Lucia

by Alex Pheby

  The wind changed direction and the siren quietened, the worst of its noise blown somewhere else in the city.

  Nonno sat at the top of the steps and the boy sat with him. His father stood, but this didn’t prevent the boy from biting into his pastry. If it was stale, he didn’t notice since it was sweet – raspberries and vanilla custard.

  Sometimes, during an air raid, a bomb will land on the offices of a newspaper, but that is not the only time when it will snow burning paper. A bomb might land on a public library, or a printer of wedding invitations, or a stationer. It might land on a manufacturer of the paper itself, or the place where wood is pulped and later dried in sheets. There are many ways in which it might begin to rain burning paper.

  So, to see white snowflakes, their edges on fire and blackening, is not indicative of a dream, or of the breaking down of reality. An incendiary bomb might set fires in a paper warehouse, burning up through the supporting structures until the roof collapses and the swirling plasma, the release of gases from wood, the action of the wind through the broken windows, might send gouts of half-burned paper up into the atmosphere where they might fall, burning, across the neighbouring districts.

  Who knows which equations determine the distances that paper might travel? The boy did not.

  When he looked up into the sky, his mouth full of pastry and custard, and raspberry seeds sticking in his back teeth, he was amazed to see snow falling, burning, to land at his feet. The snow turned to infinitely thin curled black crisps of nothing, which became smudges when touched with the toe of his shoe, but he did not question his eyes.

  Snow is white and cold where it lands, but this was hot and black; snow does not smell of anything, but this smelled of smoke and of used matchheads; snow is wet, but this was utterly dry, so dry that it could not sustain itself under any pressure at all, and became ash when you blew on it.

  Mostly it fell in pieces smaller than a postage stamp and was black before it hit the ground, but the larger pieces were edged in red, a thin line that snaked and contracted against the white, lessening and replacing it with black until it met in a piercing dot of light that disappeared immediately.

  One piece fell the size of letter paper, and on it were obituaries of notable persons who had died the day before, laid out in columns, some with pictures. The boy recognised no-one and the fire burned through the paper too quickly for him to read it, even for him to understand what it was he was reading. Anyway, why would a nine-year-old boy pause to read, which is hard work for him, when all around it is snowing fire?

  His nonno pulled him in, fearful that this fire would hurt the boy. It might have, certainly, if the fire had caught the edge of his clothes, or landed in nearby flammable material – a pile of litter, an oil slick from a leaking engine, or kindling stores leaning against the wall of a shed. If it had landed in his eye, this might have hurt, too, and required him to wear an eye patch, like a pirate, while he recuperated. His father was less concerned, or braver, and the boy himself began to laugh, as if this was enormous fun, to see burning snow, falling from the sky.

  And it was.

  In the street across the road there was a man taking pictures of the sky, pointing his camera directly up, where there is usually nothing to interest a photographer at night, unless he also has a telescope. It must be a relief, to a photographer, to have no-one to direct, no-one to communicate to – and fail – about his wishes for this or that shot. The red and white against the blackness of the sky simply is. There is no need to coerce it into being something else.

  If he wished to make a film of this event, he could stay exactly where he was until the phenomenon subsided, at which point he could pack up and leave, certain that he had done his job and knowing that nothing need be added or removed in the edit, except perhaps music.

  When it was over the boy swallowed his mouthful.

  —Can we go to the circus later? Or the zoo?

  This city was full of pleasures that a boy might enjoy, even during wartime. A circus was not one of them, not in winter, but a zoo certainly was – there was an excellent one in the Fluntern quarter of the city, and while one could not go there and see a man place his head inside the mouth of a lion, or make it jump through a hoop, there were lions there. There were also elephants, and all of the creatures a committed and well-resourced collector of specimens could ship back from the exotic places of the world.

  —Not today. Perhaps another time.

  —What about the museum? That’s educational.

  There was no denying this, surely? Wasn’t education such an important thing for a child who moved around so much that schooling was often impractical? How else would he learn of the Egyptians? Of mummies and gold masks and wall paintings? Of the Ba, the Ka, and the Akh?

  —Another time.

  Abruptly the sirens stopped, and, though they had been quieter, the absence of them was like ringing in his ears, his attention brought to the space they left in his mind. His father pulled him up by the arm and the three of them stared at the men now filing out of the cellar, shaming them, since danger was passed and their cowardice was revealed by the face of a small boy with jam around his mouth and an old man, both of whom they would have preferred to die in their place, had it come to it.

  First came the men who were not chefs but attendants in a clinic for nerve cases, then came some non-descript men of middle-age and middle-class with nothing to distinguish them from any other men of their type, then came the man who was burned on the left side, but who smelled of lemons and flowers, and then the doctor, clutching his bag to his chest in which were vials of serum derived from the organs of foetal calves, and then the maker of delicate mobiles, and the man who loved another woman, and the man who was raped by a dog in a fantasy, and the dentist who removed the teeth of old women, and the men who bear down on one at Christmas, amongst the discarded wrapping paper of one’s presents, and the intern who burns one’s letters and photographs on the lawn in the hope of impressing his employer.

  When they were all out, like the animals who left Noah’s ark, Stephen said:

  —Nonno, where are all the girls?

  To which he replied:

  —Who needs girls when you have me?

  And he pulled him to his chest.

  It was my dearest wish that this body should remain undisturbed, and every night I would pay those we had already paid to guard the tomb entrance to allow me down into the tomb alone, when my colleague was asleep.

  May you receive your head

  And reaches the Hall of the Two Ma’ats. She speaks the names of the parts of the doorway, and is greeted then by Thoth, god of wisdom.

  THE BA OF LUCIA JOYCE AND THE MAN CHARGED WITH HER BURIAL

  NORTHAMPTON, DECEMBER 1982 ONWARDS

  Green on brown, the grass grows like mad once the hole is dug, then filled in and allowed to settle. Back at the beginning they would do it by hand, taking it in turns, chatting, punctuated by tea in tin mugs, the boiled water communicating with the callouses on their palms through the conduction of its heat through the tin handle, forcing rotation first clockwise and then anti-clockwise. Now at the end it is done alone with a Massey-Ferguson 50B.

  The plot is in the extension, so no trouble getting between the old stones, and tea can wait till the work is done. Either way the result is the same: once the earth is tamped down, some loose is left on top and a bag of compost split on top of that – only time the shovel is required, and then just to cut and mix – a bag of grass seeds sprinkled over. They sprout before they hit the dirt, and when it rains you turn back and there it is, green on brown, obscenely fertile, mockingly alive. Parasites on the corpse, mow them later with the Murray 11, cut it back, weed out the dandelions. While you’re kneeling on the grave you are face to face with the dead, give or take a plank of wood and a volume of soil, an infinite number of worms and microbes. You can look them in the eye, give or take an eyelid. You can speak to them, give or take a resident soul.

  I
t’s not hard to picture yourself down there, when you are kneeling on a grave, especially before the stone is laid. You can’t lay a stone on a freshly dug grave – it takes some time for the earth to settle – in its place a plastic marker with the name of the deceased is put there, or wood. Wood gives the impression of lolly sticks, the inscription the joke. Children can use lolly sticks to make all sorts of toys, slipping them together and making them hold without the use of glue.

  Do corpses get lonely, under the earth? Worms and beetles and microbes are no company, and the body is arranged in such a way that it faces upward. Even if its eyelids are open, and the opening of the mouth performed, and a plank and a volume of soil removed, it only ever sees upwards. Perhaps they should put the body on its side, so at least it can see its neighbour, alternating corpses lying on opposite sides. Though who wants to spend eternity staring through closed eyelids and soil at a stranger?

  Once the stone is eventually placed, when the land has come to equilibrium, the grass around it has to be removed and a patch of turned earth maintained.

  They are all alike now, all these new graves in a line, their occupants staring up at the sun or into the night. This patch of brown next to the green looks very neat. It is possible to feel, in this neatness, that everything is right in this place, that to join in the line, to have neighbours either side who are doing the same thing you are doing, marching in step for eternity, is correct. Only if this neatness is maintained, which cannot be done by a tractor, or a ride on mower, but can only be done by an old man on his knees. If you want a tin mug of tea at 9.45am then you can damn well have one. What are they going to do, sack you? At your age?

  Is it going to be lonely, under there?

  There are families who maintain family graves, and not only the very wealthy. There are tombs and sepulchres and pyramids and mastabas (though not much recently) where whole families are interred. There, multiple generations of people who are not complete strangers to each other lie in death in each other’s company, for eternity.

  Some of the notable dead took their families with them, their wives and cats and bushels of their corn mowed down and preserved. Others waited in the presence of their sires and dams and grand-sires and grand-dams for their wives and cats to come when they were ready. It’s also perfectly possible to buy adjacent plots of land in a graveyard with the intention of interring your corpse, and the corpse of your loved ones, in close proximity so that you will not be lonely for eternity. All for a very modest sum (subject to availability). The turning over of agricultural land to alternative uses is a boom industry, and if your chosen cemetery does not have space for your requirements, there are many new cemeteries opening every month on land previously owned by farmers who can no longer make a living from agriculture.

  It’s possible to take an existing grave and, using the shovel, dig up the earth until you reach the coffin. Carefully remove it, dig down further, re-inter the coffin and then place another coffin, within which the spouse who lived on as a widow for forty years is placed, on top of her husband. The idea of turning the wife face down in the coffin so she can see her husband again is distasteful and must not be suggested. The idea of the husband staring at the back of his wife’s head in perpetuity does not occur to anyone.

  The Massey-Ferguson 50B should not be used to dig down to the coffin even if it seems as if it should save time. There is something disrespectful in the use of heavy machinery for such delicate work, and if you dig too deep you’ll dig into the fragile and mildewed wood and disturb the bones within. Once the coffin has been removed, a hole is just a hole and, if there is room between the grave stones, it would save time to use the digger to excavate the extra soil.

  Don’t drive it too close since the ground will be unstable.

  It’s not acceptable to bury a widow who has remarried in the grave of her former husband against her will, even if that clause was present in the former husband’s will. The authority over the eternal resting place of that woman’s corpse passes to her new husband on remarriage, should he survive her. If he then dies it returns to the widow herself (via the executors of her will).

  She is doubly widowed (there is nothing suspicious in this).

  In this case she may choose which of her husbands to be buried on top of (or neither) though the wishes of the surviving relatives must also be taken into account, since they will be footing the bill in any case (from the estate). They cannot be induced to pay for things of which they do not approve: I’m not having that bitch on top of my dad for all eternity; are you fucking joking?

  In the cost of these plots a certain amount is reserved for maintenance, although this is generally borne by the owners of the cemetery. A tidy and well-presented cemetery is a form of advertising, and no one is going to trust the corpses of their dead to a place that cannot even hire old men to get on their hands and knees to pick dandelions from the turned earth around the gravestones. Dandelions must, in any case, be removed by spring, at which time they generate vast numbers of seeds and make the job much more difficult than it would normally be.

  What if she doesn’t want you with her, though?

  What if he doesn’t want you with him, though?

  What if they don’t want you with them, though?

  It is easy to image a situation in which the doubly widowed widow wishes to be buried with her first love. He is her true love, her love who, through her subsequent marriage, was always in the back of her mind. Photographs of whom she would often consult once the washing was done: the wedding album in which she was a much younger woman in white, and he was yet so handsome.

  Yet, it is equally easy to imagine that this first husband, separated through, let us say, war, has a grievance against the wife who survived him. Not in the early years, when she grieved properly for him and was seen always in black and lost a lot of weight and could scarcely be induced to laugh, not even at Christmas gatherings. She would turn down the sherry. In the later years, though, she cuckolded his corpse with this new husband, even going so far as to take him into her mouth, which he insisted on, he knows. But still, spitting his semen into a handkerchief and placing that handkerchief into her new handbag.

  It’s a bit rich now, coming to him and disturbing his eternal rest, he who is very used to being alone, thank you. He doesn’t want some cock-gobbling old bitch sitting on his chest for all eternity: there’s no way that old whore is getting near my dad’s grave; I don’t care what the fucking will says.

  Old men who tend graves (when they are not taking yet another fucking tea break, what do we pay you for?) can imagine any number of circumstances in which the presence of one person’s corpse in close proximity to another’s is not to be sanctioned. Not only those corpses the survivors of which talk loudly over the graves in question about while he is face to face with the dead. Snipping dandelions off at the stems before they can develop parachute balls and disperse their seeds from the seed heads.

  A brother and sister should not lie together if, in life, they lay together. That would be asking for trouble, such as when Set tore the body of his brother Osiris into fourteen pieces and distributed them by throwing across the ancient lands of Egypt. From here their sister Isis retrieved them all, except the phallus which was eaten by the fish of the Nile. This is why you should never have fish for supper when visiting that country on holiday, nor ever drink Nile water. Not because you have some puritanical reservation about having cock in your mouth, but because to put the cock of a god in your mouth is considered extremely rude by those who worship that god, even if the cock has been eaten by fish, digested, and passed into the waters of the Nile in the days of prehistory.

  One must not be rude when one is a guest in another’s country.

  Though, as anyone with a passing knowledge of the science of homeopathy would know, the extreme dilution of digested Osiris phallus in the waters of the Nile would make Nile water almost infinitely potent as a medicine (though the medicinal effects of Osiris’s phallus have
not been investigated, let alone proven, unless that knowledge has been lost).

  Isis made for the reconstituted Osiris a golden phallus to replace the one the fish of the Nile consumed. She took the form of a swallow, beat her wings, and induced the emission of semen, which she did not place into either a handkerchief or her handbag, but rather used to create Horus, their son, in her womb (though the method of transmission is mysterious).

  So, then, one should not place brother and sister in close proximity, even if one or both of them are dead, without expecting funny business, and consequently having to deal with the creation of sons in the sister’s womb either via the removal of foetuses, or the raising of feebleminded children.

  Similarly, no one wants to spend an eternity with someone who, in life, was tiresome or difficult to manage. Who would wish to endure the presence, for example, of a person who threw a chair at them? Regardless of the circumstances under which the chair was thrown. An old man who pours his grouts into the turned soil behind a headstone can imagine many – the loss of Northampton Town to Southend United, the loss of Northampton Town to Aldershot, the victory of Northampton Town over Port Vale being only a sample. Even if it was the culmination of long weeks of baiting by the person at whom the chair was thrown, the throwing of chairs can make anyone reluctant to spend eternity beside whoever it is that throws the chair, no matter what bonds of blood might otherwise tie them together. When combined with the foregoing, is it any wonder that people just want some fucking peace for once? For all eternity? Buried with their husband and son? With their wife and son? With their mother and father? With the second wife?

  Similarly, there is no particular need to mark the gravestones of those who throw chairs and pour grouts, and who come home late after the football having had a skin-full and who don’t want to hear, again, of how inconsiderate they are. They don’t care how much interest has accrued, or how the men from various places to whom the chair thrower owes money have been knocking on the door while other people hide behind the settee.