The Funeral (2014 September)

THE FUNERAL

I found myself in a small village last night at dusk.  It was only a few houses and could not have held more souls than populate an English country church.  Around the village, there grew a thin, circular hedge, dense enough but not more than was necessary to establish a boundary.  In spots, I could see through it, out toward the River Ouse. 

By time I'd come upon the village, I had cycled out too far and found myself lost amongst the flat fields of the Fens.  The roads curved and bent to follow rivers and streams, though some measured the length of furrows.  Most of the latter were straight for planting and stretched out from east to west, maximizing exposure to sun at this northern latitude.  By the time I'd entered the village, it didn't matter to me just where I was.  I thought that I should stop, to call for a taxi to return me home.

Despite the sleepy landscape, the village itself was excited.  Not to see me, of course, but with some going-on.  People were running toward the village church.  I was mistaken; at first, believing that I’d landed — that’s often what you do cycling across the wind-blown Fens — landed amidst the village saint’s feast day.  With my luck, I told myself, it would be one of the saints whom had survived bloody bodily harm, one who would have been mangled in some way by the calling to sainthood.  Everyone loves a comeback following adversity.  Look at Lance Armstrong.  Less than a saint; in the end, it was his embodiment of the Livestrong® campaign that got you on your bike.  By hook or by crook, nothing else mattered.  You'd done something for humanity.

The old Norman churches that dot the countryside here in East Anglia were built like German machine-gun bunkers.  During the war, they would have passed as bomb shelters.  This one was like all of the others.  A pillbox whose skin was so thick that its walls stood on a quarter of the building’s footprint.  Its bell tower, in the fading light, appeared to be a finger raised in defiance.  Though I'd heard its bell ring on approach across the Fens, it was silent now.  If not for its clear tenor on the wind, I wouldn't have come to this village.  I’d have continued on toward Ely, which I knew to be in the distance.  There, lured by its lit cathedral, the so-called “ship of the Fens” because it could be seen to sail over a sea of corn crops, I'd have caught the next train back to Cambridge.

Once inside the village, the church lights were lure enough.  Of course, the sight of villagers scurrying into the building at a pace peaked curiosity.  The place was lit inside for the second coming.  The lights were on; and, their burning glory was a metal wheel with bare incandescent bulbs hung over the altar.  Seen through chancel windows, it seemed to sway even in the air’s stillness.  “Come inside”, a man of my age encouraged.  His insistence was more than evangelical.  “You must come inside!” he repeated, tugging at my arm.

I explained that I'd only come to call a cab.  “It was silly of me to have left my mobile at work in London.” I driveled on.  “Come inside”, he said, “you can use mine.”  I suspected that he had no intention of allowing me the use of his phone.  Not until I had been baptized, or, sacrificed on the altar.  But, his grip on my upper arm would soon come untethered and, with it, any hope of making the call.  I allowed him to lead me on.

I noticed, as we crossed the threshold, that parishioners inside were busy with the work of lighting candles.  The candles were everywhere and, particularly, anywhere light would shine come day.  Votive and tea candles warmed to the windowsills.  The wicks of tall, narrow tallows burned bright inside doorways.  Like a devil’s exorcism, the dark for darkness sake was being cast out.  Wax fell from the rafters, from the wings of eavesdroppers, from everywhere that men on stilted ladders could reach. 

The man who led me in turned and again reached out toward me.  “May the Lord protect you this night”, he said as he passed a candle into my hands from a table at the door, “and all of your days.”  I took the language and act as ceremonial.  It was something that he certainly would not have said outside.  "Good to meet you." he might have said shaking my hand.  Behind me, the wooden doors were being pushed closed.  “I hope so too!” I responded, trusting that my American accent world excuse its lack of appropriate formality.  A key turned the lock; and, a medieval plank bolted the door.

Now, I dared not ask to borrow the man’s phone.  Even had I wanted to, for whatever I feared, curiosity trapped me within my skin.  What cult had replaced English Catholicism? I wondered.  What ritual required bolting the door?  Darkness, I could see through the great window behind the altar, had fallen.  I would likely spend the night here.  By time the service ended, no cab would come out this far. 

“Oh.  I’m George.” said the man at my side.  “We won't detain you long.”  He was lying.  His eyelids fell and fluttered as he spoke the words.  We were still standing.  And, now, he was leading me down the small nave toward a baptismal font.  “May I anoint you?” he asked.  His hand cupped water from the font and raised it toward my head.  He intoned a Latin prayer.  The Romans occupied Britain for four hundred years.  The language remained.  Dons at the University of Cambridge still use it to bless their meals, to initiate and close convocation and even, I’m told, in some colleges, to pass the threshold of the cloak room.  “Each of us come to the Lord as we are,” he concluded in English as he wet my forehead, “not as we were born.”  He was staring into my eyes; this time without as much as a blink.

Had this been a pub or even public transport, I would have held his gaze.  Here, it was difficult or, more to the point, uneasy.  It was as though he was digging for something.  Acceptance, if not faith; I don’t know.  My sights drifted toward the sacristy door.  It seemed to quiver in its frame as though a window had been opened in the room beyond.  And, on cue, the door opened.  “Cantemus Domini.  In nomine Patris.” — Let us sing to God.  In the name of the Father.  — one of the female parishioners shuddered as she crossed herself while another uttered the briefest of cries.

The room beyond was dark.  A boy carrying a Paschal candle emerged and, behind him, a priest in robes.  The priest held a Bible as though a shield, which he shifted in order to raise a hand of encouragement to someone, as yet, behind him in the dark.  The scent of cloves was heavy on the air.  Both priest and boy pivoted back toward the door, then knelt, heads bowed.  The congregation followed; and, George pulled me to my knees.

The church already full of light and with the scent of cloves now filled, too, with prayer.  From the sacristy, a bare foot stepped into the light; on its weight, the torso of a naked young man.  I was stunned.  Stepping forward, into a public space, let alone amongst neighbours, must have been an act of contrition.  One that left him at once vulnerable and perfect.  The light stripped him of his blemishes.  Bowed heads, incapable — unworthy perhaps — of noting his beauty, protected his modesty.

The young man made his way slowly toward the altar.  There, he lifted himself and swung his legs up.  He lay silent, eyes fixed on a point above him, perhaps blinding himself in one of the incandescent bulbs.  The young man’s skin grew even more pale in the light.

The congregation rose.  Their eyes followed the priest to the altar.  “This is our son.” He spoke.  Just then, a tapping at the windows began, like the rapping of rain mixed with hail.  It continued; and, the noise of it grew.  "Today, he has been taken from us." the priest continued, shouting over it.  If I had been stunned, I was now puzzled.  The young man was not dead.  Wax continued to rain down. 

George, sensing my bewilderment, explained that the young man had been bitten.  This did nothing to relieve my confusion.  Rabies wasn't known in Britain.  And, if it were, I was sure that Anglo-Catholic ritual had no ceremony that should have required a young man to supine himself on the altar.  “But, he is alive!” I told George, “Look.  You can see him breathing.” 

“That is the young man’s mother.”  George spoke of the woman who had made her way to the altar through the congregation.  She was joined there by two additional women.  Together, they bathed the young man with cloths wetted in the baptismal font.  When they were done, the mother kissed her son’s lips.  “This can go terribly wrong.” George said of the rite.  “Once a young girl returned the kiss; and, a father had to bury both wife and child.”  I began to worry that the young man had been bitten by the Ebola bug, by something deadly to us all.

A full moon shone bright through the great window.  It belied clear skies, betraying the sound of the rain as a lie.  The evening couldn't grow stranger.  It already seemed as improbable as a dream.

The mother stepped slowly back from the son, as if prising herself from the den of a sleeping lion.  The priest now raised his arms and head.  It was a pose that I'd seen earlier in the day — during a visit to the Fitzwilliam museum — on the side of an Assyrian vase.  It was another priest imploring the Divine for salvation.  “Shine your favour on him, oh Lord.”  He pleaded, as he drew a blue ribbon from his vestments.  It had been sewn into the cloth above his heart.  “and, show us your compassion and mercy.” He continued, his breath unbroken as he crossed the young man’s arms over his abdomen and bound them together.

George whispered into my ear the words I half expected to hear.  “Life is a river.” He said.  “Death is an ocean.”  It was as though he was drawing the words from me.  Death is always given the light touch.  You can be a prick in life and sainted in rigor mortis.  “Look, how he holds his breath, they will say of me.” I sighed.  George was smiling.  “The clouds await.”  This was the original blue-sky.  Heaven.  The words were intentionally trite.  The young man’s chest rose and fell gently.

His invocation made, the priest performed last rites.  “Clove oil.” George narrated as the priest silently dipped his thumb into a bowl, and, used it to anoint the young man’s forehead in the sign of the cross.  This was repeated for hands, and, again for feet.  Scented of clove, the priest anointed the young man’s ears, eyes and nose, pausing before making the sign of the cross over his lips.  These were the parts of the young man that had interacted with the world.  Touching it.  Taking it in.  Speaking to it.  One last time, the priest placed his thumb in the oil.  “Poor little fella”, George distracted.  “I understand he never got to use that properly!”  I turned back just in time to see the priest lift his fingers from the young man’s penis.  “Anointing of the groins;” explained George, “most English churches have abandoned the practice.”

With this, the three women folded the altar cloth over the young man's body.  It would serve as a shroud.  The tapping at the windows began to die back.  “This passion play will soon be over”, I thought.  “How good it was”, I looked forward to telling George, “to have come in unknowing.”  I would have to admit that I was a little creeped-out.  In response, he would say something plain but cryptic.  The young man would slough himself off of the altar, and, put on his clothes.

This was not to be.      — You don't want to see the end coming.  Perhaps what I was seeing was in part the product of fatigue.  I’d come a long way without enough water.  I was lost.  Disoriented.  For all I knew, the young man breathing on the altar was actually eighty-two; dead, of cancer; lying in an open casket.  But, I couldn't convince myself of it.

In the end, it happened swiftly.  The priest took a wooden cross from the altar boy — raised it toward the rafters — and, quickly drove it down into the young man’s chest.  In the moment, I don't recall a sound.  There was nothing, not even silence.  I recall George wrapping one arm around me, while using the other to grasp mine before I fainted.

I was found on a roadside south of Ely and woke in a Cambridge hospital.  It appeared, the police said, that I had been taken out in a hit-and-run.  My bike was mangled.  I was fortunate, they told me, that I'd been thrown into the wheat beyond the verge.  When asked if I knew who'd done this, if I'd seen a registration plate, I told them this story.  I have told everyone who would listen.  Now, I've even written it down.  The nurse told me that it was a dream.  But, I can see the imprint of George’s fingers around my upper arm.

Fantastic Mr. Fox, and, a Saturday excursion

Fantastic Mr. Fox

and a Saturday excursion

Fox hunting became illegal here in the UK in 2005.  Fantastic Mr. Fox is so out-of-the-closet now that he made his film début four years on.  Relatives have even moved into the heart of the capital. 

_________________________

So, I am minding my business early Saturday afternoon.  Max and I are on Jesus Green, the park that hugs the River Cam.  It's a space made for lazy days notwithstanding the grass tennis-courts, the skate-park and band-shell.  It's a perfect day.  The sky is blue.  The sun, bright.  And, the grass beneath our feet is so verdant, it looks as if it might have been painted.

Max is old now.  He leaves his ball and flying squirrel toy at home.  These were made to make him run; but, running now leaves him winded.  Instead, he prefers simple and several rolls on the green.  Legs flying, as though he's trying to dance on the clouds.  It's behaviour that he began in a bid to prolong his walks.  Today, he's using it to entertain.  Tourists have their cameras pointed at him.

We're at the mid-point of a city-walkie.  Cambridge sits like a ball against the sinews of the River.  A city-walkie follows the curve of the ball, passing through every green space available to us. 

It begins at the far edge of Midsummer Common.  This is the wild where a small herd of beef cattle manage the land, where old-fashioned one-ring circuses pitch tents, one after another, all summer long.  It's where old Guy Fawkes will burn in effigy come the Fall.  Max likes the scent of the beasts.  There's neither a bull nor a circus colt to which he doesn't believe he is related.

The mid-point, backing Jesus College, is Jesus Green.  Beyond us, city-walkies continue between the river's lower and upper locks.  At points, we will literally walk on water to enter the city.  Max loves this part of the walk as in the city lay the remains of the party scene: spilled chips & vomit.  From there, it's over the only public foot-bridge on this side of the city, up the college backs and into Coe Fen.  The Backs bear the last signs of segregation in Cambridge.  "No dogs." they read.  Pity, as here lay the bridges that cross the river, should we need to cut a city-walkie short.  The Fen is a semi-arid wetland where the attraction for Max is another half-flink of cattle.  Coe is the old English word for cow. 

Back in the middle, Jesus Green begins just beyond the cattle guards beneath the Victoria Avenue bridge.  This marks the spot where the last of great College boat-houses rests along the opposite shore.  It's the last safe spot for Max to drink from the River.  Embankments further along grow steep.  A misplaced paw would see him tumble down, armadillo like, into the water.  He has done this once, already.

I am old, too.  The cold snap means that my knee freezes, locks-up as if I'm wearing metal-plate armour that's been left in the rain.  "Pour l'amour d'armure!"  I curse it.  Even bending down to unleash Max brings a complaint from the knee.  It pops with the sound of burst balloon. 

There's a bench not far from where Max teases the air with his up-turned legs.  "He won't bolt", I tell myself, taking a seat.  It's no time before Max is off on his own, nosing the base of trees near the city-side fence.  His graffiti 'I was here', penned in the invisible ink of pee, is marked as an invitation.  It's no surprise, then, that we were soon after surrounded: Otters — Bears — Bear cubs — and, Foxes.

Don't take this literally.  It's a rather largish crowd of gay men, half of them shirtless.  It is typical of the British spirit that, as long as the sun is shining, England might as well be Ibiza or Miami.  Despite the autumnal chill, it's weather made to go shirtless, with shorts and bare feet.  Blankets are thrown down.  Feasts are laid.  The bears and bear cubs have dropped themselves onto the pitch.  Pouring Champaign.  Devouring canapés.  The otters have gone off to play with the foxes.

I'm not much for bears and their cubs.  It's the weight, not the hair.  The otters are cute in a bony sort of way.  None of these men are foxy.  But, the foxes do have an unmistakeable animal attraction.  They're dressed in Fantastic Mr. Fox costumes, complete with paws and tails.  "The Fursuiters are out for fun!" I hear one of them yell.  Then, all of them run.  It's pandemonium.  Max takes notice.  I don't realize how flawlessly he fits in, until an otter howls, "Fox hunt!" and drops to his knees, pulling nerf™ guns from his picnic basket.  Suddenly, all of the otters have nerf™ guns.  And, nerf™ bullets are flying.

I'll leave you there.  Max and I moved on.  I was afraid that he was becoming a bit too animated.  I would have loved to have seen how this ended, ... when the bears and bear cubs finished ransacking their picnic baskets.  You might like to imagine that they'd fall back, belly up onto their blankets, sated.  I, instead, imagined them still hungry, turning on the foxes and devouring the otters.  "Hmm. Tastes like Chicken!" I can hear one of them saying. 

The rest of our city walkie was anti-climatic.

_________________________

Afterwords.  Irreverent and gay.

Should you not be familiar the imaginarium of gay slang, I introduce you to some of its woodland creatures.

A bear is a large, somewhat rotund hairy man.  Sometimes, when travelling on their own, a bear is easily mistaken for a middle-aged heterosexual man who has simply let himself go; ... which, incidentally is usually the reason he travels on his own.  His cub is a younger version of himself.

Otters are thin, hairy men of any age, though nature often takes its course, turning otters into bears as years wear on.  "Don't make fun of our father's good looks", my mother used to say.  "You'll grow into his skin one day."  She may have been right, but I'll still make fun of his come-over.

Foxes have no place in gay culture.  There are wolves, feral and inclined toward animalistic sexual naturalism.  They come out only after dark, and, are sometimes thought to be myth.  But, there are definitely no foxes.  Hence, the costumes.

Chicken, by the way, belong to the group of people usually defined by British heterosexual slang as Birds, albeit rendered simply 'nubile'.  You-are-what-you-eat has become cliché.  A sacrament less transubstantiation than supplication.  The desire to be transformed never gets old.  Some even pray for it.