logic, he decides that it is probably best to bury Gonzago before joining Elsie in bed and sating himself on love. To let the dog rot in the open air seems an invitation to allow its stupid, slavering spirit to haunt his dreams.
After dragging the mangy carcass across the yard, Claude chooses a nice spot near the grotto where the earth is soft, and warm, and the worms look particularly eager to do their work. He finds a shovel in the tool shed and then begins to build a doghouse that will last Gonzago till doomsday. Like some infernal gravedigger, he tunnels into the loamy soil, uncovering the bones of the luckless squirrels and rabbits that Gonzago has brutally mangled and then buried with the jittery backward glances of an assassin. As he digs deeper, Claude uncovers a million subtle odors locked away in the earth, the fleshy green leaves transformed over the years into a brown soup that sends up fingers of steam into the evening air, eons of carnage artfully concealed by the moribund bouquet of nature.
Even after more than forty years on this cursed planet, Claude cannot comprehend the fact that one day he, too, will belong to that corrupt odor, his lingering stench the last trace of an existence that has failed to leave a more lasting mark. The maggots will have at him, and his sullied flesh will melt into the rich alluvial mud. Ultimately, his bloated carcass will make a fine meal for some wayward fiend like Gonzago. It’s for this reason that he plans to be interred in the deepest catacombs of a monastery where, despite the anonymity of his jumbled bones, there might at least be a small chance that his skull, polished smooth by the dripping limestone walls, will become a
memento mori
, a paperweight for the manuscripts of some future literary genius who decides to smuggle it out of the tomb and place it on the edge of his desk next to an hourglass, a vase of red roses, a glass of Amontillado.
Exhausted and dizzy from the absinthe, Claude rolls the corpse into the pit and then begins to fill the hole. He wonders how his old friend will take the news of Gonzago’s passing. Edward has been behaving rather erratically of late, and there is a distinct possibility that in his unbearable grief he will dig up the corpse and rock it back and forth in his arms, trying to grasp the enormity of his loss. “Why?” he might whisper, “why?” Because asking why—why this course of action and not some other—well, those are the kinds of questions men of his station often ask, men who have grown accustomed to success and balk at any event that veers radically from the script they have meticulously crafted. How they abhor change and deplore the ubiquity of life’s impermanence. But erosion takes its toll on all things, reveals complex rows of strata andsubstrata below the surface, so that over the slow course of time, the souls of these men, petrified like fossils encased in layers of stone, are finally exposed, extracted, put on display for all to see. Change is inescapable, it unites rich and poor alike, the mindless cosmic constant that converts all things into unidentifiable heaps of dust and bones.
Claude taps down the dirt, throws the shovel aside, and returns to the house, but before heading upstairs to join Elsie in bed, he pauses in the den, takes one last look around. The bottle of absinthe and the vial of poison are still on the table beside the armchair. A peculiar feeling comes over him. The branches of the elms and maples clatter against the windowpane, the moon drifts behind a cloud, the wind whispers its secrets and then goes silent; in short, the globe continues to spin in its usual manner, but Claude has the sensation, an acute
awareness
, that he is not, and perhaps has never been, the protagonist of this drama but is merely a supporting player, one who appears briefly on stage to recite a few modest lines before retreating to the wings to wait for the spectacular, dazzling, grisly finish.
He pours three
After dragging the mangy carcass across the yard, Claude chooses a nice spot near the grotto where the earth is soft, and warm, and the worms look particularly eager to do their work. He finds a shovel in the tool shed and then begins to build a doghouse that will last Gonzago till doomsday. Like some infernal gravedigger, he tunnels into the loamy soil, uncovering the bones of the luckless squirrels and rabbits that Gonzago has brutally mangled and then buried with the jittery backward glances of an assassin. As he digs deeper, Claude uncovers a million subtle odors locked away in the earth, the fleshy green leaves transformed over the years into a brown soup that sends up fingers of steam into the evening air, eons of carnage artfully concealed by the moribund bouquet of nature.
Even after more than forty years on this cursed planet, Claude cannot comprehend the fact that one day he, too, will belong to that corrupt odor, his lingering stench the last trace of an existence that has failed to leave a more lasting mark. The maggots will have at him, and his sullied flesh will melt into the rich alluvial mud. Ultimately, his bloated carcass will make a fine meal for some wayward fiend like Gonzago. It’s for this reason that he plans to be interred in the deepest catacombs of a monastery where, despite the anonymity of his jumbled bones, there might at least be a small chance that his skull, polished smooth by the dripping limestone walls, will become a
memento mori
, a paperweight for the manuscripts of some future literary genius who decides to smuggle it out of the tomb and place it on the edge of his desk next to an hourglass, a vase of red roses, a glass of Amontillado.
Exhausted and dizzy from the absinthe, Claude rolls the corpse into the pit and then begins to fill the hole. He wonders how his old friend will take the news of Gonzago’s passing. Edward has been behaving rather erratically of late, and there is a distinct possibility that in his unbearable grief he will dig up the corpse and rock it back and forth in his arms, trying to grasp the enormity of his loss. “Why?” he might whisper, “why?” Because asking why—why this course of action and not some other—well, those are the kinds of questions men of his station often ask, men who have grown accustomed to success and balk at any event that veers radically from the script they have meticulously crafted. How they abhor change and deplore the ubiquity of life’s impermanence. But erosion takes its toll on all things, reveals complex rows of strata andsubstrata below the surface, so that over the slow course of time, the souls of these men, petrified like fossils encased in layers of stone, are finally exposed, extracted, put on display for all to see. Change is inescapable, it unites rich and poor alike, the mindless cosmic constant that converts all things into unidentifiable heaps of dust and bones.
Claude taps down the dirt, throws the shovel aside, and returns to the house, but before heading upstairs to join Elsie in bed, he pauses in the den, takes one last look around. The bottle of absinthe and the vial of poison are still on the table beside the armchair. A peculiar feeling comes over him. The branches of the elms and maples clatter against the windowpane, the moon drifts behind a cloud, the wind whispers its secrets and then goes silent; in short, the globe continues to spin in its usual manner, but Claude has the sensation, an acute
awareness
, that he is not, and perhaps has never been, the protagonist of this drama but is merely a supporting player, one who appears briefly on stage to recite a few modest lines before retreating to the wings to wait for the spectacular, dazzling, grisly finish.
He pours three
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