Far Far Away (2 page)

While our group strolls down Main Street, allow me to provide a word or two about Jeremy Johnson Johnson. When he was six or seven years of age, he told one of his schoolmates that he sometimes heard voices, “a strange whispering,” he did not know
whose, but if he pressed a finger
right here
—he pointed to his temple—he could hear the voices more clearly. “Jeremy hears voices!” the other boy sang out, and from there the news worked its way up and down the streets of the village.

Some in the town believed there was something askew in Jeremy’s mind, some believed he was too suggestible, and some believed his silver tooth fillings received transmissions from distant radio stations.

But I can tell you with certainty that Jeremy Johnson Johnson did hear unworldly voices.

How do I know this?

Because he heard mine.

So! Perhaps you had already guessed. I am the ancient ghost mentioned at the outset of this tale. The one whose intentions were good.

As a mortal man, I was known as Jacob Grimm. Yes, the very one! With my younger brother, Wilhelm, I lived once in Germany, in the village of Steinau in the Kingdom of Hesse. (The house is still there—I took the guided tour some years ago. Ha!) Both of us were linguists, but our collection of household stories—fairy tales, they are now commonly called—is what you doubtless know.

I have been dead since the Saturday afternoon in September 1863 when I saw the elm tree in the garden dissolve into nothing, and also the window before which I sat, and the wicker chair, and my niece Auguste, who had just inquired what I,
lieber Onkel
, would like for tea. I lay with a dead tongue and a dead right hand. The next day, I stopped breathing.

As a dead man, I had two surprises.

In death, I expected to be greeted by Wilhelm, who had died before me. All of our lives, my brother and I played and studied and worked as one. He was less sturdy than I, and often unwell. I forgave him that, of course. But his was a dreamer’s nature, and he was given to wistful song, longings to travel, matters of the heart.
The studies
, I would say.
The studies, the studies, the studies
. If he came reluctantly to the work, still he came. We were strapped to the same yoke. Our desks stood side to side. When Wilhelm married, I joined his household. So of course in death we would travel together—was I so foolish to believe that?—but here I was, and Wilhelm was not to be found.

That was my first surprise.

I set out to look for him. I asked the dead if they had seen my brother, but the dead who remain here are less numerous than you might imagine, two here, one there—that sort of thing. I speak English, French, High German, Low German, Serbian, Italian, Latin, Greek, Swedish, and Old Icelandic. In various languages I asked about my brother, the famous, the esteemed, the revered Wilhelm Grimm.

No, nej, nein, non
.

Several of them did not answer at all but merely stared at me with their dead eyes. To the dead, who was famous means nothing.

I hastened to the national library in Paris, where I had first learned the ecstasy of comparing words to words, where Wilhelm might wait for me, but he was not there. Around the tables hovered three dead scholars, whose only interest, to my surprise, was in keeping a watchful and suspicious eye on one another. To these men I announced that in July 1805, after a day at this very
table, I had written a letter to my brother to say that we must never be apart, that we must do our life’s work together as one.

The ghostly scholars did not speak. They kept their suspicious watch on one another.

I asked the scholar next to me if he knew my
Bruder
, Wilhelm Grimm.

Upon hearing this name, the three scholars turned their suspicious eyes on me.

Oh
, the first scholar said,
the famous Brothers Grimm, who followed the footsteps of von Arnim and Brentano, then claimed the trail as their own
.

Who collected the stories of peasants
, said the second scholar,
then diluted them for pedagogical nursery use
.

Who
, the third scholar said,
changed first the words and then the meanings and held still to the pretense of scholarship
.

I slipped away. When I looked back, the scholars had again turned their distrustful eyes upon one another.

I went to the kingdom of Hesse, where we were born, and then to Kassel, where we went to school. I walked to the Amtshaus in Steinau, because Wilhelm and I had been happy there. I went to wait, like a child playing hide-and-go-find, in the room with the green-and-white wallpaper. But Wilhelm did not come.

In the street, I met a woman, a specter who now inhabited the kitchen space of a grand home, where she had served as a maid. She had hollow eyes and a strange smile. I inquired of her, and she asked if my brother had been satisfied with his life.

Yes
, I said.
Of course
. My brother was a romantic man, and his work, his wife, and his children had met all of his romantic expectations. For all of his days, he had been at ease with his life.

Then maybe he has passed on
, said the maid. Her hollow eyes stared fully at me.
Very few do not pass on
.

It was she who explained to me that only the troubled remain here in the
Zwischenraum
, those who are agitated and uneasy, still looking for what this maid and others since have called the thing undone. “Vengeance, for example,” she told me and then, eyeing me slyly, “or some other unknown yet unmet desire. It is unique to every ghost, tailored to his own failures, disenchantments, or regrets.” The dead maid set her hollow eyes on me. “It all depends on you.”

These phrases
—the thing undone; unknown yet unmet desire
—have caused me lingering unrest, but allow me now to speak only of the second surprise: the
Zwischenraum
itself.

Examine, if you will, the vibrating space around you, what is between and around your hands and your hearths and your homes. This is where I, or another like me, might be: in the
Zwischenraum
—the space between.

Specters are not, as often imagined, agents of physical change. We cannot move table lamps or cause knockings in walls. There is about us a slight drafting of warm air—perhaps you have occasionally had one of us pass near you and, feeling a subtle current of warmth, wondered what it was. With effort, we can use this drafting to move a paper or, with greater concentration, perhaps even cause a door to swing closed. But more than that is beyond us.

Here is what we can and cannot do in the
Zwischenraum:

We see but cannot touch.

We smell but cannot taste.

We suffer but cannot weep.

We hasten but cannot fly.

We rest but cannot sleep.

We speak but are not heard.

So! And what of Jeremy Johnson Johnson, who heard me?

He was one of the Exceptionals. They come rarely, and in odd variations. I once came upon a woman in Romania who could see my
Heiligenschein
—my aura—well enough to distinguish my age and gender, and I have crossed paths with a number of mortals—younger people, primarily, but sometimes older mortals grieving the loss of a spouse or a child—who can sense our presence. And there have been several who have heard me speak, though none in my experience so clearly as Jeremy Johnson Johnson.

But wait!—I will offer you an example, for as Jeremy and the girls amble toward the Green Oven Bakery, an opportunity to illustrate his strange abilities will soon present itself.

They had just crossed to the shady side of Main Street when a passing pickup truck slowed and drew alongside them.

The truck was bright red, and its driver was Conk Crinklaw, a hearty boy whose father was the village mayor. In the back of the pickup, several boys sat on bales of hay. “Hey, Ginger,” one of these boys called out, “going to make the Moonbeam your summer go-to guy?”

Ginger Boultinghouse smiled pleasantly at the boys. “No, but if you mean Jeremy, he beats most of the local competition.”

This drew hoots from the boys, and one of them said, “But, then, Gingerkins, you might have to
vie
for Jeremy with Frank Gaily,” which generated more raucous laughter, and another boy sang out, “Catfight!”—which they then begin to chant in a husky singsong. “Cat-
fight
, cat-
fight
, cat-
fight
!”

Well, there was no Frank Gaily. He was properly called Frank
Bai
ley, and because he was a large yet delicate boy, he, like Jeremy, was the object of the bully’s sport.

Jeremy’s skin glazed with sweat. He touched his hand to his temple to receive anything I might say to him, but it was a poor time for this. One of the boys noticed.

“What’s up, Jeremy?” he called out. “Got a long-distance call coming in?” And another said, “Picking up a news flash from Jupiter?” And yet another called, “Or maybe something from Uranus?”

Well, that is how people can be. I should have restrained myself, but I could not. I gave Jeremy something to say.
Mögen Sie eine endlose Wüste auf dem Rücken eines furzenden Kamels durchqueren
.

“Mögen Sie eine endlose Wüste auf dem Rücken eines furzenden Kamels durchqueren
,
”
Jeremy repeated. He had an excellent aural memory. His pronunciation was perfect.

Ah!
Exzellent!
The boys in the back of the truck stared as cows might.

But Conk Crinklaw was not so easily stupefied. With a broad grin, he leaned from his open window. “Now, what have I told you about speaking Martian, Jeremy?” he said. “No possible good
can come of it.” The boys in the back laughed grandly at this, and Conk Crinklaw stretched his grin wider. “No girl’s going to want to do the
significant deed
with a guy who talks … you know,
Martian
.” Again he paused. “But maybe that don’t matter so much to you.”

The boys drove away amidst heavy, derisive laughter.

“Idiots,” Ginger muttered.

One of the girlfriends was called Maddy Saxon. She had a dark allure that seemed deeply seated within her and surfaced only in the thin pink scar that ran the length of her cheek. This gave her a daunting stare, which she directed now toward the receding red truck. “Conk’s tempting, though,” she said in a low voice, watching the truck turn the corner, “in an odious kind of way.”

But Ginger had turned her gaze to Jeremy. In the soft sunlight, her coppery hair shimmered prettily.

“So?” she said. “What did you say to shut those goons up?”

Jeremy shrugged and looked off. “I don’t know for sure. It just came to me.”

Ginger’s eyes shone. “C’mon,” she said. “Tell.”

“No, really,” Jeremy said, lightly rubbing his temple. “Sometimes when something like that comes out of my mouth—it’s not very often, but when it does—I just have to ask myself, ‘What in the world did I just say?’ ”

I knew that he meant this question for me. It was part of a pact we had made. If he spoke words I delivered him, I must divulge their meaning.

It was a low curse
, I said to him.
One that should remain unexplained
.

But ever so discreetly he shook his head.

So I told him.

A smile spread across Jeremy’s face. I will admit it. That he was pleased was pleasing to me.

“What?” Ginger said, her eyes full of mischief. “You know, don’t you?”

Jeremy did not deny it—he was a poor liar—but still he said nothing.

“C’mon, tell,” Ginger said, then softened her voice. “If you tell, I promise we won’t ask for any more of your homework the rest of the year.”

Jeremy laughed. “There’s only a week of school left.”

“Yeah,” Ginger said, her smile demure as you please. “That’s why I can do the deal.”

Well, it is true. Honesty is often disarming.

Jeremy looked at Ginger and said, “Promise you won’t tell Conk?”

“I do,” Ginger said, then glanced at the two girlfriends. “And they do, too, or else some of their juicy little secrets will go pin-balling around this little burg.”

Jeremy took a deep breath. “Okay … what I said was, ‘May you cross an endless desert on the back of a flatulent camel.’ ”

A merry laugh burst from Ginger. “Where do you get that stuff?” she asked. “I mean, how’d you ever learn a foreign language?”

Jeremy shrugged. “It’s beyond me.”

“Beyond you,” Ginger repeated, and this time when she stared at him, her gaze seemed not to pass through him so much as to burrow into him, as if to find clues to a puzzle she was intent on
solving. “So,” she said finally (and do not be mistaken, her voice was shaded with flirtation), “what’s life like there in Johnson-Johnsonville?”

Jeremy shrugged at this question, and Ginger smiled, as if to say,
Okay, okay—the puzzle can wait
, and soon the group of four was again moving along the street, through the shadows, and deeper into their tale.