Visions of Gerard (10 page)

“O where's that Donnelly!”

“Well then goddamit let's go to him!”

Off they vow in their Immense vehicles—

“Oh call it a day!”

“And
why?
“

And when they do find Donnelly it's only for him to sit there saying “Emil you could have ended up your days cryin in that corner—calling for more drinks—but you had to buy a store, and hire yourself out, and count your every blarney.”

“Aright with me, Ole Be-larney.”

“And you hankered and pankled and popped to discover—”

“I did.”

“And you—are you sure this is a mixture of what did you say?” and later to the other old Irishmen of the corner, in the store, the bloody store, he, Donnelly, says, “Emil Duluoz—a perfect person,” and they believe him.

But by that time we've all got big headaches—And our Manuel-wives'll have a scream at us—And it's only stored in bottles, tho you might think in furnaces of ire in Diablo Bottoms—“The trouble with you, Duluoz,” pronounces Bull on our porch, the which even Gerard in his bed can heart, at 10 A M—

“What?”

“You're just too eager to hear for me to tell you what's wrong with you, so you can change and rectify—God made misers, and misers made God, and I'm suited.”

They bump rolling heads together in the amazingness of this—

“Tst-tst,” says my mother peeking from the kitchen, “it's looks like your father is drunk this morning”—“Who's that, that big pile? He's swallowed all his glasses and his barrels in his nose, it looks like!—They want some break fast—I'll warm up last night's good
ragout d'boulette
” (pork meatball stew with onions and carrots and potatoes, exquisite, Old Bull Baloon never had a better meal since the time in Wyoming the fry-cook said to him at dawn “I got some nice homefrieds for ya this morning, Bull”—

O pitiful, lovable, soon-to-be-departed earth,—) That'll do.

“And time bids be gone”—

It might be pepper for a cold feast, but I always did say that the fact that men
are
, is more interesting than anything they might do—'tis only a poor action on a part stage and the scenery (the fakery) can be seen to shift and jello, in the backdrops, the stagehands are clumsy, the designer clumsy, and thine eye quick—Inadequate settings, poorly paid carpenters—You wake up in the middle of the night and look at the horizon sneaking swiftly back into place, and you think ‘O God, it's all the same thing'—That there
is
a world, that, rather, there
seems
to be a world, is hugely more interesting than what tiddly diddly well might happen in it, like Nirvana in an ant-heap or an ant-heap in Nirvana,
one
—

Bless my soul, death is the only decent subject, since it marks the end of illusion and delusion—Death is the other side of the same coin, we call now, Life—The appearance of sweet Gerard's flower face, followed by its disappearance, alas, only a contour-maker and shadow-selector could prove it, that in all the perfect snow any such person or thing ever did arrive say Yea and go away—The whole world has no reality, it's only imaginary, and what are we to do?—Nothing—
nothing
—
nothing
. Pray to be kind, wait to be patient, try to be fine. No use screamin. The Devil was a charming fool.

In his last days Gerard had little to do but lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, and sometimes watch the cat. “Look Ti Jean, the little nut—look, he looks one way, he looks the other—Lookat the crazy face, what's he thinkin?—Everytime he sees something what does he think?—Look, he's goin in the other room. Why? What's he thinkin that makes him go in the next room? Look, now he stops, he looks—he licks himself—there, he yawns—well, now he's comin back—he's crazy—O CRAZY KITIGI! Bring him!” and I'd bring him the little grey tiger cat and we'd biddle and fwiddle with his crazy nose and stroke his head and he'd set in purring and glad. “Look at him, a little crazy ball like that, a little white belly as soft and as smooth as a heart—God made kitties I guess for us—God sent his kitties everywhere—Take care of my kitigi when I'm gone,” he adds holding kitigi to his face and almost crying.

“Where you goin?”

No answer.

“See? the little face, the little head, look, I could break his head by squeezing my hand—it's only a little thing with no strength—God put these little things on earth to see if we want to hurt them—those who dont do it who
can
, are for his Heaven—those who see they can hurt, and
do
hurt, they're not for his Heaven—See?”

“Oui
.”

“Always be careful not to hurt anyone—never get mad if you can help it—I gave you a slap in the face the other day but I didnt know it when I did it”—

(That'd been one of the last days when he felt good enough to get up and play with his erector set, a gray exciting morning for all-day work, gladly he'd at the break fast crumb-swept newspapers of the table begun to raise his first important girder when I importunately rushed up tho gleefully to join in the watching but knocked the whole thing over scattering screws and bolts all over and upsetting the delicate traps, inadvertently and with that eternal per durable mistakenness we all know, he slapped my face yelling “
Décolle donc!
” (Get away!) and must have instantly regretted it, no doubt that in a few minutes his remorse was greater than my disappointed regret—) We made up soon enough, head to head at the sad and final mortal window, holy Gerard and I, which gave credence now to his speech about kindness; and a speech it is, that down thru the imaginary eternities, is, and hath been, handed down by all spiritual heroes (of his like and calibre):—immeasurable kindness—“It's in the words of the Lord's Prayer—forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Did you forgive me for hitting you?”

“Oui”—(tho I was too littly naive to know what it meant
forgive
, and hadnt really forgiven him, holding back that reserve of selfly splendor for future pomp)—As solid as anything, as solid as the rock of the mountain, the solid folly men and boys and women will have—“I hit you—but I didnt have to, now I know it, the junk is packed away, the thing I was building with my set” (he shrugs gallicly) “I dont remember it any more!”

“The
grignot!
”

“Dont remind me,” he smiles wanly.

“Ti Jean, dont bother Gerard, he's got to sleep this morning.”

June, late June, with the trees having burdgeoned green and golden and the beeswax bugs are high chickadeeing the topmost trees embrowsying the drowsy air of reader's noon, the backfences of Beaulieu street sleeping like lazy dogs, the flies rubbing their miser forelegs on screens, “The little flies too, you dont have to kill them—they rub their little legs, they dont know how to do anything else—”

“Sleep Gerard, the doctor wants you to sleep—Go outside Ti Jean, you've talked enough this morning.”

And I cry, to lose my buddy, whose pale door is closed on me, and there he is with his protected little kitty in the fold of his sheets and the birds are at the window waiting for more of those familiar crumbs from his sure hands—

The doctor comes more often, leaves sooner.

I wander up and down Beaulieu Street, lonely, little, a little Our Gang Rascal with no gang and no comedy and no ring-eyed dog or Pancakes to throw—All alone in mid afternoon I sit on the highwood backsteps of the St. Louis Bazaar hall and strive to imitate the sound it makes when Uncle Mike Duluoz and his wife and all the Duluozes drive over from Nashua to visit us and sit in the parlor and lament—“A BWA! A BWA!”—I'm especially imitating Uncle Mike, the hurt curl of his lips—His great rouge cry-face, poor Uncle Mike had he seen that, my little pantomime of him, he'd a wept cruds to the earth to add to the woe—

“Cut out that noise, you little brat—we've been listening to that bwa-bwa all morning!” shouts a woman from the tenement washlines across the way—I cant go on with my A-BWA play, go back to the house, Gerard's asleep, Ma's doing the wash, I go in the cellar, it's dark and damp and sad—My mother calls from the door above “Your little chum is back!” meaning some child from down the street I'd befriended a few weeks ago and now I dont remember him from beans—Hands aback clasped I go to Gerard's bedroom door, he meditates gently in mid afternoon, the shades drawn—

“Ti Jean,” he calls me, “take my pillow and raise it a little—there—thanks—I wanta see my birds outside—raise the shade—tick tzick tzick birdies!”—His breath smells like crushed flowers—I see and behold the sad sideways look for the last time, the long triste nun-like face, the blue eyes in their hollows.

Soon he's asleep on his sitting-up pillow.

When the little kitty is given his milk, I imitate Gerard and get down on my stomach and watch him greedily licking up his milk with pink tongue and chup chup jowls—

“You happy Ti Pou?—your nice
lala
”—

They see me in the parlor imitating Gerard with imaginary talks back and forth concerning lambs, kitties, clouds.

July comes, the pop firecrackers start coming on like a war in the neighborhood—Gerard's room takes on the quality of a lily, white, wan, fragrant—My mother and father are shaking their heads—

“What's the mater with Gerard?”

“He's very sick, Ti Pousse.”

Ti Nin and I wait on the porch wondering what's wrong.

I wanta go in and talk to him but I'm not allowed—The doctor turns up the sheets and looks at Gerard's swollen legs and says “That must hurt—I've never seen a kid like this—keep giving him that prescription—How you feelin Gerard?”

Gerard unaccustomed to being spoken to in English, answers, with girlish lips made so by sickness, or girlishshould-I-say-beautiful lips, “I'm aw-right, Doctor Simp-
kins
,” with the accent on “kins,” like my mother talks—

The big doctor betakes his black suited bulk out of that house of sorrows and goes home, having given up hope a long time ago—

Some time near the 4th of July he tells my mother to call the priest—“He cant have the strength to go any further” (“if he does,” adding to think, “it'll be murder”)—

My father, arms loaded with paper bags in which are firecrackers, with an expectant smile comes in that night, but he's told the priest will be called—With that comes the nuns, there they come down Beaulieu Street, three of them, to sit at Gerard's bedside praying—He's awake.

“How are you feeling, Gerard?”

“Awright, my sister.”

“Are you afraid, sweetheart?”

“No my sister—The priest blessed me—”

They ask him questions which he answers briefly and softly, my mother sees the nun taking it down on paper—She never saw the paper again—Some secret transmitted from mouth to heart, at the quiet hour, I have no idea where any such paper or record could have ended or could be found today, lest it's written on the rock in the mountains of gold in the country I cant reach—Or some fleecy mystery imparted, concerning the kinds of fearlessness, or the proof of faith, or the ethereality of pain, or the unreality of death (and life too), or the calm hand of God everywhere slowly benedicting—Whatever, the solemn tearful nuns did take it down, his last words, at deathside bed, and betook themselves back to the nunnery with it, and crossed themselves, and you can be sure there were special prayers that night—Saint Teresa, who promised to come back and shower the earth with roses after her death, shower ye with roses the secret nun who understands, make her pallet a better one than canopied of Kings'—Shower with roses and defend all the lambs and war the wraithful doves around—I'm afraid to say what I really want to say.

I dont remember how Gerard died, but (in my memory, which is limited and mundane) here I am running pellmell out of the house about 4 o'clock in the afteernoon and down the sidewalk of Beaulieu Street yelling to my father whom I've seen coming around the corner woeful and slow with strawhat back and coat over arms in the summer heat, gleefully I'm yelling “
Gerard est mort!
“ (Gerard is dead!) as tho it was some great event that would make a change that would make everything better, which it actually was, which granted it actually was.

But I thought it had something to do with some holy transformation that would make him greater and more Gerard like—He would reappear, following his “death,” so huge and all powerful and renewed—The dizzy brain of the four-year-old, with its visions and infold mysticisms—I grabbed Pa and tugged his hand and glee'd to see the expression of likewise gladness on his face, so when he wearily just said “I know, Ti Pousse, I know” I had that same feeling that I have today when I would rush and tell people the good news that Nirvana, Heaven, Our Salvation is
Here
and
Now
, that gloomy reaction of theirs, which I can only attribute to pitiful and so-to-be-loved Ignorance of mortal brains.

“I know, my little wolf, I know,” and sadly he drags himself into the house as I dance after.

The undertakers presumably carry the little no-more-body of no-more-pain-and swelled-legs away, in a tidy basket, to prepare him for his lying-in-state in our front parlor, and that night all the Duluozes do drive up from Nashua in tragic blackflap cars and come to crying and jawing in the brown kitchen of eternity as suddenly in my mind, as tho it was only a dream, a vision in the mind, which it is, I see the whole house and woe open up from within its every molecule and become instead of contours of walls and ceilings and absence-holes of doors and windows and there-yawps of voices and lamentings and wherewillgo-beings of personality and name, Aunt Clementine, Uncle Mike, cousins Roland and Edgar, Aunt Marie, Pa and Ma and Nin at the lot, just suddenly a great swarming mass of roe-like fiery white-nesses, as if a curtain had opened, and innumerably revealed the scene behind the scene (“the scene behind the scene is always more interesting than the show,” says J.R.Williams the
Out Our Way
cartoonist), shows itself compounded be, of emptiness, of pure light, of imagination, of mind, mind-only, madness, mental woe, the strivings of mind pain, the working-at-thinking which is all this imagined death & false life, phantasmal beings, phantoms finagling in the gloom, goopy poor figures haranguing and failing with lack-hands in a fallen-angel world of shadows and glore, the central entire essence of which is dazzling radiant blissful ecstasy unending, the unbelievable Truth that cracks open in my head like an oyster and I see it, the house disappears in her Swarm of Snow, Gerard is dead and the soul is dead and the world is dead and dead is dead.