The Saint Louisans

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The Saint Louisans Page 35

by Steven Clark


  I nod. “French. Baroque?”

  “He was the guy in the movie. About the old man, Sainte Colombe, who had a viola da gamba with an extra string. That played like a human voice.”

  I keep nodding, more polite than knowing. I raised Pierce on jazz. Coltrane. Miles. Bix. And he dotes on baroque. What’s a mother to do? He smiles at my ignorance.

  “The movie. At the Tivoli. With Gerard Depardieu.”

  “Okay, gotcha.” Like most people, we recall movies, not books. We read images of light on walls and screens like Egyptians did their word language.

  There is a harpsichordist. A viola da gamba player. A bass. The first two pluck and tune their instruments. Humidity is murder on early music. My head cranes about for Doc. He warned me he’d be late. Look around and what do you see? Crescent shaped pews that wrap around the stage, the sanctuary late Victorian, a series of arches. Vaults and gateways. Uncompleted circles. The stage is a semi circle. The musicians thrust out to the audience. The wood smells of varnish and dignity. You want to shake its hand.

  Pierce continued. “In the movie, Sainte Columbe’s wife died, but when he played the ’gamba in his hut, she came back to life.”

  “’Gamba?”

  He smiled. “I’m trying to sound like an early music groupie.”

  “So this piece is about an operation?”

  “Yes, Mom. An operation for gallstones. Doc’ll like it. Marais was obsessed, because he had to play like Sainte Colombe.” Pierce shook his head at me.

  “Doc,” I smiled. “You know, he claims the Beatles were inspired by South Africa.”

  Pierce cocked an eyebrow. “That’s from out of left field. How?”

  The old song. ‘Marching to Pretoria’. You remember?”

  Pierce sang very softly. “‘We are marching to Pretoria …’ Sang that at camp.”

  “And I sang it in high school. On the risers, spring concert. So, Doc says when the Beatles did Magical Mystery Tour, and the Walrus song … Well, Doc claims they lifted it from the opening from ‘Marching To Pretoria’.”

  Pierce gave a cunning smile. “Okay. It’s possible. I guess the song was sung in Liverpool.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Doc’s really trying to show he’s with it.”

  Pierce was pleasantly doubtful. “The Beatles are kind of establishment.” He shrugged. “But did you know that in their song ‘I Am the Walrus’—”

  I was quick. “The walrus is a death symbol? Among the Eskimos. Sort of helped to fuel the Paul McCartney is dead. Doc said in Capetown, he knew chaps who went starkers over it.”

  “Interesting.” Pierce smiled. “You want me to help clue him in? On Heavy Metal?”

  All of this chatter, such trivia, the talk before the concert. But it’s so happy. All the anticipation. Pierce. Doc. A summer’s evening. Two people I love.

  Pierce looks over the program. “So, Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “‘I Am the Walrus.’ The chorus. What does Doc say Goo-goo-ga-jube means? What’s the hidden symbolism of that?”

  “He hasn’t the slightest idea.” We laugh, a lighthearted, not-a-care-in-the-world laugh.

  The instruments have been tuned. That beauty of silence, of anticipation before the music begins. Outside, the sun a dying gold. A robin chirps. I think of Pierce’s ceaseless erudition. What woman is going to listen to this? He gets his pillow talk from The New Yorker. And Susan Sontag is taken.

  The light is strange. The stained glass glows. All colors shine as the sun rallies before it sinks. Scenes of Jesus and the children, of John the Baptist, disciples, the woman of Samaria. The intensity of color astounds me. They’ve come to life. Why not? Osiris, the sun, died only to rise again in the East. Jesus really just an adaptation of Egyptian thought by world-weary Greeks who hung out with Jews. Fitting he should brighten and glow in stained glass serenity.

  The music creeps and tingles. The bass doesn’t sing, but narrates as the viola da gamba mutters and groans the operation: “The description of the surgeon’s instruments.” Slow notes of trembling contemplation.

  The glass bleeds into the music. Deep green. Royal blue water. Brilliant russet garments. Leaves almost wave. The maroon robe of Jesus has folds and shades with a depth so full you could smooth it down. Happy browns, as if the earth was chocolate, ready to be eaten. The glow is like the Vitrolite at the King Tut play of so long ago … years? Ages, it seems. The scenes of Jesus aren’t holy, but like a small town memory, Happy, but there’s a kind of darkness around its edges. Like in the Twilight Zone episode ‘Willoughby’.

  The instruments mutter. The bass gets dramatic. “Serious reflections.” We look at each other and grin.

  “Clamping the arms and legs.” Quick tempo. Efficient, by-the-book nurses. “The incision is made.” The gamba wails.

  Pierce bends to me. “Marais. He’s doing Vincent Price.” Blood flows. Notes trickle. A long sigh of chords. Ned angli … Was it a Bishop? Speaking about angels? He smiles and whispers, eyes on the performance. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll get you through it.”

  The sun glows in a final rally and the light fingers out. When Pierce’s blonde hair glows like an aura from the stained glass, when for a moment he becomes one with the color, I remember. Ned angli sed angeli. It was what Doc explained to me last month in one of our outdoor conversations, when we had good food, wine, a bounteous sunset, and he got a twitch of the erudite. He told me it was what a bishop said of angles captured in battle, impressed with their fair complexion. Not angles, but angels.

  Now you know. Pierce, you are the angel. You the one who will guide me through death. I’ve waited for you. There you are. Like through a microscope. I see your face. Through a key hole, door hole. You’re small. I feel your hand. You speak, I see your lips move, but hear nothing. Your words are snowballs exploding as they hit a tree. How I watched you make snowballs and throw them when you were five and I wondered what the hell I’d do with my life; then I became a nurse.

  “Here the clamps are removed.” Deep, slow tempo. The nurses are gentle.

  “Here you are taken to bed.” Viola da gamba and harpsichord knit; kind hands moving the patient to bed. One-two … lift.

  Your words form, but I hear nothing. I’m underwater, Pierce. I’m in the glass box. I think, I talk, but can’t hear. The body is no longer mine. I’m being spiritually evicted.

  “Recovery.” A merry gigue trills.

  The deep strings make it a current, the bowels of the Mississippi gushing south, to the sea. The tinkling harpsichord the surface water, sparkling with diamonds of light when it joins the gulf. But now you don’t need the last movement. You need his hand holding yours. Looking up, you see his face now beginning to line with fatherhood. Lips still a dumb show, the eyes moist. There’s Jama. Her eyes glow. She touches. Strokes. Together, my angels lead me, see me off at the gate, the dock, the levee.

  I can only speak a few words, words that must be shoved out. I … want … to … live.

  Back at the concert comes a patter of applause. Pierce and I look up as Doc scoops in, sleeves rolled up.

  “Hullo,” he nods.

  “Did you hear it?”

  “Yes. Stood in the back so as not to interrupt.”

  “Well?”

  Doc smiled at Pierce. Two violinists join the performers, as does a flautist. “No anesthetics. Marais caught that bit. Beautiful piece. Macabre and factual, hmm?”

  I enjoy Doc’s cologne, his open necked shirt. How Pierce will dine with us, then leave so we can enjoy a long, breathless night. “Did you notice the stained glass?”

  Doc nodded.

  I turned, but the sun had drowned in the West. Now the brilliant scenes were dark squares of brown I’d seen downtown, when Saul and I spoke. Brown squares dark as the river.

  I am no longer flesh and bone. I am paper and ink, as if that’s all I ever was.

  When earth has had enough of me.

  Good night, Sara, good night.

  The pu
lse drops from burps on the screen to a single note. A current. Summer. Angel. Music. Float. Light. Space. Time.

  Now and forever.

  Jama and I watched Mother die, her blue eyes half-closed until my fingers shut them. We followed her wishes and cremated the remains. The Gateway Arch behind me, I held up the urn and scattered her ashes into the Mississippi.

  Mother told me they had got Tom and Sara into the grave, but this time we had to get it right. Antje held Richard and watched the gray ashes catch the reflection of the Arch and scatter like bird shot, flecking into the murky, flowing shroud of rippling water. Sea bound. The same waters De Soto, the first white man to navigate the river, was buried in so Indians would think him a sun god. Richard cooed and held up his tiny hands as the ashes flew. I’d like to think he’ll remember this day, remember the river. That somehow Mother’s cosmic essence will enter his mind and plant a seed. I looked above to protean clouds that seemed to make a temporal bridge.

  From up there, all of this—the St. Louisans, Cahokia, the emotional traffic of the ashes, this river Mother thought a goddess—would seem an anthill, as to the celestial eye Earth is a mere blue and white marble. A sparkle in the void. The final conjoining of a great, majestic chemistry.

  Jama and I had a tepid lunch with Saul, light salads with long pauses. He was polite but scarred, ready to throw himself into a renovation project in Chicago. To save, he said in a calm voice and blank eyes, another mansion. To do battle with the greedheads, to mourn. We knew we’d never see each other again.

  Then we spent one last night together before Jama flew back to Canada where they were on location for the film. Three new scenes had to be completed before they went back to L.A. for editing. We went over Mother’s things, cried, got drunk. Yul will come with Antje, Richard, and me. Antje says he’ll make a good Berlin cat.

  Mother’s last words were muttered twenty minutes before she died. Of a day long ago, when she passed Tom Williams on the way to his grave.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Lisa Miller for taking a chance on me and making sure The Saint Louisans got published. Her dedication and commitment to my work will always have my gratitude. I’d also like to thank Kristina Blank Makansi for editing my manuscript. Her work in all ways improved and enhanced this novel. Lastly, I’d like to thank Writers Under the Arch (WUTA), an excellent and diverse group of fellow scribblers whose red pencils helped to prepare this manuscript for submission. I owe them a lot, from their cheerful accolades to the Russian Judge.

  About the Author

  STEVEN CLARK was born in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He served in the United States Army and graduated in 1980 with a BA in English from the University of Missouri–St. Louis. His play The Love Season won the Source Theater’s 1985 Best Play award. His play The Tragedy of Hypatia was performed at the 2001 Director’s Showcase at the University of Missouri–Columbia. His novel The Green Path was published in 2012, and his stories have appeared in Black Oak Presents, Mozark Press anthologies, and UMSL Litmag. His play The Buffalo was part of Spectrum Theater’s 2011 festival. His screenplay Searching for Jesse was a finalist in the 2014 Missouri Stories Screenwriting competition, earning him a fellowship.

 

 

 


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