William Kennedy: Quinn's Book

When the orgiasts ceased to move they looked pensively into the glut in their own psychic interiors, Maud and myself perfectly invisible to their eyes. But I sensed they would see us soon enough and know by our expressions what we had seen, and I could not be sure what they might do to us for such knowledge. I pulled Maud away and led her to the front parlor, where we sat upon a green velvet sofa very like the color of Maud’s eyes in subdued light. I did not know what to say to her about what I felt, but she, never at a loss for comment, announced:

“He is a low beast, and they are both fools for a man. Would you want to do that to me?”

“I think so,” I said, though I had not considered it in such an individualized context.

“I’m not at that stage yet,” said Maud.

“I guess I am,” I said.

“It seems to be very affecting, what happens to one.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“I should have thought you’d have already tested it.”

“I’ve not had the opportunity,” I said.

“When I’m ready to do it,” Maud said, “I shall seek you out.”

“I look forward to that,” I said.

We were both utterly calm — a great lie, of course, for the agitation we felt was not only beyond words but would take decades to be sifted of significance. An image recurred for years in Maud’s mind of a voluptuous woman giving birth to an infant skeleton; and I, for years, dreamed of a woman who owned bilateral pudenda. We sat on that vernal sofa staring at a primitively painted portrait of a child wearing a white dress with a lace collar, holding a hoop in one hand while her other hand rested on the neck of a gander two-thirds her size.

“I never want to be old,” said Maud. “I want to be young forever and ever, and then, when I’m of a certain age, I want to be very suddenly dead.”

“You can’t be young forever and ever,” I said.

“Yes I can.”

“No you can’t.”

“Yes I can.”

“Not anymore,” I said; for ignorant as I was, I knew.

I HAD NEVER SEEN anyone return from the dead before Magdalena Colón was resuscitated by love, the same commodity used by the Christ to effect a similar end. I draw no blasphemous parallels between John the Brawn, the amatory instrument, and Jesus; or between Jesus and Magdalena, especially in light of what she reported to us about her deathy interlude. But the power of love is more various and peculiar than we know.

Once out of the orgiastic moment, Magdalena became the cynosure of our curiosity, for what usually follows the enactment of human improbability is the quest for proof it has really occurred. And, indeed, we all craved the gossip of her soul. And so after Magdalena had dressed herself in dry clothing, after John’s tucking of cincture, after the smoothing of all skirts and with the dissembling smiles that follow satiety, the adults gathered in the east parlor, where Maud and I were sitting, I amid a personal rapture that intensified with every moment spent in her presence, awash in desire for I knew not what; not, certainly, the simple raising of her skirts in emulation of John the Brawn. Such vulgarity (though I have since learned not to demean it) was insufficient response to my yearnings, which were destined to intensify even further during this singular evening.

Hillegond took maternal control of Magdalena’s bite wound, bathing it, bandaging it, sitting the patient close to the fireplace, whose fire Capricorn faithfully stoked. Then we huddled in front of the flames as Magdalena relived for us her time in the underworld.

“When I first died,” Magdalena began, speaking with a dramatic fervor befitting her thespian nature, “I saw a child looking up at me from the bottom of the river as I was slowly sinking from above. She was a pretty little thing, and she looked like a doll I used to own. I remembered the dress, a blue gingham.”

“Did she speak to you?” Hillegond asked. “They like to speak, dead children do.”

“She gave me a welcome, is how I’d put it,” said Magdalena.

“I knew it,” said Hillegond.

“ ‘I welcome you,’ she said, ‘to the birthplace of dreams, where even dolls live forever.’ ”

“Isn’t that just like a child?” said Hillegond.

“Do you mean,” asked Maud, “that you remember those words, just as the little girl spoke them, and you were both under water?”

“Not only under water,” said Hillegond, “they were both dead too, weren’t you, dear?”

“Well, I think so,” said Magdalena. “I mean, you never get to hear that sort of thing when you’re up and about.”

“Never,” said Hillegond. “It’s a special event, being dead and then coming back. I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes.”

“But here I am,” said Magdalena.

“Here you are,” said Hillegond. “Aren’t you the wonder?”

“Was there anything at the bottom of the river except the child?” asked Maud. “I should think there’d have been dead fish and lots of muck.”

“Dead fish rise to the top of the water,” I said, expert at last on something.

“I don’t remember any muck,” said Magdalena. “The most I remember is how bright it was. ‘It ought to be dark at the bottom of the river,’ I kept saying to myself, but it was like the light of a thousand lamps. It was ever so cozy.”

“Were you in heaven or hell?” Maud asked.

“I really couldn’t say, Maudie, but I think it must’ve been heaven.”

“You in heaven?” said John the Brawn, and he let out a great guffaw. “That’ll be the day, me love. I’ll show you how to get to heaven,” and he guffawed again.

“You are too crude for words,” Maud told my master, stamping her foot as she addressed him. “You are the piggiest man that walks the earth and I hope you rot so awfully that your feet fall off.”

“Now, now, dearie,” said Hillegond. “He’s only making a joke to lighten the subject. Your auntie was dead, you know.”

“I rather doubt it,” said Maud. “I believe the symptoms of her life vanished, but not life itself.”

“She’s a savvy little brat, ain’t she?” said John. “She’ll grow up to drive men batty, is what she’ll do.”

“I was very dead,” said Magdalena. “Don’t tell me I wasn’t dead. You think I wouldn’t know it if I was dead?”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Maud. “Nobody knows anything when they’re dead.”

“Oh, that’s very wrong, child,” said Hillegond. “All sorts of people come back from the dead to tell what it was like. I’ve heard of folks who saw dead women with their feet on backwards, and dead dogs climbing trees, and dead men covered with feathers. You mustn’t be too smart about the dead, child, or they’ll catch you out when you don’t expect it. Be friends with the dead is what Hillegond says, and it’s served her well.”

“Anyway, I’m glad I’m not dead anymore,” said Magdalena, who saw Hillegond usurping her stage.

“What’ll you do now, dear,” asked Hillegond, “now that you’re not dead?”

“Oh, I have plans,” said Magdalena. “I’ve got bookings to dance all the way to Buffalo. They’ll want me more than ever, now that I’ve died and come back.”

“You’ll want bodyguardin’ for certain,” said my master, “or the crowds’ll tear you apart. A strong man’s what you’ll need.”

“I imagine I will,” said Magdalena, nodding, and when I saw the way Maud looked in that very moment, I knew she felt trapped and that she would soon remind me of my promise to steal her. But before anything of that order could happen, a fierce knock came at the door, and as Hillegond opened the portal to the arctic night, a tall, cadaverish man, his hat and greatcoat covered with snow, stepped across the threshold to utter the single word “Lunacy.”