Still With Me

by Thierry Cohen

  Before death, I think you’re asked to justify your life before the abyss can transform itself into abundance. What claims can I make in the face of death? A few days of life, their meaning lost in the minutes that came before and the ones that followed after.

  I still love you, Victoria, as in the first days.

  Because those are still my first days.

  Victoria took her place in a seat next to the chuppah with her back to Jeremy. Next to her, an elegant man acknowledged Jeremy with a smile that showed more pity than kindness. Victoria seemed embarrassed. She sat too properly in her chair. She knew Jeremy had seen the man beside her, and she knew what he must be feeling. Then the guests came in to be seated, and Victoria disappeared. Jeremy felt his energy extinguished. He’d spent too much time concentrating on the effort to resist his senile wanderings.

  A hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality. Pierre was standing next to him. He was an old man, bald and stooped. But his eyes were still lively and quick with intelligence.

  He seemed divided between the joy of seeing his friend again and grief over the circumstances.

  For Jeremy, even if he wasn’t a friend, Pierre was the one who had supported Victoria during the most difficult years, and Jeremy was grateful.

  “Hello, Jeremy. I’m happy to see you.” Pierre was quiet for a few seconds.

  “It’s hard talking to you. What is there to say? It’s true—over the years, I thought about this day. I had it all worked out, believe me. I’d give you a piece of my mind, find the exact right words to hurt you.” He shrugged his shoulders bitterly. “As if that were my style. But okay, I was hurting pretty badly.”

  Pierre paused again for a few seconds, reliving moments from the past, so long ago for him. “What meaning would it have today? We’re two old men the past won’t leave in peace. I mean…It’s probably worse for you. I know even if you still only remember a few birthdays, the memories are more alive for you, more heartbreaking. Mine seem so far away that sometimes they’re not even mine anymore. And then, I have to admit, you did me one hell of a favor. Clotilde was not the right girl for me. I started my life over, and I’m glad I did. I won’t go quite so far as to thank the asshole you were, but…I know what you did to protect Victoria and the kids. I understand the strength of your love for her. It’s all so unfair, Jeremy. So much love, yet so much unhappiness.”

  Pierre took a deep breath.

  “We barely have time to turn around before death has us cornered. Life is too short; that’s what the old folks say. When young, we won’t hear any of it. We keep steering our hopes toward something we call the future. The word is misleading. It gives you the sense that there’s some eternal race. But life comes to an end without ever making sense. Today, my wealth and my dignity as a man, a father, a husband, a friend—that’s the inheritance I leave for my loved ones, so they’ll stop chasing after their future and start working to build a past.”

  A few disgruntled murmurs started to shush Pierre. The rabbi was speaking.

  Pierre’s hand squeezed Jeremy’s shoulder. “All right,” he said, “I’m going to sit down. I’ll find you again later.”

  Once again, time refused to move at Jeremy’s pace; the ceremony lasted only a handful of seconds.

  When the prayers began, Jeremy started to tremble. Every word, every intonation brutalized him. His blood turned to ice, and cold sweat pearled on his forehead.

  “Are you okay, Grandfather? Why are you sweating like that? Hey, is everything all right?” Julie asked, concerned. Realizing he was having a crisis, she took advantage of the moment the guests stood to push his chair as discreetly as possible toward the exit.

  She wiped his forehead. “Do you want me to get someone?” she asked. “Seems like you’re doing better, right?”

  A voice cut in. It came from behind. “Go back inside, Julie. I’ll take care of your grandfather.”

  The girl seemed concerned. She wanted to catch the end of the ceremony but wasn’t ready to leave Jeremy’s side. “No, I’m going to stay with him,” she replied.

  “I assure you, you can go back in,” the voice entreated her, soft and firm. “Your grandfather’s doing better already. I’ll stay with him. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, and I’d like to talk with him for a minute.”

  The man took the handles of Jeremy’s wheelchair to show his determination.

  Julie smiled at her grandfather. “Is that all right? I’ll come back and see you in a minute.”

  The man pushed the wheelchair to a bench and sat facing Jeremy. It was Abraham Chrikovitch. His hair and beard had been battered by the white winds of time. The thick lenses of his glasses hid his lively eyes. He looked at Jeremy seriously, stroked his beard, and rocked slightly.

  “You remember me, don’t you?” he asked. It was less of a question than a way to begin.

  “Your son told me you’d be here today. And earlier I overheard that you were…truly present.” He stroked his beard and continued. “I have a few things to tell you. For a long time…” He hesitated, absorbed in the struggle to find the right words.

  Jeremy felt the same impatience he’d felt during their conversation in the prison hall. He wanted to know, even if now it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I could never forget you. Our meeting left me a changed man. You weighed heavily on my conscience. As you already know, I had a notion about what happened to you. You talked about getting even with God. That your actions constituted a sort of defiance. The combined attraction and repulsion you feel toward religious symbols.

  “After our discussion, I tried to contact a rabbi who was an authority in the domain of mystic Judaism. In vain. The day went by, and I suffered knowing you were waiting for a sign, a word. I met with the man several days later and told him your story. He asked me in no uncertain terms to give up on your case, to stop all research. He wouldn’t say anything more. You don’t dispute advice from this kind of individual in my milieu. I chased you from my mind. I tried not to think about it. But I couldn’t forget your words. Your imploring eyes and your aura of sincerity became an obsession.” He stopped talking to make his point. He seemed preoccupied.

  Jeremy fought against fatigue to stay lucid. He knew Abraham Chrikovitch had discovered the truth.

  Abraham Chrikovitch began again, stroking his beard. “I met your son, Simon, several years later. He was doing an investigation into your past and had seen you the day you left prison. He knew that I’d visited you and wanted to know what we talked about. His words reawakened my curiosity. So I reopened your case. And here’s what I learned.”

  Intense emotion overwhelmed Jeremy. He was going to learn the truth. He worried for a moment that he’d faint or die before hearing Abraham Chrikovitch’s revelation. He had to hold on for a few more minutes.

  “You spoke to me about Psalms thirty, seventy-seven, and ninety. They offered up certain clues to understanding your story. Psalm ninety warns against defying God. In the light of the All Powerful, no faults are tolerated, and his anger is destructive. ‘All our days ebb away under your wrath; our years die away like a sigh.’ And the man, lost, turns back to God and begs forgiveness.

  “Psalm seventy-seven: ‘I cry aloud to God, and he hears me. On the day of my distress I am seeking Adonai; my hands are lifted up.’ Listen, Jeremy. As they met your wounded soul, these words had particular resonance. So much so that you found them deeply disturbing. ‘I think about the days of old, the years of long ago; in the night I remember my song, I commune with myself, my spirit inquires: “Will Adonai reject me forever? Will he never show his favor again? Has his grace permanently disappeared? Is his word to all generations done away? Has God forgotten to be compassionate? Has he in anger withheld his mercy?”’

  “These psalms tell your story, Jeremy. They describe your battle with God and his ability to demolish those who defy him. They talk about the possibility of men living their full lives—or living their deaths.

  “
And then there’s Psalm thirty. It speaks of the power of God to forgive, to grant the soul the ability to sing again, to build, to blossom by acknowledging the richness of life. God gives second chances. Has yours been denied, Jeremy? I don’t think so. The truth is something quite different. After all…the truth. I can’t be certain…No, truly…There is no certainty,” he said, almost too quietly to hear.

  Then Abraham Chrikovitch suddenly became very serious, his gaze lost between his thoughts and the words he hoped to gather. He seemed to question the veracity of his own revelation.

  Jeremy wanted to beg him to go on, but his rigid body prevented him. His strength began to fail. He was going away, to lose consciousness for a moment or forever. He made a final effort to collect the last bits of energy still scattered in the farthest corners of his will. The rabbi lifted his head, and Jeremy stared at him decisively. His eyes possessed all the hardness of all the confusion that had built up during his long days of amnesia. He didn’t want to fail so close to the end. He wanted to know before dying.

  Jeremy’s eyes frightened Abraham Chrikovitch. The man nodded once and then leaned over, voice trembling, and whispered in his ear. “I believe that…you actually died on May 8, 2001.”

  Jeremy’s body suddenly slid toward the abyss. He had no more feeling left.

  Only Abraham Chrikovitch’s voice was still audible. “You died on May 8, 2001. But you also died at the end of each of these days when you became aware of the consequences of your suicide, Jeremy.

  “Life is worth more than man will ever know. Each of our choices open up the possibility of a different world. Every time we wake up, the universe puts itself in our hands. So many paths. So many choices. Our discernment is the only way to tell which one leads to happiness. And there’s one that’s always there, the worst and often the most tempting. The one that is not a choice. The refusal to go on. The refusal to live.

  “On May 8, 2001, you made your choice, Jeremy. Your decision was an act of rebellion, an insult meant for God. Our souls are on earth to learn. Through life, they’re refined, made perfect. The one who tramples his soul by not building anything, not trying to make progress during his entire life, is like a corpse: useless, sterile. There are so many men on this earth whose souls are lost in denial of what’s essential. So many amnesiacs. So many suffering souls. Like children, these men know what values and feelings should guide them. But they’d rather live in a world of their own convenience. You too, Jeremy, you forgot your values. Your act was worse than any made in life. The worst offense to God. And God wanted you to learn your lesson. So…so another soul came to live in your body, a soul made to play, defile himself, and destroy. Not really a soul, in fact. The dark side of your own. The one your choice liberated.

  “And your true soul came to live in your body for a few moments, a few days, so that you could evaluate the consequences of your act, to see how your choice had sullied the world. Just a few glimpses, a few appearances at the important moments in the life you renounced.

  “By refusing to live, you chose hell. What is hell but an awareness of our mistakes without the possibility of making them right? God showed you the fruit of your error. You became aware of your crime without being able to correct it. And an internal fire consumed you. Maybe this is your hell, Jeremy…

  “And yet, sometimes God forgives us. He gives a second chance. Has he denied you yours? Have you asked him? Have you simply asked for forgiveness?”

  Jeremy stopped breathing, and the opaque cloud that floated behind his eyes suddenly invaded his entire being.

  TEN

  Jeremy woke up in a dark room, his body floating on a light wave that rocked him gently. In the distance, the flicker of a warm light seemed to beckon him.

  He heard a voice. Maybe it was Abraham Chrikovitch’s voice. But farther away, deeper.

  “Men have the ability to accomplish great things. They can build their lives or create others or help other lives be built. We never live alone. Solitude is an illusion. Despair, a lure.

  “To be alone is to refuse to go toward others. To be desperate is to refuse to imagine hope. By deciding to die, you made a decision that affected other people, other lives that counted on yours as a foundational element. You destroyed the meaning of your life and of those who were meant to build theirs around you, with you. Do you regret it, Jeremy? How much?”

  The light seemed to come toward him. Or maybe he was moving toward the light.

  Simon appeared and approached Jeremy. Jeremy thought he seemed to slide along the ground in slow motion. Simon leaned over his father and kissed his forehead. Jeremy’s vision was blurry. He heard his son speak to him in a muffled voice without seeing his lips move.

  “I missed you, Father. Your absence took over my life as I foolishly tried to forget you. The truth is, you were the monster hidden in the shadows of my nightmares. We never said your name, afraid you might appear. Even so, at times I needed to imagine you as someone loving, the one you seemed to be for a day, just long enough to leave an obscure warmth in my heart. But reality snuffed it out, and the cruel storms threw my dreams onto the sharp edges of my wounded mind.

  “When I found you, it was too late to start over. It was just enough to end the last sentence of a paragraph that would make sense of all these years of waiting. I only knew you for a few hours. But they were so rich. Rich enough to make me regret all the years I spent hating you and hoping for you. I missed you so much.”

  Simon disappeared, and Thomas took his place. He stood a few feet from Jeremy.

  “How ironic. Only on your deathbed does your face finally show some humanity. You’re a trickster, a thief of meaning. You forbade me from ever being careless and stole my childhood, drying up the source of my dreams. Only nightmares lit my nights with their putrid colors. I was afraid to go anywhere and find you there, ready to destroy my mother and ruin our hopes for a better future—a future without you.

  “Where you’re going, a man is only worth what he left behind: love, hate, virtue, vice, loftiness, lowness. At the moment of judgment, punishment and prayer become his only measure. I accept my inheritance, and I’ll put it in your file. A witness for the prosecution.”

  Jeremy wanted to escape these visions, shut out these voices. They were torture. His soul sought an exit, yearning for rest. Escape this body? Move toward the light? Find comfort in its warmth?

  But then his parents appeared. His father held a little girl in his arms whose face Jeremy couldn’t see. He looked at Jeremy with cold eyes. “I don’t forgive you.”

  Then his mother came forward. “What have you done to us, Jeremy?” she whispered. Then she stepped back.

  Suddenly, his heart seized. The light called to him.

  But then Victoria came. She leaned over and smiled. Her eyes were full of love. “I love you,” she told him.

  She was so beautiful. Her presence alone was gentle enough to calm him. Then Jeremy’s soul floated up to her, trying to absorb her sweet energy.

  But a prayer, spoken in many voices, suddenly broke out. His father, Simon, and Abraham Chrikovitch reappeared around his bed. The three men rocked back and forth around his body, slack and inert. They recited the prayer for the dead. Jeremy was fully aware of his end. All the pain that fed on him in his short life came back to attack his soul.

  He looked for the old man who prayed for him every time he was about to die. This person, who’d become so familiar, would ease his raging fear. But the man wasn’t there. And yet Jeremy felt his presence, so close. Now was the moment he should be crying, begging, and praying. Jeremy’s soul rose up and went looking for him. It floated through the room, passing close to the men who sang their prayers without touching them. Then it lifted higher and looked down on the scene. And Jeremy saw the old man.

  He was lying down, eyes closed, with three men praying around him.

  Hoping to escape the horrific vision of his own face, Jeremy’s soul let itself be carried toward the light, bearer of promises, w
hich seemed somehow, at the far end of an abyss, to be eternally beyond reach. The strange light had a strength of its own and calmed Jeremy. It was the sum of all his joys and sorrows. Potential balance, a corridor of serenity between opposing forces.

  But the cries, the cries interfered with his movement. Sounds that rent his exalted soul as easily as a blade cuts the skin of a child. Jeremy’s soul stopped to listen to these noises and the words that expressed only pain. He hung there, suspended, hesitating.

  The cries grew louder. Each one was a blow that struck him, pushed him back, forcing him to re-inhabit his body. Once again, Jeremy felt the contours of his cadaver, still there, as an extension of his soul.

  Immediately, a cold breath invaded him. And a new fear. The cries became more numerous, the cold more piercing, the darkness more opaque.

  He heard his mother’s voice. “What did we do?” she asked, sobbing.

  The other sounds came to him from farther away. Then another voice lifted above the haunting tumult. It was Victoria’s. “I love you,” she told him.

  And the two voices met and rebounded in a single echo. His mother and his wife, together, called to him. The words, now so close, struck his spirit with an unspeakable violence. He wanted to scream.

  His soul tried again to leave his cold, dying body and move in the direction of light and warmth. At that moment, he was aware of his suicide and realized his horror. He relived each of his awakenings. All those moments, all the words, all the feelings of those few days were there. And each one was a sharp sliver of life that pierced his soul.

  Then he realized the warmth that attracted him was nothing but an illusion. Nothing waited for him out there. Just an echo of his cries. A tumult that would never cease, becoming his hell.