ESSAYS
Set Me to Sea; Light Me on Fire With Flaming ArrowsIOWA CITY, IOWA 26 March 2007 |
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We pass beneath cherry trees in full bloom.
It seems too soon, but their pink blossoms are bright and wide in the warm March air.
This early spring is disconcerting. It’s as if there’s been no winter this year. I’m less grateful for the warmth, for the new flowers, the new green.
I’m walking through the Cimetière du Montparnasse with my father.
It’s a Saturday afternoon. People have come to tend to the graves.
We pass a man filling a watering can from a green spigot.
There’s a woman with a deeply lined face and silvery hair kneeling before a grave. She’s wearing gardening gloves and plucking dead flower petals from a small planter.
My dad and I walk along the allées pointing out headstones to one another.
This one is garish.
This one holds Baudelaire.
Sartre and de Beauvoir are buried right through there.
Ionesco.
Here’s a low black marble slab atop of which is a sculpted sleeping cat.
No name. No dates.
What are we to think about this? My dad asks. Big grave for a cat, he jokes.
But the grave makes me sad. I imagine a lonely woman. Her only friend a pet.
Why must it be a woman? Why can’t I imagine a lonely man?
I should imagine myself.
There’s a woman bent at the waist. She’s arranging flowers on what I assume is her former husband’s grave.
She moves the flowerpots with a worried expression. She squints at the flowers and speaks absently to a tired-looking man in a black suit who holds a small open bag of soil.
This must be her son.
I imagine they come together every Saturday to take care of the flowers.
To wipe away the rainwater.
The man is a bit older than I am. His hair is pushed back, covering a bald spot. He watches his mother and keeps the bag of soil away from his suit.
As we pass I catch her eye.
I say hello but she ignores me. It’s as if she doesn’t see me at all.
We pass a man in a brown corduroy suit, his jacket folded and lying across his knees. His eyes are closed, his head tilted towards the sun.
Throughout the cemetery it’s like this. People enjoy the day. Tourists look for dead celebrities.
Families replace dead flowers with fresh.
A woman has set her shopping bags at her feet. They’re full of groceries. I can see bright red tomatoes.
Lemons.
She’s wearing a knee-length skirt, leaning stiffly towards a rose-marble headstone brushing dirt from the grave.
I wouldn’t like to be buried, I tell my father.
No, I’m not sure that I would either, he says.
I like the idea of a Viking funeral, I tell him laughing.
Set me to sea; light me on fire with flaming arrows.
Or an Eskimo funeral, he suggests.
An Eskimo funeral?
They lay you on a piece of ice and send you out into the ocean.
All around us are high modern buildings. The hideous Tour Montparnasse rises insolently to the west.
Along the rue de la Gaité artless concrete buildings bear down upon the peaceful cemetery.
We pass a grave with two tall, interwoven, bronze hands.
A bit much don’t you think? My dad asks.
They’re familiar to me, these hands. And then I remember.
When I first moved to Paris I was in love with a girl. On a very cold day, my first winter in the city, the two of us walked through this cemetery. We took photographs of these hands.
We thought they were very beautiful.
Then, when we were together we thought that nearly everything was very beautiful.
They seem less so now.
A bit much, I say.
The thing about not being buried is that no one can come and visit you, my dad says.
I’d like to be cremated, I say. Scatter me somewhere. You can build one of those memorial benches. Somewhere you can come and sit.
Yes, he says. That would be good. I’d like that.
We stop in front of a grave that’s crowded with offerings. There’s a piece of cake. Toys. Flowers. A small Buddha. A couple’s been buried together. When they died, they were both younger than I am.
When we turn away I feel something hit my shoulder.
A bird’s shit on me.
My dad and I laugh. He gives me his cloth handkerchief.
He’s the only person in the world I know who carries a handkerchief.
We walk to a water spigot where people fill their watering cans. I dampen the cloth and try to clean my shirt. It’s hard for me to see.
My dad takes the collar of my shirt between his fingers and dabs at the stain.
He does this over and over until it is nearly gone.
When we leave the cemetery there is only a faint yellow halo on my collar, barely discernible in the fading afternoon light.
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