‘Beethoven, right?’
‘Ludwig von Beethoven, yes.’
At Catherine’s request, her own parish priest was also taking part in the ceremony. My head was a bowl full of sparkling wine. Catherine nodded and sat down in the pew in front of me. She was flanked by two daughters, dark as shadows. In the row across the aisle was Joanna, sitting between two Titans and a Titaness. The question of the day: who had most right to the deceased? Who got to claim his memory? Rustling, shuffling, the church was filling up. I saw Terry Mud, wearing his tie as though he’d used it to hang himself. I’d ask him later whether I could stay in his caravan for a while.
The rose window behind the altar was weeping holy tears of stained glass. Arrows pierced a martyr. The people sat down, the doors closed. Lindsay Temple began to speak. Resurrection, eternal life. He who today we are bearing to his grave. His life in a nutshell, a nod to his second, a nod to his first wife — strict protocol. The chuckling in the pews when his seawall was mentioned. I was dreaming with my eyes open. How once I had left my sleeping body and shot to the clouds like an arrow, higher, past the spheres surrounding Earth, like light past other heavenly bodies, a journey without return, until suddenly her voice sounded, my mother calling Lud-wig! With a start I fell back into my body, straight up in bed; startled, I shouted Yeah?, but nothing but silence and darkness surrounded me.
‘I would like to ask Ludwig Unger, a good friend of the family, to come up, he will play for us. .’
I play the funeral march faultlessly, I could play it in my sleep. Frozen butterflies extend their wings — melting into tears they rain down on the people. For Warren, for Marthe, I have nothing better to give.
More Bible readings, the words and formulas like lids too small to contain the bulk of absence. Catherine turns to me and smiles so that my heart breaks. The Lord’s Prayer, we stand up, I hold on to the pew in front of me.
Amid the sunken graves, the Celtic crosses, stones carved with ships, the people form a hedge, row after row, not everyone is able to see how the coffin disappears into the crypt. People pat my arms, pat me on the back, nicely played, nicely played. The bearers return from the darkness, Catherine and her daughters have remained. The cold bites my face, the wind coming off the land rustles between the graves and the bare, gleaming branches. Women sniff. Catherine takes an eternity, after this there will be nothing but dream and memory. The final touch, skin on wood. Shrunken, waxen, she returns from the underworld. Now Joanna and her children disappear into the grave. When they come back, a voice announces the further proceedings. The crowd disperses, later there will be whiskey and music, Catherine and the children would appreciate the pleasure of your company.
Before I could drink to the dead, before I could stamp my feet to the music and enter into loud conversation, there was something I had to do. I went back to the Whaler. In my room I opened the wardrobe and pulled down my suitcase. I took the plastic bag with the urn out of it. Then I left the room.
At the Readers’ Room I walked up onto the esplanade. The sea lay glistening calmly below. I walked up past the pier and the winter storage area for the beach cabins to the start of Kings Ness. Warren Feldman’s hill, the realm of King Knut. Sand and stones crunched beneath my leather soles. I didn’t follow the curve of the road but cut straight through, through the tall grass towards the rampant growth of thorn bushes in the distance, atop the cliff. A house had once stood there. It was there that I brought her, and I thought back on that other inurnment, that plastic box full of ashes from the kitchen of Aldair Macmillan’s mother, who had consented in surprise when I asked to shovel them from her oven. A flash of intuition, perhaps, to burden whatever remained of his conscience, to force him to remember.
A few yellow flowers amid the gorse, flashing like medals on a uniform. From far away, a voice was carried on the wind, someone bellowing Mol-ly! I walked close to the edge; there below you could see the remains of Warren’s seawall. After him the deluge. I needed to ask Catherine about precisely how he handled all that later, when things quieted down a bit.
Here it was, sticking out of the cliff here were the pipes that had carried water and gas to our house. Never had we been more at home than we were here. I took the urn out of the bag and set it in the grass. On the horizon was a pale blue streak of light. The sky was open, you were never sure just how far you could see. At this spot, later, I would have a bench installed. For Marthe Unger. For Warren Feldman. This place they loved. Something like that. I broke the seal, the lid was on tight. I unscrewed it and walked as close to the edge as I could. The beach was empty. As for man, his days are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourishes, for the wind passes over it and he is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.
I upturned the urn above the abyss. Part of it fell straight down, another part was caught by the wind — there you float, Mother, there you float.
I stepped back. With the urn in my hand I looked out across the water. So this was where we said goodbye, at the edge of the world, beside the glistening sea. Nothing had remained undone, there was nothing I desired. I was alone. And everything was beginning.
A BLACK CAT READING GROUP GUIDE BY BARBARA PUTNAM
Little Caesar
Tommy Wieringa
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
We hope that these discussion questions will enhance your reading group’s exploration of Tommy Wieringa’s
Little Caesar. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints and enrich your enjoyment of the book.
More reading group guides and additional information, including summaries, author tours and author sites for other fine Black Cat titles may be found on our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
This moving novel charts the destruction that can occur within the heart of families and the ensuing strength of the human spirit to overcome it — or to pursue another path, at least. Did you find this novel ultimately redemptive? Discuss your reactions.
Consider the theme of erosion that weaves through the narrative, constantly undermining the characters and causing them to reassess their lives. Discuss the many guises erosion takes: the sea and wind against the landscape; time, love, hope, and illness. Did you find other guises? Consider this quote: “When you look up from the beach you can see the web of roots clutching naked and panicky at the yellow sand” (p. 85). How does this imagery of roots compare to the people in the novel?
Ludwig Unger tells his life story to a woman he meets in a bar after returning to Alburgh, his childhood town, for a funeral. How is this narrative device effective? How did it deepen your understanding of Ludwig’s character? Did he evolve during the long hours of telling this story? Is Linny Wallace important to the story, or is she merely one woman in a particular time and place in Ludwig’s life?
Ludwig views his life story as a confession: “The reason for my confession. . lies in the desire to impose order” (p. 78). Why do you think he feels this way? Was he searching for absolution through its telling? What do you think “imposing order” suggests? Do you agree that he achieves order through his narration? Discuss how and why he views his life as unstructured, beyond his control, or out of order.