Approaching Oblivion Part 7

"Can you hear me? Can you speak? I want you to know why."

His mouth was thick and his speech was clumsy, but he heard her and he could speak and he said he understood. She bent to him and took his face in her cool hands. "Centuries ago, my ancestors were sent away. They were..." her hesitation was filled with pain and loneliness, "...imperfect." She turned away for a moment and he saw high on her back two knots of atrophied muscle, and the vision of winged men and women came to him as it had in the vision she'd let him see, and he understood that, too. Then she turned back, stronger. "There were a few like them in every generation, and they gave birth to others who gave birth to us. But no more. Now we are so few, so very few. Now almost all the people are gone."

"It was a mistake," he said. She could not tell what he had said through the drug, and he repeated it. She looked at him and nodded gently; but she was stronger.

"You said there was very little left of humanity in your race. That is the truest thing you could have said. What I do is what will be done to all of you. There are a few more of my race, and when they are gone there will be others, of other races. And they will finish the job. You may not be the first, but you will certainly not be the last. Your time is past. You had your chance and turned it against every race you ever met. And now that your time is done, you think you'll take everyone with you."

He could not regret dying, as he knew he would die. She was right. The time for men had come and gone, and what they did now was useless, but more than useless...it was senseless.

Unlike her people, men did not have the good grace to go off alone and die. They tried, in their deranged way, to drag the universe into the grave with them. Not just the leaching off of preserved memories for the momentary amus.e.m.e.nt of the jaded and corrupt, but everything men did, now that they owned the universe. It was better that the human race be aided in its slovenly demise than to be allowed to leave nothing but ashes when it vanished at last.

He had killed her race, lying sleeping, waiting to be reborn in flames. So he could not hate her.

Nor did she need to know that she brought him the dearest gift he had ever received. It was the end of summer and he was content knowing he would not have to wait for the chill of winter to descend on his race.

"I'm happy," he said.

She may have known what he meant. He thought she knew: her eyes were moist as she bent to him for the final time, and kissed him.

There were flames and heat as great as a nova and then there was nothing but ash that floated freely in the nimbus.

When they came to the suite of the sensu programmer, none of them knew they were looking at the last days of men. Only Keltin, the Designer, seemed to understand, in some deep racial way, and he said nothing.

But he smiled in expectation as the moonstone ship sailed away into the eternal night.

Palatine, Illinois; Los Angeles, California/1972

4 PAULIE.

CHARMED.

THE SLEEPING.

WOMAN.

"She'll be listening, Paulie, you can bet on that," I said to him, touching him lightly on the shoulder. "She ain't dead, Paulie, n.o.body like her could ever really die." But he didn't care, Paulie didn't. All he knew was that one fine listener, that girl he'd dug and loved and spent so many notes on, she was gone. Some bad thing had happened and Ginny was dead, in her family's crypt out in the boneyard, and they wouldn't even allow Paulie to come to the funeral. Rich parents, Ginny's parents, and they was bugged at her first for having left the family and the old escutcheon, and second for having taken up with what they called "a broken down wastrel jazz musician."

Which was flat-out not true. Paulie was the best.

People like that have no idea what it's like, hearing a horn like Paulie. Bright as a penny, and soft and quick and full of tiny things being said close into your ear...that was Paulie. You can know Miles, and you can remember Brownie, and you can talk it up that Diz uses a fine axe, and still not take it away from Paulie. He's what Chet Baker might have become, if he hadn't turned himself inside out and lost it all, or (and Hentoff called me a whack one night when I said this to him) if Bix had lived and gone through swing and bop and funk and cool and soul c.r.a.p. But that's just my feeling, falling down on the way Paulie phrases, and his soft blue stuff, and the airy changes. That's just my bag, so forget it; has nothin' to do with Paulie and Ginny, except I wanted to make it clear that Paulie was good. Maybe great, even. No one can tag great, I'm hip, but Paulie was as close to it as I'll ever care to go.

So Ginny's folks had no truth in their put-down. He was not only the finest trumpet I've ever blown guitar with, but after that axe of his, he loved Ginny more than his eyes, even. So when she died, and they took her away-and her snotty sonofab.i.t.c.h brother Karl, or whatever the h.e.l.l that fruit's name was, spit on Paulie-and put her in their creepy tomb, Paulie bust up pretty bad. And I said to him: "Paulie, you got to listen, man, because Ginny'll always be with you. She loved to hear you play, Paulie, she really loved to hear you play, and wherever she is now, she's hearing you. So you got to get back with it, because if you let it lay there, then she won't hear a thing, ever."

But it didn't take until later. Then Paulie got pretty smashed. He couldn't hold his liquor in the first place, and when he had to blow five sets a night, without her happy, loving round moony-face down there in front, it made him want to get plowed even more. So he got completely corked out of his nut, and he came to me while I was packing up the Gibson, and he said, "Johnnie, I gotta go play for her."

Marshall, and Norman Skeets, both of them were halfway out the door of the club when Paulie laid it on me. They paused on the steps going up to the street, and they waited for me to talk him out of it and take him home to the sack, so they could go back to their respective broads and wife. So I launched into it and tried to calm him, but he was stuck on the idea.

"I'm goin' over to that thing they stuck her into, Johnnie, and I'm gonna charm her outta there. I'm gonna play so good she'll wake up and cry and come back to me, Johnnie." He meant it. The kook really meant it. He wanted to go find that uppity creepy cemetery where Ginny's blue-blood parents had stuck her body, and blow trumpet for the dead. It was all at once laughable and pitiable and creepy. Like a double- talker giving you the business with the frammis on the fortestan, and you standing there wondering what the h.e.l.l is happening.

I tried to get him to sit down, but he had the horn in his mitt, and he was yanking away from me, walking a h.e.l.luva lot straighter and truer than a drunk had any right to be walking. Right for the stairs and the outside.

Well. To make it short, we tried everything short of decking him, but he was set on it, so we came around to thinking maybe it would snap him out of it, that maybe he was acting nutty this way because he hadn't been allowed to attend the funeral and he felt guilty, though G.o.d knows Paulie hadn't had anything to do with the taxi that had run Ginny down in the street outside that Detroit club where Paulie and the rest of us had been booked.

So we figured it might straighten him out, like I say, and we got him to promise that if he blew for Ginny he'd come home and go to sleep.

So we piled into Marshall's Falcon and we drove out to the Island-and Long Island late at night is much creepier than Spanish Harlem-and finally found the cemetery. It was surrounded by a big iron fence, but Paulie made Marshall drive up close, and then we all got out, and with Marshall yelling that we'd dent his top, and Skeets telling him to shut up before we got pinched, we climbed on the car and over the fence.

Into the tombstones. Dark and foggy and Christ it was just like a horror flick, except there went Paulie, like some kind of a nut, all through the tall gra.s.s where the graves hadn't been dug yet, past the piles of ready dirt, around a gang of tombs, and down this line of stones like he knew exactly where he was going.

As it turned out, he didn't have no more idea of where the h.e.l.l he was going than we did. But we tagged along, and after we'd been circling and careening around there for ten or fifteen minutes, Marshall went hssst! and we dug him pointing to a big black shape with two dark angels hovering on one foot each, like gargoyles or something. We called Paulie back (wondering where the caretaker was, if they had one, and why he hadn't heard us b.u.mbling around in there). He came tottering over, and when he saw the legend on the bronze plate beside the door of that tomb, he sank down on his knees and we heard him making little talking noises to the ground, or to himself, maybe, but very sad and lonely and wanting.

It said:

VIRGINIA FORREST MADISON.

Beloved Daughter Born April 7, 1936 Died July 23, 1961 "She is always with us."

R.I.P.

And the other three of us just stood there quietly, remembering her, the way she had been before that stupid taxi had sent her through a florist's window. We remembered how she'd sit with one Scotch and two dozen cigarettes, a whole night, digging Paulie on the bandstand and just loving him with her eyes. We remembered it, and none of us felt it was wrong for Paulie to be here. I was glad I was with him. He was a good guy, and he didn't deserve all this pain.

Then Paulie got up, and he started to blow.

He put the horn to his mouth, and the little hard muscle-ridges of his upper lip stood out, and he started to blow something low and soft and new. It was a strange sound, all minor key and repet.i.tive, with a wistful, searching thread in it. I'd never heard it before, and I knew d.a.m.ned well no one else had ever heard it, either.

It was like a million black birds with white wings sailing into the night sky. Like a sheet of coolness being drawn down over a fire. Like Paulie hungry and crying and asking her, charming her, calling her, out of that crypt, out into the night to hear him playing.

Then I got scared.

We was in a graveyard, for G.o.d's sake, and Paulie was just as clear as anything asking a dead girl to come on out of her casket with the gold handles and love him, need him, hold him and talk look see him.

It was the wrong thing to do. I knew that, and I'm not the least bit superst.i.tious. There's just some things you know ain't proper. This was like that. A guy can be unhappy and want to get his girl back...but this was somethin' G.o.d might not like.

None of us could move. We was so scared I heard Skeets behind me and he was shivering so bad he had to put his hands in his pockets.

Then we heard the noise outta that crypt.

We heard her coming. I don't think anyone screamed, but we all knew Ginny was coming back; and the way she had looked after that taxi ripped into her, none of us thought we could take it. But Paulie just kept laying it on, so sweet and charming and compelling that we knew Ginny couldn't keep sleeping with all that goodness coming at her.

Later, we got Paulie back over the fence, and into the car. We took him home, and I had three straight ryes before I could make my eyes shut.

Paulie didn't play much after that, a gig now and then, but it doesn't matter. He has his ghosts.

There aren't no ghosts except the ones we buy with our guilty desires, you know that. But with Paulie, well, who knows which is better: a live emptiness or companionship with a dead memory that likes soundless music?

I don't know, I'm not that good, that great a musician.

Chicago, Illinois/1961

5 I'M LOOKING.

FOR KADAK.

[A glossary of Yiddish words and their meanings follows on pp. 92-96. Please refer to same if you are farblondjet.]

You'll pardon me but my name is Evsise and I'm standing here in the middle of sand, talking to a b.u.t.terfly, and if I sound like I'm talking to myself, again you'll pardon but what can I tell you? A grown person standing talking to a b.u.t.terfly. In sand.

So nu? What else can you expect? There are times you got to make adjustments, you got to let be a little. Just to get along. I'm not all that happy about this, if you want the specific truth. I've learned, G.o.d knows I've learned. I'm a Jew, and if there is a thing Jews have learned in over six thousand years, it's that you got to compromise if you want to make it to seven thousand. So, let be. I'll talk to this b.u.t.terfly, hey you b.u.t.terfly, and I'll pray for the best.

You don't understand. You got that look.

Listen: I read once in a book that they found a tribe of Jewish Indians, somewhere deep in the heart of South America. That was on the Earth. The Earth, shtumie! It's been in all the papers.

So. Jewish Indians. What a thing! And everyone wondered and yelled and made such a mishegoss that they had to send historians and sociologists and anthropologists and all manner of very learned types to establish if this was a true thing or maybe somebody was just lying.

And what they found was that maybe what had happened was that some galus from Spain, fleeing the Inquisition, got on board with Cortez and came to The New World, kayn-ahora, and when no one was looking, he ran away. So then he got farblondjet and wound up in some little place full of very suggestible native types, and being something of a tummeler he started teaching them about being Jewish-just to keep busy, you know what I mean? because Jews have never been missionaries, none of that "converting" c.r.a.p other, I shouldn't name names, religions need to keep going, unlike Judaism which does very cute thank you on its own--and by the time all the smart-alecks found the tribe, they were keeping kosher, and having brises when the sons were born, and observing the High Holy Days, and not doing any fishing on the shabbes, and it was a very nice thing altogether.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that there are Jews here on Zsouchmuhn. Zoochhhhhh-moooohn.

With a chhhhh, not a kuh. You got a no-accent like a Litvak.

It shouldn't even surprise that I'm a Jew and I'm blue and I have eleven arms thereby defying the Law of Bilateral Symmetry and I am squat and round and move very close to the ground by a series of caterpillar feet set around the rim of ball joints and sockets on either side of my tuchis which obeys the Law of Bilateral Symmetry and when I've wound the feet tight I have to jump off the ground so they can unwind and then I move forward again which makes my movement very peculiar I'm told by tourists without very much cla.s.s.

In the Universal Ephemeris I am referred to as a native of Theta 996:VI, Cl.u.s.ter Messier 3 in Canes Venatici. The VI is Zsouchmuhn. A baedeker from some publisher in the Crab came here a few turns ago and wrote a travel pamphlet on Zsouchmuhn; he kept calling me a Zsouchmoid; he should grow in the ground headfirst like a turnip. I am a Jew.

I don't know what a turnip is.

Now I'm raving. What it'll do to you, talking to a b.u.t.terfly. I have a mission, and it's making me crazy, giving me shpilkess, you could die from a mission like this. I'm looking for Kadak.

Hey you b.u.t.terfly! A blink, a flutter, a movement it wouldn't hurt, you should make an indication you can hear me, I shouldn't stand like a schlemiel telling you all this.

Nothing. You wouldn't give me a break.

Listen: if it wasn't for that oysvorf, that b.u.m, Snodle, I wouldn't be here. I would be with my family and my l.u.s.tnest concubines on Theta 996:111, what the Ephemeris calls Bromios, what we Jews call Kasrilevka. There is historical precedent for our naming Bromios another name, Kasrilevka. You'll read Sholom Aleichem, you'll understand. A planet for schlimazels. I don't want to discuss it. That's where they're moving us. Everyone went. A few crazy ones stayed, there are always a few. But mostly, everyone went: who would want to stay? They're moving Zsouchmuhn. G.o.d knows where. Every time you look around they're dragging a place off and putting it somewhere else. I don't want to go into that. Terrible people, they got no hearts in them.

So we were sitting in the yeshiva, the last ten of us, a proper minyan, getting ready to sit shivah for the whole planet, for the last days we would be here, when that oysvor! Snodle had a seizure and up and died. Oh, a look: a question, maybe? Why were we sitting shivah in the rabbinical college when everybody else was running like a thief to get off the planet before those gonifs from the Relocation Center came with their skyhooks, a glitch if ever I saw one, shady, disreputable, to give a yank and drag a place out of orbit and give a shove and jam in big meshiginah magnets to float around where a nice, cute world was, just to keep the Cl.u.s.ter running smooth, when they pull out a world everything shouldn't go b.u.mp together...?

Why, you ask me. So, I'll tell you why.

Because, Mr. I-Won't-Talk-Or-Even-Flap-My-Wings b.u.t.terfly, shivah is the holiest of the holies.

Because the Talmud says when you mourn the dead you get ten Jewish men who come to the home of the deceased, not eight or seven or four, but ten men, and you sit and you pray, and you hold services, and you light the yorzeit candles, and you recite the kaddish which as every intelligent life-form in the Cl.u.s.ter except maybe a nut b.u.t.terfly knows, is the prayer for the dead, in honor and praise of G.o.d and the deceased.

And why do we want to sit shivah for a world that was such a good home for us for so many turns? Because, and it strikes me foolishness to expect a farchachdah b.u.t.terfly to grasp what I'm trying to say here, because G.o.d has been good to us here, and we've property (which now is gone) and we've got families (which now are gone) and we've got our health (which, if I continue talking to you I'll be losing shortly) and G.o.d's name can be hallowed by word of mouth only in the presence of others-the community of worshippers-the congregation-the minyan of ten, and that's why.

You know, even for a b.u.t.terfly, you don't look Jewish.

So nu, now you understand a little maybe? Zsouchmuhn was the goldeneh medina for us, the golden country; it was good here, we were happy here, now we have to move to Kasrilevka, a world for schlimazels. Not even a Red Sea to be parted, it isn't slavery, it's just a world that's not enough, you know what I mean? So we wanted to pay last respects. It's not so crazy. And everyone went, and only the ten of us left to sit the seven turns till we went away and Zsouchmuhn was goniffed out of the sky to go G.o.d-knows-where. It would have been fine, except for that Snodle, that crazy.Who seized up and died on us.

So where would we get a tenth man for the minyan?

There were only nine Jews on the whole planet.

Then Snodle said, "There's always Kadak."

"Shut up, you're dead," Reb Jeshaia said, but it didn't do any good. Snodle kept suggesting Kadak.

You should understand, one of the drawbacks of my species, which maybe a b.u.t.terfly wouldn't know, is that when we die, and pa.s.s on, there's still talking. Nuhdzhing. Oh. You want to know how that can be. How a dead Jew can talk, through the veil, from the other side. What am I, a science authority, I should know how that works? I wouldn't lie on you: I don't know. Always it's been the same. One of us seizes up and dies, and the body squats there and doesn't decay the way the tourists' do when they get shikker in a blind pig bar in downtown Houmitz and stagger out in the gutter and get knocked over by a tumbrel on the way to the casinos.

But the voice starts up. Nuhdzhing!

It probably has something to do with the soul, but I wouldn't put a bet on that; all I can say is thank G.o.d we don't worship ancestors here on Zsouchmuhn, because we'd have such a sky full of nuhdzhing old farts telling us how to run our lives, it wouldn't be worth it to keep on this side of the veil. Bless the name of Abraham, after a while they shut up and go off somewhere.

Probably to nuhdz each other, they should rest in peace already and stop talking.

But Snodle wasn't going away. He died, and now he was demanding we not only sit shiv ah out of courtesy for having lived here so prosperously, but we should also, you shouldn't take it as an imposition, sit shivah for him! An oysvorf, that Snodle.

"There's always Kadak," he said. His voice came from a nowhere spot in the air about a foot above his body, which was dumped upside-down on a table in the yeshiva.

"Snodle, if you don't mind," said Shmuel with the one good antenna, "would you kindly shut your face and let us handle this?" Then seeing, I suppose for the first time, that Snodle was upside-down, he added, but softly he shouldn't speak ill of the dead, "I always said he talked through his tuchis."

"I'll turn him over," said Chaim with the defective unwind in his hop.