Through a Glass Darkly

by Hugh Fox

  Rebirthing Without Having to Die

  The house out in mid-Michigan off Babock (dirt) Road, close to nowhere but corn farms and deer- and grouse-haven forests, had belonged to his father and before him his mother’s father, five sisters, one brother, one sister in Boston (a pathology professor at Harvard), all the rest dead (cancer, car accidents, his brother in the WW II army), his kids all in Brazil (1), Boston (2), New Hampshire (1)....one in Ann Arbor, about 2 hours away, who came to visit him once in a while, but always said “The house needs work....I know you don’t have much professor-pension, but to stay overnight, especially in the winter....” Wife dead (more cancer) for five years. Two months away from his own eighty-first birthday. OK, mid December, enough potatoes(sweet and white), chicken, eggs, cans of vegetable soup, powdered milk, carrots, apples, bottles of juice and Irish Creme Liquor, canned sauerkraut, steak-chunk, oats, sugar, powdered coffee, beer, canned beets to last all winter. At first hating it, shoveling the driveway, walking Ludwig Van, his poodle, through the snow, worrying about the roof collapsing under the snow build-up. But it had lasted for a century and a half and....

  Calls to the kids once a week, old friends in East Lansing where he had taught English for thirty years, old poet friends in Sunnyvale and West L.A., Boston, e-mails every day from Glenna out in Carpinteria, a poet pal for 50 years, cable TV and you never knew what’s you’d find about the Knights Templar, ancient Egyptian tombs, films like The Bridge Wore Black, and after he’d seen that one night (by accident) he’d checked Moreau out on Internet Search and found fifty pictures of her, including her at 81, still radiating out Magic, and....and WKAR, classical music twenty-four hours a day (except for the news).....“Waddaya say we hill and swamp it a little today!” he tells Ludwig Van, and Ludwig Van squeals a little, “OK....,” putting a heavy dog blanket on him, three inches of snow last night, two sweaters and a heavy coat, out the back door, down into ex-cat-tailed now frozen swamp, up a hill that reminded him of ancient (The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady) England, getting a little fatigued, worrying 1.5 on a scale of 10 about his heart, but reaching the river, walking into the evergreen forest, no longer cold, but adjusted to it like a grizzly bear, the trees and the birds and (one deer quickly escaping from his path) all wordlessly telling him IN THE BEGINNING WAS MY TALKING TO YOU BEFORE YOU WERE AT ALL, WITHOUT WORDS, JUST LISTEN TO PRESENCE.... I AM HERE.

  SURVIVAL

  Oh, that light!,scrambling into the car and putting on her sunglasses, then hands over the sunglasses, him pulling away from the back of the hospital. 5:16. November 17th.

  We’ve only got another few minutes of light...and its clouded over anyhow. One and a half feet of snow the night before, close to an all-time record, even for being so close to the lake. There’s slits between the clouds, and then dusk lasts for... What, fifteen minutes? Twenty-two degrees. I’m still looking at breast and testicular cells. Lots of horrific cases today, they won’t go away, fibrous histiocytoma, even one acute lymphoblastic leukemia and a cerebral astrocytoma....

  I flunked out of med school fifty five years ago, remember?

  I wish you’d flunked out too.. Astrocytoma. Astro as in astronomy?

  I don’t want to talk about it. Enough is enough for one day. Ça sufit!

  So where to for dinner?

  Pulling out on to Michigan Avenue, the state capital glorious and very national-capitol-looking behind them, one of the glories of the state of Michigan.

  Let me think!,slinking down into her seat, pulling her black wool scarf around her eyes, someplace dark...quiet....there’s that place in Owosso....

  The Ding-Bat? There’s never anyone in there under eighty. Talk about smalltownish hickabies.....all those wide Germanic-Irish faces and the blue-grey eyes, always laughing about who knows what, You should have seen the six deer I saw in my backyard last night...I almost got out one of Larry’s old pistols that I never got rid of since he died, and guaranteed dinners for a month...

  I like the Ding-Bat! Beautiful place. All the candles.

  But you’re Brazilian. The Sun Maiden!

  Was.

  Why don’t you just retire?

  Another three years. Maximization of retirement income.

  And then?

  Where are the days shortest all year?

  Winter in southern Brazil, winter in northern Canada. Winter all year. I like British Columbia and southern Argentina. Except for the northern lights.

  Maybe we could go to a cave somewhere.

  Wear stainless steel sunglasses!

  Starting to whimper now, going into the dashboard compartment and taking out some dark, dark chocolate, offering him a piece.

  Thanks, no....caffeine...and for me there’s no taste.

  Three cups of coffee a day, oatmeal twice a day, the darkest of possible chocolates....anti-anti-anti cancer, you should...

  OK, he interrupts her, You’re getting to be a cracked record.

  There aren’t any more cracked records nowadays. You’re revealing your age.

  My father had already been dead for ten years when he got to my age.

  He never got to your age!

  If he had....

  Shrinking up more into herself, opening up her seatbelt and crawling over the seatback into the back of the car.

  Come on! I’ll adhesive up my mouth!

  I’ve seen enough adhesive today. Preciso descansar um pouco./ I need to rest a little.

  No need to translate for me. Not after thirty years of yearly visits to Santa Catarina.

  No more responses. He wanted to tell her that, OK, she’d be fine once she retired and got back into the real-world full time. It was just a temporary state. She’d turn back into Sun-Girl...well, not GIRL, but Sun-Antique....she still looked good for sixty-four. Especially in candle-lit restaurants like Ding-Bat! Especially over one of their thick sirloin perfectly basted chunks which they always shared, along with a whiskey sour...just for antibacterial caution.

  THROUGH THE WALL

  “I don’t want him to die, I really love the guy, but...”

  “Love the guy? You’re not gay.”

  “You can love someone without being gay.”

  “OK, but he’s got liver cancer and....”

  Sitting on the hill-terrace overlooking the ocean that’s maybe a tenth of a mile away beyond the forest. It was best this way. So the waves never got to you even in stormy weather.

  “I feel so guilty feeling the way I do about you. At the same time it’s the most, I almost said ‘spiritual,’ part of my life. It’s where Korans and Torahs and New Testaments and the Hindu sacred books ought to be...you in the center of my altar.”

  “And you in the center of mine.”

  “But what about the flesh, desires, my orchiectomy. I’m postmeno --accent on the MEN! -- pausal, just like you.”

  “We’re like two angels, all wings and halos.”

  “All ghosts, you mean.”

  “Dogs do their thing, birds, rats, but they don’t build churches.”

  “Neither do I, but....,” he gets up, windy, the sea, something coming in across the pacific, “it’s so hard to explain. I don’t want to die. There’s a thousand things I want to hang on for. I walk around in Old Town and I’m in love with the river, the older, I almost said ancient buildings, old restaurants and art galleries and candle stores. I don’t know, I was raised to believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, the creator, the whole schmear, God was everywhere, every time we went out into the country, up to the mountains, even in downtown everywhere, and then slowly it drifted away, I was a Buddhist for a while and then that drifted away too, and then I met you and all my....waddaya call it, transcendentalism, got involved with you. You became life after death, the garden of Eden, a cathedral to walk into and find a medieval altar in. Baruch atta Adonai, Elohainu Melech haolam....”

  “Stick to the Latin, I can get that. I’m still in the fifteenth century.”

  “The fiftyith cent
ury B.C., Holy Art Thou, God forever King-Queen of the universe...everything forever sacred.”

  “We’re like two books on theology on the same shelf next to each other.”

  “I don’t really want him to die and I don’t really want to leave Solange. If there could just be two of us, you married to him ad her married to me, and then....”

  “There are our other selves living eternally in never-ever land, Eden-Anaku, our walrus-selves, superegos, I don’t know what toi call them, not Mister/Ms. Everyday but our Afterdeaths our Never-Die-Selves. That’s what we’ve been from the first, not flesh and seduction but our superselves...do I ever really ‘leave’ you”

  “Do I ever ‘leave’ you?”

  “You’re like my Dream-Me...”

  “And you mine.”

  “Anything else comes in, canes, walks, wheelchairs, deaths of any ‘others,’ and we’re still ONE...even our own deaths...”

  Sun almost down now, but it never went down inside them, the moon never vanished, they didn’t ever have to touch but just sit there now, let what else happened happen, the little sylph girl and Mr. Keyboard their ghost-angel, neo-real selves expanded out into the Eternal everything-to-yet-come NOW.”

  HOPE

  I.

  “We can start all over again...”

  “But the holy places, the temple, the holy places...”

  “We can rebuild them, or even take them apart and then put them back together again in Brazil.”

  “But that goes against our whole tradition.”

  Abraham getting up and taking a small replica of Israel in his hand, placing in on a wall-map of Brazil, part of a whole-world map that covers the whole wall.

  “Exactly the right size! Israel practically disappears in the Brazilian jungles or (placing it on top of Michigan, Northern Canada) there’s so many possibilities, so much land, why live in the midst of ancient enemies. We can start all over again, or, I should say, have continuity of Faith and discontinuity of Country. WHERE isn’t everything, but WHY is!”

  “But will the Knesset agree? All the super-traditionalists?” asked Joshua, one of the great powers in Israeli politics, all beard and hair, Mr. 10,000 BCE.

  “They can stay behind and get bombed.”

  “Maybe I’ll stay with them.”

  “Then I can go alone to Brazil. Or maybe just Brooklyn.”

  “That’s the point, why have a holy country at all, why not just ‘vanish’ throughout the world, like the Jews in New York, Tampa, Chicago...”

  “They don’t disappear, look at them in West Hollywood with their ‘costumes,’ long beards, hair, hats, suits...hassidics...”

  “But others elsewhere.”

  “OK, but who’s going to pay for the rebuilding?”

  Joshua sits down and takes out some gum, begins to chew, smiles, relaxes.

  “First off, if Israel is in Brazil we can go back to antiquity,be Solomonic, whatever, everything as orthodox-strict as can be. Travel back in time to TRUE TIME. And secondly, take Germany before Hitler. Who had the money? Just look at the pictures of the old Jewish mansions. And Hollywood! Check out the names. And Wall Street! We can get grants, donations, a kind of sacred God-tax...and the reason for Jewish success? Services! Belief in yourself, your God, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs...Einstein, Jews learn how to think, concentrate, they’d all want an end to the Amorite wars!”

  “Not the Amorites any more.”

  “Whatever they are. The Promised Land is the fulfillment of God’s promise. Now we can make another Promise, warless, no rockets coming in every day, total absorption in godliness daily, your whole life inside the promise, everything you did, didn’t do, your clothes, hair, food, your whole life drenched in godliness...”

  “But where’s God now? Why doesn’t He come back and intervene?”

  “He’s there...watching...watching us create our own promised land.”

  Abraham going over to the cupboard and finding a bottle of kosher wine, filling two glasses.

  “If we could finance World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran.....”

  II.

  Fifteen years later, Abraham with an enlarged prostate, just had a transurethral laser-based prostatectomy. A little heavy but OK, Joshua actually thinner, his wife keeping him on a diet. None of that Brazilian high-calorie stuff, Doce de Leite, Guava (Goiaba) Jelly, all the empanadas and Nescau, both Abraham and Joshua in the center of the New Jerusalem, a little walk together, Abraham lighting up a cigarette, then quickly scratching it out on the sidewalk.

  “No more suicidal habits for me. One cancer’s enough.”

  “I never understood anyone smoking anything. The only smoke I enjoy is incense smoke....”

  Stopping, looking at the scene in front of them. All the old temples and government buildings, like walking back through a door labeled Time. OK, the jungle off in the distance, but it was easy enough to filter that out....if you wanted to. And neither of them wanted to, preferred jungle to desert.

  “I love the way they replicated the sense of antiquity,” smiles Joshua.

  “If it wasn’t for the heat and humidity it’d be a perfect total replica of old Jerusalem.”

  “There was plenty of heat there.”

  “But no humidity.”

  They both smile as the go into the synagogue together, Sabbath services already started. Shabbath Shalom....

  The Rabbi blessing the lighting of the candles:

  “Baruch atta Adonai, Eloheinu melech Haolam, Asher Quidishanu Bemitzvota, vitzivanu, lehadleek ner shell Shabbat.../ Blessed is the Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who hallows us with His Mitzvot, and commands us to kindle the lights of Shabbat.”

  Both of them looking around at the congregation.

  “Such variety!” smiled Joshua.

  “At least we can get along with each other,”Abraham whispered back, thinking that eventually there would be all sorts of conflicts between the super-conservatives, hassidics, liberals, reformed, whatever...but in the meantime...this was what made sense out of chaos, towns full of restaurants and shops, moms and dads out with kiddies, antique shops, you want coffee, there’s two tons of places for it, wine, bagels, walk-places, park-places, theaters, universities, music departments, theater departments, always something going on, Summertime and the Livin’ is easy, amazed at the Jewish talent over the centuries, here, there, everywhere, the secular somehow always turned into the sacred so that a bagel with cream cheese became ‘sacramental,’ if you’ll pardon the term, and then you come to the Schule, let the Yiddish survive, a little survivor-history, and it’s Our Gang, Shalom, Shalom, Shalom, Peace, Peace, Peace, he couldn’t be happier than to be a witness to Israel, after millennia of conflicts finally having moved into permanent...he almost always thinking ‘eternal’...peace.

  Sermon time, Rabbi Baroff all long-bearded and bald, gowned and with his kipu making a little black oasis in the middle of his baldness, standing at the pulpit, starts out in all solemnity.

  “We cannot thank God enough for what we have. I don’t want to be repeating myself full-time, but today’s Torah portion is all about the ancient Jews versus the Amorites, God on our side, our right to kill the enemy and take their land and livestock. Thank God that the endlessness of tribal conflict has now ended and we are finally at peace...”

  Tears in his eyes, not dribbling down his face, but there for a moment, surprised that he was still capable of such reactions at a cynical,feeling-doomed seventy-five, remembering Cantor Wetzler during what seemed like centuries before, saying to him, when he asked about the possibility of an after-life, “We know there’s SOMETHING, but we don’t know WHAT...”

  When suddenly the lights went out, the fan over the altar stopped, the air-conditioner stopped and there was enough sunlight to see, although it was cloudy outside, unusually so, and suddenly the Rabbi stopped, looked toward the back of the temple, Abraham turning around too.

  “What the....”

  A huge, thirty foot
tall devilish-looking monster walking into the back of the synagogue, huge eyes, a gold crown around its tall, extended head, fangs, huge fangs. a pitchfork of some kind in its hand, its body all loosely clothed in grey cotton, Abraham thinking that there must be a “team” of guys inside, on top of each others’ shoulders, to make it so tall. And then on both sides guys in shorts with blowguns in their hands blowing some sorts of darts into the congregation, the ones they hit going down, sprawling, struggling for a few (Abraham counted 1-2-3-4-5) seconds, and then they were gone....

  Before they got to them pulling Josh down, down to the floor, amazed at his agility, usually all stiff and un-agile, but this was IT! Down! Josh playing the game, whispering “Play dead...,” and they did, both of them, the growling, drum-beating stopped, moments of screaming, and then ocean bottom silence, without fish...Joshua moving, Abraham holding him down, closing his eyes, actually almost feeling asleep, asleep or dead, he hardly cared which, kaddish, kaddish, kaddish, pray, pray, pray for the dead, was he going to end up on the just-dead jahrzeit list? Then opening his eyes like he had just gotten out of a concentration camp and was on a boat to Holland, and Hitler had been shot or had shot himself, Josh out too, shook him, “OK, pal, it ought to be safe now...,” only he didn’t move, Abraham got up and then saw it, one of the little darts in his forehead, talking to the silent temple, “Anyone else still here?”