Conrad Aiken: King Coffin

— A friend of mine, Mr. Karl Jones, is coming here this morning. Could you tell me when he’s expected?

— Mr. Karl Jones? Yes, I think I can tell you.

The man stooped over a table, ran his fingers slowly down a column of names.

— Also I should like to know in just what part of the cemetery—

— Certainly.… I see that we expect the interment to take place before nine. At nine or a little before. As for the other — if you’ll just wait a minute—

Interment!

An open book of grave-certificates lay on the counter, he found he was leaning above it, and began reading the blue certificate which was uppermost, still attached to its stub. Proprietors of the Cemetery of Mount Auburn. Vesper Lot 5000, Grave No. 591. This Certifies that………… of………… by the payment of twenty dollars, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, has purchased the right of interment in Grave numbered 591 in the Vesper lot which is owned by the Corporation, and has paid in addition Twenty-five Dollars to be added to the Repair Fund, for perpetual care of the grass. For each interment after the first, etc. Not more than two interments shall be made in the same grave, and the later interment shall be at least three feet below the level of the ground. When any such grave shall have become vacant, etc. Turning the leaf, he read on the back: Received of………… five dollars for grading and sodding Grave No. 591 .

Grading and sodding. But how did a grave become vacant?

— Ah, yes, just as I thought; it’s in the Vesper lot, and that’s right at the western side; if you go straight along the front here and turn up Glen Avenue, by the railroad—

— Is it far?

— Oh, no, only a few minutes, it’s just where Glen Avenue meets Vesper—

— Thanks.

A curious idea had occurred to him, he gave a little laugh as he went out and followed a workman with a wheelbarrow along the narrow tomb-lined road, it had occurred to him that it was a very neat and fitting opportunity for buying a grave — why not? And cheap at the price, with grading and sodding thrown in, and perpetual care of the grass. Across the wheelbarrow lay a rake and a hoe, and beside them, nodding in a square box, a dozen little potted plants: destined, no doubt, for somebody’s border — somebody’s counterpane. The workman was whistling softly, but stopped at once as he heard footsteps behind him, looked quickly sidelong as he was overtaken. The nod he gave was guarded, professionally friendly.

The city of the dead. That was what they always called it. And certainly, if one paused to visualize the skeletons underground, all the placid bones lying horizontal in boxes, or amongst tarnished remnants of silver and wood, it was a city of a considerable size, a metropolis. But the whole surface of the earth, if one paused to think of that too, was nothing but a mausoleum: all that living surface was nothing but a rich mulch of death. And this little collection, at Mount Auburn, of the refined dead, the rich dead, the distinguished dead, the pretentious dead, was, if one saw it in due proportion, a very paltry affair. This absurd business of putting them all in one place, collecting them, as if they were rare stamps, or coins, or first editions! As if there weren’t time enough in which to duplicate them! Good God. The world would be the same forever. The same people would be arriving, and being important, and dying, forever. In this vault are deposited the remains of. Here lieth the body of. This stone is erected to the memory of. Here lie the remains of. In memory of. Sacred to the memory of . And they were all alike, in the long view they were all alike, all they ever managed to say was a feeble and stammering “I.” They said this with an air of extraordinary importance and bewilderment, made what they considered to be a unique gesture, and were gone. And then after them came the hordes, the shapeless hordes, the innumerable and nameless hordes, of the others, world without end, who would feel the same importance and make the same unique and imperious gesture. Each in turn would believe that in some extraordinary way he had really produced himself, wrought his own intelligence and power, created his own individuality. Each would say “I have this right ,” “I have a right to happiness,” “I have a right to love,” “I must live my own life,” “I have thought this for myself,” “It is I who first felt this, thought this, needed this.” Each would believe himself unique.… And after him again would come, until the dying world was inherited briefly by grasshoppers and ants, the human swarm of others who would say and believe identically the same thing. All the Smiths, the Robinsons — the dead earth would become a tomb, sacred to the memory of the Smiths and Robinsons. And beneath it, like those who lay here now under inscribed stones, or broken columns, or slabs of marble engraved with the hour glass or the serpent, would sleep the whole human race.

He looked angrily at the stones, and then away, — the little white lambs of marble with crossed forelegs, the doves, the cherubs, the angels, the skulls — all silent, dripping in the fine rain; even the wet spring flowers, the daffodils and tulips, had a mortuary look, seemed somehow morbid. He walked along the grim avenue, taking long steps on the neat gravel, outdistanced the workman with the wheelbarrow, came to the turning and Glen Avenue. Beyond the wooden fence was the railway line, — the hard note of the quotidian and temporary. In this corner of the cemetery, not yet so crowded, the family lots were fewer: the graves humbler; many of them were unmarked save by the little oval metal plaques which gave their numbers. Noting the succession of these he found easily enough the new excavation at the juncture of Glen and Vesper Avenues. Beneath a small tree — a Judas tree? — which was covered with pink blossom, and some distance back from the road, it appeared harmless and natural enough. He walked across the sodden grass, looked into it, observed the carefully sheered sides of wet loam, as glistening as if they had been cut with a knife, and the little pile of soaked earth which had been neatly laid on canvas beside it, and the curious cat’s cradle of broad tape which lay across the aperture in readiness for the coffin. The whole thing was indescribably ugly: it was obscene: the falseness of it was profound. This note as of carefully prepared artifice, of concealment and mitigation—! Christ.

He turned, looked back over his shoulder toward the road, felt curiously ashamed and guilty: he felt sick: it was impossible to avoid the contamination, the sense of complicity and betrayal: it was himself who had done this, his own mind had conceived this dishonesty. And it was Jones who had been betrayed. To be standing here — to be seen standing here now—

He must get away quickly, before they came.

He must walk off a little way, perhaps to the tower and back, or to one of the ponds, and then, keeping always within view, return to the scene at the last moment, as if casually. That would be enough — there was no need for more — just to saunter by, have a last look, dismiss with a final gesture the dying world.

He hurried back to the road, and found that it made a loop towards the fence at this point, rejoining Vesper Avenue farther on, — it would be possible, therefore, by walking around this, examining methodically all the inscriptions, the flowers, the trees, to fill in the time and reappear at the right instant. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the palm of his hand, but decided not to smoke; took the right turning; found that he was staring at the hideous stones and their monotonous inscriptions without seeing them, listening to the passing of a train, beyond the fence, without turning his head. Who departed this life, to the sorrow of his wife and three children … In hopeful rest I here remain … My faith to heaven ensnare … The phrases and sentences were all alike, so many precise wounds of the chisel in Vermont marble or granite; and if the rain had made them more vivid to the eye, they were too familiar to be meaningful to the mind. More actual than the death it symbolized was the cutting in the stone; it was as if only the stones were real, and the incised marks on them, half filled with water, more important than the thing they chronicled. In the gentle and windless drizzle, the scent of the flowers — the lilacs, the narcissus, the daffodils — was oppressive, stifling; it was like the smell of ether; weighed on the consciousness like a cloud; and with his pipe in his hand he was thinking this, and feeling as if he had been half anaesthetized, and walking amid the intermittent patter as if half asleep, when he heard behind him the sound of a car.