So, as far as anybody on this block knows—if they ever know anything at all—that body found in the basement was mine. Or, at any rate, that of the person who bore the name I once had. Now that mother’s died, there’s nobody left on this block who remembers that person with that name. Only the body: If they’ve heard about anything, that’s it.
Just what I expected: Once the body’s gone, so’s the person. All of the people who could possibly remember any of the time I spent on this block are in this silent room now. And I have to wonder just how much they remember. Actually, I hope not much. That woman whose name I never knew did a double-take when I walked to the bathroom. But I don’t think—I’m not sure—she made a connection. Mrs. Littington didn’t seem to notice at all. She used to do that a lot—until she told mother she heard me using curse words or saw me smoke around her kids.
Maybe she’s recalling those times. Or she isn’t. Pas important, as she would say. She might’ve been looking my way, perhaps not. But somehow I don’t think she’ll ever recall me, mother or anybody in this room as soon as she leaves. As far as I know, there’s no reason why she should, for she never seemed to share even what little taste her husband had for telling amusing stories about all the places to which they’d gone and from which they’d come, like the people they met and left. When she talked about any place besides this block, or any person who wasn’t here, her eyes never met those of anyone standing or sitting within her vicinity. She might’ve been looking at someone—a member of her family, someone who lived in Toulon before the war, the aunt in Paris, one of the many expatriate Europeans she encounters in verandas and parlors misplaced throughout the world—and describe what she saw and what they said. As soon as she finished her monologue, her gaze disappeared and she returned to this block.
She’ll be gone soon; so, I hope, will I. She and the woman whose name I never knew don’t seem to recognize each other at all—actually, I think Mrs. Littington doesn’t remember her, and she won’t make any attempt to bring Mrs. L back to this block. For that, the lady whose name I never knew has my respect, if not my love-- were I capable of giving any.
Neither of them, none of us will be here tomorrow, any more than the body that was pulled out of that basement. The one that was supposed to be mine. The one that was too old—though no one but the medical examiner could’ve known—to be mine.
The body was removed; the body was moved. That’s the sequence believed and reiterated by the cops, reporters and everyone else who matched that body to the person they believed to be in it. No one’s name is ever mentioned; they are only signatures at the ends of reports. Police officers, medical examiner, coroner, undertaker—I’d guess there was an undertaker, or someone in charge of whatever rite followed the autopsy and all the rest, because he was buried in a cemetery: the same one into which we’re going to place mother’s body. The man who ran the place wouldn’t have it any other way, it seems: A religious—Catholic or Jewish—ceremony for the body’s death is required for entrance into the gates surrounding the rows of marble slabs. As far as I know, they don’t have vaults, urns or anything else for people who’ve been cremated, or for that matter, a tombstone that doesn’t have a cross or Magden David on it.
Enbalmed, with a clean suit or dress. Frozen in a moment that never existed, for eternity or posterity or whatever they want to call it. A moment that never was: the eternal present.
If the moment never existed, nor did the people who lived in—I mean, bodies that passed through—it. They can—will—would—no more accompany the body they’ve sealed against light, air and water than the person who inhabited will return to that time, to this block.
No more than mother will. Or he, or I. As long as someone thinks I was inside that body at the moment of its death, or that it had the same name I once had, it might be safe to stay here, on this block Or maybe not. But I know that if anybody asks the question—actually, any question—I’d have to go. Now I know why mother and the nuns and teachers I had didn’t want me to ask “too many questions.”
Where was I at the moment I was supposed to have died? Where is the person, the name, that once belonged to the body?
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