by Tom Crockett
“Not anytime. Soon—real soon.”
Clarence was silent after that, and eventually Marina lay back down and closed her eyes. On the edge of sleep she heard, or thought she heard, Clarence speak again.
“You know now they goin’ to come to you. You can try to hide it, but they’ll know. They’ll know you been there and come back and they’ll want to know what it was like.” Marina wasn’t sure who “they” were, but she had an idea and it scared her. She didn’t want to become a guru for near-death experience groupies. “You can’t fight it, so you better figure out how you goin’ tell this story in a way that helps people like you’re helpin’ me.”
Marina wanted to answer, she wanted to speak, to reject this calling, but sleep and dreams washed over her first.
CHAPTER 8—THEATRE OF THE BARDO
The shamans of Tibet have a Book of the Dead—chart and guide for the landscape of dreams. Before I sleep I ask a question: How shall I know if I’m dreaming or dying?
In my dream a great sea turtle swims before me. He opens his shell like the cover of an ancient book of water. I see tiny letters carved on the inside of the shell. The sea turtles’ Book of the Dead says this:
Dreaming and dying,
they are one in the same.
But when you wake from death,
you must find a new shell.
Marina woke from a dream in which she was living in the late 1800s and was trying to gather a huge extended family together in one house. It was a dream of some frustration. She was aware of trying to bring various things together, but for every three people she gathered in a room, she would lose one.
Clarence was still there. He lay where he had the night before, taking shallow and infrequent breaths, barely clinging to life.
When Gracie found them together, her first question was, “Is he alive?” She was wearing a little sundress and sandals and her normally tangled hair had been brushed and pulled back in a ponytail.
“Yes,” Marina explained. “He’s resting.”
“He’s dying,” Gracie corrected with the firmness of a child who will not tolerate being talked down to. Marina agreed, checked Clarence, and asked Gracie to come with her.
Back at the cabin she helped Gracie roll her altar treasures up in a cloth and slip them into a little canvas bag. “You can set this up anywhere you are, and it will be your secret place. Add more things when you feel like it, and give things away when that feels right. Don’t become too attached to any one thing, but remember they are powerful objects. After they have lived in your sacred space for a while they will be even more special.”
Next she gave Gracie the bear wrapped in silk.
“It’s my bear!” she exclaimed. She recognized the face immediately. She laughed and studied the bear.
“When you put this on your altar, you’ll remember me and what we’ve shared. It’ll make me feel good to know that in some way we’re connected. It’ll be like I’m sitting on your altar somewhere.” Gracie was quiet and Marina noticed tears in her eyes. Marina’s own eyes began to get moist.
“I don’t have a present for you,” Gracie sniffled through the tears.
“Just knowing you has been a present for me.” Marina swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. “I won’t forget you.”
“I gotta go now.” Gracie stood up and started for the door with her bear and her altar in its canvas bag. “My mom wants me at the big house today. We have to look like a family.” She made a face with a grimace of a smile. “Maybe I can come back before I leave, but I don’t know if they’ll let me.”
She started to leave, then turned back quickly to hug Marina tightly. Marina hugged her back and smelled soap and the sweet smell of a little girl.
“I wish you could be my mom,” she whispered in Marina’s ear. Then she broke her hug and was gone.
The cabin felt empty after that. She had no appetite for breakfast or lunch and did not even uncover the dinner tray. She checked on Clarence regularly but observed no change. She brought water in Mai-Ling’s bowl, should he want some, but he never asked, and she did not want to disturb him. She brought the two blue bottles of essential oils that Mai-Ling had given her and she brought the ivory sheet from her bed.
By late in the day she’d carried more firewood from the magically replenishing supply outside the cabin to her circle. She had not let the fire go out completely during the day, so when she added new dry wood, it sprang to life quickly. As darkness came she settled in before the fire and waited.
“S’time now,” Clarence whispered. Marina had not dozed off, but her mind was elsewhere and she thought at first that she might be dreaming when she heard him. “S’time now.”
Marina leaned close to Clarence. “Are you ready for me to read the poem?”
“Vest pocket.” Clarence spoke economically, as if he had little breath left in him, each exhalation more precious than the last. Marina found a folded piece of paper in his vest pocket and held it up to him. He nodded. “You sing it out, now. Don’t be shy ’bout it.”
Marina unfolded the piece of paper delicately.
“Sing it out. That’s how you have to say one of my poems. Sing it out till I don’t need it no more.” He paused. “And don’t cry for me when I’m gone. I’m a happy man.” He closed his eyes.
Marina began to read.
“ ‘Circus Requiem’
I had a three-ring circus,
she and me and we,
the greatest show on earth.
I jumped through hoops of fire
with the big cats,
and I had tigers in my cage
a rage within ’em,
a Cajun rhythm.
I had three rings.
Bright gold round your finger,
buried now.
Binding steel tight across my chest,
rusting now.
Tarnished brass round my finger,
slipping now,
as my fingers curl and shrink
round ticket stubs for this tawdry show.
I have no wild animals now.
Secondhand, sideshow unicorn,
all the magic I can muster.
A goat bleating,
a heart bleeding,
afraid of the sacrificial knife
that comes for my throat.
I have one tumbling, free-falling flyer.
Swinging out, night after night,
letting go my hold,
adjusting my trajectory,
hoping you’ll be there
to catch me.
I have one sad clown
left in the spotlight,
and I chase myself
round and round,
and beat myself with a rubber bat
for no one’s amusement.
I have one bag of stale peanuts
left to feed the pachyderm
that no longer stands
gently on the head
of the woman with the uneasy smile
and the sequined breasts.
I have one long last blast
of calliope circus music in me,
playing slow like a funeral dirge.
Then I’ll fold up this big top
this grave plot,
this soft spot,
and carry my poor circus
on my back
like a peddler into the flames.
My hissing, popping flesh
will sing out to you.
My crackling bones
will tap out a dancing rhythm.
My sparks and cinders
will light the night sky
searching for you.
My ashes will be carried
on the wind that whispers
in your ear
a love song from the high wire.”
Tears filled Marina’s eyes. She looked down at Clarence. His eyes were still closed, his breath almost still, but he smiled.
She said the poem again, louder this time, with more feelin
g. She heard it differently this time, but still she cried. She said the poem aloud a third, then a fourth and fifth time, growing more comfortable with it each time. She got inside the poem, put it on like an old shirt, said it again.
She was crying now, not for Clarence and his love, but for the love she hadn’t had. She had loved. She had been in love. But she had not known this kind of love. This was a love that had had time to grow. It’d grown into something Marina had no experience of, and she felt a great emptiness.
She said the poem again with rage and anger. She said it with frustration and disappointment. She said it with sadness and longing. In the end, however, she said it with hope. That someone could love this much gave her a kind of hope she hadn’t felt before.
She never knew at what precise moment Clarence died or which reading of the poem had been the last he heard. But even when she knew he was dead she still said the poem. Spirits sometimes linger around bodies, she thought. They need time to move on. So she continued reciting the poem until her throat was sore and her voice cracked.
When she was certain that she had given him enough time, she put the piece of paper into the fire and held it while it burned. She held onto it as long as she could, then dropped it in the sand while the flame consumed the last of Clarence’s words. Before it had completely cooled, she took the charred bits back in her hand and crumbled them. She rubbed her blackened hands on her face, mixing tears and ashes to mark her skin with snakelike streaks of mourning.
Then she straightened Clarence’s body and arranged his clothes. She cleaned his face and hands and feet with a cloth dipped in water and touched him with drops of scented oil: forehead, eyelids, lips, heart, palms, and the soles of his feet. After anointing him, she covered him with the sheet. She thought of saying a prayer for him, but he’d written his own prayer and she’d read it, and there was nothing better she could say.
She put all the remaining wood on the fire and stood for a moment as the flames leapt to life. She hoped that his Kiyoko would see it. She left the circle then and walked back to the cabin in the darkness before dawn. She did not wash or drink, but pulled her clothes off and fell onto her bed.
* * *
When she woke next it was late in the day. She did not know what day. She was suddenly tired of having no way of telling the passing of time. Her mouth was dry and she was feverish. She was thirsty but too tired to go out to the cistern. She reached for the little bowl on her altar. She always kept water in it to float blossoms, and she was tired and thirsty enough to drink from it now. It was not there. She’d brought it for Clarence and left it in the circle.
What she did notice, however, were the flowers. There were little coral and pink orchid blossoms all over her altar. They were the kind of orchids the Turtle Mother had covered her in before burying her. She’d found one while exploring with Gracie and commented on how beautiful it was.
Gracie was here, she thought, she came back to say good-bye, and I was asleep. This made Marina feel heavy and sad. She’d missed seeing Gracie one last time. There was nothing she could do then but sink back into sleep.
She slept a hot, alchemical sleep, drifting in and out of dreams.
She woke but did not dress. She walked naked to the circle. Clarence’s body was gone. The fire she had burned for four nights was covered and buried with sand. Many of the shells had been scattered. Only a skeleton of the original circle remained. How long have I slept? she wondered. She walked back to the cabin but lost her way. She headed out onto the beach to get her bearings. She walked up and down the beach but could not find the cabin. Everything seemed strange and out of place.
From a long way off she saw a figure walking toward her on the beach. As it approached she saw it was a man, a black man. It was Clarence, still barefoot, still dressed in his baggy black trousers and his yellow vest. He came up to her and stopped.
“What you still doin’ here?”
“What?”
“You heard me. What you still doin’ here?” He sounded gruff.
“I’m . . . I’m . . .” She stammered, stuttered, could think of nothing to say. “I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you learned anything? Is it so easy for you to get lost all over again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I should do next.”
Clarence grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and shook her. “You get up now and go. Don’t you hear that?”
Marina couldn’t hear anything.
“Listen, they’re calling you.”
Marina listened again. She heard something. It was faint and far off, but she heard something.
“You’ve done all you need to do. Do you hear me?”
Marina nodded. She found herself more and more distracted by the noise. It was almost something she could recognize.
“You think they can’t come for you here, just because you crossed over that mountain? Well, you’re wrong. You stay here too long, and you’ll find yourself going back up that trail looking for something you lost, something you’re sure you left behind. Are you listening to me?”
Marina nodded abstractly. She was naked, standing on a beach, a dead man was shaking her, a horn sounded in the distance. A horn, yes, she thought, a ship’s horn. My ship.
She woke then. It was morning again, but what day? The sun was shining across the water. The sheet she slept on was stained with sweat and streaked with black ash. She felt weak, but she got up and walked to the cistern. She drank six ladles of water before her thirst was slaked. Then she poured water over herself, washing her hair and the black marks from her face with the sweet little soaps. One pitcher at a time she rinsed her body and dried with one of the towels. Without much thought she tied on her yellow silk skirt and pulled on the red and orange top.
She looked around the cabin. Her altar was still covered with the little orchid blossoms. They still looked fresh, as if they had just been picked. Mai-Ling’s bowl was there, as were the little bottles of oil. She did not remember bringing either of them back from the circle.
She drank some more water, then walked with some thought of visiting her circle. She could not find it. It had not been far from her cabin, but she had now lost it completely. There was no body, no charred remains of a fire, no circle of shells. She found herself walking out onto the beach, so like in her dream.
She headed east on the beach. She knew by her observations from the upper plateau that around the point was a little bay and a pier, but she’d never walked far in this direction. Now, with no real purpose she would admit to, she set out for the point.
It took her longer than she thought it should have. She found herself looking back to see if she was leaving footprints. She was. They only disappeared when she walked into the water to cool her feet. The sand was hot as well and she found this reassuring.
By noon she saw the outline of the pier ahead. It was not large or particularly long, but it still took an unusual length of time to reach it. Then she saw the big house. It was clearly the place Gracie had described.
She approached it from the side first as it faced, not east, but south, onto the little bay. It was set up on rocks that overlooked the bay, and there were long wooden and stone steps to reach the front entrance. The porch was wide and covered with a thatched roof. It featured fan-back rattan chairs, low-slung bamboo recliners, little tables, and benches.
The shells of sea turtles hung as decorations. Marina hoped they hadn’t been hunted or killed. A sign with artistically primitive green letters hung over the big open double doors. It read TURTLE ISLAND RESORT. This struck Marina as funny, or at the very least, surreal.
She saw no activity, so she climbed the steps to the porch. She peeked through the doors, but it was dark and her eyes did not adjust quickly. She heard low voices, but saw no one.
The view from the porch was beautiful. It overlooked the aquamarine bay. Marina could see several small groups of people lying full in the sun or partially shaded by beach umbrellas painted to resembl
e turtle shells.
She had no intention of staying long. She had, she thought, a long walk back to her cabin. But she was tired from her walk and, she thought, not fully recovered from her recent fever, so she sat in one of the rattan chairs and put her feet up on one of the little benches. There were little cushions on the chair, and it was more comfortable than it looked.
She closed her eyes, but only for a moment.
* * *
When Marina woke she was not alone. She knew this without opening her eyes, but it was not some supernormal sensitivity. She smelled perfume, heard ice clinking in a glass, was aware of even the gentle breathing of the person across from her.
She opened her eyes. A woman sat opposite her. She had in fact moved her chair to face Marina. Her bare feet were propped on the same bench Marina’s feet were resting on. She had a tall glass of what looked like iced tea in her left hand, which she held from the top and twirled to make the ice spin.
She looked to be about fifty, with fair skin and long straight hair more silver than brown. A blue blossom was tucked behind one ear. She wore a simple white dress embroidered with wave patterns in different shades of blue thread. There were sandals on the floor by her chair.
Marina took this all in within seconds of opening her eyes. The woman smiled at her.
“Hi. I’m Ingrid, Ingrid Goeller. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived. I was away doing some buying for the island. You met my husband, Max, though. I’m sure he took good care of you.”
Marina looked around, trying to identify the person to whom this woman was speaking. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a little ill for the past several days, I’m not thinking too clearly.” She didn’t want to be rude, but she had no idea who this woman was.
“Yes, Akoni told me. He’s been looking in on you, but he didn’t think you were in any danger.”
“Akoni?”
“Akoni is the caretaker for cabins one through five. He brings food, cleans up, stocks the cabins, whatever needs doing.”
“I don’t believe I’ve met Akoni.”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t have. We are very discreet here. We try to anticipate the needs and desires of our guests and cater to them. Akoni prides himself on serving without being seen.” While this woman, Ingrid, sounded rational, nothing of what she said made sense to Marina.