All of Us (12 page)

Long before he thought of his own death,

my dad said he wanted to lie close

to his parents. He missed them so

after they went away.

He said this enough that my mother remembered,

and I remembered. But when the breath

left his lungs and all signs of life

had faded, he found himself in a town

512 miles away from where he wanted most to be.

My dad, though. He was restless

even in death. Even in death

he had this one last trip to take.

All his life he liked to wander,

and now he had one more place to get to.

The undertaker said he’d arrange it,

not to worry. Some poor light

from the window fell on the dusty floor

where we waited that afternoon

until the man came out of the back room

and peeled off his rubber gloves.

He carried the smell of formaldehyde with him.

He was a big man
, this undertaker said.

Then began to tell us why

he liked living in this small town.

This man who’d just opened my dad’s veins.

How much is it going to cost?
I said.

He took out his pad and pen and began

to write. First, the preparation charges.

Then he figured the transportation

of the remains at 22 cents a mile.

But this was a round-trip for the undertaker,

don’t forget. Plus, say, six meals

and two nights in a motel. He figured

some more. Add a surcharge of

$210 for his time and trouble,

and there you have it.

He thought we might argue.

There was a spot of color on

each of his cheeks as he looked up

from his figures. The same poor light

fell in the same poor place on

the dusty floor. My mother nodded

as if she understood. But she

hadn’t understood a word of it.

None of it had made any sense to her,

beginning with the time she left home

with my dad. She only knew

that whatever was happening

was going to take money.

She reached into her purse and brought up

my dad’s wallet. The three of us

in that little room that afternoon.

Our breath coming and going.

We stared at the wallet for a minute.

Nobody said anything.

All the life had gone out of that wallet.

It was old and rent and soiled.

But it was my dad’s wallet. And she opened

it and looked inside. Drew out

a handful of money that would go

toward this last, most astounding, trip.

Reluctantly, my son goes with me

through the iron gates

of the cemetery in Montparnasse.

“What a way to spend a day in Paris!”

is what he’d like to say. Did, in fact, say.

He speaks French. Has started a conversation

with a white-haired guard who offers himself

as our informal guide. So we move slowly,

the three of us, along row upon row of graves.

Everyone, it seems, is here.

It’s quiet, and hot, and the street sounds

of Paris can’t reach. The guard wants to steer us

to the grave of the man who invented the submarine,

and Maurice Chevalier’s grave. And the grave

of the 28-year-old singer, Nonnie,

covered with a mound of red roses.

I want to see the graves of the writers.

My son sighs. He doesn’t want to see any of it.

Has seen enough. He’s passed beyond boredom

into resignation. Guy de Maupassant; Sartre; Sainte-Beuve;

Gautier; the Goncourts; Paul Verlaine and his old comrade,

Charles Baudelaire. Where we linger.

None of these names, or graves, have anything to do

with the untroubled lives of my son and the guard.

Who can this morning talk and joke together

in the French language under a fine sun.

But there are several names chiseled on Baudelaire’s stone,

and I can’t understand why.

Charles Baudelaire’s name is between that of his mother,

who loaned him money and worried all her life

about his health, and his stepfather, a martinet

he hated and who hated him and everything he stood for.

“Ask your friend,” I say. So my son asks.

It’s as if he and the guard are old friends now,

and I’m there to be humored.

The guard says something and then lays

one hand over the other. Like that. Does it

again. One hand over the other. Grinning. Shrugging.

My son translates. But I understand.

“Like a sandwich, Pop,” my son says. “A Baudelaire sandwich.”

At which the three of us walk on.

The guard would as soon be doing this as something else.

He lights his pipe. Looks at his watch. It’s almost time

for his lunch, and a glass of wine.

“Ask him,” I say, “if he wants to be buried

in this cemetery when he dies.

Ask him where he wants to be buried.”

My son is capable of saying anything.

I recognize the words
tombeau
and
mort

in his mouth. The guard stops.

It’s clear his thoughts have been elsewhere.

Underwater warfare. The music hall, the cinema.

Something to eat and the glass of wine.

Not corruption, no, and the falling away.

Not annihilation. Not his death.

He looks from one to the other of us.

Who are we kidding? Are we making a bad joke?

He salutes and walks away.

Heading for a table at an outdoor café.

Where he can take off his cap, run his fingers

through his hair. Hear laughter and voices.

The heavy clink of silverware. The ringing

of glasses. Sun on the windows.

Sun on the sidewalk and in the leaves.

Sun finding its way onto his table. His glass. His hands.

The woman asked us in for pie. Started

telling about her husband, the man who

used to live there. How he had to be carted

off to the nursing home. He wanted

to cover this fine oak ceiling

with cheap insulation, she said. That was the first

sign of anything being wrong. Then he had

a stroke. A vegetable now. Anyway,

next, the game warden stuck the barrel

of his pistol into her son’s ear.

And cocked the hammer. But the kid

wasn’t doing that much wrong, and the game

warden is the kid’s uncle, don’t you see?

So everybody’s on the outs. Everybody’s

nuts and nobody’s speaking to anybody

these days. Here’s a big bone the son

found at the mouth of the river.

Maybe it’s a human bone? An arm bone

or something? She puts it back on the window-

sill next to a bowl of flowers.

The daughter stays in her room all day,

writing poems about her attempted suicide.

That’s why we don’t see her. Nobody sees

her anymore. She tears up the poems

and writes them over again. But one of these

days she’ll get it right. Would you believe it —

the car threw a rod? That black car

that stands like a hearse

in the yard next door. The engine winched out,

swinging from a tree.

Each evening an eagle soars down from the snowy

crags and passes over camp. It wants to see

if it’s true what they say back in Russia: the only

career open to young men these days

is the military. Young men of good family, and a few

others—older, silent men—men who’ve blotted their

copybooks, as they call it out here. Men like

the Colonel, who lost his ear in a duel.

Dense forests of pine, alder, and birch. Torrents

that fall from dizzying precipices. Mist. Clamorous

rivers. Mountains covered with snow even now, even

in August. Everywhere, as far as the eye can reach,

profusion. A sea of poppies. Wild buckwheat that

shimmers in the heat, that waves and rolls to the horizon.

Panthers. Bees as big as a boy’s fist. Bears that won’t

get out of a man’s way, that will tear a body to

pieces and then go back to the business of rooting

and chuffing like hogs in the rich undergrowth. Clouds

of white butterflies that rise, then settle and

rise again on slopes thick with lilac and fern.

Now and then a real engagement with the enemy.

Much howling from their side, cries, the drum

of horses’ hooves, rattle of musket fire, a Chechen’s ball

smashing into a man’s breast, a stain that blossoms

and spreads, that ripples over the white uniform like crimson

petals opening. Then the chase begins: hearts racing,

minds emptying out entirely as the Emperor’s young

men, dandies all, gallop over plains, laughing,

yelling their lungs out. Or else they urge

their lathered horses along forest trails, pistols

ready. They burn Chechen crops, kill Chechen stock,

knock down the pitiful villages. They’re soldiers,

after all, and these are not maneuvers. Shamil,

the bandit chieftain, he’s the one they want most.

At night, a moon broad and deep as a serving dish

sallies out from behind the peaks. But this

moon is only for appearance’s sake. Really, it’s

armed to the teeth, like everything else out here.

When the Colonel sleeps, he dreams of a drawing room —

one drawing room in particular—oh, clean and elegant,

most comfortable drawing room! Where friends lounge

in plush chairs, or on divans, and drink from

little glasses of tea. In the dream, it is always

Thursday, 2—4. There is a piano next to the window

that looks out on Nevsky Prospect. A young woman

finishes playing, pauses, and turns to the polite

applause. But in the dream it is the Circassian

woman with a saber cut across her face. His friends

draw back in horror. They lower their eyes, bow,

and begin taking their leave. Goodbye, goodbye,

they mutter. In Petersburg they said that out here,

in the Caucasus
, sunsets are everything.

But this is not true; sunsets are not enough.

In Petersburg they said the Caucasus is a country that gives

rise to legend, where heroes are born every day.

They said, long ago, in Petersburg, that reputations

were made, and lost, in the Caucasus.
A gravely

beautiful place
, as one of the Colonel’s men put it.

The officers serving under him will return

home soon, and more young men will come to take

their places. After the new arrivals dismount

to pay their respects, the Colonel will keep them

waiting a time. Then fix them with a stern but

fatherly gaze, these slim young men with tiny

mustaches and boisterous high spirits, who look

at him and wonder, who ask themselves what it is

he’s running from. But he’s not running. He likes it

here, in the Caucasus, after a fashion. He’s even

grown used to it—or nearly. There’s plenty to do,

God knows. Plenty of grim work in the days, and months,

ahead. Shamil is out there in the mountains somewhere —

or maybe he’s on the Steppes. The scenery is lovely,

you can be sure, and this but a rough record

of the actual and the passing.

One minute I had the windows open

and the sun was out. Warm breezes

blew through the room.

(I remarked on this in a letter.)

Then, while I watched, it grew dark.

The water began whitecapping.

All the sport-fishing boats turned

and headed in, a little fleet.

Those wind-chimes on the porch

blew down. The tops of our trees shook.

The stove pipe squeaked and rattled

around in its moorings.

I said, “A forge, and a scythe.”

I talk to myself like this.

Saying the names of things —

capstan, hawser, loam, leaf, furnace.

Your face, your mouth, your shoulder

inconceivable to me now!

Where did they go? It’s like

I dreamed them. The stones we brought

home from the beach lie face up

on the windowsill, cooling.

Come home. Do you hear?

My lungs are thick with the smoke

of your absence.

The next poem I write will have firewood

right in the middle of it, firewood so thick

with pitch my friend will leave behind

his gloves and tell me, “Wear these when you

handle that stuff.” The next poem

will have night in it, too, and all the stars

in the Western Hemisphere; and an immense body

of water shining for miles under a new moon.

The next poem will have a bedroom

and living room for itself, skylights,

a sofa, a table and chairs by the window,

a vase of violets cut just an hour before lunch.

There’ll be a lamp burning in the next poem;

and a fireplace where pitch-soaked

blocks of fir flame up, consuming one another.

Oh, the next poem will throw sparks!

But there won’t be any cigarettes in that poem.

I’ll take up smoking the pipe.

It was a night like all the others. Empty

of everything save memory. He thought

he’d got to the other side of things.

But he hadn’t. He read a little

and listened to the radio. Looked out the window

for a while. Then went upstairs. In bed

realized he’d left the radio on.

But closed his eyes anyway. Inside the deep night,

as the house sailed west, he woke up

to hear voices murmuring. And froze.

Then understood it was only the radio.

He got up and went downstairs. He had

to pee anyway. A little rain

that hadn’t been there before was

falling outside. The voices

on the radio faded and then came back

as if from a long way. It wasn’t

the same station any longer. A man’s voice

said something about Borodin,

and his opera
Prince Igor.
The woman

he said this to agreed, and laughed.

Began to tell a little of the story.

The man’s hand drew back from the switch.

Once more he found himself in the presence

of mystery. Rain. Laughter. History.

Art. The hegemony of death.

He stood there, listening.