Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12 (3 page)

"That's how things go for the family. The boy follows the dog around the house, and no one really talks about it. In fact, even though the ghost kid—the
naked
ghost kid—follows the guy when he walks the dog every morning and night,
no one
mentions the kid. At all. Not even his children's friends, who get really good at making up excuses not to come over after school. No one broaches the subject with the family. Sure, they probably talk about it among themselves—'So I says to Mabel, I says, what's it with that bluish naked kid following Earl Hugus around the block?, and she says blah, blah, blah'—"

I laughed again, hard. That voice he'd conjured up, a braying Chicago granny leaning out her first-floor window, was a scream. I laughed and he smiled, eyes sparkling—we had this terrific rapport going, and I couldn't believe that this same guy had put such a scare into me a few minutes earlier.

"My point is that no one asks, because no one wants to know.

"On the one hand, the guy is relieved that nobody asks, because he certainly doesn't have any answers. But it makes him nervous, too. What if it's some sort of group hallucination? You know, like the French Revolution. What if his family is being poisoned by something in their bread or water or Krispies, and they're starting to wig out?

"But, when push comes to shove, these are small worries—middle of the night worries, like worrying that a plane'll hit the house, or that you'll look out your bedroom window and see a vampire-chick floating there, ready to bust through. Or worrying about finding a corpse hanged in the attic.

"After a while the rest of the family lets it go—they learn to ignore the kid, ignore him completely—ignore him to the point that he isn't there for them at all anymore—like Auschwitz, right?"

"What?” I asked.

"Auschwitz, the Nazi death-camp in Poland? It was right near a little town, right? Like, almost right in it?"

"Yeah. OK. I get it.” And, strangely, I
did
get it: I'd seen a documentary on the History Channel that had gone on for a while about Auschwitz. It seems that the camp was almost smack dab in this little town called Oswiecim, and in the camp they had the big crematory ovens where they destroyed all the corpses. When the camp was liberated, the soldiers asked the townspeople,
How could you not know this was happening? Good Christ, the stink's incredible—it hangs all over your town right now
, and the villagers said,
The Germans told us it was a pork sausage factory, and we believed them.
This was at the end of the war, after months of living in the lingering, wispy smoke of burnt human carcasses. There was practically a famine behind Nazi lines then, everyone was rail-thin, and these folks watched the smoke billow out of those stacks, watched the trucks and trains bring in load after load of bone-skinny “workers"—and never a single pig—but persisted in their desperate belief that Auschwitz was a sausage plant and nothing more. A huge sausage plant that no pigs entered and no sausages left.

"My point is that all that's left of the ghost kid, for these kids, is a vague sense of relief when they're invited to stay over at a friend's house.

"But the guy, he can't leave it alone. He calls the Humane Society again and gets a hold of the attendant who'd given them Ski Boot. He presses the guy, who finally ‘fesses up: He doesn't have a clue where the dog came from—his story, about the old man, was total BS. Folks want to hear cutesy stories about devoted dogs, and all he wanted to do was
not
waste a perfectly good pure-bred in the doggy gas chamber. So he lied. What's the big deal? Had the dog eaten his kid's face or something?

"The guy says ‘no’ and apologizes, says there isn't a problem, and promises to send in a donation post-haste.

"But, like I said before, this guy is a sci-fi fan, a horror fan. He knows the ghost-story formula backwards and forwards: Ghosts stick around because they've got business left in this world. Help them settle up their tabs, and they'll fade into the ether.

"So, he starts talking to the kid when they're alone, talking to him in that sorta absent way you talk to a lugnut you're trying to loosen, or the way you mutter to the spices while cooking. That kinda talking that, in a pinch, you can pretend isn't
really
talking. He sits up late at night, lights off, watching cable with the boy, the dog sitting between them.

"'You lost?’ he asks, eyes glued to the tube, watching Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in
The Abyss
, swimming for their lives through the Deep Blue Nuthin'. ‘Not sure how to, you know, ‘Walk into the light, Carol Anne'? Was this your dog, once, and you've still got a last goodbye you need to say? Maybe you can't let go.’ Flicking the channels, stopping at infomercials, the
Iron Chef
, rap videos—stopping for anything that will inject a little noise into the room. ‘Are your folks still looking for you? Do you need someone to tell them that you've, um, bought your ticket? Are they dead, too, but you don't know where to find them? Are you waiting in a ditch somewhere, waiting for a proper burial? Or are you in a shallow grave, broken and . . . and
alone
?'

"The guy spends a lot of nights like that, flicking the channels, petting the dog and asking questions. Sometimes he goes for hours without even thinking about it, the questions pouring out of his mouth like rain out of a downspout. Other times the questions come as slow and hard as passing a kidney stone. A lot of the time he cries, thinking about the boy's corpse, cold and alone and forgotten, trapped in a junkyard fridge, dumped at the bottom of a ravine, stuffed into a hot, dry crawlspace.

"'Are you sad? Are you lost? Were you wronged? Do you have a message?'

"But the kid just sits there, eyes down, petting the dog. Until, one night, the kid finally turns to the guy and says: ‘Jesus, mister, shut up. Can't you just shut up and leave me alone.'

"The guy is flabbergasted.

"'When did you start hearing me?'

"'I always heard you. I don't want nuthin'. Shut up.'

"'But, what can I—how can I make you go away?’ The guy leans forward, not breathing, not even thinking. Just waiting."

He turned to me, held me in his gaze, “And the kid tells him: ‘You can't.’”

We sat there, staring at each other, and I waited for him to go on. But he didn't. He turned around, looking into the crowd, and picked up his gloves as if to go.

I almost reached out and grabbed him. Almost. “Wait,” I was nearly yelling. “What kinda ghost story is this?"

He glanced over his shoulder. “It's a true one, Pops."

"That's the end?"

"Yeah, that's it. Stick a fork in me, I'm done."

"You can't do that! Stories don't end that way—the ghost has
got
to want something, and then the guy—"

"Listen,” he said, sitting back down, “I already told you: this isn't a fake ghost story, this isn't a campfire ghost story. This is a
true
ghost story."

I sputtered, “But—"

"Danny Boy, don't ‘but’ me. Those ghost stories you always hear, those are a load of crap. In real life, it isn't like folks wander the earth on some big ole quest. I mean,
come on
."

"But, then why'd the kid come back? What'd he
want?
"

"He didn't want nuthin',” the kid snapped, “I mean, what do you want right now? Why are you talking to me? Why'd the beagle bay and weep over being alone? We're just two guys sitting at a bar, taking advantage of the Happy Hour Specials. You don't know me from Adam, I don't know you from Cain. Just two guys, but we're talking, right? We're doing what people do, we're passing the time together, we're pushing away the dark and cold, the Alone, just like those old Vikings in their longhouses, with the face-freezing blast knocking at the walls, with monsters skulking in under the clouds to tear them apart. That's what people do: we clump together to chase away the cold of being alone."

He was so
angry
—it was scary. And, as I looked at him, something in his face changed,
hardened
, and I knew that
he
knew that I didn't believe him, didn't believe him about any of it.

"Touch me,” he said.

"What?"

"
Touch me.
"

"Listen, fella, I don't know who you are—"

"Jesus! I'm not asking you to grab my johnson, Dan! Just here, just touch my hand."

"Son, I don't—"

"Touch it, touch my hand, you old puss. It's my hand, it's nothing. Touch it."

"Fine,” I reached out and grabbed him, awkwardly, around the right hand, “There. Happy?” And my God, it was
cold.

He didn't answer, just looked at me, watching.

"So what? So your hand's cold. My kid brother, he had hands and feet as cold as blocks of ice, even in the summer. Just bad circulation."

"Yeah, OK. Touch me here then, on my neck. Hunh, feel that?"

I didn't want to do it, but I did. My God, it was like clay in November. It was like touching a corpse out of one of those lockers they have in morgues.

"You ever known someone who's cold like that, cold as ice, where their neck meets their throat? Was your kid brother cold there? Is he now? Hmmm? And, while you're at it, why not take my pulse, Dan? What am I at? How many beats a minute? Pretty calm, isn't it?"

I pulled my hand away slowly.

"You're no one—"

"I'm not no one."

"—You're no one Janey knew."

"You're right on that, Danny Boy; I've not yet met the gal. But why not ask me about Janey anyway? Or about your wife, Sue, or about Butter or about your bro', dearly departed though he is?” He smiled. It was a sick smile, and it made my gut drop to see it.

"You know them? Are they—"

His smile shifted to a smirk, “Don't bother, Dan. I was just screwing with you; it doesn't work that way."

"What . . .” I licked my lips. “Whadayou? Um, whadaya
want
?"

"I don't want nuthin', Dan. I just wanna talk."

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Jack Cheng

My first thought upon hearing of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq and destruction of the library in Baghdad was disbelief, followed by despair and depression. This reaction was not unusual among people I know. I have a doctorate in Art History, focusing on Mesopotamian art, and my colleagues in the archaeological, museum and academic worlds were and are stunned, frustrated and furious.

I knew immediately that the wider public would also be outraged to some degree, but I wondered how the enormity of the loss could be conveyed to the general public, especially Americans. I listened for comparisons in the news. The loss of the Liberty Bell and U.S. Constitution was suggested as comparable. Not quite. The destruction of the Mall in Washington, D.C., combined with the torching of the Library of Congress came closer. But still, no. Not so much because we are comparing two hundred and fifty year old documents to five thousand year old documents and objects, but because the objects in Baghdad were created before (in Walter Benjamin's phrase) the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

The Constitution is an idea, and though the loss of the original would be tragic, the idea would still exist in thousands of high school textbooks and on the Internet. Nearly all the books in the Library of Congress could be replaced (amazing enough, really). The works of art in Baghdad were unique and, if destroyed or held in a private collection, are essentially lost to the world forever.

The best metaphor I could come up with was based on a model of biological extinction. Something like: “What if all the best dinosaur bones in the world were in one museum and then destroyed?” But this is just as inadequate. Metaphor is unnecessary in this situation. This is the singular event we are faced with: the Iraqi National Museum was looted.

One reason these metaphors are inadequate is because they do not reveal the extent to which Mesopotamia exists in our global, cultural DNA. That the U.S. Constitution exists at all owes a great deal to the rule of law first publicly instituted by Hammurabi of Babylon four thousand years ago. Jared Diamond, in
Guns, Germs, and Steel,
argues that the agricultural systems and written words of Mesopotamia helped configure the world today into a dominant Europe and America. My great grandparents living in Imperial China, binding their daughters’ feet, and oblivious to western influence—yet they measured their lives in hours and minutes: a legacy of the Mesopotamian number system.

We are Mesopotamians, all of us.

The first written language on earth was Sumerian and everyone I know who has studied the language eventually comes to the same conclusion: the Sumerians were aliens. Tenured professors at Ivy League universities make that claim jokingly, but it is a telling joke. Sumerian is an odd language, not at all related to the languages that followed: Akkadian and Aramaic and Egyptian and Sanskrit and Chinese. Sumerian arrived as an idea,
sui generis
, and scholars are still trying to figure out the details of its grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Alien or not, the idea of written language spread and thus the Sumerians have as much of a claim to inventing the Internet as Al Gore or Tim Berners-Lee.

All of us, Mesopotamians.

As of this writing (May 2003), a clear accounting of what was looted has not been made but the list of objects known missing from the museum is becoming a familiar litany: stone head and alabaster vase from Warka, gold helmet of a ruler, cuneiform tablets by the thousands, including the law tablets of Hammurabi, and my favorites, the bull-lyres.

A year ago, I stood in front of a crowd of a few hundred at Harvard's Sackler Museum to discuss the earliest stringed instruments in the history of the world. Boston area residents may be familiar with what those instruments look like from the mural on the side of the Middle East music club in Cambridge—that big gold bull-headed thing? That's a bull-lyre from the Sumerian city of Ur, from around 2400 BC—a little before the biblical Abraham lived there.

Through the amazing work of the archaeologist Leonard Woolley and his Iraqi excavators, eight of these instruments were recovered from a cemetery and five could be reconstructed. Eight objects are a small sample with which to make an argument about anything, but the inlaid designs and suggestive animal heads suggest that music was an integral part of Sumerian culture. Depictions of these instruments on stone plaques show these instruments played at banquets. The excavated locations of the artifacts revealed that the instruments were either buried with their players, or more evocatively, musicians participated in a ritual suicide and even played a requiem for their community as they died.