UNCLAIMED LETTERS (fiction)

Editor's Note: My ex- and I separated in 2009 and divorced in 2010. It took us a while to get into a good rhythm with visitation, so I had more free time than I was accustomed to. While living in a big empty house in West Kaysville, Utah I started writing this in small chapters, using the tiny built-in desk in the modern but already outdated kitchen, which is true of nearly all of Utah's kitchens. I imagined each "chapter" as a fictional letter from a man in Marseille, France, mailed back to his family. The story progressed as the letters continued. My inspiration for the "feel" of the story was Camus' "L'Etranger" and a bit 'la Nausee' by Sartre. The story features many characters based on real people I met on my LDS mission in northern France from September of 1990 to August of 1992. Many years after I wrote and self-published the book, I realized I must have been depressed when I wrote it.

When I first self-published the novella, it was called "Open Letters to the World," or "Wanderlust." The cover of that book was taken from a photograph I took in a cemetery in Paris that Kim and I visited circa 2015. More than 200 people purchased copies of that book, and I only remember two people ever commenting on it. One was a high school friend and smartest person in our high school, Ryan McCune, who posted on Facebook that he enjoyed reading it. Another was a co-worker Rebecca who ,mentioned many years later that she had read the novella.

I removed the story from the Amazon page so that it was no longer available for publication from around 2017 until 2025. I don't know why I did that.

In 2025, I found the guts of the book, made a new cover, changed the title, and self-published it again under the current name.

The story does not belong to me and was not created by me. The characters and events in this story really exist in a separate universe. They have their own life stories, energy, their own offspring, their own traditions and legends. They live forever separately in that universe, shining their story forever and we can peer in upon it whenever we choose. I was granted a brief glimpse of that world for a few years and decided to share my witness with the world.

Editor’s Note:  These unclaimed letters were found in a post office box in Queens, New York

1

Well, I made it. I am so tired. And scared. I hope tomorrow is better.

2

These days have been interesting and uninteresting. My malaise has a sense of forward purpose—I don’t know what. I found a studio with gold fleur-de-lis wallpaper that makes it feel even smaller, but it is my sanctuary. Heavy door heavy lock. Outside it is wild, here it is familiar—my things are a comfort to me now that they are in their places. I look at my toiletries which are laid out one by one upon a black hand towel. I count my shirts. I cannot see the water from my room, cannot see anything but a Judas tree sole occupant of a narrow courtyard walled in six stories on all sides. And garbage bins and a rusty ten-speed. I can smell the ocean though and get to it within twelve minutes ten if I walk fast. I have been sleeping day and night, reading, and walking around to use up time, acquainting myself in a linear fashion with my surroundings. There are fruit stands, butchers, bread shops, grocers and I repeat to build patterns. No one has yet asked my name but I can see they recognize me. Time is slow—my excursions feel like an hour or two but in truth take half of that. I look at my watch often. My appetite is good.

Why am I here? When I awoke today I should say when I got out of bed I didn’t sleep my stomach was sunk empty heavy like a black hole but my heart was open and it told me to hurry the fuck up before you die here. Go while you still can. You have got to sharpen yourself against strangeness. Here it’s familiar and you’ll rot in sympathy and perish. All people you know will kindly brand you as a man of sorrow and your fulfillment of their name for you will please them but you’ll not run past it.   

Well, it is late and I need to turn off the light—I have electricity of course but I will write by candlelight sometimes. I hope this touch of ritual will help the letters make it to you wherever whoever you are something deliberate and intentional and ceremonial to sacramentally circumvent space although I don’t see how honestly.

3

I am learning about taking care of myself here. I do laundry in the tub and hang it dry. The water never gets hot. Afterwards my socks are speckled with detergent unless I rinse them a second time, which I won’t do. My shirts are wrinkled. I am surprised to be wearing wrinkled shirts. My kitchen is a sink and a hot plate and a toaster oven. Most of my meals are crude—a loaf of bread and a few bites of cheese and a nectarine, washed down with water or cheap beer—even though I have nothing but time I have no energy for cooking or rather I choose not to use the time to cook.

I am mesmerized by the ships in the harbor—they are a distraction and require some attention and sometimes I will catch myself losing time watching them. There is a thirty foot yacht, navy blue—the Santa Maha. The hull is as dark as black almost, the color of the night sky without stars. There was a seventy-something man and a little girl on board, his granddaughter? She had a bottle of Orangina and they were playing checkers. They were in unawareness. I watched them.

I walked down closer. They did not see me or they saw me and didn’t look. This man was dark, older than before, and wearing lime green slacks under a white tanktop with no shoes. The girl was maybe ten. Just younger than my daughter I guess and I am good with ages. Arabs. She wore a lavender dress. It was not checkers but chess. I drew nearer and said bonjour. They were not startled. They looked at me. The girl’s bearing was open and gregarious. I said it was a nice day for chess and she said her grandpa did not speak French but she translated for him and he agreed with gestures, pointing up at the sun. I said beautiful ship and asked if it were his and she nodded yes. Are you the Maha from Santa Maha? Non, c’est le nom de ma soeur qui est morte ca fait longtemps. I said I was very sorry; there was a pause, and they resumed their match. They did not dismiss me but I made my way back to the apartment.

I hurriedly consumed my meal, it was still early, and I returned. They were not there. The empty Orangina bottle was sitting on the table where they had played. I looked around. I climbed into the yacht and took the bottle and have it now with me.

4

I saw a young guy here. He was reading on a bench. In usual French manner he was not holding an umbrella in the rain. He had eyes of zeal that perhaps that the world can still be changed. That look of things ahead to be discovered and conquered. If the world can be changed it will not be by me I will assure you of that my most solemn promise to not even try. It is enough to hold on to what I have to take care of myself for as long as I can—I have nothing leftover for the world or if I did it wouldn’t matter. I require myself only to endure and not succeed. I am good at holding on. I promise you I will. I’ll outlive all the turtles and elephants even.  

I introduced myself awkwardly, asked him what he was reading. It was a political treatise of some sort. He is in his final year of high school. I asked if he liked what he was reading and he shrugged and said he could care less he just wanted to be finished. I asked him what he did for fun and he said girls. His name is Rene.

Why am I here? First of May, I was gasping for air, grasping for intention but underneath my black mind and sick heart was this tiny window of light from a deeper place and I don’t know if it originated from me or from outside the way a match lights a candle but eventually in any event it was mine and still the master of me rather it was my true self saying look you sometimes planetarian where your feet trod despite your sorrow you are still standing nurture yourself be your own mother be your own father and the rest of me the fabric the house the shell that was seeing this warm yellow illumination this possibility this way out the brain the heart the body the testes that had to do the work to obey was acutely afraid but my soul my own self my real self my only self myself said save yourself get out of here just to see—open yourself to what will be. Jump in for hell’s sakes! Don’t stand on the side. Maybe the water is cold, but at least you will know!

So already you know from the envelopes I am in Marseille? I knew it was warm. I knew there was water. I assumed it smelled foul. Body odor, incense, garbage, cigarettes, flowers, exhaust, overripe fruit—many scents indeed. I envisioned an enigmatic city, a place where fear of strangeness would shake me out of the top of the hierarchy of need into the lower rungs. I was right. But I might have gone to a thousand different places and it would have made no difference, each would have been the starting point to something. There is nothing special about this place except that I am here. I made a calculated haphazard decision and that has made the difference.

5

I am beginning to feel safe outside my apartment walls. At times I am profoundly sorrowful but I do not numb this dolefulness with titillation or drink or if I do it changes nothing. Three evenings ago I spent a good while minutes or hours slicing up my dessert apple with a pocketknife. I made a thin careful movement all around to make a complete ring with only one cut—I mostly succeeded and would like to try again. I stared at the ring I had created. Are you ever struck by the unbearable weight of infinity? What if everything that is has always been and always will be? I try not to think on it. At times I must push the thought out of my mind, if I can. I can’t.

A few weeks is long enough to form habits and rituals to make the time pass and to push my horror aside for interludes. I pray twice a day on my knees. It is important for the knees to touch the ground. The touching of the knees to the ground—both knees—it is what helps me remember I have prayed. Sometimes the kneeling itself is the prayer, without words. Later in the day when I forget I remember knees touching the floor. Sometimes to do more to not forget to remember or to remember not to forget, I slap my thigh with an open palm, forcefully. I pray to God and to myself. I pray to Mary to talk to me.  

I do not buy more food than I can eat in a day—in this way I show faith that the stores will again be open tomorrow. And hunger is more carnal than sadness and takes priority. I bought a single egg from the grocer. One egg. Un oeuf, I said. Un? the grocer asked holding up a thumb stained yellow around the nail. Oui, I said, un oeuf. It was fourteen centimes. I offered him twenty, he laughed and said nevermind. He offered to put the egg in a bag but I just carried it home and boiled it right then. The next day I went back and asked for deux oeufs—it has become somewhat of a running joke between us this matter of the eggs. Monsieur Oeuf he calls me. I call him Gerard—that is his name. I have found a newspaper I like to read in the morning when someone has the good sense of abandoning a copy for me. There are little walks I take. They lead nowhere of course. I like to photograph the mosques here. I write to you and post the letters, always in person to pick stamps. I bought more candles, matches, pens, paper, pins and put up photographs. I clean compulsively—when I die I do not want to leave any work to others. Each of us leaves this world in a coffin-sized box. This I know. The most beautiful and full exit naked. A football pitch is not far by bus where amateurs play under the lights at night. The smell of the fish market is less repulsive to me than when I first arrived. The people next door know my name now. An electronics store down the street sells televisions and if I go at six I can watch the news through the window without sound. All the homeless near the water I notice less than I did in the beginning. Or I notice them the same and remember them less.

I did something. I bought a pink pansy and cut the stem down and put it in the Orangina bottle, added some water, and took it down and put it on the table of that yacht, the Santa Maha. No one was around.

6

Finally my routines are a rhythm and I do not have to push myself into my daily rituals. And within the daily rhythm are many spontaneous moments—it is not all deliberate living. It is a relief. I have consigned myself to feel however the universe would have me feel but it is with gratitude that I now arise some mornings with anticipation not dread.

Today I awoke, and bought cigarettes. I do not smoke. There’s only one way out of this world. So what if it runs short. I lit up and took a deep breath and gasped and vomited. So much for that. I took bread, pears, and cheese and descended to the water. I don’t like pears. I sketched the boat I have been telling you about. The old man and the girl arrived. I showed my drawing to them and the girl said well done and the old man through his granddaughter said try again tomorrow and this time draw a boat instead. He laughed. I offered them a pear. I lingered and the old man gestured for me to climb in. They set up the chessboard and I sat at the table. The bottle with the pansy, now dead, was still there. I asked him his name and without the help of his granddaughter he said Musa and she interrupted and said Moses and then Musa made a parting movement with his hands, as if parting the seas. What is your granddaughter’s name? Rive she said.

Musa pointed to the empty bottle with the dry pansy and said something. Rive translated You brought this didn’t you? I apologetically said that I had. Grandpa says that my mom loved pansies. I asked about her mom. Her mom was in the same accident as her sister, and her father. She stated this matter-of-factly as if repeating it from memory and Musa, seeing my concern, said in broken English long time ago, Rive little baby. As if to clarify, Rive said, j’etais toute petite. I am sorry, I said and I know, I know. C’est pourquoi je suis la. They smiled politely.

Musa brought a bottle of soda for me and one for Rive; he bit into the pear which was too hard and tossed it into the water. See that’s why I don’t like pears. I looked down and saw an eager bug-eyed fish rising. Rive ate hers. I beat Rive in two games of chess. She is easy to talk to but then I am good with kids. Musa was barefoot as when I first saw him, wearing a yellow jumpsuit—he is not ashamed to be comfortable. His face is even, his eyes narrow and his teeth pearl white. His body is like a sprig of juniper—spry, lively, fragile. Some people get bigger when they get older and some get smaller; he is in the latter camp. He has little hair on his head but I would not say he is bald or rather I did not much pay attention to his hair. Perhaps he has plenty of hair and I am just remembering his prominent forehead.

It turned cool and the sun was setting so I thanked them and made my way back. It is the latest I have stayed out since I have been here and it felt good to go to bed tired.

7

I had an idea for meeting new people which I hate doing but I have to I need more people actual human lives to pull me back so I don’t disappear. That’s the thing. Who will tell my story now that Mary is gone? At home I am the kind responsible polite neighbor man I keep to myself I drive a small pickup the yard is groomed and now more simply the tragic man who mourns his daughter. The one who needs stroganoff or chicken-fried steak or spaghetti and garlic bread delivered since men can’t cook and they need to eat heavy man-sized helpings. I made up some flyers and posted them around the neighborhood on store fronts and telephone poles. The announcement said straightforwardly enough: Free English Lessons / Religious Discussion.

The first class was last night. For the first half hour I taught them the numbers one through ten, the alphabet, and shit like hello and how are you. After the English lesson, two stayed for the religious discussion, a squinty-faced man Bernard who swore every other word and a round fat man Charles with a Cheshire cat smile. I tried to engage them by asking questions without success. Charles reeked of alcohol. Bernard was fidgeting with his hands the whole time and I could not understand him.

It was not what I had hoped for. But I will do it again next week.

8

I held my lesson again yesterday. There was a new student Fabienne a young woman with blonde hair and a stretched angular face with a birthmark on her neck. She is not attractive in the dictionary sense but there is something about her I do not know what. Her arms are overly long but they look like arms engaged in doing good. Her face is not a siren’s face, but is not unpleasant. The face of an aunt or a mother or a sister? A sort of bodily practicality that says, this body can help, this body can work? She speaks English well.

She left when the religious discussion started leaving Bernard and Charles. Charles wept suddenly when I said love is the only thing we can fit in the coffin. Four loves. Love for yourself love for your loved ones love for the world love for the ride. He sobbed a corporeal sob. He would not explain. I walked to my apartment and Bernard and Charles had followed me so rather than enter my building I went to the bus stop.

The bus ascended into the narrow old part of town and I stared out the window at gray ramparts. I closed my eyes to a more circumscribable time of trades and self-reliance and carriages and horses and stenches and mud and shit and despair. I saw simple people with narrow ideas and binomial choices standing at windows and walking the streets and laughing with gaping toothless mouths. I opened my eyes. A fresh flower market was just concluding. I pictured a little family with the mother bringing a tureen of soup to the table; the children cozy and sweatered; the husband cursing at the television football match; the purple and gold flowers nearby on a mantle. In another pathetic stale apartment a lone man in a tan suit lays a cheap white rose across an old photograph before retiring to bed early, the lights still on for company. And in another the daffodils and lilies stand in a vase with no one to see them because the two lovers are in the bedroom caught up in red satin.

The route became more open and suburban and less familiar to me. I gathered I was on the reverse of the route I had first taken past the football pitch, and indeed it was so and I descended there. A noisy informal match was underway of men and boys of all ages, some wearing shorts and cleats and others wearing jeans or slacks. One jocular young man stood out on account of wearing an argyle sweater on top of denim shorts and penny loafers—an unusual kit to be sure that belied his underlying dexterity. There was a buzzing overhead as hundreds of night moths flocked stupidly and blindly to the hot lights. This was not a beautiful game but mostly standing around and occasional hurried movements as one boy for example tried to dribble past four or five at a time until he was tripped or lost control of the ball or the ball careened off of a stone or hole; many players kicked wildly at the ball to try to score but their attempts found the chainlink fence and not the net. There was a fellow on one side who was an average ballhandler himself but harassed his teammates for poor touch. I thought it was Rene, the young man I told you about before, and I yelled out the name Rene and he turned so I assume it was him.

9

I have been here six weeks. I woke up the morning of May first, the day after the funeral, my soul my real self myself was open, broken but open, its openness the only thing that kept it from shattering, and it felt like the very first time I had been afraid. Keenly afraid. Go? I wondered. Now? By myself? But this open possibility of light inside said you must go, no it was my own voice and I was saying I want to go alone. I asked myself to prove my existence. If I am afraid, it is proof I am alive! Here there is only sorrow no fear. Go! So that is what I am doing.

I was lying in bed, sleepless, trying to decipher what was God’s motivation. Why did He create the world? Why did He create life and put us into this sphere? I fell asleep and dreamed of a busy intersection. A five-way stop. I entered a crosswalk and coming the other way was an old woman, she stumbled as a car approached and without thinking I reached out, saved her, and moved her back to the curb. Why did I do it? I just acted, without a plan, without motivation, without hesitation. I am good. God is good, like I am good. Goodness sprouts from Him automatically. Where is God? I know He is separate from me. And that I am also god. What I ask Him I ask myself. What I can do myself I will. If you are reading this and you are helpless or sad and you have prayed for help while you wait love yourself with the infinite beauty of god inside of you. Permit yourself command yourself. What you believe about God you believe about yourself.

In my religious lesson this week I spoke unscripted. Truth be told it’s not a religious lesson, just a chance to spout my philosophy. Any audience will do (thus these letters). How do you think it feels to have a burning wild imagination and no audience? Imagine a comedian on stage with an empty crowd. It’s not funny. Anyway, I told Bernard and Charles and Fabienne how I believed that rocks and trees and water were made of infinitely existing matter which had reached some kind of truce with co-creators God and us to be put into this massive diorama to some temporary but permanent valuable end. Charles sobbed again pathetically. Bernard avoided my gaze. Fabienne said I had made some interesting points, points which were expressed according to her in a profoundly intelligent manner that she had not previously encountered. Her kind words were the first personal expression I have heard uttered since I have been here. I do not know what to make of her. She is too young for me but I cannot avoid the impression that our fates are intertwined. And my story is complicated, I would not even know how to begin or if I even want to reveal myself to another human again, even as simple friendship let alone the complexity of sex.

10

Today was a beautiful cloudless or cloudy day and while getting breakfast or brunch or an early lunch I saw Musa and Rive coming down the sidewalk. I waved to them and they entered the cafe and I offered to buy them something. Or it was the other way around and they were already in the café when I saw them there and they offered to buy me something. Rive took a pain au chocolat and Musa some coffee. Rive dunked her pastry in Musa’s coffee. The drink warmed the chocolate which smeared on Rive’s lips, which she then wiped on her arm, and then from her arm to her dress. The chocolate looked like excrement. I began worrying I would be forced to eat a log of shit—one of my neuroses. Apart from my thoughts of excrement, we had a pleasant breakfast and I asked them if they were going boating today. Rive laughed and Musa said something and Rive said today was not a boating day but Thursday a day for Boules. They thanked me for the breakfast.

Do you know why I need you? I had a daughter and I felt useful. I had so much to give her and I did. Every day and all day and every day I painted a sure path of rock under her feet sometimes with deeds but mostly with the power of my will (love) which was all around her and underneath above her and pervaded both time and space and it didn’t matter where I was my power was not diminished it flew out of me omnipotently to alter the world around her to her benefit. She and I talked to the birds and the stars and the horses and the bugs and all of nature was our friend and teacher. I took her for what she was; I was God to her allowing her to be the very person she had always been since before the start of time, tried to leave her alone and shape her too, studying the sculpture of her soul to see what was already there to be sure that the shaping only made the already-existing picture more true, and never never taking away from it.

Now I have all this fatherhood, and nowhere to put it. What am I to do now that she is gone? I know, I know, she’s not gone and my heart vigilantly stays open forever to her and I know she knows and when I see her again no time will have passed. And I will give all I have where I can meanwhile in the here and now. I will love humankind. Not any one person mind you but the mass there’s a difference. I will love myself, yes, that’s important. But I am an ocean without outlet—I shout to all the world to come swim, see the life inside of me, see the infinite-sized heart beating and swelling inside. Wherever whoever you are I am thankful you are reading my letters. I love this world and I know it will digest me and in a thousand ten thousand years what will you have to have done to be remembered in history and would you want to be but if there’s one person who holds me in their heart one witness for one generation I will accept.  

11

Fabienne is paying me for private tutoring—she stopped attending the weeknight class. There is not much room for improvement with her English but she says she needs more practice. I have no materials so she brings English novels from the library and we take turns reading she writes down ten or twelve or twenty new words then between lessons memorizes these for next time. The lessons are in my apartment. She told me she has a boyfriend thank the Lord.  

Bernard revealed why he has been attending the class. Following our last meeting after everyone had cleared away he told me that he had fathered a child with a woman who lives in government housing in the suburbs but she will not speak to him any longer and he wants me to intervene. He views me as an authority figure—le grand Americain he says—to sort out such matters. He was shaking as he told me this; I said I could not do anything for him. Last night I woke up frightened at two in the morning to the sound of my door buzzer and without thinking I opened and Bernard was standing there. His hands were cut and covered with disgusting adhesive tape. He said he had been to confront his girlfriend, that her lover had answered the door, a fight had ensued, and he had been stabbed repeatedly in the hands by a knife. As his hands were cut all around on both sides with minute razor cuts I did not believe him. Rather I should say I believed his whole story except that instead of being stabbed he had cut himself to get attention. I regretted not having taken better precautions to keep my address hidden. I told Bernard there was no sense in going back to a woman who didn’t love him and this not being helpful, I asked him why he wanted to go back to that bitch anyway I don’t know her I was just trying to make him feel good. He left and I hope never to see him again at my apartment.

12

Some days are to be endured and nothing more. There is a zero sum of happiness and misery in the world, so my bad day makes possible a good day for another. We are all debtors and lenders. When I am well I do not think of this but when I am ill this thought boosts my spirits. The world is a perfect balance of good and bad, and we need both in equal measure to achieve our destinies. There is no use regretting the bad, it is needed as much as the other.  

There are different seasons for each individual and all of our seasons are linked together cosmically. A twelve year-old girl pale blue zip sweater jeans no helmet riding a bike her life ahead of her is hit by a bus and dies and two hundred miles away a woman with keratoconus receives a new cornea. And somewhere in the world a man was made well while I have been ill. And if I feel better tomorrow it will because someone else will have deteriorated to take my place. Whoever you are thank you for taking your turn.

13

It is a comfort to have someone here who speaks English. Everything is so foreign here (no shit, I’m in another country you say), cereal box ingredients in French and Arabic, exotic fruits meats I have never before seen, all of Napoleon’s cheeses, unusual smells. My neighbors, an elderly couple, look strangely at me when Fabienne leaves my room after lessons but I have told them it is educational. They have their doubts. Stop watching me I think when I see them or I will gore out your eyes.

Fabienne asked me if I was depressed. I asked her why. She said I have a heavy character. I said I was alive. I am far away from home, far far away, so impossibly far, in a plane where time is measured and linear and ostentatiously marches forward no glamour for the present, where togetherness is elusive and separatedness is permanent and easy—so much work in forming and keeping connections with people (sailing a ship across a desert); connections evaporate so easily, so easily (a feather in the wind)— yearning cries up and reaches out into infinite openness without echo. Billions of individual realities (the awfulness of oneness) lined up to the stars all screaming for the others to bend in their axis so that over an infinity of time the lines will cross somehow, somewhere, sometime; simultaneously these billions of selves mandating individuality and refusing to bend. These two great fears (What if I bend? What if no one bends?) and mandates (I will never yield! You must yield!) unresolved from eternity to eternity so strong a trillion gods and a trillion Hiroshimas cannot break them. Daily to beg for mercy and grant it first to myself and then to other; my daily loaf I cast upon the waters and the waters flow away. Come back I say, but the river moves beneath me I cannot keep up and it never comes back. Do I sound depressed?

14

Four months today. I woke up on the couch, the day after my daughter’s funeral, still wearing my black suit (although I had somehow removed my shoes during the night) and now I see with flawed eyes this light inside myself that is myself which will go wherever it will go constantly yearning growing infinitely in infinite direction and after the airsucking horror of loss it shrunk yes it shrunk but its centre is a hot hot light burning gaseous infinite and it cried out like a volcano I am the self I am all that is and my brain and body my shell were acutely afraid, a fear so dark it was very first time I had been afraid, a fear without the knowledge of experience that fear does in fact dissipate. What do you want? I screamed and I was screaming at myself. Let me go! but I was talking to myself. I surrendered. I filled up my suitcase and by evening I was standing at the airport counter and I looked like pale scared shit but this light inside to which I had resolved myself was pure love and it shone a way through my fear and I did not waiver and I bought my ticket.

When Mary was born in winter, I worried about her catching diseases from all the goddamn visitors who didn’t wash their hands or would come over themselves hacking phlegm. Little did I know then she would be taken for no apparent reason except that buses moving full speed at dusk when it’s hard to see are heavier than the skulls of girls riding bicycles in the bike lane minding their own business who swerve to avoid bags of lawn clippings and leaves awaiting Spring Clean pick-up stacked over the curb into the paths of buses moving full speed at dusk. How terrible I can only give myself a tiny glimpse and then I shut it away.  

Besides the usual suspects Charles Bernard and a couple others, Rene stopped by my English lesson. He interrupted to ask me for money. I told him I had none he said he thought I was his friend and not to bother watching any more of his football matches; then he left. What an asshole.

After class, Charles waited until he and I were the only ones left and asked me if I knew how to pray. I said all prayers are some combination of gratitude and requests which are the same. He said he wanted to stop drinking. We made some phone calls and found an AA chapter and he promised he would check in with them. We then prayed and I asked God to help him to stop craving alcohol and I also asked him to ask himself to stop craving alcohol.  

15

Walking around today I sensed being followed but no one was behind me. I came across a garden traversed a plush lawn onto a stone bridge spanning a stream. Standing on the bridge I thought I would be a rock I would be sure I would be constant. The stream below was shallow and when I dropped a pebble into it I did not hear a dull deep thud as I had hoped. I would be water I would be useful and pure. Looking into the ripples I saw my reflection was surprised at the amount of space it occupied. The reflection of a dead man? But when I moved my arm the reflection moved. I abused myself for my self-pity and looking up said, I am happy I am here. I felt a hand tugging mine. I turned; it was Rive. I found you, she giggled. She handed me a note and ran away and the note said that she Musa want me to go boating with them on Saturday. Cute girl she is familiar to me and like Mary a friend of all suspicious of none.

16

I went out on the ocean with Musa and Rive. It was a sunflower afternoon. Rive wore a ruffled mint green or light blue blouse and Musa a white linen suit and red ballcap. Once in the open Musa opened up the engine and we enjoyed a nice ride during which I stared into the sun until I fell asleep and awoke sunburned. The yacht carried on forward. After another hot hour he cut the motor and let the water push us around. He tied a line to his foot and jumped into the sea. He motioned to Rive who threw him a bar of soap and he bathed there. I removed my shirt and stood on the edge of the deck. I did not jump but I closed my eyes and thought: water, take me, however you will, I do not want to dictate your wishes. I just stood. I spread out my arms and the water wanted me now so I held my body stiff and let myself slowly fall face first.

Later, we went into the cabin below which was appointed with mahogany and electronics and he got out some snacks. Musa talking through Rive said that he had to watch his diet because of diabetes. I asked for more details but with Rive as intermediary I am not sure either of us understood each other. Musa pointed on the globe to Algeria and Rive said this was her grandpa’s home. Musa pointed to America and I nodded. Musa then said Rive see America. I asked Rive what he meant and she said she had never been but wanted to go to “ze Beeg Appel.”

When we returned Fabienne and Rene were walking hand in hand along the dock. I called out to them and they came to the boat. Rene did all the talking and Fabienne was polite and restrained. Rene said I had a nice boat and must have done quite well for myself and I said it was not mine but that of the old gentleman behind me. Rene asked Musa if he were rich but this was in French and Musa did not understand. Musa and Rene sized each other up.

17

Charles called me just after I had fallen asleep and asked me several times Pourquoi dormez-vous? Pourquoi dormez-vous? Je suis tout seul au jardin! I thought about crushing my phone but went back to bed. Next morning, I went to see him in the hospital. It was dim and I could not ascertain why he was there. It looked like he was simply renting a bed in a dreary apartment. There were no medications, no wires, no machines, no nurses, no doctors. This upset me. When Mary was in the hospital, I knew why, and so did everyone else, it was a formality. And here is Charles on his self-pity vacation.

Did you know I was on the bus, the one that killed my daughter? Can you imagine? I was coming home from work and I saw her on her bike and I was watching with the power of my thoughts telling her and the busdriver to Move! and nobody moved and there was no time to move and no time to yell. When the bus stopped I was insane. I yelled Are You Fucking Blind!! And I slammed the busdriver out of the way on the stairs. Fifty yards from home! I am so so infinitely glad it was me who was there to carry her limp body to the car and not a stranger and I was kind and I was calm. Even though she didn’t know and it was too late I would not erase that for anything my final act. What is a father? I’ll tell you—it’s for that to happen and to want to be the one there to have the compassion only I could give to be a witness to the life so dear even the end of it to be a witness to your child the beautiful and the blackness so that when I meet Mary again there will have been no break no time shall have passed no gap between us to have been strong enough through the power of will (love) even in that moment to take away all her fear to absorb it all into myself so that for her gravity guilt didn’t hold her back only she needed to let herself drift away through increasing shades of light to that better place where she came from.    

A handful of violets laid on the table near his bed but he could not say how they came to be. He said he stopped drinking and started reading the Bible again. He clutched a talisman.

Leaving Charles’ room, in the lobby area or in the cafeteria I saw a man with long hair and beard dressed in a white tunic; the skirt was dirty. Our eyes met and he fervently said, I have the keys to the kingdom. He paused and awaited my response. He stood and walked down a hallway, but I did not follow, and he did not wait. I assumed he was a lunatic or Jesus. Sitting here now, I do not know why I did not follow him. I must have decided he was not Jesus but how? It is possible that he was Jesus and I am a coward. I should have followed him just to see. Heaven knows I need the help. What would have been the harm?

18

I took a train early one morning and went inland with no plan except to end up in the smallest town I could find. A small gray gare was a good sign. I descended there. The station hosted a solitary worker who stared past me emptily through cigarette smoke. My shoes on the tile floor told me I was in motion. The train departed. I emerged into the empty street and looked both ways and saw no omens good or bad. I went in the direction of a hill which was either right or left, and making my way to the top came to a castle ruins. Below I could see red tile roofs, splotches of green and brown trees, and a church tower. The ruins was nothing but rock and sand and grass. No one was there to add context and I had no imagination of my own on this occasion. I decided it was not a ruins, only a bunch of stones that had never meant anything, had never housed soldiers, had never overseen a city. I decided and thus made it so.  

Behind the hill or to its side I came to a mossy grotto protecting a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Many icons and a few candles adorned the space in front of her. She looked utterly lonely. This tribute was an amateur effort as Mary was but three feet tall, disproportionate, and badly scarred. The concave surface in front allowed for standing rainwater speckled with white blossoms. I knelt down and took water in my cupped hands and buried my face in my hands, asking, May I be washed clean of the weight on my shoulders. I felt lighter and resolute. I touched my fingers to a candle until it burned.

My solitude made me pitiful and I removed back to town to a papeterie. I have saved all the money Fabienne has given me and I bought a nice pen. This letter in fact was written by that same pen. (The ink, somewhat faded now, appears to be night sky in color—ed.) The store manager pointed me in the direction of the station and on exiting, I asked Ou suis-je? She said Septemes-les-Vallons. Boarding the train, I deceived myself and thought: I should like to come here again. Later my lucidity returned and I mourned. I will never see this town again.

So many of the people we see, the places we go—it will be the last time. If I do not addle my thoughts I am in constant sorrow of a thousand daily funerals. I tell myself that although I will never again see Septemes-les-Vallons, I will again go somewhere new, will mount some climb of history, will buy something fancy, will wash my face again with cool water, will again pray for strength. But there will be a final curtain, when all of this seeing and doing and planning will end and there will be no more, nothing to anticipate or remember. But I hope for life beyond a place without Time or geography where I will see Mary again. Is that the case?

19

My flock is floundering. Don’t act surprised. The whole idea was stupid and boring to read about and you know it. I still have a few English students but no one interested in the après discussion. I walked around the neighborhood to find Charles. I went in the direction of Chez Luc the sausage sandwich joint where Charles had said he lived. There were several adjacent buildings and some entryways I could not get into and others had unfamiliar names on the buzzers. I did not know Charles’ family name. An elderly woman exited and I took a chance if he she knew a Charles, a big man with a big smile who was recently hospitalized. Charles, le Pretre? she asked? I said I did not know if that were his name and she said no, not his name, but was he Charles, the priest? I said I did not think so and she pointed to a window above and said that was where the priest lived.

I ascended to a quiet wide hallway with peepholes staring back at me from maroon doors. I rapped, heard shuffling inside, the peephole darkened, but no one opened. I had the sense of being watched through the peephole. I yelled through the door that I was looking for Charles, the priest. The door opened a crack from inside. I pushed the door open further and found him standing in the middle of his meager apartment, beer in hand, staggering drunk. A window was open behind him, knee high, large enough to jump from. He was dramatic and emotional and said while pointing to his drink that he had found his lover. My lover he said again and tapped his feet. He finished this and got another—I cannot get enough of my lover, he laughed and tapped his feet again.

The lady downstairs said you were a priest. She is a liar, he said. He went into the kitchen and assembled some flaccid cheese onto a cutting board. She is a liar because I am a priest, he added, only on account of my lover I cannot always perform my duties. He drunk lustfully from the can with tongue extended and gyrating as if lovemaking then asked me to bless the repast so I bowed my head. I heard him shuffling I opened my eyes to see him moving abruptly toward the window. Waiting for my attention, he paused, and then hurled his can of beer majestically out the window, the liquid rainbowing out and above the can and catching the light. He fell to his knees sobbing. I got him a glass of water and coerced him into drinking it and helped him to his bed, then closed and locked the window. He laid his head on the pillow.

When I left the building I again saw the Jesus-looking fellow in the white tunic. He was wearing a necklace with a large golden key as a pendant. This detail I did not recall from before. I followed him. Some looked at him with amusement some with recognition and he knew many names. Bonjour Franck, he said to an old man. Bonjour Pierre, he said to a boy. Bonjour Sabine, he said to a woman with thin brown hair. He stopped to aid her with groceries. From his free hand I saw a flash of purple which he handed to the woman. I continued on my way back to the apartment.

From the courtyard, I retrieved the ten-speed and sought out this Jesus-fellow again. I detained him and asked if he would like to use the bicycle. He declined and said he needed the walking time in between. I asked him his name. It does not matter what matters is the deeds I do. Whether I am Jesus or not, it is the same to you. I told him that I was quite in need of the real Jesus, and he responded, I will be that for you, be ye whole.

When he spoke these words I felt inside of me that it would not take effect immediately but that I would become whole at some later point. I told him I wanted to know what to call him. I will respond to whatever you call me, he said.

20

(The handwriting in the following letter was slovenly and at times indecipherable—ed.)

I am not safe here! I am betrayed. I [indecipherable].

After an afternoon walk I found my apartment ransacked. My bed was dismantled, my [indecipherable], my closets emptied. Nothing was taken—I have nothing of value. Rather I should say much was taken for all I have is this little haven and the security of it has been stolen. The door to my apartment is an illusion and provides no actual security. Like a skull! That fucking bus driver. [Indecipherable] his loved ones fed [indecipherable] while he watches, his eyes pierced [indecipherable]. At nights I push the foot of my bed against the door. During the day I leave for short intervals and am suspicious and watchful. The [indecipherable] are ordinary [indecipherable] much. I contacted the police, they interviewed the other tenants—no one saw anything. My neighbors told the authorities I have had a young woman in the apartment frequently; this turned me from victim into suspect. They asked to see my passport, my visa, asked how long I am here. I could not answer definitively and they asked more questions. They learned I am American, asked me if I had abandoned my family to pursue drugs and whores. I said no and they asked why I was here. I would not tell them but they kept asking. Bien, I said and told them that I had awoken late one morning, after the universe had been shattered, the sun had illuminated my being, and my inner self my actual self myself told me to take a journey, alone, just to be available, to plunge myself into the waters. At this the detective said I was fou and they all laughed and called me the fou prophete. They took turns calling me other names: Moise, [indecipherable], Noe, petit Jesus. Will you take us to the promised land? Where is your ark? I covered my eyes with my hands. Ultimately, they left.

Who could have done this? Where can I put my anger and fear? I want to take Bernard by the throat and force [indecipherable]. But if it was not him … Bernard, Charles, Fabienne, they all know where I live, and I have many neighbors here. They all see me coming and going, they know my tendencies. The shopkeepers nearby, I say hello to most of them every day. They know when I am out—any of them could have a friend. Perhaps one of you has betrayed me?   

21

Fabienne came by. She was making furtive glances around the apartment while we were reading. I asked her what was the matter and she said nothing. Her fidgeting made me nervous. I asked again. I had a thought and suppressed it. She continued acting strangely. She looked jumpy to me. Probably I was jumpy as hell. I accused her of robbing me and she said nothing. I accused her again; more silence. A third time I accused her and slammed my open hand on the table thunderously and she screamed that she had not robbed me. A knock came on the door. It was the elderly woman next door—she asked Fabienne if I had hit her. Fabienne said no. The old woman said she would call the police if she heard another outburst.

Fabienne was upset. I asked her why if she had done nothing wrong. She asked me if I could keep a secret. I said of course. She asked me to promise. I said yes.

She said she had met Rene at a disco, they got on well, and they had been to a movie and then slept together. Things were like this for a few weeks and then he started to tell her how to dress and which friends to keep and discard and he was usually angry or aloof one of the two. Things got worse—he yelled a lot. I said lots of people yell she said not like this, there is so much anger and it’s all focused on me, he seethes at me, he hisses, he glares. He said she was a whore for sleeping with him so early in their relationship. Him no because it was love. But her—she was not capable of love since she could not pacify him in his anger and therefore she had had sex without love and was a whore. If she tries to explain herself he wants apologies not excuses. If she apologizes she’s a coward and needs to fight for herself. Meekness is met with anger. Anger is met with anger. If she sleeps with him she’s a whore. If not she’s a nun.   

She reports on her daily activities and he provides commentary. If she does not report he ferrets it out through fear and he gets mad at her for not trusting him. She had told him about the English lessons, which explains why he had shown up above the clothing store that one evening to the English class. That night afterwards he had shoved her into the wall, accused her of sleeping with her English teacher. I told her I was surprised she would keep coming to my apartment given the danger—the danger is there regardless of her actions she said. Anyway her response (she told him she wouldn’t go to class anymore) satisfied him but later after they had seen me and Musa and Rive on the docks he accused her of wanting an American baby from her professor and said he would find out where I lived and search my apartment and if he found any signs of her having been in the apartment he would kill her. This had led to the break-in, which was not so much a robbery as an inspection—Rene searching for Fabienne’s pubes. That night he had asked her to marry him since he had not found any traces of her at my apartment. Then he jerked off on her jacket and made her wear it in public.  

Why do you not leave him? I asked. When his prior girlfriend had left him he had hit her about with a glass picture frame and crushed her hands. It was easier to stay with him and see the next move coming than to turn her back to him. Sounds like you have lost everything anyway maybe there’s not much to lose I said.  

I am relieved. I don’t want her hurt. I am just stating a fact that I am not in danger. And I feel my apartment can again be a sanctuary again for me. Which I need. Fabienne wants to continue her lessons. We are going to meet at her work at the library. Rene doesn’t go there.   

22

I walked down last night to the Santa Maha. I went a different way. A café presented itself. Eight or ten tables were set up outdoors. Two yellow-skinned women—twins—with curly black hair and bulbous noses animatedly discussed something or other, the speaker using manic gestures and the other validating with vigorous nods. A plate of green and brown olives divided the space between them. Next to them a slender young sickly-looking fellow with early silver hair deciphered the menu through lights strung overhead; it was not clear if he was waiting for someone or if the empty setting had yet to be cleared. Now the waiter appeared but in no hurry as he gave a grand salut to a friend passing opposite us. They chatted for a time and then the waiter returned to the silver-haired man who permitted the reciting of the specials. A young woman arrived and sat where the extra place setting was, the young man reassured by this. There was the sound of shattering glass. One of the twins had knocked her champagne flute to the ground. She picked up the pieces one by one. I saw her wince and pull her fingers towards her, a few drops of blood splattering on top of the olives. The other offered a napkin. The silver-haired man looked over his menu and explained what he saw to his companion. The waiter was nowhere to be seen.

I reached the water. The ship looked black in the darkness but I knew it was navy blue. The ship was vacant. I ascended and drowsy decided to sleep there. Next morning on the deck the sun felt warm and the comings and goings of ships were visible. Breakfast called or I just wanted to get out of there. Along the aged dock I saw a maroon bundled figure on the ground with grocery sacks and violets as a pillow. Bernard. I shook him awake. He drowsily greeted me as le grand Americain and nodded at no one. He did not look well. He had lost everything, first his lover then his child by that lover and then his nerves and his job and his apartment. I invited him to breakfast but he declined pointing to the sun overhead and noting that it was a good day for sleeping. He reeked.  

23

Today I was alone as with the other days here. I am coming up on nine months. I was thinking about how I came to be here. Mary’s death a reminder that time will run out. My time. I needed something to do, not a distraction to deal with grief, but rather that her death made the types of things I was doing at home day-to-day seem inconsequential … and my soul myself I wanted some type of adventure. Not an adventure for escape but for food for the sake of feeding myself my forever self. For the sake of giving the life inside of me not the one that will die but the one inside of that more to eat. I was sore afraid, not of leaving, but of what would happen if I did not leave.

In a warm rainstorm I found myself sitting on a dirty park bench facing an old tree its bark an old skin waiting to fall off. The rain stopped. In some places the hot street put off mists. The air heavy wet. I lacked the strength to escape, waited for time to move away from me. I sat. The back of my neck was warm in the sun. An ant climbed up my shoe; I brushed it away; it tried again and I stamped it. I thought I am grateful I am not an ant. I am grateful I am human. I am grateful I have a mind. I am grateful I cannot be easily squashed under foot.

I am grateful I have never been murdered and feeling the breath taken away from me involuntarily. I am grateful not to ever have been set on fire, or have my skin separated from sinew. I am grateful no one has ever cut off my tongue or digits or gored out my eyes or testes. I am grateful I am not drowning or falling through air waiting to be crushed when I hit bottom—what a sinking feeling! I am grateful I have never eaten another human. I am grateful never to have been ripped into parts by an animal. I am grateful I have never been left to die on a battlefield, covered in my own diarrhea, fear, and infection. I am grateful my flesh is not rotten and falling from my body, the foul scent …

24

I met Charles at his apartment and we went to an outdoor celebration. There was a stage with chairs and different music and dances. We sat in back and each ate his frites from a cone. His breath was spicy and raw from cocktail sauce but was free of alcohol for the first time since I have known him. He is docile, lamblike, grateful to be this far but afraid of slipping back. He mutters Sainte Vierge frequently. I asked him about being a priest and he said he could still be a priest but not yet because of his disease.

Children on stilts came to the stage and did a sort of Irish dance, their legs seemingly molded to the wood. One boy slipped off but quickly regained his composure and did not appear any worse for the wear. The pace increased and they leapfrogged, weaved, rolled, and all manner of gymnastics. It looked impossible, pretend, but yet I took account of my surroundings and judged that it was indeed real and that I was sitting here in some suburb of Marseille eating fries next to a recovering alcoholic priest while we watched children perform an Irish dance on stilts. Charles let his guard down a bit and began slapping his hand on his leg in tandem with the beat. The talisman around his sweaty scruff-covered neck jumped—it was a pewter representation of la Pieta. The music continued to stir and he stood, letting his fries drop so that he could clap his hands together, the icon moving spasmodically in sync. He lost himself and tapped one foot then another. Keeping this rhythm with difficulty he moved towards the stage. Several others stood and this intensified the work of the performers. A child motioned for Charles to take the stage which he did, standing to the side at first and then eventually being integrated into the movements, still stomping his feet. The music ended and the crowd erupted for an encore, which was given. Before descending, Charles permitted a young girl to place her headdress upon him which he was not ashamed to wear through the remainder of the day.

We made our way back to town by bus.  

25

I tutored Fabienne today and she told me more about Rene. He says he does not love her and she has pushed him away. She says maybe he is better off without her and he says no she just needs to do better. He says he wants to have a family with her and that their child would have a repulsive angular face like its mother. He says he would respect her more if she were more worthy of his admiration. One time she yelled at him to Stop and he put a stick in her ear and asked how it would feel if it were a knife.  

I volunteered to help with the community garden here along with a few others, including the Jesus-fellow who was wearing tennis shoes along with the white tunic. Is that something the real Jesus would do? I don’t know. How could I know? I asked him his name again and he smiled. He was intent on working so our conversation got no further. The ground was dry. It was hard to tell between the vegetables for instance and the weeds around them. The project seemed futile. I found some areas well away from the planted rows and turned the soil over with a large spade and continued like this for a few hours, making neat looking lines of dirt to form a clean perimeter. I do not know if this was helpful but it was something to do. I anticipated speaking more to the Jesus-fellow but he had disappeared, his portion of the gardening completed. The vegetables in the area where he had worked were larger than elsewhere but it may have been that way before he got there. The garden superintendent arrived as I was leaving and gave me some tomatoes and onions. At my apartment I chopped them up and boiled them together in water and white wine and curry and pepper—these stale spices I inherited from the previous occupant. It was not delicious and not pretty, but it warmed me and opened my pores and my skin breathed deeply. I removed my clothes and laid on the bed. My chest rose and fell, rose and fell. I rotated my head and shoulders back and stretched out my arms.

A knock came at the door. A solitary violet lay at my feet.

26

You know if you reside on this planet there are two problems time and geography. Geography keeps us physically apart from the people we love whether on this sphere or elsewhere. You know all about the master deceiver time and I believe the single most attractive feature of an afterlife would involve elimination of this measurement.

Speaking of another world, I sent someone there. I will explain. I have not been sleeping well. Evening before last, I arose and took a walk. It is not always safe after dark or rather I should say this was my first time out here in the middle of the night and I did not feel safe so I took with me a frying pan from underneath my kitchen sink or perhaps from the hot plate it was late and dark and it is hard to remember this detail. Approaching the pier, I heard some commotion and walked closer to see. The noise was coming from the direction where the Santa Maha is docked. I hurried. When I got to the boat I saw Musa on the ground with a man standing over him; Rive was screaming inside the cabin. I jumped in took a couple of big steps and swung the pan towards the man standing over Musa but he heard me behind him and lowered his head and swiveled towards me. All the weight of the iron came down on the side of his head. This made a gruesome cracking sound, the second time in my life I have heard it. His body collapsed, and he toppled into the water. I threw the pan overboard. I called out to Rive that it was safe and she emerged and ran to her grandfather’s side. He was alive but his breath was raspy and diminished.

I cradled Musa in my arms awkwardly and moved to the street with Rive in tow. A couple of kids with cell phones stopped to look and I yelled at them to call for help. During the few minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, I had a vision how future events would play out if I were to permit them to take their natural course and what would happen if I chose differently. I will not tell you whether I selected my original destiny or its alternate as indeed I do know myself which is which.

I asked Rive if she had any family but Musa. She said she did not, that her grandpa was the only one. I asked her what had happened. She said she and her grandpa were in the cabin sleeping when someone came in; her grandpa confronted him and a fight had ensued. I asked her who the man was. She said she did not know but it was the man who had been with the girl on the walk the day that I had been boating with her and Musa. Rene. I told Rive she had to lie to the doctors. That I would take care of her no matter what happened but if she told the truth I would be taken by the police, questioned, and she would be on her own until Musa got better, and if he did not get better, that she would have no family. We agreed between us that Musa had had dizzy spells and that Rive had been asleep in the cabin, heard a loud thud, and went out to find Musa down. I was her uncle, from America, in town for a visit, whom she had called using the cell phone of a stranger.

Musa was taken to the hospital. Rive lied. I lied. Or perhaps we told the truth if indeed the truth is the thing that will set us free. The doctors believed us. Musa was close to death. He told Rive to go with me, to America. Rive cried. Musa died later that morning. I took Rive to my apartment and put her in my bed and laid myself down on the floor under a blanket. Rive fell asleep, I arose quietly and returned to the water. The sun was up.

I went to the Santa Maha. It was untroubled, unbloodied. I entered the cabin. The chess board was overturned, a few drawers were opened, a watch was on the ground. I straightened things up, made the watch my own. I made some coffee and returned to the deck as if to breakfast. I moved my chair to the edge and peered into the water. I expected to see a pale bloated face staring up at me. I could see nothing but water green and deep. I was relieved and disappointed. I returned to the apartment and slept.  

Rive whimpers a lot but is doing okay considering. Truth be told I enjoy her company. As far as the neighbors know I have a brother who served in Kuwait who married an Arab, making Rive my niece, my niece who has always wanted to visit France. How long will this bullshit tale hold up?

27

It is odd to handle the cremated remains of another human. It is odd to have written those words. Musa’s ashes were given to me in a turquoise urn and with Rive by my side we wandered the city to scatter them. (As for me, I simply want to be put to rest in that quiet corner of my own backyard under the acorn tree.) I felt the weight of the remains in my hands but rather it was I assume the weight of the urn itself. I asked Rive if she would like to go to the water or a park or somewhere else and she said she just wanted to walk. This was Sunday. Few people were out but those who were out, if they noticed the urn, kept a respectful distance. We walked to the water. Rive said no. We walked to the park with the stone bridge. No. We walked to an orange orchard, an abandoned field, mounted a tall building where the wind blew lightly from the north. Rive asked to hold the urn for a time. She said that the night before, she had had a dream of a purple bed. I directed her back to the park with the stone bridge, and behind it to a field of lavender. This was not right.

I was sweating and fatigued. My pants were wet through. There were no clouds to give relief from the sun. I carried the urn against my chest. Rive ran ahead and picked something from the sidewalk and holding up a handful of violets said voila. She walked faster. It was lunchtime now and we walked past many cafes. I had a feeling to return to the café where I had seen the twins eating. As we approached, the Jesus-fellow arose from an empty table and quickly shuffled away; Rive saw violets in his hand. We now were jogging lightly to keep up with him. I would not say he was moving quickly but rather knew so many shortcuts that it made our work difficult. He cut into alleyways and courtyards and abandoned lots and through shops and apartment buildings, there always being an exit for him. We lost sight of him and continued walking.

We saw it from afar. It was an orange-pink stucco church. The outer gate was open. Extending from the church was a narrow courtyard protected by a thin and open-windowed wall of the same color and style as the church itself. In the center was a round gray fountain with a cross extending upwards from it. The water gurgled forth from the top of the fountain and slipped down into canals on the tops of the arms of the cross, trickling downwards from there into the pool below. The fountain of the cross was surrounded by a flower garden that hushed the sound of the water. Here I beheld the violets, thick and plush like lawn, purple and eager and alive and luscious and wanting to be picked. Rive asked for the urn and rushed forward to the purple bed. She slid her fingers through the remains like sand and tossed them upwards over the violets, a light wind holding the ashes still like a photograph. Some time passed.  

We were startled by movement behind us. It was the Jesus-fellow who had his back to us and was washing his face at the fountain. He dunked his hair in, and poured cupped water over his beard. He lifted each foot into the fountain and washed without soap. We approached and greeted him. “I have the keys to the kingdom,” he said, holding up the key that dangled from his neck. He motioned to the church.

The key fit within the lock and the large wooden door swung open. Inside it was dim but for the light that streamed in through stained glass windows all around the perimeter. The place felt vacant and unused. We made our way around and stopped in a bath of pink and teal sunlight in front of a statue of John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Rive asked why the church was locked and empty. The Jesus-fellow explained that the priest of this church was on a leave of absence but had trusted the key to him until such time as his return. How long has it been? I asked.  Une douzaine d’annees the Jesus-fellow replied.

At the front was the altar. The base was ornately fashioned out of wood, in the manner of an intricate carving as if of jade, delicate saints and beasts dancing and protruding hither and thither. The wood was not entirely gilded but here and there a knob or flower had received this special treatment. The top of the altar was a solid slab of white marble.

I had the urge to cast myself on the altar, to make a sacrifice of myself for someone, something, some cause higher. I touched the stone. It was cool though the air was warm and humid. I shivered and mounted the altar, lying prostate. I felt vulnerable but unafraid. I imagined a knife being put through the back of my neck. I thought I would die on this altar to save the world; and then I would not die on this altar to save the world. I removed myself, then laughed at my vanity.

The day had been exhausting and Rive and I returned to the apartment and fell into profound slumber without having eaten, she in the bed and I in a cot next to the door.

28

The day before yesterday Rive and I returned to the apartment near the lunch hour and she laid down for a nap while I made myself a sandwich. I stood staring into the courtyard, the only sound the feint air of Rive’s breathing and the noises of my chewing and swallowing. I had the sensation of something about to happen. I looked to see that the door was locked. I took a large bite of my sandwich and moved to the door quietly. I heard the sound of voices entering the apartment building. I tilted a chair over and braced it against the door and waited. The voices grew louder until there was a pounding at the door. My heart raced. The noise was adjacent where the old couple lives. I overheard them talking; it was the police and the woman next door was saying that the pervert had taken a young girl in with him. I shook Rive awake and took her into the bathroom and shut the door and had her breathe into a towel. There was pounding and shouting at my door. There was more pounding and shouting and the door was kicked. Rive was shivering but kept her sounds smothered. The pounding continued for ten or twenty minutes.

We stayed on the floor until nightfall and then quietly I took Rive and walked down to the Santa Maha. I told her she would need to stay here by herself for a while but that I would visit her every day and bring her food but she must never show herself until I told her it was safe. If she needed fresh air she should come out only a night and only briefly. I left her there at sun-up and went to market and returned to the ship with all kinds of foods and drinks and games and paper and books and other things.

I returned to my apartment and slipped in quietly and awaited the inevitable which came soon—a knock on the door; I calmly opened up and invited in the two officers, whom I recognized from before. The first one spoke up and said that it was not right for Petit Jesus to have a sex slave. The second one asked me where she was. I told them they were right before, when they had suggested that I had come to France for sex and drugs; that I had had a prostitute with me for several weeks but had grown tired of her and sent her back. They did not believe me and said that the lady next door had informed them that the girl I had with me was short, like a little girl; and I confessed to being perverted and told them I had taken a midget prostitute. I played up the part and told them some of the things I liked to do with midget women upside down and backwards and how nice it was that their heads were waist high and how dwarf sex had been an obsession of mine and that France had some of the sturdiest small whores I had ever had. I started to draw pictures in case they were interested or offered to show them with fruits and vegetables.  

They believed me. They backed down but as they were leaving the first officer turned and elbowed me in the stomach. The other one pounced on me and seized my neck and told me he himself would be back to strangle me if I had been with a little girl instead of a midget whore.

After they left I found that I was weak and could not get up from the ground. I had intended to return to see Rive that evening but stayed on my bed getting up only to spit blood.

29

Fabienne was over. I told her what had happened. Her face was neutral, as if she already knew. She said she had already been questioned by the police about Rene’s disappearance but as she knew nothing about it, and had been in the suburbs with family for several days at the time I killed Rene, the police had stopped questioning her.

She was highly agitated about Rive’s situation and said she would go down to the boat regularly to see how Rive was doing. I thanked her for this. I am thankful for this.

I have been looking at pictures of my family from when I was college age. One from the family reunion we had at Pluto Canyon the picture of me on that camp chair the one my Mom hung on the wall for some reason—I was heavier then. Looking at the picture I felt sorry for the person sitting in the chair and for a second I thought it was my brother Jack I pitied but as I was in the one in the picture I was feeling ignominy for my actual self, not myself as I am now but myself as I was then. I was looking at a picture of a man who did not know who he was or what he wanted and here he was trapped in a photograph unable to do anything about it mired in the past.

Am I a happier person now than I was then? That is what people are always asking themselves. Would more money make me happier? Will I be happier if I am married? Will I be happier if I am divorced? What if I were in better health? Would I be happier then? Happiness has nothing to do with anything. Who I am to suggest an alternative but I will try—I think what we want is to be complete whole fulfilled free.

Take a mother and child. The child comes home from school and reads or colors for a little while watches TV chases the dog around the house eats dinner frolics in the yard—he has a carefree existence and if you ask him if he is happy he says yes. His mother is tired and she has other kids to watch and work to do at night once the kids are in bed to make ends meet and little time to herself. Ask her if she is happy and she will pause. Does this mean the child’s life is better than his mother’s?

I miss Rive. I felt useful when she was here. I was teaching her things, words, expressions. I was taking care of her. I still am. I was showing her how to cook some of the things I like to eat. I was telling her about Mary. I go down at nights to the Santa Maha to check on her. Fabienne has giftedly taken to the role of caring for Rive. Most days Rive goes to school but Fabienne is there in the evenings to help Rive with homework, feed her, and to keep her company. When I descend into the cabin after dark they are sleeping, but I wake them up and we will chat for fifteen or twenty minutes, longer on nights when Rive does not have school the next day.

(Inside the unopened envelope with the letter above was a yellowed photograph of a young girl with dark skin—ed.)

30

Have you ever wanted to have a heavenly visitor to say how it is there that it is worth waiting for that it is better than here. To make sense of all this. Me too. I pray that Mary will come visit me.

My situation here is precarious. Yesterday I went down to the docks to visit Fabienne and Rive. I had a whole crate of eggs for them a bottle of juice and a new game. Fabienne said that earlier that day a homeless man in a maroon jacket had come by the boat and asked for some money and when she refused him he said he knew something dangerous to the future of the little girl which he said while pointing at Rive.

I asked Fabienne a bunch of questions and the homeless man must be Bernard. It is possible the saw something the night I killed Rene. We decided if Bernard comes by again she should give him alcohol or money or anything to appease him for as long as possible. At that moment we heard steps on the deck of the boat and I opened the door. It was Bernard and he was drunk and menacing. His face was beet red and he was poking at me with a tree branch saying that he had seen me clobber a boy and throw him overboard. I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted money. I grabbed him by the throat and removed all the paper from my wallet and stuffed it into his mouth and said that he if he would keep quiet there be more where that came from. He peed into the water from the deck and then turned around and pointed at my wrist. I gave him the watch too.

31

You are a lot smarter than I am so you know by now that Bernard has made the most of his situation. Fabienne says he comes by every day now making new demands and threatening to notify the police. We have given him all the money we can spare and one-by-one the chess pieces which he can likely pawn for a small fortune if he is smart enough and plenty of alcohol and clothing too. I want to tell him to go to hell but there is too much at stake, one word from him and I will be dealing with interrogations for months and heaven knows but that Rive will be taken away.

Compression and time have a way of clarifying a shadowy situation. Nothing in life has to be done right now. When you feel compulsion to do something immediately pause and you will find that everything can wait. And in that moment of waiting you will have the greatest visions that anyone could have. You are a god and somewhere inside you know all things. Just wait and let it surface.

Here I have been in a trap unable to go forwards or back … two choices in this world only and I unable to make one. Rive on the ship … Fabienne taking care of her. And running out of concessions for Bernard before he goes to the police. I can’t bring Musa back to life to take care of Rive; can’t go to the authorities and tell them my story. And my resources are running low now that I am paying for food for three people.

It is futile to consider the world as what it was before it became what it is. It is futile to imagine it as it would be, or how it will be. It simply is, that is the only truth. As it was—that is a lie. As it will be—that is a lie. It simply is. Imagine Abraham and Isaac that morning after they awoke and comprehended what was ahead of them. I suppose all the wishing in the world could not have made them travel backwards in time at a moment prior that comprehension nor could they travel forward to learn what they had already done. And here is what is for me that I cannot get away from—a little girl has no family.

But I don’t know what to do and I will wait I will hold all this in my heart and in my mind and I will ask God and I will ask myself to show me the way out.

32

I went to the cathedral where Musa’s ashes were scattered to find something for which I was looking. The courtyard was peopled; the door opening and closing. The church was full of life. I went in and sat in the back. The priest entered all in purple and gold. It appeared to be Charles, and when he spoke it was confirmed. It was Charles. He has found his way back to his flock.

After the Mass, the congregation scattered and I found myself alone in the nave. I approached the altar which was covered with violets. The violets caused my attention to stay there on the altar. I was fixed there and could not move. I envisioned my whole life there held it there above the cold marble without judging it. It was bigger than I thought. In my mind I made a transparent cube there into which I put everything I am everyone I know everything I know everything and everyone I love and I imagined it all there held there in this invisible box.

It is a lot to hold said a voice behind me. Yes I said, unconsciously. Turning, I saw Charles and the Jesus-fellow.

It is a lot to hold the Jesus-fellow repeated. He was looking not at me but the altar. His eyes seemed to be tracing the same invisible box I had imagined. You have big shoulders.

I nodded. He was right. I do have big shoulders. I have suffered much. I felt seen.  

Charles spoke: What are you looking for?

I told them how I had come here, the day after Mary’s funeral, because I was afraid of what might happen if I did not come here. I told them about Rive and Fabienne and being trapped and ready to go home.

Charles spoke again: What are you looking for?

I said I wanted God to tell me that my sacrifice had been enough and let me out of the trap.

It is enough the Jesus-fellow said. I believed him when He said this. I felt buoyant and light. It is enough he repeated.

I have seen what you put upon the altar and it is enough. Take Fabienne and Rive and go home. Ask Charles this Priest to marry you and Fabienne here at this altar and adopt Rive as your daughter under French law and go back to New York.

I don’t love Fabienne I said.

You said you wanted to go home and to continue to take care of Rive the Jesus-fellow responded. It is the only way.

I do not wish to make a mockery of this altar I said by marrying someone for paperwork only to divorce her in New York.  

You will make a mockery of this altar the Jesus-fellow said if you do not marry Fabienne so you can adopt Rive and she is taken from the only two people on earth who care for her. I took a deep breath and walked back to the apartment.

33

My dear friends I am no Isaac but I volunteered myself at the altar and posterity I have like the sands of the sea. I have Mary in heaven and Rive on earth the dark river girl flowing to replenish the ocean. Mary and Rive those who came after me my posterity my untold wealth my lands and possessions. Innumerable inestimable fathomless infinite. Like the sands of the sea my children and I their Father, Abraham Ramos Rapp.

EPILOGUE

Forensic study of public documents in both the United States and France, including immigration records, vital statistics, court documents, and tax filings reveals no individuals corresponding with the persons described in the letters.