Beautiful Soul: An American Elegy (38 page)

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Authors: Joshua Corey

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You wanted that, didn’t
you.
To reach and out and touch her, as
she was touched by others.
M. You wanted to touch it, as she wanted to
touch it, history in the form of two bodies, meeting.

Every second, the narrow
gate.

And there, before the
balcony, backlit, black figure, the man.
Lamb.
Her deputy, her author, her undertaker.
He shines as a
vampire shines, invisibly, unmirrored.

The case is closed. You
shouldn’t have come.

I had to come.

You had to come.
The deadliness of repetition.
He has been repeating her, all
along.

Does he have a gun? Is that
how he plans to finish the job? Bullet fired seven decades ago, from the grave
of Europe, aimed forever at my heart?

His suitcase nowhere to be
seen.

She’s here, isn’t she, Mr.
Lamb?

Your mother is dead.

But she is here. She was M.

The wind catches in the windows,
rattles it, builds up to an unearthly revenant whine that makes them both
wince. Ruth puts her hands to her ears.

What’s in a name? She
called me Elsa. I called her M—. But we didn’t answer to those names.

Lamb holds the gun level,
pointing it at her heart. He gestures with it.

Let’s walk.

Out into the storm, though
the sky is bewilderingly blue and clear, not a cloud to be seen being chased by
the mistral up from the south, chopping the sea behind them. Into the woods,
the thick forest of the park surrounding Miramare, like Little Red Riding Hood
and the wolf, seeking cover for the dark deed of their story. He walks behind
her,
she steps carefully, watching her feet. Is this what it
was like? Is this where I come from? Istvan called it the death march, but
that’s not quite right. It’s only death if you stop. Keep moving.

Mr. Lamb, she calls behind
her, though he can’t possibly hear in this wind.
Lamb.
This doesn’t make sense. You work for me.

I work for you, he agreed.
She could feel it between her shoulder blades: the eye of the gun.

This isn’t my story, she
says, or thinks. This is my end.

This is the end.

Every story ends in death.
But my story began with it.

She
stops,
flinches. The air in the wood is still though she can hear the treetops tearing
with it high above them. No birds. Twigs roll under her feet like marbles. She
puts out her arms to steady herself.

It’s the story I wanted.
To feel that I had one.
That there was
something behind her, beneath her, a human being.
If my mother died, the
human being could live. I could meet her.

She turns around and says
to no one, to her, to M:

I had to love you. You gave
me no choice. You were the world. And I mean that literally, you had taken the
world inside you, I could see it and taste it, in the lines of your face, the
voice so low, your bitterness, the snap of your rage, your blame. I bore it
all,
I was stronger than you knew, stronger than you. I had
to survive you, what you couldn’t even do, survive grandma and all the wars,
survive Germany,
survive
Paris. And now I’ve done it,
I can call you by your right name. I can see you so clearly. I see me in your
face, and I see your own face, and none of it is alien,
none
of it is not mine, not ours
.
M, a letter, a character,
in writing.
It’s so beautiful to know you. It’s so beautiful to cry for
you, now that you’ve gone.

The woman in white, the
wind peeling her
, carrying
her clothing away.

Bless me and let me go
.

On my knees in the dirt of
Mitteleuropa, where I began, to see her.
In
tears, smiling at the woman who lived.

A crow’s cry, a black
report, under the wind.
Winged.
To
take flight.

The castle is behind her
and the man she made, stumbling blind and alone through the trees, empty-handed.
No camera follows him, no awkward suitcase, no body commas the ground. No grave
comes near. The air in the airplane cabin is dried-out and decontextualized.
Focusing on the back of the seat in front of her, a luminous white face eyes
closed in concentration. The faces of her loved ones are blooming there: the
daughter who needs her.
The husband who waits for her.
The light whole and clear in her face, all the faces, retreating and returning,
mother in daughter in mother in
in
. She opens the new book, the blank book, the book of
home, its wings, her eyes write her face, a woman, renamed, writing a letter,
to the middle, at last.

Joshua Corey
is the author of four books of poetry:
The Barons
(Omnidawn Publishing,
2014),
Severance
Songs
(Tupelo Press, 2011),
Fourier
Series
(Spineless Books, 2005),
and
Selah
(Barrow Street Press,
2003). He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife and daughter and is an
associate professor of English at Lake Forest College. This is his first novel.