Iron Chamber of Memory

The author thanks David Lindsay and Tim Powers for their inspiration, Jeffrey Nowland for his generosity, and Saul and Justin and one other whose name I do not write, for their protection, and guidance, and above all, hope.

Standing and frowning in the New York snow, Hal Landfall realized he did not recall the name of the woman pushing his mother’s wheelchair toward his father’s grave.

He had been overseas for the last four years, studying. It now seemed all too long since he had last been home. He remembered how his sister Elaine had insisted he go abroad, that he take advantage of the rare opportunity being afforded him. In less than a year, their father’s health declined like a rapid childhood in reverse: there was a day when his last tooth fell out, a day when he took his last upright step, a day when he spoke his last word.

When he offered to abandon his studies and come home, Elaine talked him out of it. She vowed that she could shoulder all duties their father had so carefully performed in watching and tending their mother. Hal could not recall, even among his simplest, earliest memories, a day when his mother had been entirely well.

Elaine said she recalled the brighter days of their childhood, when their mother could play with her children, sit on the nursery floor and roll a ball, clap and sing rhymes, and hold them as they repeated their bedtime prayers.

But he remembered little more than the bedroom door, looming in the darkness. He had to reach over his head to touch the knob. Shouts and screams of different voices—but voices he always knew were his mother’s too—would come from the door. Young Hal was forbidden to touch the door, even when nightmares woke him at midnight, and he needed a gentle voice or loving hand. Dad told him to be nice to the woman with the wild and empty eyes, be nice and not upset her. He never told Hal what upset her or why. Hal tried not to complain when she bit him.

Elaine said she recalled custard they once had shared, something actually made by their mother in the kitchen, not bought from a store, not take out. Father never cooked.

As his eyes got bad and his hands shook, Father still prepared the needle for Mom’s injections. He carried her upstairs and downstairs. There was a wheelchair on every floor. He spoon-fed her. He carried her to the bathroom. He said she had no weight.

Hal had been in England when it happened. It happened suddenly. He talked to them both. Elaine had passed the telephone to their mother, but Mrs. Landfall did not remember who Hal was.

Instead she kept talking about a black dog. “I hate the black dog,” she said, in the voice one might use when confiding a secret to a stranger met by chance. “Sometimes I see him stand upright on the road, under the streetlight outside the window. The black dog howled when Henry went. I think he was laughing at me. I’ll get up in a moment, as soon as I’ve rested. I have to remember how to walk. I don’t remember what it feels like.”

Elaine was not at the funeral. His sister was snowed in, trapped in some Midwestern airport until further notice, and, with Hal returning to the British Isles that same day, it had seemed impossible to cancel or delay.

Mounts of white snow were on all the gravestones. The angels wore caps and cloaks of white, as did the spears of the fence. Beyond the fence, Hal could see the East River, and the traffic moving slowly through the gray weather. It seemed unfair that so many people would have so many places to go, families and friends unmarred by tragedy. Hal felt a bitterness in his heart; it was as if the world could tolerate to continue only because it forgot the tortures of the world.

After the priest was done saying the words, Hal tucked the hawk-headed walking stick he always carried under one arm, stooped, and reached down to take his mother’s ungloved hand. There was neither a cap on her head nor a scarf at her neck, and the sweater was old enough that he remembered it from his youth, a favorite of hers to be worn in all weathers, but now festooned with holes. There was no one left to patch them.

“Who are you?” she said.

“I am your son. I am Hal,” he told her. He gave his mother a warm smile, but there was ice behind his eyes as he glared at the nurse standing behind the wheelchair with a bored look on her face. The woman was dumpy and potato-shaped. “You don’t seem dressed warmly enough!”

“Henry will take care of me,” said Mom. “He always takes care of me. Did you hear Father O’Brien just now? I don’t know why they made me come out here on a day like this. I might miss my programs!” She looked cross. “What is going on? Who died? Was it someone I know? I want to ask Henry about it. He said he would come to see me!”

Hal did not realize at first what she meant. When her rambling words finally sank into his soul, he felt as if they left burn marks there. He patted her hand, unable to speak. She looked at him benevolently in the way one might look at a kindly stranger.

She was shivering now. She wore no hat over her grey and thinning hair. Snowflakes were landing on her head, and she did not even raise a hand to brush them away.

“If I could remember where I put the door key, I would let years flow in. Rose and silver-white and iron! And gold beyond that! Old years, green years, and the good ones would wear all white. Oh! How I adored the crowns and the trumpets! So pretty! Henry knows where I put it. He always takes care of me. Where is he? Where did he go? I was talking to him just now.”

Hal straightened up and looked around. There had been other mourners, two veterans from Mr. Landfall’s old unit, his partner and one loyal customer from his days running a bookstore, a student he had tutored, and a neighbor. All had said their farewells earlier, and were drifting away, silent, down the paths out of the little churchyard and back into crowded streets where tall buildings loomed, indifferent. Hal glanced left and right, looking to find his sister, even though he knew that she was not coming, that she could not come.

He glared again at the nurse. Elaine had told him her name, but it escaped him now. “Where is this place you keep her? Who are you?”

The nurse gave her name and the name of the sanitarium. Saint something or other. Hal asked her to take his mother inside, into someplace better, and into a warmer outfit.

The fat nurse shrugged, wearing the same serene expression as a cow chewing a cud, and said indifferently, “We all want some place better, honey. Don’t mind me. I just do what I’m told. They say take her out, I take her out. You say take her back in, I’ll take her back in. No problem.”

Hal’s hand tightened on his walking stick, as if it had a mind of its own that was toying with the idea of bludgeoning the nurse with it. Was no one actually taking care of his mother?

Mrs. Landfall must have been following part of the conversation, for her trembling voice broke in, querulous: “When can I go home? Henry will take me home.”

The casket had been closed the whole time. Hal insisted on that point when Elaine had been making arrangements. Seeing their father lying motionless inside it would have been terrible for his poor senile mother, a punishment worse than anything she deserved.

The priest, a bent-backed, bald, short man with an odd, sad smile, and eyebrows of astounding size and color that looked like two albino caterpillars on his forehead, came over to them. He spoke in a soft, kind voice to Mrs. Landfall. Hal did not hear what the priest said, but his mother’s reply was sharp and clear in the cold air: “I’ll have Henry leave it for you in the black iron moly chamber in the church, so you’ll remember.”

The old priest turned to Hal, put out his hand, “So this is Little Henry?” The priest had to crane his head to look up at Hal, who towered over him. “Father O’Brien, Henry. Your mother has often spoken of you. We hope for great things, heroic things, in the struggles ahead. Keep your sword always by you, and your prayers ready at hand, eh? These sorrows, these present sorrows, will melt when this world melts, eh! The last enemy to be conquered is death, but there are others before it. You are deployed to England, I understand?”

Hal was puzzled by the little man’s odd behavior, “Did Mother tell you I was a soldier or something?”

The little priest raised his oversized eyebrows. “Well, she said, ah…”

Hal smiled mirthlessly. “I am in England working on my master’s degree. At Saint Magdalene College. Elaine arranged the funeral so I could come during Christmas holiday. Did she think I was in the army? My mother, I mean. Not Elaine.”

The little priest smiled back, albeit enigmatically. “We serve in the hosts of the light, and you are born of a great warrior. For
we
wrestle
not against flesh and blood
, but against principalities, against
powers
, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.”

Hal was unsure he was hearing the priest properly. The words were strange, unearthly. He vaguely thought he had heard something like this before, but the memory eluded him. He shook his head sharply, and said, “My father served in the Navy for five years before I was born. She does not remember me. That must be what she is thinking of, his military career. She does not know me.”

“No, she speaks of you often.”

“We are both named Henry. I am Henry, Junior. I go by Hal.”

“But if you are not kept away by your official duties, then why weren’t you here earlier, when your mother needed help?”

Later, Hal did not recall what he answered, or even if he answered. They were interrupted by a commotion. In the distance, through the snow, beyond the belt of trees and the low fence of wrought iron surrounding the churchyard, was a city street filled with gray snow and honking cars. Some stray dog, a big, black mutt, was motionless in the intersection, barking at a truck, and the cars had stopped.

At that point, mother became hysterical, and the nurse took her back into the church. The little priest took out a small stoppered bottle of liquid and his prayer beads, and walked toward the fence, toward the noise of the barking. Hal was alone. Only the two gravediggers were left, stony-faced foreign-looking young men, who were cranking the geared wheels to lower the casket into the ground.