My Last Lament by James William Brown

Author:James William Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-20T09:49:12+00:00

CASSETTE 4 Side 1

Yes, I know, what a place for the cassette to finish. And that was the last of those you left me, my little American scholar. I suppose you thought that was all I’d need for my laments. Of course I’m taking advantage of you a bit, telling so much more than you wanted. But laments are surrounded by life, even though provoked by death. They’re not separate from it, because on their own, laments don’t make much sense. They’ve grown out of my life as much as out of the lives of the dead.

No one here in the village carries cassettes, certainly not old Stamatis in his one-room shop, though he’s got all sorts of batteries and chips for gadgets like the one that you worked with your thumbs. He had to order more cassettes for me and apparently they’re hard to find because no one uses them much anymore. Old technology, he says, but who’s he to talk, still scooping salted cod out of the barrel for his customers, as he has all these decades? Anyway, they’ve just arrived finally—the cassettes, that is, not the cod—but while I was waiting for them, the forty days passed after Zephyra’s wake and funeral so yesterday her memorial service took place.

It started in the church with young Father Yerasimos up front in his brocade robes waving censers around until the clouds of incense sent some of us into spasms of sneezing. Through multiple prayers we sneezed, cupping the flames of our candles that represented our souls. When Zephyra’s own soul had received as much repose as our prayers could manage, we moved forward to put our candles in the candelabra in front of the crucifix. But as we stepped up, I sneezed once more, so hard this time that I blew out my little flame and another one. I got the giggles thinking, oh, well, out goes the soul on the breeze of a sneeze. Father Yerasimos gave me such a look.

As we walked behind him to the cemetery where he was to bless Zephyra’s grave, I mentioned to the other women that I wanted to visit my father’s grave there too. Funny you should mention it, they said, and they told me that during her nights of goat stealing as a child, Zephyra had sometimes seen my father in the shadows alongside the houses, moving from one to another. Oh, he would have been stealing those squash, I said. They looked at each other and smiled. What Zephyra had seen in the time of the Germans, others had known long before, they said. It had been going on for years. One of the women snickered and then the others.

My father was a bee, they told me, gathering nectar. And not from only one flower. They drew their black scarves over their mouths. It wouldn’t have done to look amused as we walked to the cemetery. Other villagers stood by the side of the road or on balconies above to watch us pass.

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