"Should I?"
"Yes; the most important thing you could've done would have been to stay there and feel yourself die! Who was it that pushed you?"
"I told you – a midget who called me his son."
"Don't you want to know if it was your father? Don't you want to know why it happened? That's the whole purpose of studying. All these magical things that have been happening to you lately all come from that last life."
My heart was beating like a hammer on an anvil. BAM BAM BAM. "Do you know why I died there?"
He pursed his lips. "I don't know. I got a feeling, but there's all kinds of funny stuff coming out of you. Like someone's turning the channels on you fast and I can't see any one picture yet."
"How will I get back there to find out about it?"
"After we go to the mountains I'm going to have you go through a couple of rebirthings. You know what they are?"
"You hypnotize me and I go back through past lives?"
"Something like that. First you gotta learn some other things. We gotta fix the TV set to stay on one channel before we can watch the Super Bowl, eh?"
That night Maris and I made love – slowly and deeply. After it was over, she said it'd felt like two clouds touching and then moving together as one great whiteness. Later, we figured out that was probably the night she became pregnant. Neither of us was surprised.
Afterward, we lay on our backs, holding hands. She hadn't asked anything about what had happened with Venasque because she knew I'd tell her as soon as I'd sorted the meeting out in my mind.
"Walker, we're good for each other, aren't we?"
"Of course! Why are you asking?"
She squeezed my hand hard, then let it go. "Because I'm letting myself fall more and more for you, and part of me gets scared doing that.
"Did I ever tell you about the fat man I saw in Vienna? We were supposed to meet one day, but I had some time to kill before, so I went into an AIDA for coffee. The biggest fat man I ever saw walked in right behind me and sat down nearby. He was so huge that it looked like he was sitting on a pin and not a chair. You know what he ordered? I counted. Three pieces of cake, two scoops of ice cream, and when he was finished, two coffees with Schlag. He ate the whole . . . blop in about five minutes. His hand and mouth never stopped moving: like a big steam shovel. At the end, when he went to pay, he reached for his wallet and took out the only bill in there – a hundred-schilling note. His check was for ninety-eight. I heard the waitress tell him. He gave the hundred and told her to keep the change.
"The first thing I thought was, how sad. This big fat man, who obviously didn't have much else in the world but cake to look forward to, used up the very last money he had to buy some. Then I thought some more about it and realized how wrong and condescending to think that way."
"How so?" I took her hand again.
"Because he probably knew sooner or later those cakes he loved so much would kill him with a heart attack or something as bad. But so what? That's what he loved best, so damn it all, he's going to appreciate it to the last cent or breath he had. Isn't that wonderful?" She turned to me while the soft light from the bedroom window fell over her shoulder and the top of her breast. "I can't tell you how envious I was of him. Know why? Because never in my life has there been anything I'd been that crazy about. Nothing. Except you. You're the first. So I have every reason to be scared of that, don't I?
"Obsession is nice, but it can also kill you."
"You think I'm going to kill you?" I smiled at her, but she did not smile back.
"I don't know. No, of course not. I'm hoping I know you well enough to believe you're always telling the truth. That's a lot, Walker! I love you. I love you too much sometimes. You've got more of my secrets now than anyone else ever. That makes you kind of dangerous, you know what I mean?"
I leaned over and kissed her gently. "Can I tell you my coffee story now?"
"Don't make fun of me. That story really happened."
"I believe you. I'm not making fun of you, Maris. I only want to tell you my coffee story so you can see how you fit into it."
She pinched my arm, harder than was necessary. "You're not going to make this up just for me?"
"I swear to God not. This happened about a week before we came over. Remember that day I gave you that big bouquet of roses? Then. I went in for a coffee, just like you did. Anyway, I had just ordered when I saw an old man sitting by himself off in a corner. It was a big place, and I had the feeling that was his seat every day. His Stammtisch. All the waitresses seemed to know him. I don't even know why I kept looking at him after that first glance, except for this great bad boy smile he had on the whole time. Thank God I did!
"The waitress brought him a cup of coffee, and for the first time I saw his hands. Maris, he had the worst case of palsy or Parkinson's disease I think I've ever seen. His hands were shaking so badly that they were out of control. There was no way that man would be able to pick up the cup and get it all the way to his mouth before it spilled all over. But he kept smiling, as if he had a great big trick up his sleeve and was proud of it. What was he going to do? With those crazy shaking hands, he reached into his coat and brought out a straw –"
"A straw?"
"Yup. A big, long, yellow straw that he dropped right into the cup. It looked like a little kid was going to use it, but the thing worked perfectly. Think about it for a minute. After it was in, he didn't once have to use his hands, just his lips. But you know what I loved most? After he took his first sip, he looked up with the proudest expression on his face. No double-crossing hands were going to stop him from having his coffee."
She slid closer to me. "I like that story."
"I liked seeing it, but you know what struck me after I saw him? The first thing? That I had to tell you about it. Partly because I want to tell you everything now, and partly because . . . because you're my straw, Maris. Without you, I know this now, there'd be no way I'd ever be able to –"
"Drink coffee?" She giggled.
"Drink my life. I've been trying to think of a good way of letting you know how much I love you. Seeing that guy showed me. Before you, I had such shaky hands. I know you won't, but I love you so much I wish you'd marry me."
She put a hand over my mouth and said "Sssh!" But she also smiled – beamed – so at least I knew she'd been thinking about it, too.
We fell asleep with our foreheads touching. When we both jumped awake later, she said it was because I'd butted her so hard with my head.
I'd been dreaming of a cemetery. A Russian Orthodox cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia, around the turn of the century. Outside the high walls, horse-drawn sleds, droshkies, hushed over the snow-packed streets, with now and then the delicate metal tinkle of sleigh bells. Snow was spinning slowly down, but it was the nineteenth of April, Easter Day.
The place was full of people because this was traditionally the day they came to greet and honor their dead. They had colored Easter eggs with them which they lay on the graves. After that, they opened bags and baskets and took out all kinds of food which they ate while standing around the egg-ornamented graves, chatting gaily with each other, including their dead in the conversations.
My name was Alexander Kroll. As a child, my father had liked to call me Rednaxela when we played together. I had come today to visit his grave and bring him an egg. He'd died the year before of a cancer that slowly ate his face and showed me what he would look like forever once the disease had finished with him.
He had been a poet, a man capable of taking our endlessly long Russian words and sewing them invisibly together into beautiful quilts of language and imagery. While the cancer squeezed that last of him in its stone fist, he began work on a play about a child who accidentally builds a new Tower of Babel with toy blocks. My father died silent and sad because his body wouldn't permit him to finish the first act. The inscription on his grave read Dum vita est, spes est. While there is life, there is hope. He chose it himself.