‘That’s some memory,’ said Smith.
‘He was there every day, was in school with me, my best friend. Every once in a while, at lunchtime, he’d eat an apple and when he finished he’d say, “Apple core.” And one of the other guys would say, “Baltimore.” Russ would then say, “Who’s your friend?” They’d point at me and he’d throw the apple core–hard–at me. This was a routine; it happened at least once a week for a couple of years. Apple-core Baltimore.’
‘And this was your best friend?’
‘Sure, my best friend.’
They stood there by the grave, still working at their apples. The sun was getting hotter and there was no breeze.
‘What else?’ said Smith.
‘Oh, not much. Well, sometimes at lunchtime I’d ask the typing teacher to let me use one of the typewriters so I could write, as I didn’t have a typewriter of my own.
‘Finally, I had a chance to buy one real cheap, so I went without lunch for a month or so, saving my lunch money. Finally, I had enough to buy my very own typewriter so I could write whenever I wanted.
‘One day Russ looked at me and said, “My God, do you realize what you are?” I said, “What?” He said, “You’re a stale fruitcake, giving up your money to buy that damned typewriter. A stale fruitcake.”
‘I often thought later that someday when I finished my great American novel, that’s what I’d call it: Stale Fruitcake.’
Smith said, ‘Better than Gatsby, huh?’
‘Gatsby, sure. Anyway, I had the typewriter.’
They were quiet then, the only sound the last bites into their diminishing apples.
A distant expression came over Smith’s face and he blinked and suddenly whispered, ‘Apple-core.’
To which, quickly, Menville said, ‘Baltimore.’
Smith then said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
Menville, looking down at the marker near his feet, eyes wide, said, ‘Granger.’
‘Granger?’ said Smith, and stared at his friend.
‘Yeah,’ said Menville. ‘Granger.’
At this Smith raised his hand and threw his apple core down on top of the gravestone.
No sooner was this done than Menville hurled his apple core down, then reached and took it up again and threw it a second time so that the gravestone was so littered with shreds of the apple core that you couldn’t make out the name on the marker.
They stared at the mess.
Then Menville turned and began to walk away, threading through the gravestones, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Smith called after him. ‘Where are you going?’
Menville, not looking back, said in a hoarse voice, ‘To get some more apples, damn it to hell, more apples.’
The Reincarnate
After a while you will get over being afraid. There’s nothing you can do; just be careful to walk at night.
The sun is terrible; summer nights are no help. You must wait for cold weather. The first six months are your prime. In the seventh month the water will seep through with dissolution. By the eighth month your usefulness will fade. Come the tenth month you’ll lie weeping in sorrow without tears, and you will know then that you will never move again.
But before that happens there is so much to be finished. Many likes and dislikes must be turned in your mind before your mind melts.
It is all new to you. You are reborn! And your birthplace is silk lined and smells of tuberoses and linens, and there is no sound before your birth except the beating of the earth’s billion insect hearts. This place is wood and metal and satin, offering no sustenance, but only an implacable slot of close air, a pocket within the earth. There is only one way you can live, now. There must be an anger to slap you awake, to make you move. A desire, a want, a need. Then you quiver and rise to strike your head against satin-lined wood. Life calls you. You grow with it. You claw upward, slowly, and find ways to displace the heavy earth an inch at a time, and one night you crumble the darkness, the exit is complete, and you burst forth to see the stars.
Now you stand, letting the emotion burn you. You take a step, like a child, stagger, clutch for support–and find a cold marble slab. Beneath your fingers the carved story of your life is briefly told: BORN–DIED.
You are a stick of wood, trying to walk. You go outward from the land of monuments, into twilight streets, alone on the pale sidewalks.
You feel something is left undone. Some flower yet unseen, some place you must see, some lake waiting for you to swim, some wine unsipped. You are going somewhere, to finish whatever is still undone.
The streets are strange. You walk through a town you have never seen, a dream on the rim of a lake. You grow more certain of your walking, you start to go quite swiftly. Memory returns.
Now you know every lawn of this street, every place where asphalt bubbled from cement cracks in the summer oven weather. You know where the horses were tethered, sweating in the green spring at these iron waterfonts so long ago it is a fading mist in your brain. This cross street, where a lamp hangs like a bright spider spinning light across darkness. You escape its web into sycamore shadows. You run your fingers along a picket fence. Here, as a child, you rushed by with a stick raising a machine-gun racket, laughing.
These houses, holding their people and memories. The lemon odor of old Mrs Hanlon who lived here, a lady with withered hands who gave you a withered lecture on trampling her petunias. Now she is completely withered like an ancient paper burned.
The street is quiet except for the sound of someone walking. You turn a corner and unexpectedly collide with a stranger.
You both stand back. For a moment, examining each other, you understand.
The stranger’s eyes are deep-seated fires. He is tall, thin, and wears a dark suit. There is a fiery whiteness in his cheekbones. He smiles. ‘You’re new,’ he says.
You know then what he is. He is walking and ‘different,’ like you.
‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ he asks.
‘Step aside,’ you say. ‘I have no time. I have to go somewhere.’
He reaches out and grasps your elbow firmly. ‘Do you know what I am?’ He bends close. ‘Do you not realize we are the same? We are as brothers.’
‘I–I have no time.’
‘No,’ he agrees. ‘Nor have I, to waste.’
You try to brush past, but he walks with you. ‘I know where you’re going.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘To some childhood place. Some river. Some house. Some memory. Some woman, perhaps. To some old friend’s bed. Oh, I know, I know everything about our kind. I know.’ He nods at the passing light and dark.
‘Do you?’
‘That is always why we lost ones walk. Strange, when you consider all the books written about ghosts and restless souls–never once did the authors of those worthy volumes touch upon the true secret of why we walk. But it’s always for a memory, a friend, a woman, a house, a drink of wine, everything and anything connected to life and…living!’ He makes a fist to hold the words tight. ‘Living! Real living!’
Wordless, you increase your stride, but his whisper follows:
‘You must join me later, friend. We will meet with the others, tonight, tomorrow, and all the nights until at last, we win!’
‘Who are the others?’
‘The dead. We join against’–a pause–‘intolerance.’
‘Intolerance?’
‘We–the recently deceased, the newly interred–are a minority, a persecuted minority. They make laws against us!’
You stop walking. ‘Minority?’
‘Yes.’ He grasps your arm. ‘Are we wanted? No! We are feared, driven like sheep into a quarry, screamed at, stoned, like the Jews. It’s wrong, I tell you, unfair!’ He lifts his hands in fury and strikes the empty air. ‘Is it fair that we melt in our graves while the rest of the world sings, laughs, dances? Fair, is it fair, that they love while we lie cold, that they touch while our hands turn to sto
ne? No! I say down with them, down! Why should we die? Why not the others?’
‘Maybe…’
‘They slam the earth in our faces and carve a stone to weigh us down. They bring flowers and leave them to rot, once a year–sometimes not even that! Oh, how I hate the living. The damn fools! Dancing all night and loving till dawn, while we are abandoned. Is that right?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it that way…’
‘Well,’ he cries, ‘we’ll fix them.’
‘How?’
‘There are thousands of us gathering tonight in the Elysian grove. I will lead our army. We will march! They have neglected us for too long. If we can’t live, then they won’t! Will you come, friend? I have spoken with many. Join us. Tonight the graveyards will open and the lost ones will pour forth to drown the unbelievers. You will come?’
‘Yes. Perhaps. But right now I must go. I am looking for something…Later, later I will join you.’
‘Good,’ he says. You walk off, leaving him in shadow. ‘Good, good, good!’
Up the hill now, quickly. Thank God the night is cold.
You gasp. There, glowing in the night, but with simple magnificence, the house where Grandma sheltered and fed her boarders. Inside that grand, tall house, Saturday feasts happen. Where you as a child sat on the porch watching skyrockets climb in fire, the pinwheels sputtering, the gunpowder drumming at your ears from the brass cannon your uncle Bion fired with his hand-rolled cigarette.
Now, trembling with memory, you know why the dead walk. To see nights like this. Here, where dew littered the grass and you crushed the damp lawn, wrestling, and you knew the sweetness of now, now, tomorrow is gone, yesterday is done, tonight you live!
And here, here, remember? This is Kim’s house. That yellow light around the back, that’s her room.
You bang the gate wide and hurry up the walk.
You approach her window and feel your stale breath falling upon the cold glass. As the fog vanishes the shape of her room emerges: things spread on the little soft bed, the cherrywood floor brightly waxed, and throw-rugs like heavily furred dogs sleeping there.
She enters the room. She looks tired, but she sits and begins to comb her hair.
Breathlessly, you press your ear against the cold pane to listen, and as from a deep sea you hear her sing so softly it is already an echo before it is sung.
You tap on the windowpane.
But she doesn’t turn; she continues combing her hair gently.
You tap again, anxiously.
This time she puts down the comb and rises to come to the window. At first she sees nothing; you are in shadow. Then she looks more closely. She sees a dim figure beyond the light.
‘Kim!’ You cannot help yourself. ‘It’s me! Kim!’
You push your face forward into the light. Her face pales. She does not cry out; but her eyes widen and her mouth opens as if a terrific lightning bolt has hit the earth beneath her. She pulls back slightly.
‘Kim!’ you cry. ‘Kim.’
She says your name, but you can’t hear it. She wants to run but instead she opens the window and, sobbing, stands back as you climb up and into the light.
You close the window and stand, swaying there, only to find her far across the room, her face half turned away.
You try to think of something to say, but cannot, and then you hear her crying.
At last she is able to speak.
‘Six months,’ she says. ‘You’ve been gone that long. When you went away I cried. I never cried so much in my life. But now you can’t be here.’
‘I am!’
‘But why? I don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Why did you come?’
‘I was lost. It was very dark and I started to dream; I don’t know how. And there you were in the dream and I don’t know how, but I had to find my way back.’
‘You can’t stay.’
‘Until sunrise I can. I still love you.’
‘Don’t say that. You mustn’t, anymore. I belong here and you belong there, and right now I’m terribly afraid. It’s been so long. The things we did, the things we joked and laughed about, those things I still love, but—’
‘I still think those thoughts. I think them over and over, Kim. Please try to understand.’
‘You don’t want pity, do you?’
‘Pity?’ You half turn away. ‘No, I don’t want that. Kim, listen to me. I could come visit you every night, we could talk just like we used to. I can explain, make you understand, if only you’ll let me.’
‘It’s no use,’ she says. ‘We can never go back.’
‘Kim, one hour every evening, or half an hour, anytime you say. Five minutes. Just to see you. That’s all, that’s all I ask.’
You try to take her hands. She pulls away.
She closes her eyes tightly and says simply, ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve been taught to be afraid.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes, I guess that’s it.’
‘But I want to talk.’
‘Talking won’t help.’
Her trembling gradually passes and she becomes more calm and relaxed. She sinks down on the edge of the bed and her voice is very old in a young throat.
‘Perhaps…’ A pause. ‘Maybe. I suppose a few minutes each night and maybe I’d get used to you and maybe I wouldn’t be afraid.’
‘Anything you say. You won’t be afraid?’
‘I’ll try not to be.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I won’t be afraid. I’ll meet you outside the house in a few minutes. Let me get myself together and we can say good night.’
‘Kim, there’s only one thing to remember: I love you.’
You climb back out the window and she pulls down the sash.
Standing there in the dark, you weep with something deeper than sorrow.
Across the street a man walks alone and you recognize him as the one who spoke to you earlier that night. He is lost and walking like you, alone in a world that he hardly knows.
And suddenly Kim is beside you.
‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I’m better now. I don’t think I’m afraid.’
And together you stroll in the moonlight, just as you have so many times before. She turns you in at an ice-cream parlor and you sit at the counter and order ice cream.
You look down at the sundae and think how wonderful, it’s been so long.
You pick up your spoon and put some of the ice cream in your mouth and then pause and feel the light in your face go out. You sit back.
‘Something wrong?’ the soda clerk behind the fountain says.
‘Nothing.’
‘Ice cream taste funny?’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘You ain’t eating,’ he says.
‘No.’
You push the ice cream away and feel a terrible loneliness steal over you.
‘I’m not hungry.’
You sit up very straight, staring at nothing. How can you tell her that you can’t swallow, can’t eat? How can you explain that your whole body seems to be solid, like a block of wood, and that nothing moves, nothing can be tasted?
Pushing back from the counter, you rise and wait for Kim to pay for the sundaes, and then you swing wide the door and walk out into the night.
‘Kim—’
‘It’s all right,’ she says.
You walk down toward the park. You feel her hand on your arm, a long way off, but the feeling is so soft that it is hardly there. Beneath your feet the sidewalk loses its solidity. You move without shock or bump, as if you’re in a dream.
Kim says, ‘Isn’t that great? Smell the lilacs.’
You sniff the air but there is nothing. Panicked, you try again, but no lilac.
Two people pass in the dark. They drift by, smiling to Kim. As they move away one of them says, fading, ‘Smell that? Something’s rotten in Denmark.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t see—’
‘
No!’ Kim cries. And suddenly, at the sound of those voices, she starts to run.
You catch her arm. Silently you struggle. She beats at you. You can hardly feel her fists.
‘Kim!’ you cry. ‘Don’t. Don’t be afraid.’
‘Let go!’ she cries. ‘Let go.’
‘I can’t.’
Again the word: ‘Can’t.’ She weakens and hangs, lightly sobbing against you. At your touch she trembles.
You hold her close, shivering. ‘Kim, don’t leave me. I have such plans. We’ll travel, anywhere, just travel. Listen to me. Think of it. To eat the best food, to see the best places, to drink the best wine.’
Kim interrupts. You see her mouth move. You tilt your head. ‘What?’
She speaks again. ‘Louder,’ you say. ‘I can’t hear you.’
She speaks, her mouth moves, but you hear absolutely nothing.
And then, as if from behind a wall, a voice says, ‘It’s no use. You see?’
You let her go.
‘I wanted to see the light, flowers, trees, anything. I wanted to be able to touch you but, oh God, first, there, with the ice cream I tasted, it was all gone. And now I feel like I can’t move. I can hardly hear your voice, Kim. A wind passed by in the night, but I hardly feel it.’
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘This isn’t the way. It takes more than wanting things to have them. If we can’t talk or hear or feel or even taste, what is left for you or for me?’
‘I can still see you and I remember the way we were.’
‘That’s not enough, there’s got to be more than that.’
‘It’s unfair. God, I want to live!’
‘You will, I promise that, but not like this.’
You stop. You turn very cold. Holding to her wrist, you stare into her moving face.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our child. I’m carrying our child. You see, you didn’t have to come back, you’re always with me, you’ll always be alive. Now turn around and go back. Believe me, everything will work out. Let me have a better memory than this terrible night with you. Go back where you came from.’