“We are pleased to hear it, sir.”
“I confess that this,” said Rat, lightly shaking the girl’s limp fingers, “was a development I had not anticipated. I wonder if she is real.”
“Real, sir?”
“Real, Cummings. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Or if she is not merely an apparition. The personification, the embodiment, the anthropomorphization, if you will, of a parting object lesson. Greater minds than ours, Cummings, have copyrighted the observation that things are not always what they seem. And, you will grant, the reliability of this point of view has been ratified by our mutual experience.”
“I apprehend the interpretation, sir.”
“I suppose the question of her reality will become clear in time,” said Rat philosophically. “It is probably of no importance whether she is real or not. What is real is my response to her.”
“What will you do with her, sir?”
Rat considered and, after a little while, a smile creased his lips. “I will be her father.”
“It is a formidable role, sir.”
“It is, Cummings. It is. But one I feel somehow equipped, as a result of our little adventures, to discharge if not flawlessly, at least with a good will and a ready heart. I shall endeavor to apply the lessons I have learned: kindness, gentleness, forbearance, understanding, selflessness. All those attributes, in short, that make critics of popular media cringe—due, no doubt, to deficiencies in their upbringing—but without which humanity is inhuman.”
Cummings took the soliloquy to heart. Invisible tears formed freely in his invisible eyes and crept silently down his invisible cheeks. He made no effort to sniff them back.
“It took deep scars to heal my soul, Cummings,” Rat continued thoughtfully. “I believe they were inflicted that I might be made useful.”
“’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, sir.”
“Come, Cummings,” said Rat. He stood and, taking the girl by the hand, left the room. The smudge followed obediently, salver in hand.
As they descended the wide marble steps onto the lawns and gardens, Rat cast an appraising eye upon the statuary that bespeckled the lawn. “Which do you find preferable in cleaning them, Cummings, a chamois or a sponge?”
“A sponge, sir. There are an abundance in local waters that are at once soft yet sufficiently abrasive to remove dirt and grime while not disturbing the natural patina that makes each distinctive.”
For the remainder of the walk down the luxuriant path toward the beach, Cummings kept up a running commentary upon the flora and fauna and the minutia of their care and maintenance. As he listened, Rat became aware that it was a stroll he had taken many times during those mystical, unremembered interludes between his nightly adventures, and that the things Cummings was saying he had said before. Indeed, they were already grafted upon his heart and mind and he knew each word before it was spoken. Nevertheless, he didn’t interrupt, any more than he would interrupt a chanteuse in the midst of a bawdy ballad. The reverence in Cummings’ voice was lyrical and poetic, interpreting every leaf, petal, and blade of grass as a manifestation of the Divine. Time ceased to exist.
Eventually, though, they arrived upon the beach. For a long time the three of them stood—Cummings’ presence marked only by his footprints and the silver serving tray—staring out to sea. Harold held his daughter’s hand and, from time to time, gave it a gentle squeeze. She squeezed back. A number of days and nights passed, but none of them moved. They had need of nothing. They were breathing. Inhaling creation. Distilling from the chaos the profound tranquility that accompanies complete surrender. Peace inhabited the most remote and untraveled byways of their beings as they drifted into and out of one another in a fellowship of absolute knowing and acceptance. They were three. They were one.
“It’s time,” said Cummings at long last.
“So it is, Cummings,” said Harold. He held out his hand and Cummings, a somber ceremony in his heart, relinquished the serving tray.
“To be of service,” Cummings said, his voice choked with emotion, “is a lofty calling, Harold. One must always be sensitive to others’ needs, to anticipate them. It is no easy thing to thrust oneself into the background, to subjugate one’s pride and personal desires.”
“Quite contrary to all we are taught,” said Harold from the bottom of his soul. He released the girl’s fingers for a moment and, with his free hand, burnished the brass buttons of his waistcoat. How he had come by the butler’s livery, he had no idea, but it came as no surprise. It was now as much a part of him as his heart and lungs, the trousers perfectly creased, the boots polished to a brilliance that shamed the sun. He had merged, at last, with the image in the mirror. “No doubt I still have much to learn.”
“Not so much as you may imagine, I think,” said Cummings. “And you have this little one to practice upon, be she real or not.”
Harold took his daughter’s hand. “She is real to me,” he said. “That is enough.”
The little girl looked up at him, her large, brown eyes brimming with affection.
“Then,” said Cummings, “I will take my leave. It has been an honor, Harold. You are the first, you know, who has finished the course.”
“I suspected as much.”
“I had long felt myself a failure.”
“One cannot fail who has tried one’s best, Cummings. The results are hardly of consequence.”
Cummings made a nodding sound. “When you polish the statuary, be understanding.”
Cummings walked toward the water’s edge, a progress marked by the indentations of his bare feet in the sand. He hesitated briefly as the waves lapped silently about his ankles. “Until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again,” said Harold, unable to keep a tear from his eyes. “Thank you, sir.”
“You are most welcome,” said Cummings.
For some time the ringlets made by his feet as he walked across the water toward the rising sun were visible from the shore until, finally, they were swept away by the rolling waves.
Harold, the butler, and his nameless daughter remained where they were, staring out to sea, waiting. Presently someone would be along.
Nearly the End
Author’s note: It has been my pleasure to bring you these diversions. It may be too much to hope you have found them thought-provoking, but if these simple shades have entertained, I am gratified. I confess I’ll miss Rat and Cummings. I feel I’ve come to know them and, like the departure of old friends, they leave a hollow shaped in their likeness, which only they can fill.
I would be remiss if I failed to express my indebtedness to P.J. Wodehouse for his creation of Jeeves, the perfect English butler, in whose mold Cummings was cast, as well as to his delightful, capricious wordplay of which I stand in awe and have made a humble effort to replicate.
Every morning I walk two miles, from Friendship village down Davis Point and around the loop that brings me back home. This morning, my eyes attracted by a glint of the sun on an object floating in the ocean, I climbed down to the beach near one of the summer cottages, and found, washed ashore, a bottle. I retrieved it from the water and, removing the cork, was at once treated to the pleasant aroma of mangos and pomegranates. I sniffed deeply, then, opening my eyes, saw that the bottle contained a note. I removed this with some difficulty, and read the following:
“The distillation of my philosophy, resulting from certain adventures and misadventures too numerous to chronicle upon this simple scrap of paper, is that life must be approached with humanity, humility, and humor. Make a note. Inscribe this simple wisdom on the tablet of your heart. It was hard come by.
Your servant, Harold Erasmus Jackson.”
NOTES:
The Elephant Walker
NGO = non-government organization, such as Churches, The Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders.
$1 = 1800 Ugandan schillings.
Travels With Tomík
Hajl is pronounced Hale
Peo
pling Dreams
ghee—clarified butter used to soak a wick that was then burned in place of sacrifice.
The story thus far, much abridged and extravagantly modified, is the dramatization of a vignette related in The City of Joy by Dominique LaPierre, Doubleday, 1985. I direct the reader to its pages for a true story that will haunt, humble, and illuminate.
P.S. There was a movie with the same name and some of the same characters.
There are thirty-three million gods in the Hindu pantheon.
The Copyist
Scots—The Irish were the original Scots. When they colonized Hibernia, the northern part of Britain, the native Picts called them Scots, a name that later Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes came to apply to any inhabitant of that land, which, in time, became Scotland.
chlamys—The Irish version of a toga
brat—An outer woolen cloak
brughaid—The individual responsible for preparing food, drink, and lodging for guests. To the ancient Irish, a person’s worth was measured not by what he possessed, but by how freely he gave. Any reservation in showing hospitality, to whomever required it, was irredeemably disgraceful.
codex—The compilation of rectangular vellum pages in book form.
The poem, Pangur Ban, appears in the margins of a 9th-century manuscript containing commentary on Virgil.
Following is the quote of a medieval scholar, who wrote in awe of an illustrated gospel he came across in Ireland:
“Look more keenly at it, and you will penetrate to the very shrine of art. You will make out intricacies so delicate and subtle, so exact and compact, so full of knots and links, with colors so fresh and vivid, that you might say that all this was the work of an angel and not of a man.”
Sometimes As Ghosts
It will come as no surprise to the perspicacious reader that Marie Hugo of Besancon, France, had a son named Victor who one day wrote a story called The Hunchback of Notre Dame based on his mother’s recollection of a dream she’d had before he was even born.
“Funny,” she’d said. “I don’t often remember dreams, but that one’s stayed with me forever.”
And so, D. B. Cooper achieved the immortality he sought, though under a pseudonym.
Requiem for an Aspirin Bottle
paghjella—an irreverent, satirical folk song.
clandestines—Corsican terrorists.
THE END
BOOKS BY DAVID CROSSMAN
from
Alibi-Folio
The Albert Mysteries
Requiem for Ashes
Dead in D Minor
Coda* (2013)
Winston Crisp Mysteries
A Show of Hands
The Dead of Winter
Justice Once Removed
Photo Club Mysteries
Dead and Breakfast
Bean and Ab Young Adult Mysteries
The Secret of the Missing Grave
The Mystery of the Black Moriah
The Legend of Burial Island
The Riddle of Misery Light (2013)
Historical Novel
Silence the Dead
Fantasy
Storyteller
Thriller
A Terrible Mercy
www.davidcrossman.com
[email protected]
David A. Crossman is a best-selling novelist, an award-winning lyricist and composer, a writer of short stories, screenplays, teleplays, and children’s books, a television producer/director (also award-winning), a video producer, radio/television talent, award-winning graphic, computer graphic designer, advertising copywriter, videographer, publisher, music producer, musician, singer, performer and … well, you get the picture. He’s shiftless. He divides his time between the home he shares with his wife Barbara and worlds that don’t exist outside his mind.
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