Hamlet (15 page)

The cemetery had not changed much. It would be a wonder if it had. Hamlet approached it slowly, keeping to one side of the path, barely visible to travelers on the road. There were none, anyway. He had not intended to pay the graveyard a visit, but something within him dragged at his legs and sought distraction, wanted to delay his arrival at the castle. That impulse turned him sideways, so that he found himself standing at the foreigners’ gate. There was activity in the distance, beside the old quince tree that marked the southern boundary, but the morning mist had not cleared; indeed, now, in midafternoon, it was heavier than ever. Hamlet could see the figure of a man, working at one of the grave sites, but he could not recognize him at this distance. Probably that old bearded fellow, the prince thought. Or has someone buried him now, and replaced him at his melancholy task?

He opened the gate and wandered in, maneuvering among the gravestones until he was closer to the laborer. It was indeed the same gravedigger Hamlet had seen at his father’s funeral. His beard was at least a foot longer than Hamlet remembered, and he was shoveling the loamy soil. He was in it up to his shoulders, almost, and as he was a lanky brute, it meant that the grave was nearing completion. He flung out another load. The lift needed was tremendous, and Hamlet was impressed that he could still manage it at his age. Most gravediggers would have used a pulley.

“Who’s there?” the man said, squinting through rheumy eyes.

His arms may be strong, Hamlet thought, but his eyes are failing. “Just a traveler,” the prince replied. His words were turning to mist. “Whose grave is that?”

“Why, it’s mine, sir. Whose do you think it would be? There are nigh on ten thousand who reside in this place, and two thousand and twenty rest in graves of my making.”

“That’s a fine tally.”

“It is indeed, sir, and I’m hoping to add to them. It’s a funny thing, but people keep dying, and so my score increases.”

“Do you think they’ll ever stop?”

“I don’t, sir, and that’s a fact.” The man was leaning on his shovel now and wheezing. It seemed that the break in his labors had come at the right time. “No, sir, not until the Day of Judgment, when they’ll disturb the earth and put all my work to naught. What a mess the place will be on that day, sir. I often think of that.”

“I suppose so.” Hamlet smiled to himself. “But tell me, who will be buried in this grave?”

“Why, someone dead, sir, to be sure. It’d be a terrible thing if it were anyone else.”

Hamlet smiled again. He walked over to peer into the pit. “It’s a fearful deep hole.”

“It is, sir, yet some of them are in a rush to get into it. The young lady who will be lodged in it presently, now she were in a terrible rush, sir. And it were in the rushes they found her, where she’d drowned herself.”

“Not her fault, though, I suppose,” Hamlet said. “It must have been an accident, or they would hardly be burying her in this holy ground.” A tremble ran through him, knowing how close he himself had come to self-slaughter. “To those who deliberately end the lives God has given them, a special place is reserved.”

“Aye, sir, that it is, and the earth is extra cold where they are buried, sir, out by the forest, so they may feel even more warmly the flames for which they’re bound. I could take you there, sir, if you like. There’s some who like to see it.”

Hamlet shivered at the morbid thought. He went to turn away, but his foot brushed something. He looked and saw a skull leering up at him. Curious, he bent and picked it up. “What’s this?” he asked the old gravedigger.

“Well, now, I can’t quite see what you have there, traveler. My sight is as short as my years are long.”

“It’s a skull.”

“No surprise in that, sir,” the man said, reaching out for it. “Where are you more likely to find a skull than in a graveyard? Still, he’s a bit too eager for the Day of Judgment, that one. Give it here, sir, and I’ll pop him back where he belongs.”

“How long do they last before they rot?” asked the prince, still holding the grisly object.

“Well, now, sir, a lot of them are rotten before they come here. Some of them are so riddled with the pox that it’s a job to hold them together long enough to get them into the ground. But if they’re not poxy, then they last about eight or nine years. Nine years for the tanners.”

“Why do the tanners last longer?”

“A tanner, his hide is already so tanned with his trade, that he keeps out the water. And it’s the water that rots them. A human can have too much water. Like the young lady that’s bound for this hole.”

Hamlet grimaced. Suddenly he was conscious of the weight of his head, compared to that of the skull he was holding. “This fellow, who is he? Do you know?”

“He’s nobody now, sir. No body, do you get it?”

“All right, well, who was he?”

“I can guess who he was, without even looking at him. If he came out of this grave, and it’s fair to suppose he did, he’d have to be Yorick, jester to the king. Things are a little crowded around here, sir, as you may have noticed. Dying’s a fearful popular activity these days, so we often double ’em up, and then some. There’s plenty of graves here with half a dozen in them. I thought we might run into Yorick sooner or later. No doubt there’s a good bit more of him around my feet.”

“Yorick?” the prince repeated, gripped by horror. “Yorick, you say?” He gazed at the skull, trying to see something familiar in it, trying to find the sharp nose, the ruddy cheeks, the quick laugh. The empty eye sockets stared back at him, seeing nothing. Hamlet shook his own head. “Where are your jokes now, merry man?” he whispered to the skull. “Where are your riddles and your limericks? Where are your musical farts? Is this the fate of all men? Alexander the Great, too, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, do you all come to this?”

There was no reply.

The gravedigger shrugged. “Talk to him as much as you want, sir. But let me have him back when you’ve grown tired of the conversation. There’s a funeral to be had, and I think I hear them coming already. They’re a little early and I’m a little late, but if we’ve reached Yorick, I’d say we’re deep enough.”

He sprang out of the grave with amazing agility. Embarrassed, Hamlet handed him the skull, and the man threw it back into the pit. He had been right about the funeral procession. Now Hamlet too could hear the soft tolling of the horse bells, although the mist still obscured the people from view. He marveled at the keen hearing of the old fellow.

Visited by irresistible curiosity, Hamlet grabbed the gravedigger by the sleeve. “You say she drowned?”

“Drowned herself, yes, sir. In tears and the river.”

“But by accident, surely?” Hamlet insisted. Something in the man’s manner niggled at him.

“Well, now, sir, some would say that.”

“You mean it is possible that she ended her own life? Deliberately?”

“Now, now, sir, enough, they are almost upon us, and I have work to do.”

Hamlet, his curiosity not satisfied, resolved to linger. He retired to a row of young elms behind the last graves and peered into the mist. The procession had reached the main entrance to the cemetery. Hamlet could see the men unloading the coffin from the hearse. This was a high-born person then; ordinary citizens like Yorick got no such luxuries as a box to protect their tender flesh.

The priest was opening the gate. He propped it open, then led the way toward the new pit. Behind the robed figure, Hamlet was transfixed to see the king himself, his treacherous uncle, followed by the queen, then a group of servants from the palace carrying the pale coffin.

Looming out of the mist behind them was Laertes, accompanied by another priest. As the coffin and the royal couple took the path that would bring them to the front of the grave, Laertes and the second priest diverged onto the other path, which would take them to the grave’s head. But they stopped, just meters away from Hamlet, and began a conversation in angry whispers. Every word went straight to the prince’s ears, burning as though they were frost.

Laertes: “What other ceremonies are to be observed?”

Priest: “We cannot do any more. We have already gone as far as we dare.”

Laertes: “But what other ceremonies?”

Priest: “Had it not been for the queen’s orders, we would not have done as much as this. Were it not for Her Majesty, she should have lain in unblessed ground until the Day of Judgment. Instead of prayers, she would have had rocks thrown at her grave. Here she has flowers. Be grateful for that much at least.”

Laertes: “So you’ll do nothing else for her?”

Priest: “We would be in savage breach of the church’s rules to say prayers over the grave. Such a privilege is for those who have departed their lives in peace.”

Laertes: “Let me tell you this, you sour and miserable minister of God: plant her fair and uncorrupted body in the earth and watch the violets grow from her. My sister shall be an angel ministering to others while you lie howling in hell.”

Slow fear had been growing inside Hamlet while the two men were talking. Now the fear flowered into a garden of huge and terrifying cactus plants. Each plant shouted the name “Ophelia” at him. The prince tore at his throat as if to rip out every word he had ever said to his beloved.

The queen was already scattering flowers over the coffin, which had been lowered into its home in indecent haste. “Sweets to the sweet,” she crooned. “I thought I would have been weaving flowers for your wedding to my son, not throwing them in your grave.”

Laertes and the priest had advanced toward them. Laertes, his temper already stirred by the priest’s churlish words, came to the boil at the mention of Hamlet. Springing forward, in a voice barely recognizable, he cried, “A hundred curses on that miserable name, the one who sent my sister mad. Ophelia, I cannot let them cover you in earth.”

Before anyone realized his intention, he leaped straight into the grave. A cracking noise gave those gathered around the pit the terrible thought that he might have burst the coffin, but it was not that, just the impact of his feet and some falling rocks on the wood. “Bury me with her,” he sobbed. “Please! Pile the earth on both of us.”

Hamlet began to advance from the shadows. He was deaf and blind to the feelings of Laertes. He could think of nothing but his own despair. “Who has grief like I do?” he mumbled. Then, louder, “Who is the one who stops the stars in their tracks with his grief?” Then, louder again, almost shouting, “Who is the one whose grief freezes the sun itself?” And at full volume, facing them all, the shocked bystanders and the incredulous king and queen, he answered his own question. “It is I, Hamlet the Dane.”

With a flying leap, he too jumped into the grave, almost landing on Laertes. “The devil take your soul!” shouted the aggrieved brother, and threw himself at his childhood friend. Frantically, they wrestled. Above them circled the helpless, frightened officials, bleating and protesting. In the pit the two men shook and rattled each other, searching for a good grip, but each unable to get one. “Separate them, damn you!” the king roared at his servants. “Separate them!”

One of the footmen, afraid to touch the prince, but more afraid of the king’s wrath, jumped down and pulled the two apart, managing to hold both of the sweating, staring men. Only when they were calmer did the servant allow them to climb out of the grave. Even then, Hamlet, spoiling for a proper fight, could not hold his tongue. From the top of the mound, on all fours, spitting like a cat, he snarled at Laertes, “If I have to do battle with you a thousand times to prove my point, I’ll do it.”

The queen, unwisely, asked, “But to prove what point, my dear Hamlet?”

“That I loved Ophelia! Fifty thousand brothers, with all the love they can summon, would not equal my love for her. Ophelia, Ophelia.”

The king stepped across the corner of the grave to stop the enraged Laertes from springing at Hamlet. “He is mad, Laertes; you know that. Take no notice of him.”

“Hamlet, you must stop this!” Gertrude begged.

But Hamlet, torn apart by shock and sadness, hardly heard them. “Show me what you would do for her!” he cried to Laertes, but almost as if to himself. He sank back onto his haunches. “Would you weep, fight, fast? Would you tear yourself to pieces? Would you drink vinegar? Would you eat scorpions? I would. Do you come here to whine? To outdo me by jumping into her grave? Do you want to be buried with her? Well, so too I, all of these. And if you tell them to build a hill over the grave you share with her, then I’ll tell them to put a million acres of earth on her and me, and then another and then another, until they have built a mountain like the world has never seen before. A mountain that touches the sun.” He shook his head and sobbed bitter, dry sobs.

The onlookers were standing well back, alarmed by his ranting. Many had never seen him like this. “Please, this is nothing. He is upset,” the queen told them. “Soon he will calm down. Please.”

Laertes, still blocked by Claudius, went to speak, but the raised finger of his monarch stopped him. Not daring even now to flout his commander-in-chief, he stayed silent, trembling with feeling. “Your time will come,” the king whispered to him. “Not now. Not now.”