Outside the wind is howling through the streets, up the long boulevards and down narrow little rues, chasing litter and leaves along and pestering the lonely and sad autumn people who see nothing but the browning colors and hear nothing but the lack of summerly joy.
You don't know where you're headed, but your legs are carrying you along, navigating and turning and taking you past all the hurried people, everyone wanting to reach their destination before the sky breaks open and drenches the city in icy rain that'll wash the sins right off even the most hardened criminal.
As you come to the end of a rue, you realize where your body is headed, taking you along for the ride. You're in front of the cemetary of Montparnasse, a giant and quiet haven for the dead right here in the middle of the city.
The cemetary isn't a good place to be for a man of your somewhat frail psyche, and especially not on a murderous day like this. As you enter through the guarded gates you hear the silent moans of all those who've exasperated, now quietly knocking on the walls of their tombs, wondering how to get out of there and back into the ranks of those who breathe and walk on the earth.
For a while you walk among the tombstones, reading the names and little inscriptions that go with them, looking at the sometimes monumental stones, put up to celebrate the dead, but ending up celebrating death itself. The oldest stones are crumbling now, torn down by the rain and the wind and forced to once again become part of nature, like the people they were put up to commemorate have become years and years ago. It's a comforting thought, that one day all men and all monuments built will be eroded and consumed by nature in its steadfast rhythm.
As the first wave of rolling thunder breaks in the sky, darkness settles upon the city and in the bright flash of lightning that follows a marble angel screams out from the depths of despair and for a second shatters your ears and throws you plummeting through the ages of time and back to the creation itself, in all its glory and violence and horror.
With a shudder you hurry along, a little scared and bewildered, wanting to get out of this madness, this place for the dead and not for the living. On your way you pass the grave of Baudelaire, watching as three young people write him notes and leave them on his tombstone. You wonder: what do you write a dead man? The same has happened at Satre and de Beauvoir's grave, and this time you have to stop to read, just to know what the living tell the dead. One is a thank you-note from a girl to Simone de B., for the strength she's given her. That's nice, you think, but the dead do not listen to the living. Another is a joke for the very much dead Sartre to enjoy: "Dear Mr. Sartre, today nothing existed - 2:19 PM" it says, and you're even more puzzled that people will tell dead people jokes. It's very scary and you flee, again hearing the dead tumble restlessly in their graves, angry and saddened that they're gone and lost to the world.
As you scurry out you think about your own death and the inevitability of it all, fearing the day and at the same time cursing your own fear. Wasting life worrying about death is an immensely silly thing, but you can't help it even though you try as hard as you can.
Outside there's a procession of wedding cars going by, full of laughter and joy - that's a fine thing and a wonderful contrast, isn't it? you think and for a moment you forget about the thousands of dead watching you leave, knowing you'll be back some day.
But then, as if God himself is watching you and wanting you full of anguish, a funeral procession comes the other way and pulls into the graveyard slowly and marked by sorrow. Now the green marble angel has torn loose from it's monument to circle above you, reaching into your chest and squeezing your heart with a stony cold hand. With only wild fear on your mind you run down the rue and home, to barricade yourself inside, shutting out the thunderous gray rain of the dead.
2 comments:
I remember notes left for the dead from my short stint of mowing lawns in a churchyard some years ago. These were not quite as uplifting as those you encountered, let me tell you. Then again, these were written exclusively by living children for dead children, which I presume would not make for a very cheerful encounter regardless of content.
I prefer the jokes.
Yeah, that's a bleak picture. I can understand children writing to dead people, though, even if it's a sad thought. For an adult, you'd think that just thinking whatever you want to say to some dead person would be enough.
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