Benediction

All at once, we stopped what we were doing and turned our faces to the sky. On the appointed day, at the appointed hour, we raised our faces to the sun and our malediction rained down on us.
I thought about you and shrugged, knowing that nothing could change what was happening. And I thought of the hearts, so close to my own, and I wished them a silent wish, and dreamt one final thought.
When I was four, I stood boldly beckoning to my sister, to hurry up and take the picture. I was self-conscious, even then. The lens pinned me to the grass and I squirmed under its scrutiny. I resisted the impulse to knock it out of her hands and surrendered to the moment. I just wished it all away.
The sorrow that permeates the essence of this place is manmade. It’s our final flaw and it’s our dearest resource, coming at a cost unimaginable.
We stood there, our faces pointed skyward, knowing that the end was just a new beginning. On the appointed day, at the appointed hour, our benediction rained down on us.

One Eye Open

Sometimes I see more than I should and I guess you could say that I've made quite a good living because of it. When I was a young man I used to say that I always had at least one eye open, which I thought was very humorous, at the time. Now I can safely say that I've seen enough for this lifetime and probably a few more.
The first time I saw the Walters sisters was in 1953. Well, I saw them onscreen, in Victor Desormeaux's "Conquest of Heaven", and I didn't realize at the time that they were twins. They were champion swimmers, both of them, and Victor used them in his 'Aqaurian dream sequence'. I'm still not sure whether Victor understood that phrase, entirely, but he knew what he wanted and he always got what he wanted.
The sisters tested for the scene without really knowing what they were getting into, I'm sure. They were small town girls living in a bad old city and they auditioned on a dare to each other. Victor told me later that he was smitten instantly but could never tell which one he was more in love with. The film did modestly and brought him some acclaim but Victor was to make only one more before the accident.
That's what this is about. I'm putting together a little book for the fiftieth anniversary of his death and when I tracked down Miriam I was saddened to discovered that Margaret had died. She had suffered complications while in hospital two years previously and Miriam, who had been devastated, had nearly followed a short while later.
They had disappeared after the trial, during which both women were found innocent of any involvement in Victor's death, but the trauma and the sorrow inflicted on them by the scrutiny of the press and society had driven them from their home and into obscurity. They shunned any publicity for years and begged for privacy and the world, myself included, obliged them.
I met Victor during the pre-production of what would be his last piece, called, predictably, Neptune's Revenge. His solicitous manufacturing of a career for Miriam and Margaret was anything but, as the whole town knew, but he had an innocence about him which allowed him to maintain the fantasy that what he was doing he was doing for the good of the sisters. He was a roaring and outrageous drunk by then and in the habit of throwing lavish parties that could last for days and, of course, the sisters were right in the middle of it all. In those days they were never far from Victor's side.
The nursing home that Miriam had lived in for the last two years was a frightening place, at least for me. I'm happy to say that I've managed to keep my health and if I'm lucky I'll go the way Victor did. Miriam, I was shocked to find, was a shadow of the woman she once was. Mostly deaf and lucid for only moments at a time, she didn't seem to understand where she was on the day that I arrived. She had forgotten that she had agreed to let me shoot her and claimed that she didn't remember me at all. I explained to her, again, what I was doing and she finally understood and even lit up when she heard Victor's name.
We chatted as I readied myself and I let her tell me stories in which I was actually a participant and a strange sadness came over me, as I began to take her picture, that came from reliving the events of my past from another's perspective. I shrugged it off and continued to shoot.
"I know who killed him." she said in an offhand way, after relating to me a story that predated Victor's murder by only a day or two.
"Really?" I answered, in a distracted way.
"Yes, I do. I was there, you see, hidden behind a curtain. I'd heard loud voices coming from the living room and I remember being frightened, but more from the thought of being discovered than anything else because Victor had forbidden my sister and I to be in the room while he had his meetings. I suppose I was a curious girl then, too much for my own good, as it turned out. I remember that a young man had come to see Victor because Victor had fired him as a result of some indiscretion. Something about a scandal which Victor felt might threaten his relations with the studio. Anyway, they fought, and this young man hit him quite hard and Victor fell over. Poor Victor hit his head on the coffee table as he fell and that was it for him."
I had stopped shooting but was still looking at her through the camera and that was when I saw it in her eyes. She knew exactly who I was. She hadn't forgotten me or anything about that night.
"But it was all so long ago now and my memory isn't what it used to be." she said dismissively. "You'll send me a copy won't you? When it's done? I do like to sit and think about the old days from time to time, although I'd prefer to just forget all that sordidness that Victor was so fond of and to remember him like he was in the beginning, so handsome and sure of himself. At my age there's no use in wallowing in past sorrows. Don't you agree?"
"Yes, I do." I said quietly.
As I packed up my equipment, an orderly wheeled her back down the hall to her room and she gave a slight wave in my direction before she disappeared. It wasn't until I was in the car that I felt I could relax. I don't like nursing homes and I was glad to be done with that place. Like I said, when I go I want to go like Victor.

Pure

Like everything good in life, their happiness was accidental. They wasted no effort trying to unravel mysteries that didn't concern them. They were wanton and reckless in their desire for each other, often lying in bed late into the afternoon and laughing long into the evening. When they grew hungry they would glide into the kitchen where Eufemia would hiss at them and chase them back to their nest. But soon she would knock and, laughing, he would open the door and accept whatever she had made for them. "I can never know what you see in her." she would say to him, on the rare occasions that she found him alone. His moods frightened her but she refused to be cowed. "This is what I am." he would answer in a tone that made it clear he would listen to no argument. Eufemia made the sign of the cross behind her back and, of course, he smiled to see it. "You don't understand, Mama, and I don't expect you to."
When he was in a good mood the rooms they shared were alive with miracles and turbulent outbursts of pure joy, their spirits rising like the soap bubbles he made with his pipe, to burst as they touched the ceiling and fell to shower them with hope and anticipation for the future. But these days he seldom had time for her and his black moods served as a warning for the torrents of violent energy he could no longer control.
Eufemia explained her worries to Ennio but the old man simply shrugged off her concerns. "You treat him too gently, my dear." he would say to which she would answer, "I know what he has done and I am afraid."
Ennio had heard it all so many times before and he said the same thing that he always said, which was, "God's will is immutable." to which she had no answer.
Years later, long after she had lost him, she often wondered if it was true, that God's will is immutable or was it that she had simply given up?
And then, in answer to her question, she would hear the voice of Ennio, long dead now, and he would say, "Chi s'aiuta, Dio l'aiuta." and she would pray for the soul of her son.

The Detritus of Lost Time

The surface of the water was calm and reflective, except where my paddle would rouse tiny maelstroms of activity which were reflected and repelled by the cattails and the duckweed. Mired in the sediment of a thousand years they listened to whispered words and focused the lament of loss, directing my mind to the inescapable present they adorned. It was impossible to be anywhere else when here. I mistook their presence for the ascension of some sort primordial death ritual, confused, as I was, by the reek of decay and the detritus of lost time, always searching for an exit from the labyrinth.
The growling and gurgling exhaust of passion cut across those first impressions I had of this place and filled me with a fear of the depths, a fear of the collapse of the structures around me and the unconscious pull of death. And then we pushed past them and their grip on me faded into the back of my mind and I was free from the desire to join with them in their vigilance, escaping the brutal morality they disguised so cleverly with flowers and greenery.
"Hey, would you please pay attention."
"What?"
"You're going to tip this bloody canoe if you don't lean back. Have you never seen a weed before?"
"Sorry, man, I was just trying to see the bottom."
"Yeah, and if we were going to the bottom I'd be impressed, but we're not. We're supposed to be there for six and if you don't get paddling we'll be late. Fix your eyes on the horizon and paddle."
And I did.
The slow pull of the current, the sideways dreams of the ancient forest that longed for word from the time of creation, the low-slung sky that held its breath, waiting for the moment my attention wavered, all of these standards of war, adapting to my presence, accepted my challenge and now hung back, as if communicating their assault and I wished I could read the signs. The language of fear, committed to one purpose, spoken aloud and condensed into an in audible sigh, misunderstood and confused, could only result in chaos and I stood on a precipice, my balance nothing more than a question shouted into the heavens above me.
"Paddle, you idiot." he yelled at me.