Susan’s grave is under a tree very near my parents’ graves. I arranged everything. A green carpet covers the earth where it has been dug up. Three gravediggers move off and wait at a discreet distance as we get out of the car. They are young guys, not much older than I am. They will never lose their curiosity for the varieties of grief. Around the corner on the little graveyard street is a yellow trench-digger. Susan’s coffin rests in its grave and the funeral director looks at me. I have refused the company rabbi, and it’s now time to say the prayers and throw the shovelful of earth on Susan’s coffin. I tell him to wait a minute. I run through the cemetery and hire little old Jewish men, the kind who always come along for a fee to say the prayers the younger Jews don’t know. Little bearded men who make their livings in cemeteries — shamuses, scholars, bums, misfits, who make it begging people to say prayers for their newly dead, their recently dead, their long since dead. They are usually shabby, their heels run down. Some of them are drunkards. I run through the cemetery, hiring one after another, directing them, and by the time I get back, half a dozen stand there, ignoring each other and racing through prayers for Susan in their singsong rituals, rocking back and forth on their heels with their eyes closed, chanting and simpering their nasal prayers. It’s a bonanza. Other shamuses come running, like pigeons, when they see the crowd. I accept each blessed one. I have a roll of bills in my pocket. I am bankrolled. My mother and father go back to the car. The funeral director waits impatiently beside his shiny hearse. But I encourage the prayermakers, and when one is through I tell him again, this time for my mother and father. Isaacson. Pinchas. Rachele. Susele. For all of them. I hold my wife’s hand. And I think I am going to be able to cry.
3. THE LIBRARY. For my third ending I had hoped to discuss some of the questions posed by this narrative. However, just a moment ago, while I was sitting here writing the last page, someone came through announcing that the library is closed. “Time to leave, man, they’re closing the school down. Kirk must go! We’re doin’ it, we’re bringing the whole motherfucking university to its knees!”
“You mean I have to get out?”
“That’s right, man, move your ass, this building is officially closed.”
“Wait—”
“No wait, man, the time is now. The water’s shut off. The lights are going out. Close the book, man, what’s the matter with you, don’t you know you’re liberated?”
I have to smile. It has not been unexpected. I will walk out to the Sundial and see what’s going down.
DANIEL’S BOOK: A Life Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctoral Degree in Social Biology, Gross Entomology, Women’s Anatomy, Children’s Cacophony, Arch Demonology, Eschatology, and Thermal Pollution.
and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation … and at that time the people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end … Go thy way Danieclass="underline" for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
About the Author
E. L. DOCTOROW’s work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and The March. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, three National Book Critics Circle awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.