plate.) I'm home! he shouts deep into the building, and then there are the happy sounds of human life. A woman's voice—very quiet, very LOUD, very quiet, very LOUD—makes the man laugh, or sometimes it makes his blood boil.
My heart swelled with longing for an intimate study of this kind of scene, for closer quartering with these elusive beings. I considered that these workers must be artists, artists who broke through relentlessly to the human happiness that was sleeping in the rock as honey sleeps beneath the pollen-dusted, warm bees, and through their work the buildings were converted from unremarkable gray blocks of stone into living things. I looked up at my mother.
These buildings are alive! I said. Like trees . She cut me an angry look and tightened her grip painfully on my hand. They are not at all like trees, she said sternly. Trees are living things. She knelt beside me and whispered into my ear, These buildings are graves, and these men gravediggers .
Mother, of course, made quite an impression on me.
As we walked back toward the park that day, the man in the black jacket and my mother talked about various construction techniques that he hoped to refine, others he hoped to eliminate entirely. We walked along the big bland avenue, smooth and cool in the shadows of the buildings. People coursed in and out of the buildings, and my chest tightened with fear for those who were about to go in, and I sighed with relief for those who had just egressed . . . the undead, the walking dead, suddenly back on the crowded streets with us. I held my mother's hand and tried to imagine us entombed in one of the inside rooms—her chopping fruit on a piece of hardwood, me at the window shouting for help.
The man in the black jacket walked with us and spoke to my mother in low tones. I listened to my own thoughts, tried to memorize his smell: ghostly pipe smoke and sweet buttery soap. People nodded politely at him as we passed. Up and down the street, I noted configurations that resembled ours—children walking hand-in-hand with adults. I contemplated reaching out casually with my free hand to take the hand of the man in the black jacket, but just then, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Why was my mother spending so much of her time—time we might have been spending together—with someone involved in such an unsavory enterprise, one of which she clearly disapproved?
When she returned from her afternoons with the man in the black jacket, usually bearing some little gift for me, some apples or a little knife or a warm scarf, she was given to solemn, distracted, almost mystical conversation. I gave her my full attention. I listened carefully, tried to glean the important lesson, but the less I understood, the more her voice seemed pure and urgent . . . the indisputable sound of my mother speaking to the universe and me, as if we were one and the same: You will never suffer as I have suffered, and she would take my hand in one of her broad, strong hands.
I was standing in front of the still-grand building, the man in the black jacket's masterpiece, and daydreaming about the past, when I realized that quite a few people had gathered and were eyeing me uncomfortably. I nodded reassuringly—I wasn't there to arrest anyone. Finally, I raised my voice: Disperse, disperse! But they stood and stared, and as they stared I felt an old pressure building in my brain. I heard the flutter of black wings, the spectators and I turned to look up the street: the Brothers of Mercy were coming. As sinless as children, they smelled like children, as they wrestled me effortlessly to the ground and then hoisted me into the air. I kicked and shouted, I screamed Bedge's name. They were hustling me toward the river as if I were an infected corpse from the Age of Plagues, and when we reached the city dump behind the old prison, they hurled me onto the garbage heap with all their strength and turned back toward the city, their black garments
My heart swelled with longing for an intimate study of this kind of scene, for closer quartering with these elusive beings. I considered that these workers must be artists, artists who broke through relentlessly to the human happiness that was sleeping in the rock as honey sleeps beneath the pollen-dusted, warm bees, and through their work the buildings were converted from unremarkable gray blocks of stone into living things. I looked up at my mother.
These buildings are alive! I said. Like trees . She cut me an angry look and tightened her grip painfully on my hand. They are not at all like trees, she said sternly. Trees are living things. She knelt beside me and whispered into my ear, These buildings are graves, and these men gravediggers .
Mother, of course, made quite an impression on me.
As we walked back toward the park that day, the man in the black jacket and my mother talked about various construction techniques that he hoped to refine, others he hoped to eliminate entirely. We walked along the big bland avenue, smooth and cool in the shadows of the buildings. People coursed in and out of the buildings, and my chest tightened with fear for those who were about to go in, and I sighed with relief for those who had just egressed . . . the undead, the walking dead, suddenly back on the crowded streets with us. I held my mother's hand and tried to imagine us entombed in one of the inside rooms—her chopping fruit on a piece of hardwood, me at the window shouting for help.
The man in the black jacket walked with us and spoke to my mother in low tones. I listened to my own thoughts, tried to memorize his smell: ghostly pipe smoke and sweet buttery soap. People nodded politely at him as we passed. Up and down the street, I noted configurations that resembled ours—children walking hand-in-hand with adults. I contemplated reaching out casually with my free hand to take the hand of the man in the black jacket, but just then, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Why was my mother spending so much of her time—time we might have been spending together—with someone involved in such an unsavory enterprise, one of which she clearly disapproved?
When she returned from her afternoons with the man in the black jacket, usually bearing some little gift for me, some apples or a little knife or a warm scarf, she was given to solemn, distracted, almost mystical conversation. I gave her my full attention. I listened carefully, tried to glean the important lesson, but the less I understood, the more her voice seemed pure and urgent . . . the indisputable sound of my mother speaking to the universe and me, as if we were one and the same: You will never suffer as I have suffered, and she would take my hand in one of her broad, strong hands.
I was standing in front of the still-grand building, the man in the black jacket's masterpiece, and daydreaming about the past, when I realized that quite a few people had gathered and were eyeing me uncomfortably. I nodded reassuringly—I wasn't there to arrest anyone. Finally, I raised my voice: Disperse, disperse! But they stood and stared, and as they stared I felt an old pressure building in my brain. I heard the flutter of black wings, the spectators and I turned to look up the street: the Brothers of Mercy were coming. As sinless as children, they smelled like children, as they wrestled me effortlessly to the ground and then hoisted me into the air. I kicked and shouted, I screamed Bedge's name. They were hustling me toward the river as if I were an infected corpse from the Age of Plagues, and when we reached the city dump behind the old prison, they hurled me onto the garbage heap with all their strength and turned back toward the city, their black garments
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