—
Jones sorts through a collection of records, none of which have been opened. They are still wrapped in cellophane. The jacket designs are subdued, epic. Names, instruments and orchestras are mentioned confidently. He would like to agree with their importance, for he knows that they have worth, but he is not familiar with the references. His daughter brought these records with her. They had been given to her by an older man, a professor she had been having an affair with. Naturally, this pains Jones. His daughter speaks about the men she has been involved with but no longer cares about. Where did these men come from? Where were they waiting and why have they gone? Jones remembers his daughter when she was a little girl, helping him rake leaves. For years, on April Fools’ Day she would take tobacco out of his humidor and fill it with cornflakes. Jones is full of remorse and astonishment. When he saw his daughter only a few weeks ago, she was thin and nervous. She had plucked out almost all her eyebrows with her fingers from this nervousness. And her lashes. The lids of her eyes were swollen and white, like the bulbs of flowers. Her fingernails were crudely bitten, some bleeding below the quick. She was tough and remote, wanting only to go on a trip for which she had a ticket. What can he do? He seeks her in the face of the baby but she is not there. All is being both continued and resumed, but the dream is different. The dream cannot be revived. Jones breaks into one of the albums, blows the dust from the needle and plays a record. Outside it is dark. The parsonage is remote and the only buildings nearby are barns. The river cannot be seen. The music is Bruckner’s Te Deum. Very nice. Dedicated to God. He plays the other side. A woman, Kathleen Ferrier, is singing in German. The music stuns him. Kindertotenlieder. He makes no attempt to seek the words’ translation. The music is enough.
—
In the hospital, his wife waits to be translated, no longer a woman, the woman whom he loves, but a situation. Her blood moves as mysteriously as the constellations. She is under scrutiny and attack and she has abandoned Jones. She is a swimmer waiting to get on with the drowning. Jones is on the shore. In Mexico, his daughter walks along the beach with two men. She is acting out a play that has become her life. Jones is on the mountaintop. The baby cries and Jones takes her from the crib to change her. The dog paws the door. Jones lets him out. He settles down with the baby and listens to the record. The baby wiggles restlessly on his lap. Her eyes are a foal’s eyes, navy blue. She has grown in a few weeks to expect everything from Jones. He props her on one edge of the couch and goes to her small toy box, where he keeps a bear, a few rattles and balls. He opens the door again and the dog immediately enters. His heavy coat is cold, fragrant with ice. He noses the baby and she squeals.
Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen
Bald werden sie wieder nach Hause gelangen
Jones selects a bright ball and pushes it gently in her direction.
—
It is Sunday morning and Jones is in the pulpit. The church is very old, the adjacent cemetery even older. It has become a historic landmark and no one has been buried there since World War I. There is a new place, not far away, which the families now use. Plots are marked not with stones but with small tablets, and immediately after any burial, workmen roll grassed sod over the new graves so there is no blemish on the grounds, not even for a little while. Present for today’s service are seventy-eight adults, eleven children and the junior choir. Jones counts them as the offertory is received. The church rolls say that there are 350 members but as far as Jones can see, everyone is here today. This is the day he baptizes the baby. He has made arrangements with one of the ladies to hold her and bring her up to the font at the end of the first hymn. The baby looks charming in a lacy white dress. Jones has combed her fine hair carefully, slicking it in a curl with water, but now it has dried and sticks up awkwardly like the crest of a kingfisher. Jones bought the dress in Mammoth Mart, an enormous store that has a large metal elephant dressed in overalls dancing on the roof. He feels foolish at buying it there but he had gone to several stores and that is where he saw the prettiest dress. He blesses the baby with water from the silver bowl. He says, We are saved not because we are worthy. We are saved because we are loved. It is a brief ceremony. The baby, looking curiously at Jones, is taken out to the nursery. Jones begins his sermon. He can’t remember when he wrote it, but here it is, typed, in front of him. There is nothing wrong in what one does but there is something wrong in what one becomes. He finds this questionable but goes on speaking. He has been preaching for thirty-four years. He is gaunt with belief. But his wife has a red cell count of only 2.3 million. It is not enough! She is not getting enough oxygen! Jones is giving his sermon. Somewhere he has lost what he was looking for. He must have known once, surely. The congregation sways, like the wings of a ray in water. It is Sunday and for patients it is a holiday. The doctors don’t visit. There are no tests or diagnoses. Jones would like to leave, to walk down the aisle and out into the winter, where he would read his words into the ground. Why can’t he remember his life! He finishes, sits down, stands up to present communion. Tiny cubes of bread rest in a slumped pyramid. They are offered and received. Jones takes his morsel, hacked earlier from a sliced enriched loaf with his own hand. It is so dry, almost wicked. The very thought now sickens him. He chews it over and over again, but it lies unconsumed like a muscle in his mouth.