The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove (18 page)

“No, no, no, Cyril!” I protest gently. “Not today. No brief lives. You must be quiet and focus on what I want to show you. This is
my
afternoon.”

He looks chastened, so I hasten to reassure him, patting him on his crabbed hand—but I know he will be quiet now. I pour two cups of Earl Grey from the pot and pass him the milk and sugar. He puts in three cubes and splashes milk into his cup. His hand is shaking.

“Dear Cyril, please relax, this is
not
a test, and I’m not trying to intimidate you. We are friends forever, no matter what. I just want to try and share some of the things I love because I think you might enjoy them.”

I take up my well-thumbed copy of the collected poems of A. E. Housman, a poet lyrical and direct, who often wrote about the countryside. I don’t want to start with writing that is too complicated, and I don’t want Cyril to feel challenged. I hope that he will begin to hear things in the lyrics, sounds of the words and lines.

Cyril sees the writing on the book cover. “Ah yes,” he says. “Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, in 1859 and his stuff got really popular during the First World War . . .”

“Cyril!” I say emphatically, and silence him. “Please, please relax. Just listen to this. It is one of his
poems
, let the words and sounds come to you”:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

As I read it aloud, I am concerned that Cyril might not absorb some of the very British images in the poem—but he is quiet only for a few moments. He is thinking, then he asks, “Would you read that again?”

Bless his beautiful heart! I read the poem again. Cyril moves his right hand slightly with the rhythm as I read. When I am finished, he says, “That’s almost like singing a small song—your voice is beautiful when you read it. It’s quiet and watchful. Housman is not trying to give us a big story, but he shows a lot by just saying some of those words—bough, trees, cherry, bloom, spring, woodlands, and the nice surprise at the end with snow. There’s sadness in the poem about being young and getting old. It’s like he’s taking me by the hand and leading me through that English springtime. And you lead me, too, Lady Louise, under the boughs and cherry trees, with the way you read, I got the music with the words. That’s all pretty special.”

Oh, Cyril! Indispensable, hideously adorable Cyril! If I could live fifty springs more just to be with you, I would do it.

“Would you like more tea?” I ask him. “Try the scones. They are good.” I pour him another cup and he butters a scone and puts it on his plate.

He looks at my little stack of books. “Would you read some more, please?” he asks. I would hug him, but his tea would spill. Instead, I read a Robert Frost poem, a John Clare, Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, I read translations into English of Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. Cyril gives me only very abbreviated biographies of each of these poets, then listens carefully as I read. I even include an Arthur Rimbaud poem, reading “Delirium” to Cyril in French, then translating it into English for him:

Ce fut d’abord une etude. J’écrivais des silences des nuits, je notais l’inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges.

“At first it was experimenting. I wrote of silences in the night, I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed their dizzy flight . . .”

I read the whole poem to him.

“So
that’s
Rimbaud?” Cyril says in wonder when I finish. “Listen to that guy! He’s hustling danger in that poem, and fixing himself for a big fall. He must have been on opium all the time, and God knows what else. You can hurt yourself that way, you know, and I guess he did. But it was like he was
trying
to hurt himself. I know he was nineteen when he gave up poetry and took off for Abyssinia and tried to be a gunrunner. He got a dose there and didn’t live much past his midthirties.”

Precious, amazing Cyril, he knows the brief life of Arthur Rimbaud—but he has never read one of the poems. What a rare afternoon! The two of us come together like a locking jigsaw puzzle. Here we are, two American ancients reading the hallucinatory poetry of a precocious, perilous eighteen-year-old French boy written 150 years ago. And we are a team. Where else would such mysteries like this be happening in this large world, except in Soldiers Grove?

I read Cyril another section from
Une Saison en Enfer
, and he comments when I am finished, “That boy was giving us something when he stuck his head in the fire like that, almost as if he were feeding himself to terrible dreams. He seemed to want to explore all the possibilities and then go down with his ship and tell us about it before he grew old.”

To conclude the poetry, I read something briefer and gentler—a translation of Tu Fu:

March is gone, and April here.

How many more chances to welcome spring?

Do not think of things beyond death;

Just drain these last allotted cups of life.

“It’s almost like he is talking directly to the two of us,” Cyril comments. “He is saying good-bye with only a few words, before he says hello again from 1,300 years ago.”

I want to play some music for Cyril. The afternoon is short and I have to be selective, so start with small pieces or short movements from Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn. He listens hungrily, happily, and always, without hesitation, makes some comments.

This is Cyril on Debussy’s fifth Étude: “He pops right into that, doesn’t he? Gives a theme and works it over hard a few times, then runs his tune like a horse. People were still running around on horses in those days, and a lot of that galloping sound gets into his music. I heard it in the Mendelssohn you played, too. That pianist is quick! A statement with a theme; he gets it all in there. Debussy’s very French, isn’t he? He starts fast, then slows to a trot before he surprises us by galloping on some more. He’s got to be firm in the saddle. He gets a lot done in that little bit of time, doesn’t he? What is an étude?”

Cyril, so swift sitting there—looking like a bear burned in a forest fire—takes my breath away. What could he have been if he’d had half a chance? It doesn’t matter. He is the keeper of the lives—and that is worth more than three advanced degrees or a billion dollars.

“An étude is a brief exercise, I guess you would call it,” I tell him. “Like a hop, skip, and jump in a track meet. It’s meant to give the pianist a chance to show off.”

It’s getting late in the afternoon. I had wanted to show Cyril some painting reproductions and had taken out a stack of big art books. But there was really only time to show him one artist, so I select the relatively unknown Gustave Caillebotte, whose work has always intrigued me. An odd choice amongst the French galaxy of painters—but then Cyril and I are both odd choices, too. We page together through the book, admiring the painter’s skill and energy. Cyril particularly likes Caillebotte’s painting of workmen scraping a floor in some building, their weariness evident in late afternoon.

There is only half-light in my room now. I switch on several lamps. I had wanted to play some of the jazz I love for Cyril, too, and hear his comments—perhaps Lester Young or Thelonious Monk, but it has grown too late, and we are tired. We’ve learned a great deal about each other in these hours. I will host many more teas for the two of us, I promise him. Cyril is finishing a second scone.

“Perhaps we better stop eating,” I say. “We’re going to be too full for our dinners.”

“I hope so,” Cyril says.

C
HAPTER
21

Cyril

W
e buzz into the dining room just in time for the end of dinner service. Crumbled hamburger cooked with Wisconsin cheddar and topped with a tomato sauce, corn from a can, and two boiled potatoes—not exactly tournedos Rossini—but I give it a go. Louise is a little slower getting to it, poking her fork around, but eventually she digs in, too. The singer is working on her rendition of “Falling In Love With Love.” Fortunately, she got it started right and is not off-key, so she doesn’t sound half bad tonight. Sometimes she can reach back into herself and hit some of those notes pretty good.

We’re both sleepy after our afternoon of culture and no naps—but we’ve had a time, a wonderful time, and will sleep well tonight. I notice Danderman a few tables over, trying to put some moves on an attractive, recently admitted widow. She doesn’t look very interested. In fact, she looks as if she’s not hearing most of what he says. Danderman yammers on, trying to look cool, a man of dogged habits.

Louise and I have talked a lot this afternoon, so we don’t have much to say to each other at dinner. It’s often like this when the day is done—a weariness that takes full possession of us. I see the same thing in the protracted movements of the other home guests sitting around us—a sort of heavy cloud that comes into the institution and bears down on us when light falls; we are a roomful of old folks in various stages of decay; the faint glimmering in our eyes that might have been present in the morning is obscured almost completely now. It is a time of day when, if you are going to get a disease, or feel the beginning of some kind of attack, or get a fever—it happens now. Days are generally okay, but when night inches in, the trolls seem to slip out from under the bridges around Soldiers Grove and creep into town to do mysterious things, and mostly they head for this old folks’ home.

After the dining hall we all return to our rooms. A little television, medicines, and wash-ups, then there is only one thing to do—go to bed and begin the cramped tussle between consciousness and bizarre subconscious dreams, interrupted by trips to the john. You piece together the best sleep you can—just suck it up and go on. Some folks are better at this than others. Louise and I do okay, but we’ve had a lot of things on our minds these past days and weeks.

The dessert that evening in the dining hall is canned fruit salad. Louise picks out only the maraschino cherries, but I eat it all. We touch shoulders as we shamble through the corridors to our rooms; we’re still glowing a bit from our very special day. I take her to her door, make sure no one is looking, give her a big hug and a small kiss, thank her for the tea, take in her astonishing smile one more time, and then, happy as an ant milking aphids, head off for my own digs.

As usual I haven’t locked my room; I close the door behind me and hustle straight into the bathroom just inside to take an urgent pee and wash my hands, and when I come out to switch on the lamp over the couch I sense that somebody is in the room, sitting in the chair in the far shadowed corner.

I don’t make any sound, but I take a step back, drop my canes, and almost fall over. A large, vile-looking shape in the corner shadows—I begin to see it more clearly as my eyes adjust to the light. An ogre with dirty hair all over his face and neck. It looks as if someone has slashed a mouth into his face with a flick knife.

“Well, well, well, geezer,” Balaclava rumbles. “I see you are still peeing all the time. But you’re changed since the last time I saw you. Did somebody run over you with a hay rake?”

I take another teetering backward step. “How did you get in here?”

“I walked right in like the local undertaker does every day. That desk attendant always has her nose in a book, and you left your door unlocked. I could have driven a Hummer in here and they wouldn’t have known.”

“Get out of here! I’ll pull the emergency cord.”

“It’s already cut, gramps. Don’t start talking tough. I think you better sit down. We’ve got some serious things to discuss.”

But I choose to continue standing on my uneasy pegs. “What do you want with me?” My new little gun is strapped under my shirt, but I’d never be able to get it out in time. He’d be all over me if I started fumbling for it.

“Pops, you caused me a whole peck of trouble. Ever since I left you out in that blizzard the fuzz have been hot on my ass. It’s given me fits trying to stay clear of them. But you—you make it through that storm and hang on long enough for the cops to find you.

“Then when everyone finds out you are going to pull through and defrost, they make you into a national hero! I thought they were going to give you the fucking Medal of Honor before they were through! All that ink they were giving you and they went on and on about how you were so goddamned courageous. Courageous, my
ass
! You were sucking your thumb. Big brave shit-ass! You were shaking and peeing your pants in my truck.

“Then the pictures of you in the paper, smiling like you’d just eaten a dozen chili dogs. They give you that goddamned award for
bravery
—50,000 smackers and a tuxedo dinner in New York! Bravery! Your pants were wet, old man! You were begging for mercy—and I
gave
you mercy. I let you go and made you famous. Do
I
get a 50,000-clam award for giving you mercy? Naw! They are chasing me down like a dog. You owe me big time, geezer man. Big time! Where’s that money they gave you?”

“I can’t remember.”

Balaclava is up out of his chair and rolling toward me like a jagged boulder from the shadows.
Cyril
, I say to myself—as I did when I was about to be put out into that blizzard—
Cyril, this is
it.
All the lives in this world aren’t going to save you now.

Balaclava claps onto my shoulders and starts shaking me. My head is bobbing like an apple in high wind and I almost black out. “Wait, wait,” I manage to gargle. “Don’t kill me. That won’t help. Let me think.”

He lets go of me and sits down on the edge of my bed, breathing hard. The money is right under his ass, in two socks tucked under the mattress. I know this . . . but he doesn’t. I fall onto the rug, and he’s looking down at me. I try to make it look like I’m completely vulnerable—but I’m thinking fast. “I put it in the bank in Viroqua,” I manage to whimper. He picks me up again like a broken twig, backhands me across my face, and tosses me onto the couch.