Landscape: Memory

by Matthew Stadler

  I saw a pair of lady's boots come into view, a few feet from my shoes, their tips pointed toward mine.

  "I see you're in distress," a lovely lady's voice announced. "You don't look well at all." She sat down beside me and put her warm hand to my forehead. "You'll forgive my impertinence, but I am a mother and will not stand on ceremony where a child's health is concerned."

  "Do I really look as bad as all that?" I asked, soaking in her concern. "I know I'm a bit of a mess."

  "More than a bit," she insisted, "and suffering chills to boot." She put a shawl about my shoulders and picked a clump of grass from my hair. "Your name, child. What's your name?"

  "Maxwell."

  "Maxwell," she repeated. "Listen to me. Maxwell. I am Mrs. Dunphy and Mr. Dunphy has gone home, as the Fair tires him. Are your parents with you?"

  "I'm here by myself." I looked at her with sincerity. "I only need a little rest. I'm just dizzy from ... all of this." We both looked out at the grotesque enormity of it all.

  "It is a dizzying sight," Mrs. Dunphy agreed. She shifted around on the bench, tilting her head toward me, beckoning some sort of response.

  "I find the avenues leading out to the water especially difficult. It's so unclear whether they end, and the wind is too much for me.

  "Yes, precisely." She nodded her head sagely. "The Fair is a difficult treasure. Maxwell. I'm afraid you've not been adequately prepared for its scope."

  I took some very deep breaths and smiled a reassuring smile. Mrs. Dunphy kept her hand firmly on my shoulder, keeping me from getting up just yet. I felt bolstered by her strength and calm.

  "We'll catch our breath for a few more minutes," she announced, "and then go on to the Court of Ages. It's important you not miss it. You'll need a guide, and it shall be me."

  "Of course," I agreed. I was happy to oblige, glad to let myself into her care, rather than striking out into the mysterious Fair alone.

  A tiny motorcar came chugging by, pulling a train of tourists in topless carriages, its many compartments looked like railroad cars in a long snaking line. Off they chugged past the stone caldrons (bubbling thick with red liquid and steam), beside the tall walls of the Palace of Mining, and through the high arch leading to the Court of Ages.

  "We'll soon follow them in," Mrs. Dunphy said, watching me stare in wonder at the disappearing lights of the caboose.

  I ruffled my shoes across the gravel with vigor and smiled brightly at my kind guide, trying to cover my vague dread and nausea. Things still loomed too large and lurid. Grotesque figures stared down from parapets, tiny tourists ferried about below, like brittle little sticks in a raging river.

  We walked from our sheltered spot past the grim stone murals, past the plantings and lovely green lattice, and through the Gothic archway into the Court of Ages. The black night sky opened up wide, let loose as the buildings drew back from their close arrangement in the side court. Here the plaza spread out in broad sweeps from the central fountain and throngs milled about the wide-open space, dwarfed by the architecture and towering statuary.

  Mrs. Dunphy took my arm and led me toward the center.

  "Mullgardt," she began, referring to the genius behind this design, "has succeeded in putting into architecture the spirit that inspired Langdon Smith's poem 'Evolution,' beginning 'When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.' The whole evolution of man is intimated here from the time when he lived among the seaweed and the turtles and the crab."

  The whole evolution of man. It seemed an impossibly long time to have put into these massive walls. The presence of those ancient ugly fish swimming frozen in the stone was like a pressure on my eyes. I felt the walls might soon tumble forward, collapsing from the sheer momentum of the ages, let loose like some swollen river finally breaching the levees.

  "Even the straight vertical lines used in the design suggest the dripping of water."

  I watched clouds of steam roll out above the rough-blown water of the fountain. A light burned blood-red deep within the wide pool. Stone serpents twisted out of heavy caldrons along its perimeter, tangling their slithery forms around gas flames, their sharp eyes staring out in all directions.

  "Did Mullgardt design the fountain as well?" I asked to be polite.

  "That's Aitken, Maxwell."

  "Is he also concerned with fish?" I lost sight of her as a cloud of steam blew in around us.

  "Aitken has played with Mullgardt's elemental theme, drawing us back to our primeval origins, further back than even the fish, back, I believe, to the very origin of the planet."

  I looked again at the fountain. A small child was playing on the lip, dipping her bare foot into the glowing pool, testing, it seemed, for depth and temperature.

  "Specifically, the pagan conception of the sun, Maxwell. Aitken has used the notion that the sun threw off the earth in a molten mass to steam and cool down here and to bring forth those competitions between human beings that reveal the working of the elemental passions."

  An older sibling sneaked up and gave the little girl a shove, neatly grabbing her wrist in the same motion. This set her to horrible screaming and an ill-advised tug away from her brother. Attentions turned toward them. Mrs. Dunphy drew me away.

  We left the fountain and went west toward two enormous snowflake ornaments, lofted to midair on thin columns. The two flakes burned bright as suns on either side of us, obliterating all else by their light.

  "They look like stars, don't they?" Mrs. Dunphy asked as we paused between them.

  "From very far away, I suppose."

  "Yes." And she paused, for just a moment, to entertain my thought. "And yet they have a history behind them." I closed my eyes to listen to all the sounds as Mrs. Dunphy picked up the thread of her lecture. "They are like the monstrance used in the Catholic Church to hold the Sacred Host, the wafer that is accepted by the faithful as the body and blood of Jesus Christ. These very ornaments contain the Sacred Host in a small glass bulb at their center."

  I looked but could not see to their center. The light was too bright.

  "They've got a bit of flesh?"

  "As it were. Blessed wafer accepted as flesh." A brass band struck up from the Court of the Universe, their oom-pahs wavering in and out of sync with the strains of a string quartet close by the fountain. Voices were being raised again back by the lip and the little girl had taken to a constant wailing.

  "Observe how the ideas in the structure of the walls of the court are carried on in the ornamental details and the tower. The primitive man and woman repeated in a row along the upper edge, drawing the eye naturally to the religious figure in the apse of the tower. Some believe it to be Buddhistic in origin, but it belongs to no particular religion."

  The string quartet kept on. All around us people seemed to be moving swiftly toward the central court.

  "Will they really blow it all up this winter?" I asked, too dizzy and distracted to inquire about meanings.

  "Perhaps not, Maxwell. Some say the city will set it all in stone, if funds can be raised." We looked around the full sweep of the court, I imagining it first blown to bits, then set in stone, a crumbling ruin fixed forever in gray, weathered granite.

  Our costumes fluttered in the strong wind blowing in off the bay. Wild currents swirled over the high walls, raising rubbish up in dust devils around the broad court. The brass band and quartet had stopped, perhaps long ago.

  "Are you quite all right?" Mrs. Dunphy asked again, looking in close to my eyes. "You seem rather dizzy."

  I was quite dizzy, and suddenly very empty, feeling as though something in my center had been drawn out with my last breath. It rushed forward with the cold wind. The air seemed to have suddenly gotten much richer or thinner, a queer chill running across my skin. Mrs. Dunphy took my arm and led me on.

  Men and women were gathered all around in silent bunches, clotted thicker as we came near the center of the court. Stone fish stared benignly into the night, and I wobbled a bit and lay down on the ground, staring up in
to the black sky. Mrs. Dunphy was silent now, mute and dumb, her mouth moving and her head drawing near, then away. She was rushing off in a flurry, away into the dark. I could hear nothing.

  * * *

  I lay still and stared upward. Past gabardine trousers and flannel overcoats, beyond the colored lights and brittle domes, up into the night, through the chilly thin air, beyond Beachey's altitude record, past the pinpoint stars, beyond the most primitive bird flying alone through the crystalline spheres. I focused as far away, as distant and dark as my eyes knew how. It seemed possible, just then, that I might see through to its farthest end.

  The crowd paid me little mind as they shuffled to and fro. Mrs. Dunphy had disappeared into the night to search, I felt certain, for a doctor or a priest or my parents. The sandy ground was cool against my back. A soft thumping beat into my bones through the solid earth, a rhythm of bumps and rumbles that you had to lie down flat against the dirt to feel. I turned my head and laid my cheek against the ground. That little girl was lying by the lip of the fountain, all wet and tiny like a kitten who'd been drowned or just born. Two men held her body down. A third had drawn a thick wool stocking tight across her opened mouth.

  "When you were a Tadpole and I was a Fish, in the Paleozoic time ..." Bits and scraps of songs were floating inside my mind. I felt the little girl's convulsions beating into me through the ground. Her tiny body seemed so powerful just then. Her head swung wildly around and I saw her look into me with eyes so big and black I felt I might fall forever into them. The depth of them gave me a spasm of fright so sudden I rose from the ground with no breath left in me.

  Mrs. Dunphy was gone.

  I walked away through the pink gravel and down the bannered boulevard, now nearly empty. There, far ahead, by the sea, my mother stood atop a tall thin column. She stared out across the bay, her victory robes flowing, set in stone, a laurel wreath round her head. I saw her in the last illumination, just before closing. Her shadow was cast into the heavy fog. It was rolling in again, displacing the little wisps of steam produced by the Fair's elaborate machinery.

  A buoy flying a small black flag floated offshore, lit by a single spot, marking the sight of Beachey's plunge. I dropped big white stones and watched them disappear into the black water. The last lights shut down.

  An attendant in nursing whites pushed a limbless man in his wheelchair, rattling along the gravel of the Florentine Court, last and alone excepting me, rushing to the gates before they were finally locked. The little man bounced about like overstuffed luggage, tipping this way and that, righted on occasion by his attendant, talking a blue streak in a language I didn't understand. It made me cry, more for myself being last and alone, I suspect, than for the man's hardship.

  I didn't think to stay.

  25 MAY 1915

  Dear Robert,

  What was that song we sang as children? That song about egg nog plum? You and I made it up when I was just three or four and sang it incessantly. Mousie plum, you're in a scrum, egg nog plum and then I can't remember any more. I've been hearing it sung as I drift into sleep, but I'm certain it's just a trick of the mind. I've put in for a transfer off the medicals but it seems very unlikely.

  There is something about the smell of things here, not just the blood and the sheer impossibility of ever burying the dead, but, also, our absolute failure. It's the stink of cordite and the mud and our own bodies too. I would ask you to send soap but soap is not what's needed. Lost Jeffers and Tolland both. Really I was quite lucky.

  I can't sleep, it seems. I find my attention quickening as night comes on. And now that I'm up so long it seems a good idea to stay up even longer.

  Duncan noticed today. He said, "You haven't slept, have you?" and I nodded no, I haven't. We were at home, him getting dressed and me sitting on his bed looking at the angle of the sunshine, it being very low and casting long shadows up against the fronts of houses. He sat down next to me and tilted my head back to look, I suppose, at my eyes or throat or something.

  "Aren't you tired?" he asked, peering into my mouth.

  "Not really. I feel kind of loose, like pudding."

  He held me round the ribs and shook my loose body, testing.

  "How long've you been up?"

  "A day now. I slept pretty well before last night." I flopped back on his bed, stretching my arms up to the headboard, and looked for the battle lines of the Marne in the ceiling cracks. "I get all dreamy in my head, but not tired really. Do I make sense?"

  He rolled up next to me and felt my forehead.

  "You make sense. You just look a mess, like you're living in the woods. Take a shower. You'll think it's morning and you slept and everything." It seemed a good idea, so I did, and Duncan cooked breakfast and we went to school.

  I noticed Flora's bosom today, how big it is and that I don't think she restrains it. My feet are too big for my shoes now. And Miss Gillian always closes her mouth when she's not speaking. I felt like prying it open by the end of class, it was so resolutely shut, as she listened with her bright eyes trained on the speaker.

  Mostly I noticed the weather, it seeming so much larger and more important than all the talk. It really does move in over the whole face of things. You can smell it coming over the hills, foggy or clear, dry or damp or thunderstorm. It made me jumpy and frisky, just wanting to be out in it.

  Flora and Duncan and I drove down the Great Highway and ran on the beach, letting all that air wash over me in waves and waves, air from far across the ocean blowing in steady over me, on my face, and I dove into the sand, and got up and dove again, and leaped as high into the air as I could, running far and fast through the wet salty air. I started to strip off my clothes, ready to run into the icy blue water, but Flora and Duncan bundled me off in bear hugs to the car, saving me from certain arrest and probably pneumonia. It was a wonderful day.

  There is no more firewood here. I've burned all the wood wanting a good read by firelight. This room is beautiful in the flickering yellow light and shadows. It reminds me of the magic lamp, only these shadows and shapes are even older, unreadable, playing out in patterns you must unfocus your eyes on if you want to make sense of them.

  I made it through one hundred and sixty pages of Melmoth. I read out loud to Duncan through almost sixty of those, until he fell asleep, curled in at my feet, next to the fire. That was very kind of him, as I know Melmoth is not what interests him. He's lying here still, drooling through his warm hand onto my sock, his head resting on my feet.

  It's been foggy tonight, gray clouds hugging the ground, rolling close across the windows, close enough to take the flickering shadows of the fire on their faces, before they roll away again with the wind.

  There is a light in a house across the way. It's the only light I see that keeps long hours like me. It's burned steady all night tonight, appearing and disappearing through the intermittent fog.

  The house is tall and thin, with a stone path leading to its small porch. Inside, I'm sure, the stairs are steep and narrow, two flights of them leading up through the quiet, creaking night to the front room up under the eaves. That's where the light burns. Sometimes I see shadows moving across the curtains, and once or twice a face peering out, ever so briefly, through the neat gap between them.

  I think it's a woman and I fancy she's writing a book, a romance adventure book, or thinly veiled autobiography detailing the horrible beatings she's suffered at the hands of her drunkard husband. He, no doubt, is buried in the basement, chopped to neat little bits and mixed with oatmeal, stuffed in canvas sacks and covered by six feet of dirt. She's got a dog, I'm certain, a St. Bernard, all full of fur and drool, who is her lover. Or she's Phoebe Hearst's secret lover, locked up on pain of death, showered with expensive gifts, and unable to leave her lonely prison. The dog, then, is merely her friend and confidant.

  Her light has gone out. I wonder if she's seen me, and what she makes of me. There's just enough light left in the fire, I'm sure she can see that I'm still here, sta
ying with her as late as she could possibly stay, last and alone. I'll go to get more wood.

  26 MAY 1915

  When I got up to go in search of wood Duncan woke and stretched and stirred, rolling his face toward the fire, and mumbled to me as if out of a dream, something about not leaving him just then.

  "We need more wood," I explained. "I'm just going out to find some and bring it right back." He rolled back and wrapped around my leg.

  "No, Dogey, no. You're staying here. It's warm and toasty. Be my friend."

  "I am being your friend," I insisted, pulling my leg free. "I'm getting more wood to keep you warm." But he just lay there all pulled into a little ball.

  "No, you keep me warm. Stay and read more, sleep here," and he turned his back again to me, scrunching up closer to the fire.

  "I can't read in the dark."

  He just shook like a shiver, pretending it was cold. I patted his shoulder and got up to go. I had set my mind on keeping this fire burning, just staying as we'd been, me reading through to the end and Duncan warm and sleepy by the fire.

  "I'm going now," I said as nice as I could, pulling my boots on and buttoning a big sweater over my shirt. "I'll be right back."

  "So wait for me," Duncan said, still sleepy but waking up just enough. "Dress me, get my pram."

  "You are dressed, dummy."

  "It's freezing out there," he complained, sitting up and yawning some more. "I'll need furs and a muffler."

  "You're funny," I said, wrapping a throw rug around him.

  "I'm cold."

  I figured Lone Mountain was best for firewood, it being near and unlikely anyone would mind our clearing windfall from a graveyard. We walked down Divisadero to Turk and went west, the fog still hanging thick and silent. I felt we were walking out to sea, walking a long thin peninsula out into the dull gray waters, birds asleep or resting in the calm, the ocean surface like cold lead and silent, and all of it hidden by the heavy fog.