Fifty Contemporary Writers

by Bradford Morrow

  EIGHTH WATCH

  And there is a moment when you are not the patient or near the patient and it is like sanity. And it is rhythm and murder. In the disguise of healing, in the disguise of the labor that is dying, giving birth to more birth, mewing—just do not say unnatural. Why didn’t you say unnatural? Guard your mind, its rapid-eye movements. Watch what you can’t possibly watch, and mumble greetings that sound like the opposite. Like hearing clinging to the world.

  Then open the forest slowly, removing all tree limbs and trailheads. The echo gains strength and has no more to do with you. That’s fine, Madame, you would like to know we’ll think of your story, even as you push it away. Where will it go? In sleep we enter this vacant reverie—this hospitium with dirty floors.

  Only to train in the fortress of reflections. Open a window? Peer into the stream.

  Why did you open the window? It’s in the book. It’s written right

  here that there are a lot of pages offered for review. When the

  manuscript arrives for reading it has lost its voice. Narcissus,

  stream-crosser, kneeling in mud.

  NINTH WATCH

  Maybe I’ll just be spontaneous, she says, and takes Mara’s hand.

  breathing

  breathing—Oh well, it’s too late for that. Do not distract. The hand a cold bone. More visitors come after breakfast and offer everything the patient liked: Magazines. Mints. Apricots. They hold themselves up: “Don’t you love us?” The Tathagata refuses the offerings and the visitors cut themselves with knives and withdraw to sit at the side.

  Don’t scream at the dying. A new nurse comes close, impatient with medicine. Sit up now, un, deux, trois, Madame. She has long given up speaking, but responds to the voice like a baby. A voice is love and she responds. Pain is an echoing laughter, Monsieur, please step away. Step close, push down the tongue, finger the throat. Breathing will be a sign that death is close, when it runs wild and then collapses for a long time.

  not breathing

  not breathing

  Accidents dense, as whole organs release and are lost, float off, and harden. Bring them back for a change of sheet, in these loose moments of shit and liquid, that last day’s smell that is fuller than anything you’ve smelled in the past tense, brown and not right. She confesses she would like to die now. Telling it to the window. But now isn’t the window and she suffers it.

  The Tathagata’s bed orients North-South. It’s not personal. An earthquake is certain at an unknown moment. No reasonable doubt. The medication will change; the aides and orderlies come in shifts. A baby’s monitor goes off and people go running. Fear is all in birth, the gurgling sounds of a newborn. But rattles and blankets—death has the exact same toys. Even sucking a wet cottonball to the lips.

  When the outbreath becomes much longer than the inbreath, it won’t be long now. Turn the body but not at the very end. Roll the sheet at the sides and lift if you must.

  NEXT TO LAST WATCH OF THE NIGHT

  Left-lying for the baby. Right-lying for dying. Block the right nostril, head on the right hand. The Tathagata died on his right side. Refused all offerings and a reading: I will not read this out loud and you won’t stare at my absence. If you can’t agree on my death, I haven’t said anything.

  There are periods of no breathing, even up to 45 seconds.

  The pulse sensor, the beeping lights. Nurses rush over. The baby is startled and shaken awake. Nurses trained in holding and feeding babies do not work with the elderly. Doctors say nothing when asked how close death is. What will happen first? What will happen next? How will we prepare? What are you doing with all that sleep if not practicing not waking?

  LAST WATCH OF THE NIGHT

  The buildup of waste in the organs, the uncoughable pools. Don’t panic now. The machines echo back quotes to the corpse. Characters by the bed see an uneaten lunch. Touch a bite, it won’t be touched. The TV-talk makes a joke. I dreamed someone came in to ask how I died, and I asked them to go back out, saying, “I’m working on it.”

  The Venerable Ananda leans against the doorpost: “I am still a student and have to strive for perfection. But, alas, my teacher, who was so compassionate toward me, is about to pass away!”

  Enough, Ananda.

  Narcissus wears an old costume, enters the forest, fends off all clinging, all desire projected on him, on his beautiful body. He kneels to quench his thirst but becomes paralyzed in the view of his life, facing a reflection. Raise the head and unpool the mouth. When the body turns waxy and yellow, the blood is already moving away and puddling in bruises underneath. Pass through cold. High fevers. He thinks he hears his reflection speak, but can’t understand. He wants so badly to hear himself he won’t leave the scene, eventually forsaking food, and even trying to drink disturbs the image, so his lips and tongue itch with thirst. Earth, water, fire, and wind elements dissolve from gross to fine, in order of appearance at birth. At the very last, a tiny amount of blood and sexual fluid, red and white, leaves the body. The subtlest aspects of mind become light. As long as he stares, it’s not in Echo’s power to speak first. There is no way to be the audience to this performance.

  She wants to be sure about the archive. The echoes are just machines. Stop saying the echoes are the world-wolves in pain. The visitors beat their heads and howl and refuse to move to the side. To laugh may be the last dignity, the last world we can share. Ananda enters the tent with the visitors. Manjushri and Ananda describe intense colored lights flowing from the Tathagata’s facial orifices. A final display of one who, utterly awake, never wakes again.

  TENTH WATCH OF THE NIGHT

  And when they hear Ananda’s news, the kings and goddesses with their sons, their wives, and the wives of their sons, grieve with their hair madly raised, pounding the ground they roll from side to side, lamenting: “Too soon!”

  Hearing that hearing is the last sense to quit the body, the visitors rush to yell at the corpse. Sometimes the dying will wait to be alone to die. Do not confuse the mind. It takes a final permission to stop holding on, one last practice. Holding the breath means it rushes back in, the visitors and their offerings. Out the window starlings gather. Conjured, they fly off.

  LAST WATCH OF THE NIGHT

  Echo stumbles blindly through the woods, the surprise hallucination, empty open clatter. Narcissus reborn another minute, homeless, animal of a last “I love you.” I love you, says the dream.

  At a certain point, they’re still taking blood samples. But not any more. Winds pass heavily through the head. The stock photo of floral curtains burns away. The props and costumes are sent for disinfecting. After the rush, a doctor takes the pen and slowly signs the paper.

  Helplessly, she whispered, “I’ve lost my glasses”—and the visitors got up to scan beneath the bed, the blankets, even though she couldn’t read or see. Chairs scraped the floor in a ritual of searching.

  Can you hold an enemy up? Madame, a hand? Can you hold your tongue down, Madame, allez-y. Suddenly she’s all in English and one two three, Monsieur, stand back. She’s not breathing. Madame, sit up. Monsieur, we’ve got it. Please step back.

  She becomes agitated in the lifting. More moaning.

  not- breathing

  not- breathing

  No one finds the glasses that were taken accidentally.

  Outside the private room, death stories are as boring as birth stories.

  The clock has 12 hours marked around a circle; a tool for teaching.

  Hours cause more hours, the minutes, more minutes.

  Twelve o’clock is caused by 11 o’clock, and 11 by 10

  even 1 o’clock is caused by 12 o’clock and 4 o’clock by 9 o’clock.

  Looking away from the clock, at any minute a chance of earthquake. The Tathagata gives his last lesson: “All you know will change and be gone. Train to be lost now.”

  The little child you love; Paris, birds, food—what isn’t finished in the book you want to finish? The moon is full and the month is
May.

  Rushing to the emergency room, you offer everything to buy a way home.

  A mother gives all the only children the elephant’s look.

  Hearing is the last sense to go.

  Day for night and night for day, the hospital rehearses its empty beds.

  The Historic Voyage of the Rosalind

  Robert Antoni

  ON THE EVENING OF November 2, 1844, the Rosalind was at last ready to depart. Her passenger list included the first thirty-one officially designated “pioneers” of the Tropical Emigration Society, all gathered at the forecastle rail beneath a clear and starry winter sky to gaze, perhaps for the last time in their lives, upon the lights of London flickering farther up the Thames. Suddenly a small, rodentlike woman appeared, scurrying across the deck. She waved her arms above her head, screeching hysterically, “Anschlag! Anschlag! Anschlag!” Captain James Damphier, under whose austere command the ship fell, had already sounded his charge to send the sailors scrambling toward the bow, and begin the laborious process of weighing in the anchor. He had sung out his third “Heave-ho!” when, with undisguised irritation, the captain issued a countercommand. He turned his attention to the woman. But the only way he could get her to say anything other than “Anschlag!” was to have one of the sailors lower a bucket over the side, and douse her with cold harbor water. Given that this woman’s distinguishing feature was her prominently protruding front teeth, she now bore striking resemblance to a drenched ship rat. She spit out a mouthful of water, raised her skirts to her face to dry it off, and muttered, “Mein Ehemann ist verschwunden!” Though a Scotsman by birth, Captain Damphier could speak a rudimentary German. He countered, “En who, woman, is ye fuckin husband?” At this point it was revealed, with considerable alarm, that although his wife, daughter, and son-in-law could all be accounted for, Mr. Etzler was not aboard.

  This was peculiar, as a number of the passengers had seen him arrive on the sloop earlier that afternoon with his family. They’d heard him greet Captain Damphier (who was immediately put off at being treated as a subordinate), and supervise the off-loading of his luggage, which—despite all Mr. Etzler’s previous claims of needing nothing more for the tropics than the threads upon his back, and these “strictly for reasons huff politesse”—was indeed excessive. No doubt he fully intended to make the voyage with his followers; where he might have disappeared to, at the final moment, and for what conceivable purpose, was a perfect mystery. It could only be surmised that somehow, during all the noise and commesse of making ready for the voyage, Mr. Etzler had slipped unnoticed back ashore.

  “Less he’s drowned,” the captain suggested, producing several gasps from the women. “En aye good riddance, far as I’m concerned!”

  Mr. Stollmeyer, who’d removed his coat to spread it around the shoulders of the shivering and still-dripping Mrs. Etzler, now stepped forward, his chest visibly inflated, long beard tousled by the breeze. He informed the captain, in no uncertain terms, that their departure must be suspended until such time as the whereabouts and safety of his comrade, Mr. Etzler, could be ascertained—

  “He alone gives meaning to this monumental voyage!” Mr. Stollmeyer stated.

  “En his strumpet’s sauce-box!” the captain responded, resulting in further gasps from the women.

  He turned his back and repeated his command for the sailors to hoist in the anchor.

  Fortunately, Mr. Stollmeyer was able to persuade the captain to delay the ship’s departure long enough for him to make a quick investigative trip ashore. A small rowboat was therefore lowered over the side, into which Mr. Stollmeyer descended by way of a rope ladder, the loop of a lit lantern clenched between his teeth.

  “Ye’ve three wee hours,” Captain Damphier shouted out behind him, already rowing away into dark. “Alterwise ye en Shitesler kin swim ye ruddy arses to Trineedad!”

  At this pronouncement Mrs. Stollmeyer, with a frightful thump, dropped to the deck in a faint.

  The two men returned in the nick of time. Mr. Etzler, at first, dangerously attempting to climb the rope ladder while simultaneously carrying an apparently heavy and obzockee suitcase. A rope net was lowered to the rowboat, into which Captain Damphier instructed him to place his piece of luggage, while Mr. Stollmeyer held high his lantern.

  Instead, Mr. Etzler tucked the tail of his beard into his crimson vest, and he climbed into the net, carrying his suitcase. He shouted up to the sailors to hoist him aboard.

  “A pestilence upon thy fayther’s pestle!” the captain grumbled.

  But when Mr. Etzler climbed out of the net, grinning like a bobolee and brushing himself off with his free hand, it became apparent that the suitcase was attached by chain and padlock to his left wrist.

  Those members of the Tropical Emigration Society who’d hurried anxiously back up to the deck for their leader’s return quickly identified this case as the one in which he carried his model (and generally stood upon during his lectures in order to reach the podium). Though they’d never seen the case chained to his wrist before, and they must have wondered why it had been so necessary for him to delay their departure and return ashore to collect it, since the real, life-sized machine—disassembled in its enormous crate—sat lashed to the deck directly behind them. (There was, of course, no possible way to get it into the hold.) Even those passengers aboard who knew nothing of the society, and were entirely ignorant of Mr. Etzler’s inventions, could not have failed to notice this oversized crate with its mysterious markings—

  Now, still grinning like a bobolee, Mr. Etzler untucked his beard from his vest, and he approached the captain.

  “How foolish huff me to leave him behind!” he nodded toward the case attached to his wrist.

  And reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, Mr. Etzler presented Captain Damphier with the following notice—

  The Rosalind had been at sea for five days, and Willy had yet to catch a glimpse of Juliette. Even from a distance. Despite his uninterrupted, solitary wanderings of that portion of the deck allotted to the third-class passengers, in all weather and at all hours of the day and night. Despite Willy’s untiring, though generally thwarted, attempts to gain access to other parts of the ship; once the voyage was under way, each of the three cabined classes was physically restricted to those areas that coincided with their rank and privilege. This included not only deck space and sleeping quarters, but the designated dining rooms with their attendant galleys, saloons, and parlors for recreation and relaxation, in addition to toilets and lavatory facilities. The third- and first-class passengers not only did not intermingle—socially or for any other reason—they were, for the most part, scarcely cognizant of each other’s existence. Willy had begun to despair that even if Juliette were aboard, he would not encounter her before they disembarked in Trinidad.

  The Rosalind, a three-masted, fully rigged schooner of 460 tons—capable of transporting 250 passengers, or nearly half that amount in tonnage as cargo—seemed a miniaturized, floating replica of the city they’d left behind: everybody had their place. With the wealthy congregating forward and nearest the main deck in their elegant cabins or dining halls, or reclining beneath a parasol on the lounges of their wind-shielded sundecks; and the farther astern and deeper into the ship’s bowels one descended (like the basements and sewers of London), the more decrepit the environs and their inhabitants.

  Willy’s father seemed the sole passenger able to escape all of this carefully enforced segregation. Each morning, after a breakfast taken with his family of wretchedly prepared porridge and coffee, which consisted of used grinds stirred into lukewarm sugared water, he returned to the cabin he shared with Mrs. Tucker to change his outfit. Now he donned his new white linen shirt and embroidered vest, his silk cravat, new frock coat, and tall top hat. (Willy’s own newly tailored attire, purchased prior to the voyage—at his parents’ insistence, and to his great disappointment—lay packed away with the rest of his family’s luggage in the hold, perfectly inaccessibly.) Mr. Tucker
then made his way forward, past the deck steward posted behind the galley, to the first-class saloon. There he spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon drinking whiskey with Mr. Whitechurch and a handful of other gentlemen—though he had required Mr. Whitechurch’s hand-written invitation to get past the pompous livery-clad butler. His father, Willy knew, also visited the Whitechurches in their first-class cabin, located just below the forecastle deck, adjacent to the first-class cabins of the Etzlers and the Stollmeyers. Those accommodations, his father had told him—with their private sitting rooms, four-poster beds, and luxurious bathrooms complete with full-length porcelain tubs and running hot water—were superior even to Captain Damphier’s own!

  To Willy, those parts of the Rosalind seemed as far away as Knightsbridge had from his old London borough, and just as out of reach.

  Yesterday, their fourth afternoon at sea, Willy had spied for two long hours on the steward stationed behind the third-class galley, before he stepped away from his post for a moment to piss over the side. Seizing the opportunity, Willy hurried past the deck steward’s turned back—leaping a low railing and descending a short flight of steps—and instantly found himself surrounded by a number of elegant couples, all dressed to the nines in full feather. He felt as though he’d stumbled into another world! These couples casually promenaded the first-class portion of the deck, one behind the other in circular fashion—as though the entire operation were orchestrated so that the women did not decapitate one another with the brims of their enormous hats—several of them holding glasses of champagne or toddies in their gloved hands. With an older couple even accompanied by their primped-up poodle, wearing a floppy black bow on top of its head and a red-sequined vest!