Visions of Gerard (5 page)

It's a bright cold morning in December 1925, just before Christmas, Gerard is setting out to school—Aunt Marie has him by the hand, she's visiting us for a week and she wants to take a morning constitutional, and take deep breaths and show Gerard how to do likewise, for his health—Aunt Marie is my father's favorite sister (and my favorite aunt), a talkative openhearted, teary bleary lovely with red lipstick always and gushy kisses and a black ribbon pendant from her specs—While my father has been abed with rheumatism she's helped somewhat with the housework—Crippled, on crutches, a modiste—Never married but many boyfriends helped her—The spittin image of Emil and the lover of Gerard's little soul as no one else, unless it be the cold eyed but warm hearted Aunt Anna from up in Maine—“Ti Gerard, for your health always do this, take big clacks of air in your lungs, hold it a long time, look” pounding her furpieced breast, “see?”

—“
Oui
, Matante Marie—”

“Do you love your Matante?”

“My Matante Marie I love her so big!” he cries affectionately as they hug and limp around the corner, to the school, where the kids are, in the yard, and the nuns, who now stare curiously at Gerard's distinguished aunt—Aunt Marie take her leave and drops in the church for a quick prayer—It's the Christmas season and everyone feels devout.

The kids bumble into their seats in the classroom.

“This morning,” says the nun up front, “we're going to study the next chapter of the catechism—” and the kids turn the pages and stare at the illustrations done by old French engravers like Boucher and others always done with the same lamby gray strangeness, the curlicue of it, the reeds of Moses' bed-basket I remember the careful way they were drawn and divided and the astonished faces of women by the riverbank—It's Gerard's turn to read after Picou'll be done—He dozes in his seat from a bad night's rest during which his breathing was difficult, he doesnt know it but a new and serious attack on his heart is forming—Suddenly Gerard is asleep, head on arms, but because of the angle of the boy's back in front of him the nun doesnt see.

Gerard dreams that he is sitting in a yard, on some house steps with me, his little brother, in the dream he's thinking sorrowfully: “Since the beginning of time I've been charged to take care of this little brother, my Ti Jean, my poor Ti Jean who cries he's afraid—” and he is about to stroke me on the head, as I sit there drawing a stick around in the sand, when suddenly he gets up and goes to another part of the yard, nearby, trees and bushes and something strange and gray and suddenly the ground ends and there's just air and supported there at the earth's gray edge of immateriality, is a great White Virgin Mary with a flowing robe ballooning partly in the wind and partly tucked in at the edges and held aloft by swarms, countless swarms of grave bluebirds with white downy bellies and necks—On her breast, a crucifix of gold, in her hand a rosary of gold, on her head a star of gold—Beauteous beyond bounds and belief, like snow, she speaks to Gerard:

“Well my goodness Ti Gerard, we've been looking for you all morning—where were you?”

He turns to explain that he was with . . . that he was on . . . . . that he was . . . . that . . .—He cant remember what it is that it was, he cant remember why he forgot where he was, or why the time, the morning-time, was shortened, or lengthened—The Virgin Mary reads it in his perplexed eyes. “Look,” pointing to the red sun, “it's still early, I wont be mad at you, you were only gone less than a morning—Come on—”

“Where?”

“Well, dont you remember? We were going—come on—”

“How'm I gonna follow you?”

“Well your wagon is there” and Oh yes, he snaps his finger and looks to remember and there it is, the snow-white cart drawn by two lambs, and as he sits in it two white pigeons settle on each of his shoulders; as prearranged, he bliss-remembers all of it now, and they start, tho one perplexing frown shows in his thoughts where he's still trying to remember what he was and what he was doing before, or during, his absence, so brief—And as the little wagon of snow ascends to Heaven, Heaven itself becomes vague and in his arm with head bent Gerard is contemplating the perfect ecstasy when his arm is rudely jolted by Sister Marie and he wakes to find himself in a classroom with the sad window-opening pole leaning in the corner and the erasers on the ledges of the blackboards and the surly marks of woe smudged thereon and the Sister's eyes astonished down on his:

“Well what are you doing Gerard! you're sleeping!”

“Well I was in Heaven.”

“What?”

“Yes Sister Marie, I've arrived in Heaven!”

He jumps up and looks at her straight to tell her the news.

“It's your turn to read the catechism!”

“Where?”

“There—the chapter—at the end—”

Automatically he reads the words to please her; while pausing, he looks around at the children; Lo! all the beings involved! And look at the strange sad desks, the wood of them, and the carved marks on them, initials, and the little boy Ouellette (suddenly re-remembered) as usual with the same tranquil unconcern (outwardly) whistling soundlessly into his eraser, and the sun streaming in the high windows showing motes of room-dust—The whole pitiful world is still there! and nobody knows it! the different appearances of the same emptiness everywhere! the ethereal flower of the world!

“My sister, I saw the Virgin Mary.”

The nun is stunned: “Where?”

“There—in a dream, when I slept.”

She does the sign of the cross.

“Aw Gerard, you gave me a start!”

“She told me come on—and there was a pretty little white wagon with two little lambs to pull it and we started out and we were going to Heaven.”

“
Mon Seigneur
!”

“A little white wagon!” echo several children with excitement.

“Yes—and two white pigeons on my shoulder—doves—and she asked me ‘Where were you Gerard, we've been waiting for you all morning”‘—

Sister Marie's mouth is open—“Did you see all this in a dream?—? here now?—in the room.”

“Yes my good sister—dont be afraid my good sister, we're all in Heaven—but we dont know it!”—“Oh,” he laughs, “
we dont know it
!”

“For the love of God!”

“God fixed all this a long time ago.”

The bell is ringing announcing the end of the hour, some of the children are already poised to scamper on a word, Sister Marie is so stunned everyone is motionless—Gerard sits again and suddenly over him falls the tight overpowering drowsiness around his heart, as before, and his legs ache and a fever breaks on his brow—He remains in his seat in a trance, hand to brow, looking up minutes later to an empty room save for Soeur Marie and the elder Soeur Caroline who has been summoned—They are staring at him with tenderest respect.

“Will you repeat what you told me to Sister Caroline?”

“Yes—but I dont feel good.”

“What's the matter, Gerard?”

“I'm starting to be sick again I guess.”

“We'll have to send him home—”

“They'll put him to bed like they did last year, like before—He hasnt got much strength, the little one.”

“He saw Heaven.”

“Ah”—shrugging, Sister Caroline—“that”—nodding her head—

Slowly, at 9:30 o'clock that morning, my mother who's in the yard with clothespins in her mouth sees him coming down the empty schooltime street, alone, with that lassitude and dragfoot that makes a chill in her heart—

“
Gerard is sick
—”

For the last time coming home from school.

When Christmas Eve comes a few days later he's in bed, in the side room downstairs—His legs swell up, his breathing is difficult and painful—The house is chilled. Aunt Louise sits at the kitchen table shaking her head—“
La peine, la peine
, pain, pain, always pain for the Duluozes—I knew it when he was born—his father, his aunt, all his uncles, all invalids—all in pain—Suffering and pain—I tell you, Emil, we havent been blessed by Chance.”

The old man sighs and plops the table with his open hand. “That goes without saying.”

Tears bubbling from her eyes, Aunt Louise, shifting one hand quickly to catch a falling crutch, “Look, it's Christmas already, he's got his tree, his toys are all bought and he's lying there on his back like a corpse—it's not
fair
to hurt little children like that that arent old enough to know—Ah Emil, Emil, Emil, what's going to happen, what's going to happen to
all
of us!”

And her crying and sobbing gets me crying and sobbing and soon Uncle Mike comes in, with wife and the boys, partly for the holidays, partly to see little Gerard and offer him some toys, and he too, Mike, cries, a great huge tormented tearful man with bald head and blue eyes, asthmatic thunderous efforts in his throat as he draws each breath to expostulate long woes: “My poor Emil, my poor little brother Emil, you have so much trouble!” followed by crashing coughs and in the kitchen the other aunt is saying to my mother:

“I told you to take care of him, that child—he was never strong, you know—you've always got to send him warmly dressed” and et cetera as tho my mother had somehow been to blame so she cries too and in the sickroom Gerard, waking up and hearing them, realizes with compassion heavy in his heart that it is only an ethereal sorrow and too will fade when heaven reveals her white.

“
Mon Seigneur
,” he thinks, “bless them all”—

He pictures them all entering the belly of the lamb—Even as he stares at the wood of the windowframe and the plaster of the ceiling with its little cobwebs moving to the heat.

Hearken, amigos, to the olden message: it's neither what you think it is, nor what you think it isnt, but an elder matter, uncompounded and clear—Pigs may rut in field, come running to the Soo-Call, full of sow-y glee; people may count themselves higher than pigs, and walk proudly down country roads; geniuses may look out of windows and count themselves higher than louts; tics in the pine needles may be inferior to the swan; but whether any of these and the stone know it, it's still the same truth: none of it is even there, it's a mind movie,
believe
this if you will and you'll be saved in the solvent solution of salvation and Gerard knew it well in his dying bed in his way, in his way—And who handed us down the knowledge here of the Diamond Light? Messengers unnumberable from the Ethereal Awakened Diamond Light. And why?—because is, is—and was, was—and will be, will be—t'will!

Christmas Eve of 1925 Ti Nin and I gayly rushed out with our sleds to a new snow layer in Beaulieu street, forgetting our brother in his sack, tho it was he sent us out with injunctions to play good and slide far—

“Look at the pretty snow outside, go play!” he cried like a kindly mother, and we bundled up and went out—

I still remember the quality of that sky, that very evening, tho I was only 3 years old—

Over the roofs, which held their white and would hold them all night now that the sun was casting himself cold and wan-pink over the final birches of griefstricken westward Dracut—Over the roofs was that blue, magic Lowell blue, that keen winter northern knifeblade blue of winter dusks so unforgettable and so cold and dry, like dry ice, flint, sparks, like powdery snow that ss'ses at under doorsills—Perfect for the silhouetting of birds heading darkward down their appointed lane, hushed—Perfect for the silhouetting presentations of church steeples and of rooftops and of the whole Lowell general, and always yon poor smoke putting from the human chimneys like prayer—The whole town aglow with the final russet adventures of the day staining windowpanes and sending pirates to the east and bringing other sabers of purple and of saffron scarlot harlot rage across the gashes and might ironworks of incomprehensible moveless cloud wars frowned and befronting one another on horizon Shrewsburies—Up there where instead of thickening, plots thinned and leaked and warrior groups pulled wan expiring acts on the monstrous rugs of sky areas with names in purple, and dull boom cannons, and maw-mouth awwp up-clouds far far away where the children say “There's an old man sleeping in the north with a big white mouth that's open and a round nose”—These mighty skies bending over Lowell and over Gerard as he lay knowing in his deathbed, rosaries in his hands, pans on papers by the bed, pillows under his feet—The sides and portion wedges of which sky he can barely see thru the window shade and frame, outside is December's big parley with night and it's Christmas Eve and his heart breaks to realize that it will be his last Christmas on our innocent mistaken earth—“Ah yes—if I could tell them what I knew—but when I start it stops coming, it's gone, it's not to talk about—but now I
know
it—just like my dream—poor people with their houses and their chimnies and their Christmases and their children—listen to them yelling in the street, listen to their sleds—they run, they throw themselves on the snow, the little sled takes them a little ways and then that's all—that's all—And me, big nut, I cant explain them what they're dying to know—It's because God doesnt wanta—”

God made us for His glory, not our own.

Nin and I have our sleds and mufflers and we have wrangled dramas with the other kids over the little dispositions of activity among snowbanks and slide-lanes, it all goes on endlessly this world in its big and little facets with no change in it.

In the kitchen, before Pa gets home and in a quiet interim when Gerard's asleep and we're still sliding, Ma takes out her missal and unfolds a paper from it on which are written the words of the prayer to St. Martha:—

“St. Martha, I resort to thy protection and aid and as proof of my affection and faith I offer this light which I shall burn every Tuesday.”