by Natale Ghent
The walk to Michael’s seemed to take forever. Her feet were leaden, her head dizzy and light as her mind ricocheted erratically, back and forth and sideways. The streets and houses, the trees and sidewalk, everything was slightly skewed. Resting on the bridge, she could see her secret spot down on the tracks. And there, beside the boxcar. Who was it? The old man from the cemetery. Mr. Ellis from 317. Their eyes met. Sarah pushed away from the wall, continued along the bridge. Feet moving step over step. Heavy as cannon-balls. At the grove of pine trees she stopped. Had to stop. Stooping over, hands braced on her thighs. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting the man to appear behind her.
But, no, she was alone. She straightened herself and began toiling across the stretch of ground to the parking lot. A plaintive cry echoed across the stillness of the park. The woman. Sarah listened. It was a peacock, calling from inside its cage. Plumage painted and gleaming like a Japanese kimono, the peacock paraded regally along the length of fence. Sarah took a moment to admire it. It was the first time she’d seen one in the park. The bird cocked its luminous head and watched as Sarah made her way across the parking lot, calling woefully after her as she set out up the hill.
At his house, the windows were dark.
The curtains drawn, preventing the light from coming in
Clutching the ledge, she balanced tiptoe on the rock and peered through his bedroom window. When she couldn’t see him, she walked around to the front of the house and attempted the door. It was unlocked and slightly ajar. She pushed it lightly, the door creaking slowly open. “Michael?”
Mouth shaping words without meaning, the mechanical wails from some primitive place deep inside as the body began to expire
Stepping tentatively over the threshold, Sarah called out again. “Michael?” The door to his room was open. She took a few halting steps down the hall and stood in the doorway.
Where the nurses had nervously collected, while others trotted purposefully down the corridor
The room no longer neat but messy, as though he’d been looking for something in a hurry. Sarah sat down on the bed. She was so tired. She needed to rest. She lowered herself slowly onto the comforter, the pillow cool against her cheek. Pulling her feet up, she curled into a little ball. She would stay like this for a while and wait.
The family gathering around the bed, weeping, confused faces searching for answers that were not there, labouring through the minutes, desperate for a peaceful resolution
But by morning when he had not arrived, she began to grow restless. She rose from the bed. The videos were in a heap on the floor. There was one beside the TV. A new one. An image of Michael and Donna flickered distantly through her mind.
The sudden kick of memory asserting itself, of life resisting surrender
Sarah turned on the TV, took the cassette from its case and pushed it into the VCR. The screen buzzed. The image grew clear. It was Sarah as a little girl, playing in her bikini in the plastic pool. She looked up at her brother and laughed, splashing him with water.
The intravenous dripping slower and slower
To one side, her mother, mouthing instructions from a patio chair, hair in curlers. Sarah watched with wonder as John jumped in and out of the pool, kicking water into the air. The scene faded and changed. It was Christmas.
The chance for miracles quickly unravelling
She was there, tearing open a package, pulling a doll from inside. She held it up to the camera, hugging it over and over with delight. John walked into the frame, cowboy hat tilted to one side. Lining himself up, he pulled a pistol from his holster and shot something off screen.
A thin trail of blood emerging from one nostril, eyelashes fluttering, chest heaving
The picture faded to black, then emerged again. It was her mother and father, young, smiling. They held a baby in their arms. They cooed and clucked over the infant, kissing its head and face with pride.
Arms enfolding, voices strained to the point of breaking, lips held closely to the ear, speaking through the moans
That she should find this filled her with awe and confusion. She watched the video for what seemed like hours, her face shining with tears as her life unfolded in front of her, through infancy to young adulthood, the shy joy of her first ballet recital to the anguish of skinned knees and broken hearts. She could not imagine how Michael had managed to create it.
An entire life playing out to its inevitable conclusion, the momentary glimmers of recognition, fingers working the air
As the last images faded and crackled from view, Sarah turned off the TV. The room was quiet and dark. Michael had not come home. She stared at the blank screen, knew that if she was going to understand any of it, she would have to see the old woman again. Walking from the room, her heart resonated with the one truth that the video had imparted, the extraordinary message that Michael had so carefully pieced together in the hundreds of ordinary little scenes held there.
“I love you.”
The train trundled along the tracks. It swayed and rocked like a willow tree, urging her to sleep. Outside, the rain poured down, lashing against the windows and making it impossible to see. Inside, a few lone riders sat stiffly in their seats. Sarah recognized the old man’s hat, and the little boy from Michael’s videos, too. She slouched down to avoid eye contact when the old man turned to look at her. So she could stretch out her feet, she raised the armrest of the seat next to her, then covered her legs with her jacket and rested, the bundle of pictures clasped in her hand. The movement of the train lulled her, the whistle blowing mournfully in the distance, the engine hundreds of feet ahead down the tracks. The train was picking up speed as it left the city, careening through the night toward Salem. It wouldn’t be a long ride. Just enough to get some rest.
Sarah woke as the train slowed to a crawl and lurched to a stop at the station. There was the clamour and bang as the stairs unfolded to the platform. She sat up and looked around. The train was empty, save for herself. She wondered briefly where the other people had gone. Her jacket dropped lifelessly to the floor as she got up and made her way along the aisle to the door. The door was open, the stairs waiting. She stepped carefully down, photos in one hand, holding the rail with the other for support. The rain had stopped; the station was deserted. She had to jump down from the last step, the conductor graciously assisting her. The train bucked forward, and the conductor disappeared inside the car as Sarah walked toward the stairs that led to the street. They were long and steep, switching back several flights; the rubber soles of her sneakers struck bluntly against the metal treads.
As she neared the top, Sarah could see that the streets were also empty. Stopping at a crosswalk, she waited dutifully for the light to blink from red to green, then crossed into the town square. The shops were closed, their windows uninviting and dark. Walking past the familiar rows of red-brick buildings, Sarah searched for the alley. When it didn’t present itself she began to worry that she had the wrong street, that she’d remembered it incorrectly. But it soon came into view, a gap between two buildings. Sarah stood at the mouth of it, the alley stretching into the shadows. There was a small white light at the end, illuminating the way.
She stepped into the alley. She hardly knew what she would say to the old woman when she saw her. Her footsteps echoed softly against the buildings as she walked, counting out the numbers as she went: 15, 17, 19. Where was 17½? She turned, retraced her steps. She could not find the door. Where was it?
Sarah lowered herself against the wall in defeat. She looked at the bundle of photos in her hand. They were all out of order. Who had done that? From somewhere in the alley, the cries of the woman began to filter through the darkness. Sarah buried her face in her hands, the photos fluttering to the ground at her feet. She began to weep, in deep sobs that shook her body to its frame. She wept for her mother and her father and for John. She wept for Michael and Donna and Peter. And for all the people she had known and would never know. She wept for life, with all its beautiful
intricacies, and for death, in all its mystery. Most of all she wept for the Fool, travelling alone and without direction in a desolate land. Silly little fool. She saw the faces of the masks around her, laughing, scowling, muttering prayers. She wept until she heard a soothing voice calling her name.
“Sarah. Sarah.”
It was Michael, standing in the alley.
“The Fool,” Sarah cried, her body wracked with sobs. “He meets a skeleton in black armour upon a white horse …”
“… Rising with the sun,” Michael said, completing her thought. He walked toward her, his voice steady and calm. “He knows that he is in the presence of Death. He fears for his own life and for the lives of those he loves. He thinks to flee, but knows in the vast stretch of barren land that he cannot possibly outrun Death, and so, faces him.”
“‘Am I dead?’” the Fool asks.
“‘You have left all you know behind,’ Death answers. ‘But this is not the end. It is but a new beginning. A transformation.’”
Michael reached for Sarah’s hands, pulling her gently to her feet. She clung to him like a newborn, her mind a pin-wheel of questions as they moved to the end of the alley, where the bricks gave way to soil and the town fell away to trees. The light in the alley burst, illuminating the way along the path that curved and snaked through the woods, a ribbon of moonlight in the dark, though there was no moon in the sky. Her breath rattled, as if her lungs were filling with water instead of air, inhaling and exhaling in rhythm with Michael’s own; her body, heavy as clay.
“I’m so scared,” she said.
Michael squeezed her shoulders. They were walking toward the oak tree, the same one from her dream. Turning to face Michael, Sarah was met by her own countenance peering curiously back at her. It was the girl. She was the girl. Michael had been right about that. The cries of the woman rose up, filling the air before fading to the faintest mewling. And there was something else there. Another voice. John’s voice.
“Sarah … Sarah, I love you.”
Sarah laughed and lowered her eyes. She was surprised to find her blue sock feet outlined sharply against the earth. Had she forgotten to put her shoes on? Pulling off the socks, she began removing the rest of her clothes, scattering them carelessly along the path as she walked. She felt so free. Her naked body shimmered with a sparkling translucence. As she gazed at it in wonder, she understood at last. There was nothing left to fear. She moved toward the tree, its branches reaching out to her, a single exquisite leaf escaping and falling in gentle arcs to the ground. From somewhere far off in the distance, she heard the sound of a door quietly closing. The heaviness left her body and she began to rise toward the sky, like the kingfisher with wings like knives, up, up, into a pool of silver light.
Sarah lay on the bed, eyelids fluttering like pale butterflies, mouth gaping, her body shuddering with the memory of life. Mrs. Wagner clasped her daughter’s frail hand, her cries spilling over into the hallway and down to the nurses’ station. Cradling the pillow behind Sarah’s head, John supported her small frame until the convulsions finally stopped. He held her as the sun slowly blossomed in the window, and a street lamp burst, spreading phosphorous seeds over the sidewalk. When he was sure that it was finished, John eased himself free, careful not to jostle the body. Sitting delicately at the foot of the bed, he wept, a dry, fathomless grief beyond tears.
The nurses lurked outside the door of the room, hands in pockets, faces etched with rehearsed concern. It was a shame, they all agreed, to see this happen to someone so young. Breaching the sanctity of sorrow, Dr. Field offered condolences to the family, speaking haltingly about the afterlife and what natives believe happens in death, causing everyone to feel awkward, including himself, until he relented and left the room, bumping the bedside table clumsily and knocking a blue glass tumbler to the floor with an astonishing crash.
Beneath the oldest oak tree in the Terrace cemetery there stands a stone. It is black granite and almost always decorated with fresh flowers or pine cone offerings. There are words engraved there, under the thinnest crescent of moon. “One under heaven.” And in its corner, a small porcelain picture of the girl, shaped in a neat oval, the suggestion of a smile on her lips—a Mona Lisa smile—as though she guards a secret that she will never tell. Perhaps she was amused by the words of the priest who boomed with breaking emotion, “Who knows but life be that which men call death, and death what men call life?” Or by the size of the funeral, the students pouring out the doors of the church when the pews were full. People paying their respects. Family. Teachers. Boys and girls that she had known and would never know. Hands in pockets, staring vacantly, absorbed with the notion of lives lived and lost. The impossible fabric of living and dying, the weft and warp of individual experience, strung out on the fragile loom of the human mind. The constant niggling of “what if”s.
Or perhaps it was the snow appearing magically after the rain, falling gently at first then whirling through the air, great deific shears snipping away at so much lace. And at the cemetery, the trees sighing in the emptiness, the absence of everything, even ghosts. But in the spring, through the urgent chatter of birds, the delicate mauve prayers of the crocus rise up, and later, the bright faces of forget-me-nots.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks and appreciation to the gang at HarperCollins Canada, especially Lynne Missen, Akka Janssen and Katie Hearn. Hearty thanks to the math people at Dr. Math for all their good advice. A huge salute and great admiration to Michio Takagi for his artistic stylings and tech wizardry. Warmest thanks to Laura Taylor for her talents and friendship, and to the Dixits for their kindness over the years. Gros becs to Lucie Pagé, the Francophone Goddess. Profound love and deepest gratitude to Wesley and Brian for their unwavering faith, and to my whole family for their enduring support: Mum, Mark, Rita, Cindy, Monika, Norman, Cassel, Hayden, Jasmine, Charlene and Jim. Hats off to Dom and Cath—same time next year? Thanks to Naomi and Doug for knowing what it’s all about, and to Marilyn and Ade. And special thanks to Chris and Richard for caring enough to share in this wild journey.
Copyright
The Book of Living and Dying
© 2005 by Natale Ghent.
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EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40148-7
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FIRST EDITION
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ghent, Natale, 1962–
The book of living and dying / Natale
Ghent. – 1st ed.
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-639349-8
ISBN-10: 0-00-639349-7
1. Title.
PS8563.H46B66 2005 C813’.6
C2004-907309-5
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HC 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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