Chapter 22

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet . . .

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"


December is the cruelest month. My father died in December. It is the month of the Winter Solstice, of the darkest night. It is also the month of Christmas, that forced, cash-registered cheer. One night I found the sidewalk leading me to the church. The actual Episcopal church had burned down about thirty years ago; the land was now a park. Services were held on the second floor of a functional building adjoining the park. The worship hall was suitably enormous, the long spaces lost in the shadows of this Wednesday evening service, one in a series of small affairs leading to Christmas Day. I entered late and took a seat; only a handful of worshippers were scattered about. I stared at the altar space with my new face but no one noticed. My ears were ringing. People appeared on the lectern, saying something about the scriptures.

I wasn't listening. Why was I here? Oh, yes - to remember my father. I looked around and, in the low ringing in my mind, was the thought: this building, too, is an Idea. I wondered what this building would be if the untold numberless and nameless had not toiled their lives away, building and slaughtering, for the glory of the Idea of Christendom. The place was too large to be a dry cleaner's but perhaps a nightclub would fit.

The scattered worshippers, like living ghosts, moved forward to surround the altar. Joining them, my eyes were drawn to the main source of light in the vast room: a few scores of candles clustered at the base of the altar. I counted them but when I counted them again, I got a different number. With each count the candles changed in number. Then someone said something about Christ and the Lord's Prayer issued from the scattered mouths. Hemingway's version came to my mind, though I did not mouth it:

Our nada who art in nada,
nada be thy name thy kingdom nada
thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada.
Give us this nada our daily nada and
nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and
nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada;
pues nada.
Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

When the scattered souls moved towards the exit, I realized the service was over. A couple of young men with sweet smiles and long pale hands approached me, greeting me. I mouthed a few nadas and excused myself, not wanting to see the darkness swallow the smiles and hands when the candles were blown out. Why had I come here? Was it for some kind of social gesticulation? Thank-yous to cash register operators - and little other speech - could get tedious. I should have known better than to commemorate my father's memory at church; he had parted company with organized religion long before his death. I knew all too well that he would far better that I remember him among the music and revelry of a nightclub.

That was when, following the sidewalk home, the ringing in my ears became the distinct sound of fire engines. The blaring sound was tedious as a fire truck roared past. Then there was silence, the cold air of the winter night absorbing all sound. I passed an intersection and saw the streets blocked; there were six, no perhaps seven, fire engines scattered about. Most of the trucks clustered in the middle of the block, off to the left, in front of a building. Firemen moved silently, like astronauts across the surface of the moon. I never knew what happened; I looked for smoke but could see none. Perhaps a candle had tipped over in an apartment. The sidewalk took me past the the red flashing lights.

The lights of the fire engines bled into the walls of a building; when I looked up I saw a wide bay window where a Christmas tree sat quietly festooned in bright, blinking blue and white lights. Colored balls, made by nameless hands, suspended amid the greenery, reflected my questions, and - refracting them - scattered them into the silent night.

* * *
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate . . .