The Book of the Dead (16 page)

Here, telling his story, the Siamese gave Monty a knowing look. “Hunts-the-Black-Beetles and the temple cats recognised her as well. For they looked past the human shell, to what was animating the body.”

The small tabby piped up proudly. “Everyone knows that we cats can see the other world. Even humans know that.”

“So can dogs,” said Monty. “We just don’t show off about it.” It wasn’t uncommon to see the Dean’s cat sat frozen, ears flattened to her head, fur on end, staring at a spot in the quad or at the big chair in the great hall, while students stood about and tried to work out what she was staring at. Some of them had even tried to set up a séance.

Half the time all that Monty could see was the ghost of a stable boy who’d been killed at the college – a very friendly lad, that ghost, nothing to be scared of – and half the time there was nothing there at all. Monty was convinced the Dean’s cat was doing it for the attention.

Rashid, well into his cups, had finally begun telling the story to Cricklewood. Though it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the cats’ version, and Monty hadn’t been listening. “They said afterwards,” said Rashid, “that the beggar woman had gone mad with the loss of her daughter. That she’d killed the children of others to make up for the loss of her own. Though where she learnt the ancient dialect she was speaking to my father, who knows.”

“She was shouting ‘Not enough, these are not enough!’” Rashid wiped a tear away, thinking about it. “She had my kittens. She’d killed them. All but one.”

The Siamese continued. “Hunts-the-Black-Beetle and the temple cats knew that it wasn’t the human woman who had killed those kittens, who had killed all the sad bodies within the temple, but something far, far worse. For though their eyes showed them a human, their noses told them of mouldering bones, and their ears heard a great roar when she opened her mouth, a thousand hissing voices all at once.

“‘THESE MORSELS ARE NOT ENOUGH! GIVE ME BACK WHAT WAS MINE, GIVE ME FLESH!’

“The boy Rashid ran to the woman, trying to wrest the final kitten from her grasp. Spotting the better prize, she flung the mewling scrap of life at the hard stone wall and held the boy instead, her hands around his throat.

“Shenouda approached her with his hands held out placatingly, maintaining eye contact with the woman, heart beating frantically in his chest.

“‘Please, don’t hurt him. What do you want?’

“‘WHAT WAS OURS! THIS ONE STOLE IT FROM US. HUMANS STOLE IT FROM US.’ Her voice was many voices – a yowling gale, a fox’s cry, a barking and a hissing tumult of something old and angry.

“‘My boy stole nothing from you. Please, give him back.’

“‘THIS ONE ATE FROM THE FIELDS, AS DID YOU. THESE SMALL ONES ATE THE RATS THAT ATE FROM THE GRAINHOUSES. ONCE YOU WORSHIPPED US, ONCE YOU LOVED US, NOW YOU SCATTER US ON YOUR FIELDS AND YOU GROUND US FOR YOUR MEDICINE, BUT WE WILL RECLAIM OUR FLESH AND THE PARADISE THAT WAS PROMISED TO US.’

“She squeezed the boy until he fell unconscious, and it seemed as if the life were leaving him and entering her. As the colour drained from his flesh and his skin began to sink and tighten, her voice grew louder and more powerful.

“‘No!’ cried Shenouda, rushing her. The yips and growls and cries grew louder and louder as the man and the creature grappled with each other.

“‘You forget your place, creature,’ Hunts-the-Black-Beetle spoke, standing by her last remaining, cowering kitten, who was climbing shakily to his feet. ‘We cats claim nothing from humans, we find our own path.’

“Despite his courage, Shenouda was no match for the unnatural creature. He wrestled bravely, but her touch sapped the strength from his limbs, and, haltingly, he fell to his knees.

“‘YES! WE WILL HAVE FLESH TO FEEL THE SUN ON OUR BACK, LIMBS TO CHASE SILVER FISH IN THE RIVERS OF PARADISE.’

“Hunts-the-Black-Beetle nuzzled her kitten goodbye and stepped forward, putting herself in between it and the creature. ‘But if it is flesh you need to find your way, then mine you shall have – and willingly.’

“And the creature stopped its roaring and listened to that one small voice, for the independence of a cat is a precious thing, and never more so than when it is willingly surrendered.

“‘And I wager my life, freely given, is worth more to you than twenty humans of his size forcibly taken. So come to me, and this heart will be weighed in the Hall of Two Truths, and we shall find those that loved you in the Fields of Yalu.’

“It is a thing humans know instinctively. A dog will join any pack that will have him. A cat, however, who makes a gift of her company; who does not merely accept human offerings of food and shelter but who gives up her independence to cast in her lot with the humans she loves, is rare indeed.

“Hunts-the-Black-Beetles glanced sadly at her kitten, and at the unconscious Rashid. ‘And those that loved me will join us there soon.’

“She stepped forward, and, as the temple creature reached down to pat her, the green light slowly enveloped the cat. As it left the beggar woman, her body collapsed to the ground, dead and decayed.

“And Halftail-the-Brave, who most assumed was the kittens’ father, and Patches-of-Ginger, who Hunts-the-Black-Beetle
knew
was the kittens’ father, joined her, stepping forwards and swirling around one another gently. As they brushed against Hunts-the-Black-Beetle, they too became part of the green light. As did Hunts-the-Black-Beetles’s sister, Eats-the-Black-Beetles.

“Shenouda could not believe what he saw. As the light filled the cats’ bodies, their eyes closed, their legs folded underneath them and they fell down, seeming only to sleep.

“Hunts-the-Black-Beetle’s kitten, too young for a name but later to be known as Last-of-Three-Brothers, ran to his mother. He yowled as he discovered her dead, but to Shenouda, it looked like a natural death, not the prematurely desiccated state of the other poor creatures in the temple.”

Monty looked away, hoping that the cats couldn’t see how much their tale had affected him. “The strays, they saved the Shenoudas too? Willingly?”

“Yes, them too.”

“Why? I mean, some might say that wasn’t very cat-like of them,” he ventured, in a manner as to so imply that those who might say such things were nothing to do with him, were the kind of creatures he would avoid at parties, but that he felt their opinion need be stated, for form’s sake.

“The temple creature was ours, feline souls run mad. We cats always clean up our own messes. Unlike
some
creatures I could mention.

“In the days that followed Shenouda worked in his library, helped by his son, who was the only other member of the household allowed to enter. Sometimes he sent out the servants with requests they were unused to – sawdust, wax and jewellery from the market, as well as large quantities of salt and baking soda.

“For after that fateful night, after the hospital had taken away the human remains and the authorities had written up their reports, Shenouda and Rashid had returned to the temple, and made the last temple robbery it would ever see.

“Rashid and Last-of-Three-Brothers buried the two kittens’ bodies in the garden, where they had liked to play near the purple thistles. But their mother and her three comrades were preserved by Shenouda, embalmed in the ancient way, for forty days, and then finally wrapped in fine, unbleached white linen, to ensure their body’s protection and thus their way to paradise.

“He used everything he had learned about the cult of Bubastis, and the
Book of the Dead
, and he said the words as well as he could as he and Rashid wrapped each limb and tail, tucking in powerful symbols such as prayers written on papyrus, and beads from the market with beetles and ankhs upon them, in every few layers as he went.

“The presence of the four mummies was not the only thing that had changed about the Shenouda household.

“As they worked in the library, Rashid had become closer to his father and finally picked up the interest in ancient history that the elder Shenouda so wished to cultivate in him.

“Last-of-Three-Brothers, named Shadow by young Rashid, had taken Hunts-the-Black-Beetle’s place at the boy’s side.

“And, finally, Shenouda had enforced a new rule upon his household, and on the pets within it. All foodstuffs were to be imported from outside the town of Beni Hasan – and the cats were to be kept well-fed with meats and fish from the same origin.”

“But why did he do that?” asked Monty.

“Dogs!” scoffed the black cat who was a descendant of Last-of-Three-Brothers. “You never listen.”

“It’s all that digging dogs do,” said the ginger tom. “Sand gets in their ears.”

“The Egyptians believed that a dead creature needed its body intact, for its soul to go to its rest,” explained the Siamese. “But humans took the mummies from the tomb and scattered them on the fields. Do you understand, yet? Shenouda forbade anything grown in those fields to come within his house – where the original owners of those bodies might notice it.”

“That’s why he told your professor to come straight from Cairo, not to stop to eat or drink anything in Beni Hasan.”

“Rashid keeps to his father’s traditions. But he doesn’t understand them.”

Monty watched his mistress gather her skirts and lean in to bestow Rashid with a lingering good night kiss.

“My mistress did not do as she was bade. She never does.”

As Cricklewood perused the library shelves for some bed-time reading, the mummified cats seemed to follow her every movement.

Blue was her favorite color.

He touched the glass case one last time before returning to the desk, but his handprint lingered on, an ethereal smudge above the backlit, cerulean shadow of her face. No matter how often he tried to write their story, he couldn’t shake free of the lies he had built around them. He suspected that even if he could discover the truth, it would pass him by unrecognized, as ephemeral and false as a balladeer’s concept of love. Love knew you better and could hurt you worse. Where fear faded so did love, and he nurtured a delightful terror, a trembling fascination bred in tales. He wanted to reach her and make her understand, but all he had left was the elusive call of memory.

A decade out of fashion, his pin-striped suit hung well on him. A man of occasion, his father would have called him, with a head full of gray head, a filigree of wrinkles around his gray eyes. His manicured nails adjusted his tie one final time before his appointment. The door chimed fifteen minutes earlier than expected. If he didn’t have to inspect the merchandise he wouldn’t have bothered. The living offered little except their stories.

“May I help you?” he said.

“You the old dude who buys stuff?” A young boy looked past him with heavy-lidded, half-upturned eyes. His camouflage hoodie, drawn up, shadowed most of his face. He under-enunciated his words.

“I am. I’m also quite busy. I have a one o’clock appointment.”

“Yeah, with me. JaQuon Wilson.”

“I see… JaQuon. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I should be a lot of things.” The bulk of the hoodie hid his husky frame and JaQuon allowed his wrinkled clothes to hang from him in calculated slovenliness. His book bag, half-slung over his shoulder, slid into the crook of his elbow before he hitched it back. He avoided eye contact, all the while clutching a skateboard to his chest, protecting it as if it held all the secrets of childhood.

“Is that the item in question?”

“Yeah.” JaQuon gripped the skateboard even tighter.

“It won’t do. I have quite… specific requirements.”

“I know what you want. You think I’d be caught in this creepy joint if I didn’t have what you wanted?” His determined eyes half-pleading with him, JaQuon puffed up his chest and stepped broadly, all bravado and empty swagger.

“Come in.”

The man’s hard-soled shoes sat by the doorway, pointed in the opposite directions, so no one knew if he was coming or going. Walking barefoot into the room, he checked his watch, age spots, like tiny scars, on the back of his hand.

The great thing about wealth was that things mattered less. Not the trappings of power. Not the social jousting of civilized behavior behind smiles like gleaming swords. Money excused eccentricities and only the dreams mattered. That was the last lesson his father had taught him before he went away, leaving behind a blood splattered envelope – addressed to him in exquisite calligraphy – shaded by the slumping body with the large hole in its head on the couch.

Thigh-high clusters of golden ropes of grass, pallid from lack of water, provided beauty in their dying. Burrs and brambles clung to his pants and socks, scraping his thin skin as he walked without care, a boy with the blush of ruddy peach in his cheeks. Resting in the crook of a low-lying branch, he daydreamed of the castle atop a hill he would one day build for a princess.

Glass enclosed the porch. He dreamed of tending hydrangeas, lilies, and morning glories. From the patio they would sit and watch the sunsets together. The paint fresh and the wood polished, the furniture stopped short of being inviting, museum pieces meant to be stared at and appreciated, but not for too long. Serviceable rooms held little decoration as not to give too much away. No knickknacks, bric-a-brac, or curios; no pictures, no portraits. Thick curtains didn’t rustle when he moved past them, a ghost in his own home.

“Your house is bigger on the inside,” JaQuon said.

“Is it? I hadn’t really noticed.” He leaned down and whispered. “It lies you know. The walls have ears and move to confuse you when you aren’t paying attention.”

“You ain’t right in the head, old man.”

“You’re the one trying to sell me your skateboard,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Ain’t much to tell. I go to Persons Crossing Elementary. I’m 9 years old.”

“What’s that? Fourth grade?”

“Yeah, I stay with my grandparents. My mother doesn’t come around much anymore.”

He thought he’d seen JaQuon before: a latchkey kid, after a fashion, who punched in the code to the garage – probably because he so often lost his key. JaQuon wandered about the sitting room, without shame or pretense, directed by the insatiable curiosity of childhood.

“So what’s your deal anyway?” JaQuon studied an empty curio cabinet.

“My… deal?”

“Word is you buy stuff people died on. That’s the story anyway.”

“Stories take on a life of their own. Voices of the past, grief working itself out in patterns of familiarity. Objects hold memories of a life lived, but the memories of the death outweigh the memories of the life.”

“You talk funny.”

“Do you wish to hear this or not?”

JaQuon nodded.

“It started with the couch my father died on. My mother set it outside to be hauled away, but I had it brought to my study. She never came near my room after that. When I curled up on it, I could still feel his presence. At night I could still smell him, the scent of loneliness and pain.”

“Dang.” JaQuon gave the word an extra syllable for emphasis.

“My collection has grown over the years. That chair over there? A grandmother of seven fell asleep while knitting and watching her soap operas only to never wake up. A man stroked himself out on the toilet, not to put too crass a point on it, straining during his morning sit down. It reminds me that death comes at any time, and there is no place safe from it.”

“You’re making that up,” JaQuon said.

“Like most stories, some parts are real. But they comfort me.”

Death was separation, leaving unchanging echoes of the people they used to be. He was the caretaker of a grove of memories, his and others. He kept them like a scrapbook, taken out and revisited, an echo chamber of death. Grasped onto like a skateboard he couldn’t bear to let go of.

A time of remembrances, of the day, of days past, of summertime dresses and walks along the canal, of hands held. Her leg brushed against his and he still received the same thrill from her presence as the first day he saw her.

A farmhouse had stood on the field when he finally bought it. He covered her blue eyes as he walked her to the spot.

“This will one day be your castle,” he said.

“But it’s such a beautiful farmhouse.”

“We erase history when the memories become unbearable.”

She leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. She filled his spaces. That was what love did.

“What am I going to do with a skateboard?” he asked.

“What did you do with the couch?” JaQuon said.

“I can sit on the couch.”

“You can skate on the skateboard. You can sit on the motherfucker for all I …”

“Language.”

“What?”

“Watch your language. You have plenty of words to choose from in order to express yourself. Why limit yourself to the basest ones? It’s so… common.”

“You a weird old dude.”

“You haven’t told me the story of the skateboard.”

JaQuon peered at him, his eyes suddenly seeming too large for his face. His legs quavered and he sat down on the couch without thinking. “It was my brother’s. I was the oldest. It was my job to protect him, you know. My mom used to always hover over us. Wouldn’t even let us walk down the two courts to our friends’ house.”

“It’s a mother’s job to overprotect. It’s difficult to let their children rush off into the dangers of the world. As if they can keep you safe by force of will and control.”

“Sometimes it was like she wasn’t happy unless we were rolled up in bubble wrap before going outside. Playing on the lawn, where only she could see us.

“Demarcus really wanted this skateboard. We tag-teamed mom for weeks, wearing her down. Demarcus was in third grade, so if she let him have a skateboard, she’d have to give me more room to … be. She bought him this board. Plus knee pads. Elbow pads. Mouth guard. Cup. And a helmet. The next two weeks she insisted on watching him learn to board. And we counted down the days until we’d be able to run free. She began to let us go. Just a bit. We could go over to the next court to play. She even stopped driving by… like we wouldn’t notice her car. Though a couple times I swear I saw her peeking over bushes. Eventually, she trusted us to return. ‘Don’t worry about it, mom, we just ride around on sidewalks and we just sort of push ourselves along.’

“No one wore a helmet. Definitely not our friends. That stuff was for babies.

“Demarcus wasn’t even going that fast. He turned the corner and the wheels stopped when it hit a break in the sidewalk, but he didn’t. It threw him from the board. I watched him fly through the air, his arms flapping like a drunk bird. He landed head first into the sidewalk and I laughed.

“I laughed.

“It was like one of those funniest home videos. But then he didn’t get up. They said it did something to his brain and I had laughed.”

JaQuon didn’t wipe away his tears, probably wasn’t aware that they trailed down his face. “So, you want to take it off my hands?”

The man leaned forward. In this chair a man cheered on his favorite basketball team and had a heart attack. “Five dollars.”

“I can do better than that.”

“I didn’t amass my wealth by throwing good money after bad. I make wise investments. Hold onto it for a while. Offer’s good. Whenever.”

It wasn’t about the money. JaQuon couldn’t bring himself to allow it to go out in the trash. For him to let it go was to begin to let go of his brother and, as painful a reminder as the skateboard was, forgetting his brother was worse.

Death pruned childhood. Sometimes to grow you have to lose something. Sometimes you have to force people to grow and change, shock them back into life, before they become a ghost trapped in a museum.

She found the first stray by the back door, sick and wounded. A large white husky with eyes the color of overripe persimmons. She couldn’t leave it behind: she had already pledged her heart to it. Rivulets of blood streaked when she shifted its matted fur from unseen wounds. Its head lay heavy in her lap, it didn’t move, but simply closed one eye. Its tongue lolled across its lips in pathetic repose. She fed it pieces of torn chicken by hand. Stroking its fur for its pleasure, then for hers, as she nursed it back to full health.

He bought the dog a mate and they patrolled the grounds, fiercely protective of her.

A cat park had once circled the outer gardens, but she was allergic. He loved cats, but he loved her more. Each cat was buried in a carpeted casket under a brass nameplate. His shoes click-clacked, click-clacked, click-clacked along the plated sidewalk each day.

“Come upstairs. I have something I wish to show you,” he said.

“I ain’t going upstairs with you,” JaQuon said.

“You’ve already come into my house.”

“You could be a pedometer.”

“True. And you are wise to be cautious. I was going to show you her bed.”

“I for damn sure don’t need to go to your bedroom with you.”

“You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I get so caught up when I tell the stories. I miss her.”

“Who?”

“Helen. My wife. I was going to show her to you. I’m not going to touch you. I just need someone to know. Someone who’d understand.”

An unspoken knowledge leapt between them. JaQuon nodded. The old man led the way up the stairs without any tiresome soliloquies about the state of his bones or kidneys.

The first time he saw her, she captivated him from the stage of the vaudeville show. She had yellow hair straight out of a fairy tale and eyes the color of a frost-covered pond. Her smile, a melancholy upturn of her lips. She wasn’t the strongest dancer, her steps too pensive and calculated – clunky prose that flowed from the head, not from the heart.

He wanted a chance to be near her, to watch her up close. Every time you see a beautiful woman alone, someone was tired of being with her. That was the secret men told themselves. He dared asking her for a dance. Hers was an inexhaustible beauty. He feared touching her. She might have consumed him. The difference in their age was nothing, he told himself.

She loved to swim and spent hours picking out her bathing suit from J.C. Penny’s. He would build the largest pool in Indianapolis. Large enough for a hotel, but just for them. Far away from ogling eyes. The inside painted blue and lit from underneath, its glow leant a bilious tinge to the hillside. They swam in the summer months, often sharing too many glasses of wine. Lost in their moment, an eternity in routine.

They stopped in front of a set of double doors.

“Is this your bedroom?” JaQuon asked without any nervousness.

“It was her favorite room in the house.” He rested his hand on the door handle attempting to gather the strength to open it again so soon. “When we got married, her father stood up during the reception. He wanted me to take care of his little girl. All of her. They had a tradition of saving everything. He handed me a box. It had all of her baby teeth.”

“That shit is weird.”

“I remembered thinking thank God I didn’t marry their son. I’d have his bronzed foreskin or something in here.”

JaQuon stared at him for a heartbeat then stifled a chuckle.

“Do you know how the Egyptians preserved the dead?”

“They were into mummies and stuff. My mom took us to the Children’s Museum back when…” JaQuon trailed off.

“Their funeral rites were the ritual re-enactment of the acts that raised their god Osiris from the dead. Life, even death, boiled down to ritual. The act of remembrance, more than the process. They took a long hook, shoved it up the nose, and took out the brain. They cut open the side and emptied the abdomen then washed out the cavity with wine then stuffed it with myrrh and frankincense.”