Violin Read online

  Now she couldn't get in. No one could.

  The room was icy cold because the windows were wide open, and it was full of the smell, but I took deep gulping breath after breath and then crawled under the blankets and beside him for the last time, just one more time, just one more few minutes before they burn each and every finger and toe, his lips, his eyes. Just let me be with him.

  Let me be with all of them.

  From far off there came the clamor of her voice, but something else from a distance. It was the dim respectful pavane of a violin. You out there, playing.

  For you, Triana.

  I snuggled up against Karl's shoulder. He was so very dead, so much deader than yesterday. I shut my eyes and pulled the big gold comforter over us--he had such money, he loved such pretty things--in this our four-poster bed, our Prince of Wales-style bed which he had let me have, and now I dreamed for the last time of him: the grave dream.

  The music was in it. It was so faint I couldn't tell if I was only remembering it now from downstairs, but it was there. The music.

  Karl. I laid my hand on his bony cheeks, all sweetness melted away.

  One last time, let me wallow in death and this time with my new friend's music coming to me as if the Devil had sent him up from Hell, this violinist, just for those of us who are so "half in love with easeful Death."

  Father, Mother, Lily, give me your bones. Give me the grave. Let's take Karl down into it with us. What matter to us, those of us who are dead, that he died of some virulent disease; we are all here in the moist earth together; we are dead together.

  3

  DIG DEEP, deep, my soul, to find the heart--the blood, the heat, the shrine and resting place. Dig deep, deep into the moist soil all the way to where they lie, those I love--she, Mother, with her dark hair loose and gone, her bones long since tumbled in the back of the vault, as other coffins came to rest in her spot, but in this dream I range them round me to hold as if she were here, Mother, in a dark red dress, with her dark hair and he--my lately dead father, wax probably still, buried without a tie because he had wanted none and I took it off him right there beside the coffin and unbuttoned his shirt, knowing how much he had hated ties, and his limbs were whole and neat with undertakers' fluids or who knows, perhaps within they were alive already with all earth's tender mouths, come to mourn, devour and then depart, and she, the smallest one, my beautiful one, cancer-bald yet lovely as an angel born hairless and perfect, but then let me give her back her long golden hair that fell out because of the drugs, her hair that was so fine to brush and brush, strawberry blond, the prettiest little girl in all the world, flesh of my flesh--my daughter dead so many years now she'd be a woman if she had lived--

  Dig deep ... let me lie with you, let us lie here, all of us together.

  Lie with us, with Karl and me. Karl's a skeleton already!

  Open lies this grave with all of us so tenderly and happily together. There is no word for union as gentle and total as this, our bodies, our corpses, our bones, so heavily snuggled together.

  I know no separation from anyone. Not Mother, not Father, not Karl, not Lily, not all the living and all the dead as we are one--kin--in this damp and crumbling grave, this private secret place of our own, this deep chamber of earth where we may rot and mingle as the ants come, as the skin is covered over with mold.

  That doesn't matter.

  Let us be together, no face forgotten, laughter of each one clear as it ran some twenty years ago or twice that long, laughter lilting as the music of a ghostly violin, an uncertain violin, a perfect violin, our laughter our music that blended minds and souls and bound us all forever.

  Fall softly on this great soft secret snuggling grave, my warm and singing rain. What is this grave without rain? Our gentle southern rain.

  Fall soft with kisses not to scatter this embrace in which we are living--I and they, the dead, as one. This crevice is our home. Let the drops be tears like song, more sound and lull than water, for I would have nothing here disturbed, but only lustrous sweet, among you all forever. Lily, snuggle against me now, and Mother let me burrow my face in your neck, but then we are one, and Karl has his arms round us all, and so does Father.

  Flowers, come. There is no need to scatter broken stems or the crimson petals. No need to bring them big bouquets all tied with shining ribbon.

  Here the earth will celebrate this grave; the earth will bring its wild thin grass, its nodding blooms of simple buttercups and daisies and poppies, colors blue and yellow and pink, the mellow shades of the rampant untended and eternal garden.

  Let me snuggle against you, let me lie in your arms, let me assure you that no outward sign of death means anything to me as much as love and that we lived, you and I, once, all of us, alive, and I would not be anywhere now but with you here in this slow and damp and safe corruption.

  That consciousness follows me down to this final embrace is a gift! I am intimate with the dead, and yet I live to know it and savor it.

  Let trees bow down to hide this place, let trees form over my eyes a dense and thickening net, not green but black as if it snared the night, so shut away the last prying eye, or vantage point, as the grass grows high--so that we may be alone, just us, you and I, those whom I so adored and cannot live without.

  Sink. Sink deep into the earth. Feel the earth enclose you. Let the clods seal our quietude. I want nothing else.

  And now, bound up with you and safe, I can say, Hell to all that tries to come between us.

  Come, the steps of strangers on the stairs.

  Break the lock, yes, break the wood, and pull the tubes away, and pump the air with white smoke. Do not bruise my arms for I am not here, I am in the grave; and it is an angry rigid image of me that you intrude upon. Yes, you see the sheets are clean, I could have told you!

  Wind him up, wind him thick, thick in the sheets, it does not matter one whit--you see, there is no blood, there is no virulent thing that can get you from him--he died not from open cankers but he starved inside as those with AIDS are wont to do, so that it hurt him even to draw breath, and what do you have left now to fear?

  I am not with you or with those who ask questions of time and place and blood and sanity and numbers to be called; I cannot answer to those who would Help. I am safe in the grave. I press my lips to my father's skull. I reach for my mother's bony hand. Let me hold you!

  I can still hear the music. Oh, God, that this lone violinist would come through high grass and falling rain and the dense smoke of imagined night, envisioned darkness, to be with me still and play his mournful song, to give a voice to these words inside my head, as the earth grows ever more damp, and all things alive in it seem nothing but natural and kind and even a little beautiful.

  All the blood in our dark sweet grave is gone, gone, gone, save mine, and in our bower of earth I bleed as simply as I sigh. If blood is wanted now for any reason under God, I have enough for all of us.

  Fear won't come here. Fear is gone. Jangle the keys and stack the cups. Bang the pots on the iron stove downstairs. Fill the night with sirens if you will. Let the water rush and rush and rush, and the tub fill. I see you not. I know you not.

  No petty worry will come here, not to this grave where we lie. Fear is gone--like youth itself and all that old anguish when I watched them commit you to the ground--coffin after coffin, and Father's of such fine wood, and Mother's, I can't remember, and Lily's so small and white, and the old gentleman not wanting to charge us a nickel because she was just a little girl. No, all that worry is gone.

  Worry stops your ears to the real music. Worry doesn't let you fold your arms around the bones of those you love.

  I am alive and with you now, truly only now realizing what it means that I will have you always with me!

  Father, Mother, Karl, Lily, hold me!

  Oh, it seems a sin to ask compassion of the dead, those who died in pain, those I couldn't save, those for whom I didn't have the right farewells or charms to drive off panic, o
r agony, of those who saw in the final careless, dissonant moments no tears perhaps or heard no pledge that I would mourn you forever.

  I'm here now! With you! I know what it means to be dead. I let the mud cover me, I let my foot push deep into the spongy side of the grave.

  This is a vision, my house. They matter not:

  "That music, can you hear it?"

  "I think she should get into the shower again now! I think she should be thoroughly disinfected!"

  "Everything in that room should be burnt--"

  "Oh, not that pretty four-poster bed, that's foolishness, they don't blow up the hospital room, do they, when somebody dies of this."

  "... and his manuscript, don't you touch it."

  No, don't you dare touch his manuscript!

  "Shhh, not in front of--"

  "She's crazy, can't you see it?"

  "... his mother is on the morning plane out of Gatwick."

  "... absolutely stark raving mad."

  "Oh, please, both of you, if you love your sister, for God's sake, be quiet. Miss Hardy, did you know her well?"

  "Drink this, Triana."

  This is my vision; my house. I sit in my living room, washed, scrubbed, as if I were the one to be buried, water dripping from my hair. Let the morning sun strike the mirrors. Toss the peacock's brilliant feathers out of the silver urn and all over the floor. Don't hang a ghastly veil over all things bright. Look deep to find the phantom in the glass.

  This is my house. And this is my garden, and my roses crawl on these railings outside and we are in our grave too. We are here and we are there, and they are one.

  We are in the grave and we are in the house, and all else is a failure of imagination.

  In this soft rainy realm, where water sings as it falls from the darkening leaves, as the earth falls from the uneven edges above, I am the bride, the daughter, the mother, all those venerable titles forming for me the precious claims I lay upon myself.

  I have you always! Never never to let you leave me, never never to go away.

  All right. And so we made a mistake again. So we played our game. So we nudged at madness as if it were a thick door and then we slammed against it, like they slammed against Karl's door, but the door of madness didn't break, and that uncharted grave is the dream.

  Well, I can hear his music through it.

  I don't even think they hear it. This is my voice in my head and his violin is his voice out there, and together we keep the secret, that this grave is my vision, and that I can't really be with you now, my dead ones. The living need me.

  The living need me now, need me so, as they always need the bereaved after the death, so needy of those who have nursed the most, and sat the longest in the stillness, so needy with questions and suggestions and assertions and declarations, and papers to be signed. They need me to look up at the strangest smiles and find some way to receive with grace the most awkward sympathies.

  But I'll come in time. I'll come. And when I do, the grave will hold us all. And the grass will grow above all of us.

  Love and love and love I give you--let the earth grow wet. Let my living limbs sink down. Give me skulls like stones to press against my lips, give me bones to hold in my fingers, and if the hair is gone--like fine spun silk, it does not matter. Long hair I have to shroud all of us, isn't that so. Look at it, this long hair. Let me cover us all.

  Death is not death as I once thought, when fear was trampled underfoot. Broken hearts do best forever beating upon the wintry windowpane.

  Hold me, hold me, hold me here. Let me never never tarry in another place.

  Forget the fancy lace, the deftly painted walls, the gleaming inlay of the open desk. The china that they take with such care now, piece by piece, to place now all over the table, cups and saucers ornamented with blue lace and gold. Karl's things. Turn around. Don't feel these living arms.

  The only thing important about coffee being poured from a silver spout is the way that the early light shines in it; the way that the deep brown of the coffee becomes amber and gold and yellow, and twists and turns like a dancer as it fills the cup, then stops, like a spirit snatched back into the pot.

  Go back to where the garden breaks to ruin. You will find us all together. You will find us there.

  From memory, a perfect picture: twilight: the Garden District Chapel; Our Mother of Perpetual Help; our little church within an old mansion. You have only to walk a block from my front gate to reach it. It is on Prytania Street. The tall windows are full of pink light. There are low guttering candles in red glass before a saint with a smiling face whom we love and revere as "The Little Flower." The darkness is like dust in this place. You can still move through it.

  Mother and my sister Rosalind and I kneel at the cold marble Altar Rail. We lay down our bouquets--little flowers picked here and there from walls, through iron fences like our own--the wild bridal wreath, the pretty blue plumbago, the little gold and brown lantana. Never the gardeners' blooms. Only the loose tangle no one might miss from a viny gate. These are our bouquets, and we have nothing to bind them with, save our hands. We lay our bouquets on the Altar Rail, and when we make the Sign of the Cross and say our prayers, I get a doubt.

  "Are you sure that the Blessed Mother and Jesus will get these flowers?"

  Beneath the altar before us, the carved wooden figures of the Last Supper are set in their deep glass-covered niche, and above on the ornate cloth stand the regular bouquets of the Chapel which have such size, authority, giant spear-like flowers with snow-white blooms. These are powerful flowers! Flowers as powerful as tall wax candles.

  "Oh, yes," says Mother. "When we leave, the Brother will come and he'll take our little flowers and he'll put them in a vase and he'll put them before the Baby Jesus over there or the Blessed Mother."

  The Baby Jesus stands to the far right, dark beside the window now. But I can still see the world He holds in his hands, and the gold that glints on His crown, and I know that His fingers are raised in blessing, and that he is the Infant Jesus of Prague in that statue, with His fancy flaring pink cape and lovely blooming cheeks.

  But about the flowers, I don't think it's so. The flowers are too humble. Who will care about such flowers left like that in the gloaming, the chapel now full of shadows that I can feel because my Mother is a little afraid, clutching the hands of her two little girls, Rosalind and Triana, come, as we make our genuflection and then turn to go out. We are wearing Mary Janes that click on a dark linoleum floor. The holy water is warm in the font. The night breathes with light, but not enough anymore to come inside among the pews.

  I worry for the flowers.

  Well, I worry not anymore for such things.

  I cherish only the memory, that we were there, because if I can see and feel it and hear this violin that sings this song, then I am there again, and as I said--Mother, we are together.

  I worry not for all the rest. Would she, my child, have lived had I moved Heaven and Earth to take her to a faraway clinic? Would he, my Father, have not died if the oxygen had been adjusted just so? Was she afraid, my Mother, when she said, "I'm dying" to the cousins who cared for her? Did she want one of us? Good God! Stop it!

  Not for the living, not for the dead, not for the flowers of fifty years ago, I won't relive the accusations!

  Saints in the flicker of the chapel do not answer. The icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help only gleams in solemn shadow. The Infant Jesus of Prague holds court with a jeweled crown and eyes with no less luster.

  But you, my dead, my flesh, my treasures, those whom I have completely and totally loved, all of you with me in the grave now--without eyes, or flesh to warm me--you are with me!

  All partings were illusions. Everything is perfect.

  "The music stopped."

  "Thank God."

  "Do you really think so?" That was Rosalind's soft deep voice, my outspoken sister. "The guy was terrific. That wasn't just music."

  "He is very good, I'll give him that mu
ch." This was Glenn, her husband and my beloved brother-in-law.

  "He was here when I came." Miss Hardy speaking. "In fact, if he hadn't come playing his violin, I would never have found her. Can you see him out there?"

  My sister Katrinka:

  "I think she should leave now for the hospital for an entire battery of tests; we have to make absolutely sure that she did not contract--"

  "Hush, I won't have you talk this way!" Thank you, perfect stranger.

  "Triana, this is Miss Hardy, dear, can you look at me? Forgive me, dear, for quarreling so with your sisters. Forgive me, dear. But I want you to drink this now. It's just a cup of chocolate. Remember when you came that afternoon, and we drank chocolate and you said you loved it, and there's lots of cream and I'd like you to have this ..."

  I looked up. How fresh and pretty the living room was in the early sun, and how the china shone on the table. Round tables. I have always loved round tables. All the music disks and cookie wrappers and cans had been taken away. The white plaster flowers on the ceiling made their proper wreath, no longer degraded by detritus beneath them.

  I got up and went to the window, and lifted back the heavy yellowing curtain. The whole world was outside, right up to the sky itself, and the leaves scuttling on the dry porch right in front of me.

  The morning race for downtown had begun. There came the clatter of trucks. I saw the leaves on the oak above shiver with the thunder of so many wheels. I felt the house itself tremble. But it had trembled so for a hundred years or more, and would not fall down. People knew that now. They didn't come to tear down the splendid houses with the white columns now. They didn't vomit out lies about these houses being impossible to keep, or heat. They fought to save them.

  Someone shook me. It was my sister Katrinka. She looked so distraught, her narrow face bitter with anger; anger was so much her friend. Anger just jumped up and down in her, waiting any second to get out, and it was out now, and she could barely speak to me she was so furious.

  "I want you to go upstairs."

  "For what?" I said coldly. I haven't been afraid of you for years and years, I thought. Not since Faye left, I suppose. Faye was the smallest of us all. Faye was the one whom we all loved.

  "I want you to wash again, wash all over, and then go to the hospital."