went off to that higher expanse. And they smiled, as it were, to see all those other thoughts that ever since the world began have helped men to be men and women women.
That came out all right too.
There are some other people I would like to see join the heroes of my story in the expanse that, for the sake of convenience, some people call heaven. I would like to see George and Heloise there together with General Custer, Suzy, Tom Margitai, and of course Harry Cipriani and all his family. Merchants no, because their life is too studded with temptations to get through it unharmed.
That way things wouldn’t seem boring either, and one day—I hope it is still a long way off—I wouldn’t mind joining all those nice people myself. I should also hope that the person in charge of the arrangements might work some inscrutable miracle and make sure they never run out of deliciously refreshing Bellinis for the enjoyment of all.