I asked where he found it and he said it’d been on the step when he came out. I was amazed—who was this guy? Robert Capa, Indiana Jones, and Saint Francis of Assisi? He asked what the creature was called, and I told him and said I’d always wanted one for a pet. Did I want that one, he asked, but I said no; I just liked the picture of the three of them together. He turned around with a beautiful smile, then put the igel down on the ground. The little thing just waddled off in no big hurry. Minnie didn’t move, but looked back at me as if to say, “See? Did you see that?” I asked Leland how he felt and he said fine. He put a hand on Minnie’s head and she leaned into him even more. The sound of a plane swept over us, and a few seconds later its flashing lights and dark shape moved across the sky. Leland took his hand off the dog’s head and reached up. He pretended to grab the fist-sized plane and bring it down slowly. Then he opened his hand to me and said, “It’s for you.”
WYATT
My second day in Vienna I raised the dead.
Jet lag set in right after Sophie, Caitlin, and I had dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. One minute I felt fine; the next, I was so exhausted that I didn’t know if I’d have the energy to get up from the table and stagger back to the room. I did, but once there I simply dropped my clothes on the floor and fell into bed.
At six-thirty the next morning I was wide awake and on the phone to Jesse Chapman, telling him to come get me in his car because we had to go someplace right away. He didn’t sound surprised. The only thing he asked was if it had to do with what we’d discussed the day before. Yes, it did. Come get me.
I was standing in front of the hotel when he pulled up half an hour later.
“Hi, Wyatt. What’s up?” There was an eagerness on his face and in his voice that hadn’t been there the day before.
“Do you know where the Friedhof der Namenlosen is?”
“Cemetery of the Nameless? No.”
“Do you have a map of the city?”
“Yes, in the glove compartment. What is the place?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to Vienna before, remember? I just know we have to go there now. Is it this one?”
He looked at me a long second, then nodded. “What’s going on?”
Without knowing anything about the city or this place we had to visit, I looked at the map for no more than a few seconds before finding the cemetery. “Here it is. I don’t know what’s going on. Do you know how to get here?” I pointed. He took the map and looked at it for a moment.
“It’s out by the airport. Yes, I can find it.”
There was a great deal of traffic, so it took us half an hour to get there. The only time he spoke was to point out certain famous sites—the Hofburg, the Prater, a building where Freud had lived early in his career. It was a clean, orderly city that didn’t strike me as very interesting. There were other places I would much rather have visited before I died. I’d always wanted to go to Bruges; always wanted to see that spectacular view of the sea from Santorini.
We rode for a while beside the Danube Canal. The water was brown and slow. There were no boats on it, not one, which I thought strange. Fishermen stood on the bank with their shirts off; bike riders pedaled by. A high summer day in Vienna. Jesse said they were in the middle of a drought—every day at least ninety degrees and no sign of rain. Trees drooped and the grass near the water was spotted with brown. A news broadcast in English came on the car radio and the commentator went into long details about the terrible war in Yugoslavia. Thousands dead, concentration camps; no one had any idea of how to make peace.
Jesse switched off the radio as soon as the report was finished. “Can you tell me anything about this, or do I have to wait till we get there?”
I ignored his question and kept looking out the window. How could I explain? I hardly understood it myself. I did not understand it.
We were on an autobahn a few minutes, then off and winding over back roads that bordered a giant oil refinery and gray block housing. More back roads. Billboards advertised familiar things in an unfamiliar language. Orange soda lived here, as did panty hose and Bic pens. I wanted to be home, seeing these products advertised in my language. I wanted to be home. Warehouses with trailer trucks parked in front with bold Cyrillic writing on their sides. Russian and Bulgarian license plates.
I said, “This really is the East, isn’t it?”
We slowed, bumped across railroad tracks, and stopped. He took the map from me and checked where we were. “We should be almost there. It must be just up the way a little.”
We drove a bit farther and then I knew before he did that we had arrived. “Here, stop the car on the other side of the circle. It’s up that hill.”
He parked and we got out. On our left was a high warehouse with many broken windows and giant cranes in front that leaned out over a spur of the canal. The top of a black barge peeked over the edge of the pavement.
“There. Go up those stairs.”
He didn’t move. “How do you know, Wyatt?”
“Austria’s a Catholic country. If you’re Catholic and kill yourself, church law prohibits your being buried in consecrated ground. City officials put this cemetery here for two reasons. They needed somewhere to bury their suicides, and when they were building the canal, many of the workers drowned or were killed on the site and they needed a nearby place to put them.”
Instead of asking how I knew these facts, he started up the narrow staircase. At the top was a strange building that looked like a stone beehive. It was the chapel for the burial ground. The light switch was on the outside wall. When you pressed it, you could see behind an ornate locked gate a small but gaudy altar loaded with fresh flowers and one lit candle. Whose job was it to come out here first thing every morning to check on the candle and light it?
Down another short set of steps to a waist-high cement wall with FRIEDHOF DER NAMENLOSEN in thick block letters. On the other side of the wall were perhaps a hundred graves. Almost all had identical black metal crosses at the head of the humps of earth. At the bottom of each cross was a square that looked like a small chalkboard for something to be written, but only a handful had names and dates recorded in white script. The rest were blank. Nevertheless, there were a surprisingly large number of flowers and wreaths on these graves. It touched me to think that people came out here to pay tribute to the anonymous dead. What inspired them to do that? Someone kept the candle burning in the chapel; someone brought fresh bouquets of flowers. Was it someone’s job? Did the city of Vienna pay salaried homage to a few dead no one knew or cared about? Or was it simply the kindness and respect of some good souls? I hoped it was that. A sudden rage in my chest hoped it was that. Here and there stood a few regular stones with names and dates and the causes of death. But they were rare and looked out of place among all the other black crosses.
I walked to one anonymous grave and, putting a hand on the marker, looked at Jesse. “This was a man. His name was Thomas Widhalm. Committed suicide in 1929 by jumping into the Danube. His body washed up, as did a lot of the others, right over there on that hook of land that divides the canal from the river. He was from the town of Oggau but came to Vienna to study medicine. The great pride of his family. But he was gay, which nobody knew of course, and when he found out he had gotten syphilis from sleeping with a fellow student, he killed himself. After the family hadn’t heard from him for two months, they sent his younger brother Friedrich to Vienna to find him. But Friedrich hated Thomas, and after a week of halfhearted searching, he went home and told their mother her favorite boy had run off to Germany. At the end of the war, Friedrich was killed by the Russians when they invaded Austria. They shot him when he tried to keep them from a cache of Nazi bicycles.”
A couple of feet over, I touched the top of the next anonymous cross. “Margarete Ruzicka. She came from Czechoslovakia. From Bohemia.” I closed my eyes and thought a minute until I saw her face clearly and knew everything about her. It was like driving through thick fog into clearness.
One moment nothing; the next, a view that went on for miles. She had been hired by a wealthy Viennese family with a villa in Hietzing and a summer residence in Meran to take care of twin baby boys. I saw her packing her cheap suitcase, saying goodbye to her family, riding the train to Vienna with her head pressed to the cold glass window. Trying to see everything at once. She said to herself a hundred times, “I’rn going to Vienna; I have a job in Vienna.” Then her shy dip of the head and curtsey when she was introduced to the master of the house. Her terrible claustrophobia that first week away from home. In her tiny room at night she tried to read the Bible but had no heart for it; she tried chanting “Vienna” to herself as she had on the train, but nothing helped.
Things slowly got better for her, but what she didn’t understand, because she was naive and silly, was why the master, who smelled of würst and ‘4711’ cologne, was around too much of the time, watching her, watching her constantly. Then that night in spring when he came to her room and took her for the first time. She thought, There is nothing I can do now. Nothing I can do about this. I’m not pretty; why does he want me? For the first time in her life she began looking in mirrors whenever she got the chance. Rape had made her vain. He ignored her after that, stopped looking at her altogether, except when he took her. His breath was always bad, his skin always cool. She would look at him, thinking all the time, What will I do if he tells? What will I do if he tells my mother? And then her period didn’t come and another maid who was kind and jealous told her she must run. So she left the house and disappeared into the city.
One afternoon a customer wouldn’t pay her for the ten minutes of sex he’d just had, and when she complained, he slit her throat as neatly as if he were opening a letter.
“How do you know?”
I blinked and realized my mouth was open. I closed it and looked down at her grave. “Because I had one of your dreams last night. I dreamed I met Philip Strayhorn. Do you know who he was?”
“No.”
“He was a well-known actor who killed himself a while ago. We were lovers once for a short time, but that wasn’t what we were about. He was my friend and I admired him.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Come on. Let’s go sit on the wall there. I could tell you the names and histories of every person in here. All their hopes and hatreds; the secrets they thought were so important but weren’t… Not that it matters. Did your person glow?”
We were up on the wall and he turned to me, confused. “Glow? What do you mean?”
“The dead person you talked to in your dream. Who was it?”
“A kid I knew in school. What do you mean, glow?” His voice was testy and suspicious.
“Strayhorn glowed. Not like a lamp, but there was a definite… illumination to him. His whole body.
“I dreamed I was sitting in a steak house I like in New York. Gallagher’s. I was looking at the menu and Phil came in as if we had a date for dinner. We shook hands, and he sat down and asked what was good here. It was all very calm and comfortable.”
“Were you surprised?”
“No. I understood immediately why he was there and what was about to happen, but it didn’t bother me. We both ordered sirloins and mashed potatoes. Dinner with a dead man.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I had any questions. I asked why he glowed. He explained it to me and I understood.”
“What?” Jesse’s eyes widened, and, sitting up straight, he pushed himself forward with his hands. “You understood? What did he say?”
“I can’t tell you. You know that. But I did understand.”
“I can tell you anything I heard, Wyatt. I can tell you anything you want to know about my dreams. Ask whatever you want.”
“I can’t. My situation is different from yours.”
“Why? Well, what the hell can you tell me? Did you learn anything that’ll help us?”
“Yes. I understood every answer he gave to my questions.”
“No!”
“Every one. But I was careful. Most of the time we just chatted. I’d ask him something only if I thought I could understand the answer, and it worked.”
“Was he surprised?”
“No, he seemed pleased, even congratulated me once.”
“What can it do for us?”
“It means that for the time being you and McGann will be all right. Nothing more will happen and you will not dream again. Strayhorn specifically said that—you two are okay as long as I continue to understand his answers.”
“Then McGann was right: you are the one who can save us.”
“Save? I don’t know. At least for now. But who knows what will happen next? It reminds me of the Arabian Nights. But instead of having to tell good stories night after night to keep from being killed, I have to understand a dead man’s answers. So far, so good after one night. What’ll happen in the long run? Anyone’s guess.”
“But you’re sure for now that McGann and I will be okay?”
“You will, yes. I don’t know about me. He didn’t say anything about that. Plus, I didn’t ask to be saved—I asked for knowledge. He asked whether I’d rather survive or know? I said, ‘Won’t I be able to protect myself better if I know some things?’ He nodded and, well, that’s when he congratulated me.”
“I don’t understand this. What do you mean, know or be saved? What is there to know? You mean the big questions? That’s stupid! You’ll get all those answers when you die, if there’s anything to know! What’s more important for any of us now than surviving?”
“When I knew I was terminal, I told Sophie the only thing I wanted before I died, if it were somehow possible, was to meet Death and ask Him questions. Phil did that for me. I don’t know if he is Death, but he’s close enough. He obviously speaks for his Boss.” I smiled while Jesse shook his head disgustedly and mimicked the word boss.
“But what does it do for you, Wyatt? Give you the ability to recognize bodies in a graveyard? So what? Does that give you new insight into the way God works? Huh? Is that helpful?”
“It might save your life for now.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know that. Please know I’m grateful. But I’m thinking of you now. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Thank you, but it already has—I’ve been dying for a while. That’s a big difference between us.”
“He can stop it!”
I shook my head. “Maybe, but you’ve got to realize that there’s another big difference. You and McGann both have partners who love you very much. You also have Sophie. I don’t. I’m alone and have been dying alone a long time. I don’t love anyone the way you love your wife. I wish I did. That’s the heart of the matter. Since there’s no one to love, I’ve got to love myself the best way I know how.
“Listen, when my father died a few years ago he went out in the worst possible way. No heroics, no last-minute grace. Just pain and suffering all the way down to the end. Worst of all, he made those of us who loved him suffer too.
“One day toward the end, when he was still coherent, I sat with him and said, ‘Dad, even with the agony, you’re still much luckier than most people. Mom and I are here and we love you, there’s enough money in the bank to pay for your care, and you’ve lived a wonderfully long and full life.’ I know it’s easy to say those things when you’re not in another person’s skin, but it was the truth. I really believed that if he could somehow turn his mind’s eye toward that truth, it would be easier for him to let go. You know what he said? ‘Wait’ll you’re where I am, buddy boy; then let’s hear you talk about a good life.’
“Well, here I am, Pop, right behind you on the oblivion express. On my way to knowing exactly what it’s like to be there. But you know what? My opinion hasn’t changed, and I’m dying a lot younger than my father. He had a great life, so he felt cheated by what was happening to him at the end. How dare things go bad! They had a deal: he’d live, and life would be good to him. Ho
w dare his health fail and all those strengths and fail-safe systems stop? He’d always ignored final things because he had no use for them, and when they started arriving, he only knew how to be bitter and confused. Not me. Not if I can help it.
“If you have someone loving you, then it’s different. That gives you all sorts of real reasons to go on living, but I don’t. I don’t want to die, but when Strayhorn offered the choice between possible understanding and survival, I thought, What’s surviving if you don’t understand anything? Better to know something about it. Isn’t that what religion teaches? Christ was at peace and so were Muhammed and Buddha, the saints… That peace can come only from understanding, not from living another ten years. If I can learn something from these dreams, then I’ll be all right, no matter what happens. Maybe it would be different if I had a great love like you, but I don’t. Whether it’s now or later, I would love to learn enough so that when I saw Death coming, my only reaction would be to say, ‘Okay.’ ”
“No one does that! Forget the saints. No one ever reaches that kind of final peace. It’s not peace when people give up because their bodies are exhausted and anything has to be better than all that fucking pain and fear!”
“A week ago I would have agreed with you, Jesse, but today I’m not so sure.”
“But you can’t trust these dreams!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Death talking. Death’s the enemy, Wyatt. Why should He make deals, give you a peek into the cosmic consciousness, when He holds all the cards? You can’t trust Him.”
“I agree, but maybe I can find enough so that I only have to trust myself, and that’ll be plenty.”
There are times, maybe once a month, when my mind goes absolutely blank. For several seconds I truly do not know who I am, where I am—anything. When I was younger, these forced visits to the outer limits scared me, because I thought I was going mad. But over the years I’ve learned almost to enjoy them. Before, when the spells came, I would become petrified and think as hard as I could: Who am I? What’s happening? Find the thread, damn it, find the thread! Now that I’m older I know my mind is only taking its foot off the gas and coasting. It’ll start again in a minute, so I don’t worry.
From the Teeth of Angels Page 15