I.
I am telling you it was before, but it wasn’t before. More like outside. Or over. But none of these, really.
It seems like before, though. Before I was born. Before anything was born.
You’d say we talked, but we didn’t need to make a sound. I was in her presence, and she in mine, but we knew this without needing to see one another. There was nothing to see. There was only Mary and I.
How do I say it?
When I knew her, before, we were not merely invisible, not winds, nor even beams of light, and certainly no more ether than earth. We were more like ideas. Not ideas. One idea. Mary and I.
Why did we ever give it up? I don’t know. We had a yearning for something else, something specific. We agreed to it at a sort of meeting we held. But understand, this is not how it was. I say it this way, because this is the way of saying things. Saying is my fever. Each word is a drop of sweat.
We were just there, some place. But not a place, you know. Home. The point of parting. There our separate wanderings began. I stepped across the threshold alone, and all the clocks in the world started ticking at once.
* * *
Floating was the first sensation of my new, separate self. The thump of a drum and the wash of a sea were the first sounds I heard. Mother’s was the first voice, high and lilting, as muffled as it was. Then another, deeper voice. The first light I saw was shapeless and amber colored. Darkness crept in and voices ceased, but the drum persisted, the sea continued restlessly.
I had never been away from Mary, never before. I had never known needing. Needing was my first knowledge.
Before learning her name, before learning naming, I learned longing to speak her name. Hearing the voices of my parents, I longed for a voice of my own to call for her.
Violent promises in my tiny hands and my new brain would not let me rest. My sanctuary became intolerable
I sought an opening. I knew there had to be one somewhere. But I could not escape. I was forced to wait. When I could stand it no longer, the walls of the place began to twist and heave, to tear themselves apart. They started to squeeze me out, clamping down on my body, cramming my head into a narrow way. I thought I would never get through. I was crushed terribly, then thrust into sudden light, and suddenly sounds of save the choking child, finger down my throat, I was jerked upward by the ankles, SLAP hot prickles stabbed my bum, two icy balls of air popped into my lungs.
Then at last my voice crying, crying, howling, I want to see you now, Mary, and howling, and crying, my voice at last.
Trembling arms pulled me close to the bosom soft lips on the bloody little brow.
I knew I was out, but I also knew I was not home.
II.
Light began to carve shapes and distances out of the bright fog surrounding,
and where there had been only me and day
there were thousands of things, all far away.
First to emerge from the comforting confusion was Mother’s face, just beyond her breast, her eyes newly unwrapped gifts, and her mouth to kiss me. Father’s stubby finger, reeking of tobacco, roughed my cheek. At the end of his endless arm his huge face loomed, with its terrible teeth.
He put it all to rights when he sang to me. My body was charged with song as from a stroke of lightning. Had I any hair it would have evaporated off my head with the first note. My father sang, and straightaway my soul recognized its natural tongue, my breath its logic, my longing its means.
My longing.
Years went by before I found Mary in this world. Dull as a cow, I fell into step with her going to school, but with no idea, really, of who she was. I would grow wise enough to worship her, but not for a long time.
***
I started to tell you how I found Mary in this world, but first, I will tell how I remembered I was William Shakespeare.
I was ten years old at the time. We were working a tenant farm that was particularly kind, as such farms never are. Mother had taught me reading out of the Bible when I was a little boy, but at this place, things were good enough we could afford some new reading matter.
I am an out and out cannibal when it comes to books.
Suddenly there was a fresh supply in my house, so I ate all I could get my teeth on. One day in particular, father tossed me a raw one he had got from a peddler for the price of a few sausages. “SONNETS,” the cover read. Feeling especially hungry that April night, after a hard day’s planting, I ripped it open and set to feeding. But this was the first book that dared to bite me back.
Settling down next to the hearth fire, I read, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes . . .”
***
Suddenly I find myself in another world. It is a world I have never seen before, all the same it is completely familiar to my mind. I am sobbing and sobbing, my head cradled in my arms. An upper room, Tuesday afternoon in winter. My hands clutch my head, sobs choke me, tears soak my cheeks, snot gurgles in my nose. I’m kneeling as if to pray. More sobs attack, heart drops, something sucks the breath out of me. I topple over, knees to my chin, shaking, wracked. Hold on, hold on. Then slowly I turn onto my back and stretch out, my eyes closed tight.
Can’t breathe. Struggle to sit. Pull out my nose rag and blow.
I know there is a certain letter on the floor in front of me. I bend down to read it, and know I am reading it for one of hundreds of times.
Dear Will.
Father knows. Of course, it is impossible now.
I will never forget. Never.
Yours. H.
Another fit of weeping, but more gentle. Calm down. I have people to see soon. There is a mirror. Must straighten myself. The mirror shows me a face. But not my face, not the face I am accustomed to seeing there. No boy, but a grown man. Big eyes. Big forehead. mustache plastered with snot. Repulsive.
Tense mouth. Ridiculous. Must clean a mouth blessed by holy kisses. Kisses of my H, my love.
An unexpected light is thrown upon my grief. I lift the letter from the floor, turn it over, then bring it to the table with the mirror. There is a quill stuck in an ink pot. I blow my nose again, and begin to write, “When in disgrace with fortune . . . “
***
Then I was reading again, lounging in front of the late night fire in our little farmhouse, remembering so many things from that other world — the scratch of the quill, the chill that crept in through the thatch overhead, the yellow light fading to gray, the intoxication of sorrow, the heavy laying down of the exhausted pen, a lute ringing with its last chord.
I turned to the frontispiece of the little book. I recognized the picture — it was the face in the mirror. My other face. Below the picture, my other name, which I read for the first time. I yelled and dropped the book as if it were a scorpion, burst out of the cottage and ran as fast as I could, avoiding the lanes, keeping to the borders of the newly plowed fields, the dirt giving way under my feet as in a nightmare impossible to escape. I ran until I could run no more, then fell down gasping where a hedgerow threw the blackest of moon shadows.
I was William Shakespeare. I wrote that book. And many other things. It all came back to me in a flood. I remembered it all.
***
I knew I should write again. So I did. But to my astonishment, my first efforts at verse and song-making were ridiculed by my parents. They hooted and laughed at me until I thought my cheeks and ears would burst into flame.
So I threw the first songs into the fire. Let them burst into flame.
After disaster, nothing will do but a stratagem. My folks often asked me to read poems of the great ones for them, Shakespeare among others. I would sneak one of my own songs among those of the Bard.
This was no deception. I merely placed my children in with their brothers and sisters. People are so daft. Only then were there praises.
“See Johnny, that’s how it’s properly done, not by some farmer boy, but by William Shakespeare.”
I had to agree.
This took place before I started walking to school with Mary.
III.
When I was sixteen, Dad fell off a hay rick and twisted his back. He could still fiddle and sing, but that brought next to nothing but his happiness. My odd farmer jobs paid hardly at all. Something desperate was called for, so I joined the militia.
The King’s coins clanked on the table, and I was off.
Did I kiss Mary good-bye? I know I kissed her. That I don’t forget. My whole life in my lips, bending closer, the shudder in me as a boat bumping dock, the lightest touch for the longest time. Then standing straight again, myself and the whole world ripe as a thunderhead. This happened, I know. I just don’t know when.
We mustered at the market, myself and three other lads with the recruiter. None of us had a clue about drill, but this didn’t discourage us from making a show of marching off.
At the barracks there was a corporal who had an eye out on me. He was short but stout. His voice was plain ugly. Every word scraped across your brain.
You see, at the time, everyone was afraid of Napoleon. He was supposed to be coming. No one was more afraid than the corporal. Napoleon was in his skull as you’d have a stone in your boot and the laces wet. The reason the corporal watched me close, I think, is because I never thought of Napoleon at all. I’d joined to get Dad the bounty money. I couldn’t please this man, in any case.
— Brighton! You call those spuds peeled?
— Brighton! Have you never heard of pipeclay? Your belts are BLACK! That’s not regulation by half, you dog!
— I said about face! About face! Shall I say it again? About face! About face!
This was new for me. There had been rough times in the fields with fellows kidding me, and a few fights, but not so ugly. I didn’t understand. I hadn’t put Napoleon under his skull bone.
Then came the day I remembered I was the Duke of Wellington.
At parade that morning we were given order arms, and so held muskets in front, eyes straight ahead. The corporal saw I had lost a button on my cuff. He set to scraping my brain, scraping it hard without letting up. It was nothing he said, but my eyes brimmed without spilling, so I couldn’t see. I smelled the oil on the gun barrel an inch from my nose.
***
The smell explodes in my face. I sit upright on my horse, my heart cold, eyes dry, back straight. Down a shallow hollow to my front, a cloud of smoke rolls away. I see precisely what I expect to see — a horde of men in uniforms, some blue, some white, a steadily approaching forest of bayonets.
“Stand ready there!” I say this to the soldiers formed in a large square around me, facing outward. All around them I see the leavings of a slaughter house, but blunt knives did the work, and carelessly. Men and animals. Moaning and screams. I am neither terrified nor surprised.
“Infantry coming. Form line, lie down, and make ready to rise and fire when I give the word.” I call again to the men. No sooner said than done. I adjust my position.
Breaking out of the blue column, a rider approaches, shouting, “Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!” Some of my muskets stir.
“Hold fire,” I tell them. “It’s another deserting officer.” The men obey.
The rider is near enough, I see he is in an excited state. He shouts in French something about the guard and an attack. One of my subordinates gathers him in.
I turn to another subordinate closest to me. “Imagine,” I tell him, “that damned idiot thinking he was bringing us news that the Guard was attacking.”
The name of the young officer I am addressing is Fitzroy Somerset. He laughs politely at my observation, his smile creasing his sooty face. A cannon ball whooshes past, taking his right arm cleanly just above the elbow. His face, still smiling, starts to ripple. Instead of screaming, he chokes. His horse lunges, his remaining hand automatically clutches the reins to his chest. His head rolls back as he starts to swoon.
“Attend to Fitzroy Somerset!” I say it. It is done.
The Guard is upon us, maintaining composure and alignment despite the shower of shot pouring down on them. They take the blow, sink into the grass, as if it were part of the drill every soldier learns. Something clicks in my brain.
“Up and at ’em boys!” The line rattles to its feet and explodes in front of me. Roaring smoke blots out the world.
* * *
Then I was on top of the corporal, scrubbing his face with a jagged rock. “At ’em boys! At ’em boys!” He was bawling and bleeding. I got a clunk from behind, everything went transparent, then nothing. From nothing to black.
Then I smelt straw. I was flat on my back on the floor of a dark, stinking little cell. Oh, my head.
I awoke to more memories of the Duke. Riding the bloody field alone in the evening, tears streaming down my face. These were my memories, three years before Waterloo, mind you. Then I recalled William Shakespeare, and I laughed until my leg irons rattled.
IV.
Coming back from King’s service, I was in a fever to be Mary’s husband. Napoleon had not come. I assumed I had whipped him when I’d called my troops to up and at ’em. But the rest of the world didn’t catch on for a couple of years. To me this Napoleon business was through. Now I could think only of Mary, and song.
When I went out to cut wheat, my note book was in my duffel with my water bottle and brown bread. I made fine songs in bundles. Bundling shocks and bundling songs. I wanted to be precise, above all. A woodlark was sketched from life, and a daisy was done on the spot. The whole world was alive in every corner. Stones spoke their names to me, and I was a stone among them, a bloom amid bouquets, a weed in the hedgerow, a flyer among flocks. All were my friends and fellow-citizens. They explained their existences in a thousand wild hosannas. Having transcribed it strictly as dictated, I knew it was good.
Feeling so favored by nature, I was moved to push my luck.
Hat in hand, skin and hair gritty with the day’s sweat, which a dip in spring water could not efface, I and my song book went courting.
My heart pounded as I walked into the sinking red sun, over a hill, down a dell, up a hill to the house where Mary resided.
It was two stories tall, the house of a proud and prosperous man. He was friendly enough. He allowed me onto the porch, but not into the parlor. He called for Mary, and she emerged from deep within, emerged from among the candles, out onto the porch, and into the last amber light of day.
I remember her dressed in white, wearing a bonnet so deep I could not see her face. I was allowed to touch her hand from time to time at farewell. Ivory lightning whispered on my fingers. Good-bye, sweet Mary. Sir, may I come again? Yes, Brighton, you may come. Such pity in his eyes. When he finally told me his Mary could not be wed to a landless farmer, though he love her ever so, it nearly broke the old fellow’s heart.
I stayed out all that night, roaming the blue fields. All along I knew my consolation. That she would never be his Mary, but only my Mary, forever and now. Nothing to pity in me. A storm in time passes away. Love that is hotter and older and will outlast the sun can never fade. It contains its own consent. It depends on nothing for its existence. It is the thing solitaire and utterly self sufficient.
Mary, how I love you. How I miss you.
V.
Everything changed once I met Polly of the dell.
Stood drinking in a tavern louder than thought, when a plush bosom pressed my elbow. I turned to see ringlet on ringlet of black hair, bright eyes and rich lips smiling.
The last smile I ever saw from her, I swear. Then we’re tumbling all over one another in a back room of her father’s pub, we’re caught and married and there’s three kids louder than the tavern where I met their mother.
I’ll be damned if it wasn’t that fast.
I was never much for swearing until Polly. First thing in the morning, all through breakfast, the evening meal, we growled and swore, and we bit and growled and swore as we wrestled on our straw tick at night, and I drove my anger into her and she ground me up with her anger until we both shouted with rage, always waking the baby while making the new one.
She kept growing. I knew soon she would be bigger than me, bigger than me and the kids, bigger than me, the kids and the house. She would envelope all of us one night, a sitting hen enveloping her brood.
I escaped this fate through another stratagem. I persisted in writing verse as I worked the fields. Beyond that, I had sent patches and throbs of it out into the great world. Like a continent, I was discovered. I thought I was free at last, little knowing I had escaped to the silliest place in the world.
I won’t waste much wind on London. There’s nothing unique about how it ruined me. Every human who crosses its outer limit is ruined by it. Like drinking pure alcohol, soon I was blind and bleeding in my guts. A successful book. Damn them.
* * *
“Mr. Brighton has written a charming little collection of verse that has eased the tedium of many a wasting afternoon. He is here to read a few selections, and if any of the ladies and gentlemen present find that curiosity has been piqued, feel free to borrow my copy, which I have with me. I give you Mr. Brighton.”
“I have not written a charming little book. If ever I write a charming little book, the lord mayor of London may geld me with a cold razor. You must receive this book as your own personal lightning bolt, or don’t receive it at all. As for borrowing the gentleman’s copy, I would much rather you bought it at the stalls. Otherwise, it’s back to the cornfield for me.”
Those who stayed for the reading were very impressed. The last time I impressed anybody.
You should have seen my friends. They were famous. They were wise. They were there once or twice, or I went to see them once or twice. Then they were gone.
I had no idea how silly this life was. I had lost my ground. So I raved and wrote and wrote. Stiff, dead stuff. I wanted another chance to shock people, but that only happens once, when you are young and ridiculous.
I tried to rejoin Polly and the kids. I would get back to the fields that had never failed me. But that was gone, too. Polly swore, but I couldn’t swear back. Birds sang, weather surged, foliage danced and slapped at me, the whole world begged me to join in, but I saw less and less of it every day. Or more and more. Polly was a flashing thunderhead, the fields were vast banks of cloud, the birdsong no more than the whispering of winds among vapors. This smokey world grew thinner and thinner every day.
Something was in the offing, but what? A storm? Or sunshine? The clouds gave no clues, and there were only clouds as far as my eyes could see.
VI.
I was running my rake over a snaggle of cloud, thinking only to reveal the fog beneath, when the light broke through.
It was an otherwise unremarkable day. The sky above was a thin sheet of grayness, the field one boiling bank of mist, dear Polly a deep blue thunderstorm spitting prickly little lightning bolts at cloud kids and cloud cats.
The rake floating on my shoulder was but a coincidental shape a cloud may take, and my path was a quiet stream of vapor.
That day the vapor path led to the source of it all. The rake knew its own destruction was in my deliverance, knew the destruction of the entire cloud world was inevitable once I was delivered, but selflessly did its task all the same.
We raked back a wisp, light broke up, out of the ground, and everything dissolved except me. And except her.
“It was you who was missing?” I said to her.
“Yes, I was missing, but no more,” she answered.
“Will you help me make sense?”
“No, I will not help you.”
“Dear Mary, where have you been?”
“Right here.”
“All the time?”
“What do you mean?”
“I love you, Mary. How I’ve longed to tell you.”
“Then why did you leave me, John?”
“I never did.”
“Who is this Polly?”
“Who?”
“You must tell Polly of our marriage. I am not dead. you may not marry two women.”
“I never did.”
“So tell her.”
“I shall, my dear. Must I go back?”
Then my face was in the mud, rain crashing down, raining so hard. I had no idea where I was. I pulled myself to my feet, wandered, crying for Mary.
Tried to dig through, but could not find the light again. No light above nor below.
Finally I was found by a lad I had worked with before London. He scraped the mud off my face and packed me off to Polly, who gave me her soundest cursing yet.
She was weeping all the time and mopping the mud off me. I felt such untellable tenderness for her, I kissed her firmly even as she was damning me to hell.
I had to tell her. So I began, as gently as I could, to explain about my first marriage, how I had to get back to Mary.
She had never hit me on the head before. It nearly put me out altogether, and I nearly became angry. Instead, I chose to ignore it, and made for the door. I would go back to Mary. She is somewhere out there, I thought.
A mile out of town, her father and the eldest boy caught up to me. They stuffed me into a cart and took me to a magistrate who decided I needed a new home.
And here you see me.
VII.
Mary is with me always, and in person. I know this, though I haven’t looked on her since that day the light broke through the clouds.
Sometimes, they allow me to go out to a field to be alone, so I can speak to her. I know she hears me, though the field is earth, not cloud, and though no voice sings sweetly in reply, and there is no light at all.
So the longing persists, never letting up for even a moment. Every dream, every waking thought, is a straining to look into the face of my Mary.
Patience, John. Patience.
Oh, but these last days are long.
I live now in the antechamber, waiting to rejoin her. My whole self sings with anticipation. Still and always it is that song that sustains me. The song is the straight true line to that world where all lines dissolve, where Mary and I are one and one with all things. I can see it, hear it, feel it. I am there now more than I am here.
* * *
At the last, the world is awash with amber light, thick as honey. But the sun is in place. I am the body receding, backing over the horizon, sliding easily, easterly, past divisions and curtains and desires and details, to where light is superfluous, where signals come not by eye nor ear.
Passing the border of the illuminated page with its spiraling vines, into the blankness, then off the paper altogether.
The end of beginnings begins and never ends. Mary, I am home.
THE END