nanowrimo - 25-28. End of the book!

“So where we going next?” Wolf asks as he piles into the back seat as if this is some sort of holiday excursion.

This time, I have the keys and Jack merely shrugs and waives his hand. “Driver’s choice.” He wasn’t too willing to give up the reigns to me, but there’s no way I would put up with another evening of him grumping about after spending 12 hours at the wheel. For some reason, put a man at the steering wheel and all privileges to stop, get out, and stretch are cut off.

“Massachusetts!” I announce.

“Awww why there!” Jack whinges. The man handles loss of power badly, I’ve noticed.

“What dere?” Wolf pops his head over the seat to ask.

“What’s there is some of the oldest towns and buildings in this country. History my boy! It’s not often I meet things in this country that are older than I am. Besides, as long as we have you playing hookey from school, we may as well see to it that you learn something.”

“Aww c’mon I don’t want to go to moldy old New England!” Jack complains again.

I attempt to dangle a carrot before him. “Boston has a pretty vibrant gay community.”

“Oh!”

“What!! Wait a minute! Is you a fuckin’ fairy?” Judging by Wolf’s reaction, you’d think someone in the front seat had just pulled the pin on a hand grenade.

“Wolf! He’s no more a ‘fairy’ than you are a ‘nigger’! We do not use words like that!”

“I don’t want to be ridin around with no... what I call him iffen I can’t say ‘fairy’?”

“Homosexual!” Jack is red in the face and I know he’d have slapped Wolf straight into the trunk by now had he not spent centuries perfecting his restraint. “The term is ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’, my dear AFRICAN AMERICAN friend. And for all your upset over finding that out I’d wager that I was probably the first openly gay man you have ever had the pleasure to meet. So ditch the superstition and bigotry! Because from what I can tell so far this fairy, fag, poofter has thus far done a pretty fine job of saving your black ass!!”

“Yeah, not bad for two honkeys, if I must say so.” I add. “Besides, what divides us, what we are on the outside, woman, gay, black, is feeble compared to what connects us underneath.”

Wolf’s eyes get large like two eggs and he makes a silent “oh” with his mouth. Oh here we go, here come the identity politics.

“Now I gets another sermon, huh? How you think I feel knowin here I am just another black man wit not much educatin and ridin’ around bein’ taken care of by you two spooks. Peoples already look at me strange. All my life I seen lil’ old ladies pull they purses away when I sits nearby on da ‘L’, peoples look down cause they afraid to make eye contact wit a black person. They afraid I might be one a dem ANGRY niggers. They afraid I gone hurt them o take dey stuff and all a ma life I hoped I’d be the kinda man ta prove dem wrong. And HERE I IS!! A big ole black man what hasta kill people to stay alive. If dat ain’t whitey’s worse nightmare come true I don’t know what is!”

Jack busts up laughing. Not just sniggering but laughing uncontrollably. “Wolf! Dude! Get over your bad self! We are all, each of us, someone’s worst nightmare in some form or another! Mum here is a liberated woman who goes on a killing rampage when she doesn’t get to eat enough bacon! She could snap a man in half! If I weren’t gay and her son I’d probably be dead by now!”

“Especially with your lip, sonny boy.”

“You dat scarey?” Wolf looks at me in shock.

Not wanting to lose the theater of the moment I shoot him a low look over my shoulder. “I see a diner down the road. You’re gonna drink coffee. I’m gonna eat bacon. Got it?”

“Woooo yes ma’am!” and he lies back down in the back seat.

It’s early yet and through the windows we see the diner holds only a small crowd of regulars and a few loners. Jack and Wolf goof around on the way in.

“So a nigga, a fairy and an ole lady goes walking into this diner in a middle a no place...”

“Can’t wait to hear the punch line on this one.”

“Me neither. Maybe iffen I’se lucky someone in here mistake me for Michael Jordan and we gets our coffee for free.”

“You know, you don’t all look alike!”

“I probably be the first black man these here folks ever done laid eyes on!”

“I don’t know who all you lot are calling the old lady!” I interject.

“ohh m’sorry m’sorry ma’am. Did I say ole lady? Nuh uh! I mean ODD LADY!”

They bust up again.

“I know it’s tough. But you lot could at least attempt to act a wee bit closer to normal! Don’t attract attention!” I know they register a collective complaint as I usher them through the front door.

Immediately through the door it is obvious, however, that stares are going for cheap around here.

“What dey all lookin at?” Wolf mumbles under his breath. “I done took a shower today.”

“Well if its any comfort I think you clean up real nice!” Jack tells him, with an extra effeminate affectation to his voice.

“Don’t be tellin’ me dat!”

Some of the gents seated at the counter glance over their shoulder at us and turn to chat with each other. But, I don’t sense trouble, and the waitress pops over to us with menus soon enough that I can relax.

“Whacha havin’ this mornin’ folks? Can I get ya’s started with 3 coffees?” she asks as she slaps 3 menus down onto the table.

“Yes!” Jack and I chime in unison.

“Coffee?” Wolf wrinkles his nose. “Man I never understood why you folks drink dat shit!”

“Hey, watch the language here.” I admonish him as I seem to have turned into the authority figure, here.

“Well what do you want young man? Hot cocoa?” Jack teases him again.

“Hey!” he brightens up. “I likes cocoa!”

“Cocoa it is! Comin right up!” and the waitress is gone.

Jack isn’t done ribbing yet. “Cocoa! Man how old are you, twelve?”

“I be thirteen nes’ month. Sides, what’s wrong wit cocoa? I likes chocolate! It be good for my complexion!” And he smoothes a hand over his ebony cheek.

“You two are like peas in a pod!”

“I’ve never actually tasted chocolate.” Jack muses.

At this, Wolf is incredulous. “What! Man how you live as long as you have an’ never tasted no chocolate! It against yo religion or somthin? Man dat makes me glad I ain’t white!”

“Wolf, I think what Jack means to say is that he can’t taste chocolate.”

“Right. I’ve stuck it in my mouth and swallowed it, but it doesn’t have a taste for me.”

I try to explain “Most mortal food is just, well, grey. It has no flavor and doesn’t really effect our satiety. You know what I’m talking about, if you think about it. Can you remember how anything besides chocolate tastes? But, each of us has certain foods that we DO taste. And that’s good to know, because that food can hold you over when you need to feed but perhaps can’t.”

“So, for you, obviously, that food is chocolate.” Jack continues.

“What be yours?”

“Mine is bacon!” I offer. “Jack? What’s your food?”

He blushes briefly before offering a sheepish answer. “Well, it’s mustard.”

“Mustard! Eiw! That be nasty! Like that paste they put on hot dogs! Aw man!”

“I know! I know! I realize it’s odd. I once baked Damien a cake for his birthday and frosted the whole thing with mustard! I thought it was quite tasty! But I found out real quick that this was just the wrong thing to do!”

We all die of laughter. Wolf is in tears.

We quiet down once the food comes. Wolf gets pancakes onto which he squirts abundant quantities of chocolate syrup. I get a pile of bacon. Jack’s fried eggs are soon drowning in mustard from the squirt bottle on the table. Nibbling at my bacon I look up at a woman stuffed into a booth nearby. Her belly strains against the table. Her neck is so portly that her head seems to merge with her shoulders. What strikes me the most is how she adoringly focuses upon the breakfast sandwich in front of her. Lovingly the food is cradled in her hands. As she takes bites from it she turns and eyeballs it from every angle, careful not to let a single morsel drop to the plate. Her world, one can see, has shrunk down to the size of her meal.

Wolf spies me watching her and whispers in my ear. “So dat be the normal you want us to look like?”

I just shake my head. “It just disgusts me what mortals sink to sometimes. You’d think that food was the only thing that ever loved her back.”

“Look like it be lovin her back a LOT. Mownin noon an night. m-hm!”

This time when we get back into the car, both Jack and Wolf sit in the back seat. As the road wears on I hear them goofing and chatting. Wolf asks questions, Jack answers – mostly seriously. He explains everything he can about living as a once born as well as answering various questions about the logistics of being gay such as “how do two men actually DO IT? Know whatta mean?”

Just outside of Albany I eyeball the two of them back there and it occurs to me, Jack actually loves this guy, maybe romantically, but definitely deeply. There’s a gift in teaching another one that no thing on Earth can possibly match. This must be a bit of how Zoltan felt in teaching me. That is, if I’m lucky. I wonder too if something about the act of teaching diminished him a little bit. Perhaps soon enough I’ll get to Paris and find out.

Winding into western Massachusetts the road grows narrower and the dark creeps in from all directions. We settle for the night in the Berkshires. I toss Jack the keys and rib him a little. “So wasn’t it more fun to give up control for a day?”

The air has the fragrance of spring’s melt in it. The ground’s icy crunch relents to a goosh under our feet. We all three take deep lung-fulls of air as we look around outside of the inn we’ve found.

Wolf marvels at the stars and stands in the middle of the parking lot, head turned up. “Holy shit man! Lookey all dem stars! Where dey all come from? I ain’t never seen so many like that befo!” After circling around in awe, he throws back his head and lets out a howl befitting of his name.

The spirit of the group is much improved from last night’s tense self-consciousness. But still in the middle of the night I’m awoken by the unmistakable sound of Wolf crying to himself in the corner. I move to get up and go talk to him when my arm is seized. In the dark I hear Jack say “no, mum”.

He’s right. This is for Wolf to heal in himself. No one can take him to his own truth. The best we can do is point the way.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion from all of the driving, but I sleep like a rock, dreamless and deep. Only Jack shaking me wakes me in the morning. “Mum! Wake up!! Wake UP!”

“Are you alright? What’s the matter?”

He rattles a piece of paper around in his hand “Wolf’s gone! He’s gone! Run off! Mum! We can’t just let him do that!”

He races out the door and before I know it, I’m throwing shoes on and running after him, out the inn’s back door, past the covered pool, toward the woodlands that back up onto the property.

“Artie! Artie where are you?” Jack shouts into the trees.

In the fresh spring snow that has fallen overnight I spy a clue and grab Jack’s attention. “Jack! Footprints!” I point to the marks made unmistakably by the sneakers we bought for Artie back in Indiana.

But Jack is too frantic to hear me and continues to yell at the top of his lungs, running into the trees. “Artie! Artie come back! You can’t run off like this! ARTIE!!”

I follow the prints as they lead from the manicured property onto the dirt path through the trees. Normal at first, they spread further and further apart, swishing in the snow as the walking man began to run. I follow the steps further and further into the trees as they mark strides that became a fixed gallop. And then, the two-legged prints become four legged paw prints. I can follow their direction for only a short while before the clutter of leaves on the forest floor obscures the trail.

Standing up, I take a lung full of chill air and let out one call. “Wolf!”

From somewhere in the hills full of trees, deep and directionless, muffled by snow and wood, the lone howl of a wolf returns to my ears. The sound commands a quiet reverence and for a second or two even the wind hushes itself.

Jack, too, has heard the sound. I find him resting against a tree, panting steamy gusts of air in and out of his lungs.

“He’s gone, Jack. The boy isn’t coming back.”

“Why?”

“He has to find his own way. We’ve done all we can for him. Come on, it’s cold out here” But Jack won’t budge and the wiggling chin reveals a nearness of tears so I come up to him and put my arms around him as best I can.

In seconds he’s sobbing. “Why? Why did he have to run away?” He’s not just crying over Wolf, we didn’t know the boy that long. A compounded sorrow wracks his shoulders and pours out of his eyes. It’s an answer to end all answers that he’s seeking. Wolf, with his running off to his own destiny, is the latest abandonment in a parade that I, myself, headed up.

I grab him and make him look at me. “I don’t know, Jack. But from my life I do know that it’s easier to run off alone to mould one’s destiny than to make yourself stay and feel something like love.”

“That makes no fucking sense!” He barks. But, he doesn’t release his hold on my shoulders and continues crying. Now who would be content to settle down in a small Midwestern town and let themselves fade away, I wonder.

We’re silent as we pack up the room, check out, and get on the road eastward to the coast. I spy a roadside greasy spoon that promises to have the kind of bacon and mustard to tide the both of us over. I motion my head towards it, Jack nods, and we pull over for food.

Both of us clutch heavy diner mugs filled with steaming coffee and stare out the window in silence.

I voice the first coherent set of words to enter my mind all morning. “Tell me what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“After I left, with your father, tell me what happened.”

He sighs and just looks at me for a bit, eyes full of doubt. “You sure you really want to know?”

“Just tell me. If it’s ugly, I deserve to hear it.”

He sighs and shuts his eyes for a long pause to call forth the memory. “Do you remember Mister William? Father’s ‘best boy’?”

“I remember someone running around, always at your father’s elbow. I remember that his company was much preferred to my own, especially in Mr. Fitz’s bed.”

“Yes, well that man was put in charge of my upbringing. It was he who was charged with arranging all tutors and riding lessons. He was charged with meting out all discipline should I falter in my efforts to study or to carry myself as a proper young gentleman. And he was quick with the switch, to be sure. Well, as I got older, about thirteen or so, and began to mature, Mister William began to make me get dressed and undressed in front of him. He claimed that it was to make sure I was putting my waistcoats on in a proper fashion for a young gentleman. But, I was ill at ease about it and tried to resist this supervision when I could.

“Then came the day when he began to touch me, said he wanted to show me a little game that gentlemen played together. It was to be a secret, just he and I could know, no one else. And after he had… touched me… I didn’t care to have anyone else know. I felt absolutely – soiled to the soul. And this went on for a few years. Father was arranging all manner of young ladies for me to meet with an eye to marry and I knew that marrying a woman was a commitment to somehow soiling myself with her for eternity. I couldn’t bear to look at them. I couldn’t bear my own body and it’s utterly tasteless responses and whims.

“About this time, the urge began to arise in me. I didn’t know what it was. It started like a low boiling in my belly, like an angry seed. As it grew there would be times when my whole mind was consumed with the thought of killing and feeding to be free of all torment. One day, Mister William and I were isolated in my chamber. He was… he was touching me, forcing me to arousal, and the maddening burn grew inside me rapidly. I could think of nothing else but consuming my tormenter. I seized upon him and, before I understood what I was doing, I drank his blood.

“The strength and elation I felt after that incident were the most pleasant sensations I’d ever experienced my life to date. I had to have more. That’s all I knew.” He finishes, staring off in his coffee.

“It never gets much better than that first feed.”

“No! no it doesn’t!”

“Look Jack, I don’t know how to put it after this long, but I was wrong to have left you alone.”

“Don’t! Don’t start apologizing!”

“I’m not apologizing. I’m not sorry! I just know that I was doing my best and I can see now that my judgment was wrong. But nothing I did or didn’t do was bigger than the life you were supposed to have, the experiences you were meant to go through and the man you were meant to become.”

He just looks at me in surprise. “Is this another sermon, Minister Eleanor?”

“I’m not bigger than God. You were always god’s child, not mine.”

“I wanted you.”

“Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for. Whatever it was you wanted, I was guaranteed to disappoint.”

“Are you disappointed with me?”

“Why would I be?”

“Because I’m gay, because I’m a once born, because… I don’t know what else.”

“Because you couldn’t defend yourself against a man who wanted to use you cruelly before you were old enough to really understand what was going on? A man you were supposed to trust and obey who abused the situation?”

He pauses and looks at me in shock. “Yeah, maybe that too.”

“That’s not who you are, it’s who you were, and you did the best you could. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of the man you have become. I watched you with Wolf yesterday and I saw the rare man capable of genuine honesty and a nurturing kindness. That spirit came from you, Jack, inside of you. Not from being gay, being an old once born, not from being my son, it was yours all the time. You don’t see it, yet, because you like to push people’s buttons so much, but you have such a big heart.”

He drowns his ham and eggs in mustard and stuffs a few bites in his mouth to hide the fact that he doesn’t have words to articulate whatever nebulous feelings float in his gut. After a few minutes he pauses and says “I think I’m going to go, too.”

“I don’t see why not. It’s your car. Just drop me at the bus station in Amherst.”

“You sure, mum?”

“I’ll be fine! And I’m not leaving you, you know that. You know I’ll be there when you pause to reach for me.”

“Do you have enough money? I mean, to go where you need to go?”

“I have my stash of greenbacks, some gold and some antiques. I’ll do ok. The universe always provides if you don’t get too caught up in how.”

“Huh!”

“Where you think you might head off to?”

“New Orleans!” he says with a big grin.

“A-haa! Time for some much needed fun, I see?”

Imitating a drawl he says “Why yes ma’am!”

Tires on damp pavement hiss as the black Jetta pulls away, dropping me at the Greyhound station. I watch him waive over his shoulder as he points the car back westward. He’d have hated Boston, anyhow.

From the bus window I watch the tree filled hills of western Massachusetts wind their way down to towns, flat stretches, and finally fat highways that pumps vehicles toward the hub city like metal corpuscles feeding an urban heart. Boston in March is still grey and subject to unforgiving winds off the ocean. But, there’s a refreshing familiarity to the aged quality of buildings. Those bricks what have stood their ground for over 200 years reach out to my spirit in recognition. It feels like home, not so much in place but in time. I find the “freedom trail”, a red stripe leading all tourists past both history and locations where they can feel at liberty to spend money, and follow it through the streets that wander and wind with an old world nonsense. I was on the other side of this battle for freedom, sixteen years old and hearing gentlemen guffaw over cards at the audacity of the North American colonies to think they could rule themselves and declare independence. We both spent the next seven years at war with those powers set on keeping us under thumb. They inked the treaty for their own freedom just as I stepped onto a Scottish ship headed for the French coast. I could flatter myself into thinking that this country has been my true home all along, that we are kin of liberty. But I’m not willing to sink with her into the encroaching darkness, which is sure to come if these people don’t push their collective paunches back from the fast food table and wake up. In a small box what’s been banging about in my possession for almost 200 years, there is a gift I must return, if possible, to its original owner. I must return to Paris.

I pause along the trail to touch a building dated “1639”. Here was the riot that started the war and the road for independence. The cars, the sidewalks full of modern folk rushing to and fro in their daily tread mill of life, all fall away. Through the folds of time I hear the shouts of children and see the snowballs filled with stones fly through the tense atmosphere. Whigged, propped up for the king and poorly paid, the string of redcoats looses the thin hold on all composure. Musket balls fly through the air. Smoke rises, feet scatter, screams sound from rebel throats, and a black man lies in a pool of blood. I think of Wolf, his strength of body and wild eyes. I think of the Robert Taylor homes filled to the rim mostly with African Americans all pushed to the margins of poverty and anonymity. Always this country has hinged the measure of its freedom on the life and death of the black people it refuses to own. Here, in what time has turned into a busy urban intersection, the memories will fade but the truth will not be stamped out. A black man died to begin the march toward a freedom what has yet to be found, not for any single citizen. America is a family with too many bastard children begging for a place at the big table. Words comes through the air like a whisper. “But not for long, dear country, not for long.” I feel it in my bones that this darkness of spirit cannot and shall long endure, for across the heartland, as sure as nature turns all things in proper order and good time, dawn is breaking. These dark hours of spirit cannot conceal that it is morning in America.

The centuries fold back their pages over memory, the musing fades as modernity returns. Beep-beep, Honk-honk, excuse me miss, time must march on. I wander through the old North End over to Rowes warf, finding one spot along the edge of a continent to pause, look over the bay and breathe in the briny air. The smell of salt water and fish always makes one think of leaving. Time to go.

I have cash enough for airfare, but it’s time to trade in something I’ve carried around for far too long. I spend a few hours inquiring about Downtown Crossing as to the best place to get a good price for antiques, and when I finally enter the tiny den of gold complete with tiny old man I know I’ve hit the mark.

“Do you buy antique pieces of jewelry?”

“I’ve been known to, whatcha got, missy?” he raises a snowy head and lowers the extra piece attached to his specks.

From my pocket I produce a box so small that I’m amazed, holding it in my hand, how I let the memory weight me down for so long. Raising the tiny container to the light on the counter, I crack it open, revealing two gold bands. “Two antique wedding rings. They were crafted in 1815 by a goldsmith in Baltimore.”

Immediately his face forms a frown and his mouth makes an “oh”.

“Oh my my my! Oh lets look at these!” Under the light he can see the craftsman’s stamp. He takes out a strap to test the stone set in the tinier ring. It’s a bit difficult to watch what I’ve so long treasured get handled and roughed up, but it must prove its worth. After a few minutes he comes back to me, picking up the box. “This is the original box! How did you ever get your hands on these?”

“They’ve been in my family.”

“Honey, are you sure you want to part with these? I can give you a lot of money for them, sure. But, you might regret not having them. These are family treasures!” The concern of the old not willing to part with those things that lend life a permanence and value shines through any of his commercial interests.

I love him for it, I bet we’d have a great time talking over coffee about how things used to be, but I have to keep moving and I can go no further carrying the rock of failure. For no matter how tiny that stone was, we’ve just proven that it was genuine. “I appreciate your concern, really, but it’s time for me to let these go.”

He almost looks a little sad for me despite the enthusiasm for this find. I sign certificates, hand over rings and memories and old ideas about myself once and for all. He puts lots of money in my palms. After giving me the last bill he reaches out to shake my hand and thank me. But the handshake goes long as he shoots a sharp look over the top of his bifocals. “Was your ring wasn’t it?” I give him a quick nod. “Well god bless ya, old woman!” and with a wink he releases me.

I don’t want a return ticket, I’m only going one way. I don’t wish to end up connecting through London, no matter how much cheaper the ticket. In a matter of hours I peak out the window of a 747 bound straight for Paris. As the plane turns up a runway lined with blue lights I watch the landscape speed by. When the great, grey bird lifts its metal feet from the ground I feel instant relief and turn to bid America good-bye.

“Have you ever been to Paris before?” I ask the elderly lady in the seat next to me as our meals arrive.

“Why yes I have! Just once a few years ago I traveled over for my daughter’s wedding. I’d never even been on a plane before in my life!”

“So what takes you over this time? Visiting your daughter?”

“Yes, she just had a baby so I’d like to see my new grandson. And …” she holds herself up with a bit of pride “it’s going to be my 75th birthday in two days! So I wanted to celebrate in style!”

“Well, happy birthday, ma’am!”

I get her talking about her family, her children, her life, mostly because I just want to know. I hear stories about being a little girl during the Great Depression. “We lived out in the country so it wasn’t as bad for us. Dad would find work when he could but Mom would always raise a vegetable garden and we’d can all through the fall, all the tomatos, corn and beans and vegetables. Corn isn’t real acidic so you had to boil it for a long time to can it good. Squash you just had to keep cool and watch for spots, can’t can squash. But there weren’t these big freezers like folks have now so if you wanted to eat it, you had to can it. Then Dad would raise chickens and so we would kill and dress those and sell those. I remember when we got a machine to take all the feathers off, because we had been doing it by hand in hot water, you know, and mom went to use it for the first time. It was just a wheel with all these little suction things on it to pull the feathers. Well, she didn’t have a good enough hold on the chicken and it went flying across the room! Ha ha! They were such good people! It was such a shame that they had to die so young. But they were smokers, you know.” She goes on to talk about her other daughters and through the conversation a disappointment begins to seep through. None of the children stayed with the Catholic faith she tried to give them. One even married a “black” man – a word she spits out as if it were a cuss. She never visits that daughter, won’t hold that grandchild. “What is it?” She asks. “What could it ever become?”

Despite some discomfort, I don’t editorialize on any of her attitudes. It’s more important, with an old one, to simply let them talk and to listen fully. As she goes on it occurs to me that those confines of culture and religion against which I chafed actually provided structure and solace for other women. But I look at her fuzzy little head full of graying hair and just wonder how well she’d do against those chains of gender and religion if she were looking at the prospect of living with them for more than just eighty years or so.

“Tell me, what is your favorite memory?”

“Oh, taking trips with mom and dad! We’d plan where to go, mom would pack the basket full of food, I’d get the car checked out. Dad and I would pool our money and we’d take off for West Virginia or Texas or all over the country.” She trails off telling me about buying goober peas and picking up stinky turtles.

At Charles de Gaulle my little grey lady slips into the receiving crowd and back to her own life. I’m sure she’ll have a grand time going around all of Paris’s great cathedrals. I hoist my old pack onto my back and find an Air France bus into the city. The place has grown so big! Neuilly, which was once a distant town, now abuts the western border of the city. The little round map I remember has fattened and fattened through the years like a tree adding more rings to its girth. The outer arrondissements, with their boulevards netted together by winding streets, confuse me. I keep finding myself back at the Ile de la Cité and trying to make my way to somewhere that feels the same. No spirit here reaches out to recognize me. I go through museums to visit the articles and attitudes of the Paris I remember. I return to the Louvre only to have difficulty finding the entrance. A pyramid in the middle that takes one into the basement is the lobby? Why not just let the door be the door! The whole construction almost outlandish enough that I’d attribute it to Napoleon’s tastes if it weren’t so bloody modern.

My French is a wee bit rusty and antiquated. I lack the vocabulary for many modern items and speak in an older idiom. I collect funny looks just as if I were to land in New York speaking Elizabethan English.

Within a few days I grow accustomed to using the Metro to get about town and decide to brave a journey to the Bastille. So this is where the whole bloody terror started. And now it’s filled with coffee shops, youth lounging about, and a street musician abusing a saxophone for the sake of torturing some Euros out of the tourists. Currently said musician stands poised in front of an older woman who has merely stopped to rest her feet. From the sour look on her face I can tell she will soon toss him some coin simply to leave her in peace.

Over a week of searching, and I have found no sign of Zoltan. The location where once we enjoyed our abode was long ago blasted through by Napoleon to pave the way for a boulevards. I’ve come to this old place in hopes to find some familiarity, to let the narrow streets wind around me and weave me toward some setting where I feel known and connected to a people. I pass through the gates of Place des Vosges and breath a sigh of relief. “Home again.” Modernity and commerce go on, but the air here is pregnant with memory. Parisians take in the early spring’s warm day and enjoy the wide park. This used to be homes. Tradesmen sympathetic to the Revolution bustled their wares and renamed the square. This covered entry still echoes with the wheels of horses and carriages carrying men and knights to tournaments and games in the center. Breathe deep and you feel the time open its pages to all welcoming eyes. Do you remember me, old city? Do you hold a place for an old woman who just wants to come home?

I collapse onto a bench under a tree. Children chase a ball around me, parents call out to them. I reach through the carpet bag I’ve been toting around and pull out a now battered brown package. Maybe Zoltan really meant this for me, knew Agnoletti would refuse the gift and that I would only open the present at that moment when I could truly accept it?

I toy with the box in my hands, looking at the mangled corners, feeling the subtle jostling those contents inside of it. Hope it wasn’t a breakable gift.

“Open it” something whispers in my head.

Should I really do that, though? What if I’m wrong – just deluding myself? What if I’m just rationalizing?

“OPEN IT!” The whisper turns into a chorus.

I turn the box over again and spy a tiny tear in the enclosing paper. This is all the invitation I need and in seconds the wrapper comes flying off. The box inside consists of thin wooden slats that slip apart easily to reveal wood shavings. Fishing through the shavings, my fingers sense a swish of silk in their midst. I grasp and pull gently. A silk bag containing something hard emerges. This must be it. I open the bag to find a simple gold goblet inside.

“A cup?” I have to say out loud. I’ve been carting around a cup since 1808? I shake my head in disgust for a minute. All that trouble over an empty cup! Then, figuring that it’s at least gold and may have some trade value, I hold it back up to look at it more closely. It is gold, for sure, my fingers tell me that much. And while the work on it is fine, it lacks the sort of crafted symmetry of surface that post-medieval pieces possess. It’s old. It’s VERY old! But what is it? I look at the markings stamped into the surface. After some inspection I realize that in Hebrew, maybe Aramaic, it bears the tetragram of God’s name. “Zoltan, what on Earth is this?”

With a click the answer dawns on me. This is a seder cup. This is the seder cup used by his good friend Yeshua in the celebration of his final Passover meal. This stupid box I’ve been carrying around contained the holy grail. The vessel fairly rings in my hand, vibrating its recognition. Somewhere, I hear Jack laughing himself silly.

I want to jump up and run around from a mixture of excitement and panic. Yet I can’t move, frozen in place with horror. When you find yourself in possession of one of history’s most sacred objects of lore, what do you do? How do you explain how this thing came into your possession? The truth would be stranger than any story I could make up. All that I can do with this most esoteric of gifts is to simply, well, sit here and hold it.

I stare into the goblet, mesmerized by the frail bits of spring sunlight refracting around its curves. What is the true legacy of Christianity? What is the imperative of the Christ? After all Yeshua’s calm words and miraculous acts what are we left with, really, but an empty tomb? No sun reigns in the sky as a daily vestige of a god’s protecting its people. The moon no longer pretends to watch over her children each night. No bird takes wing from the ashes and flies again. No single thing survives the gospel as a true symbol rich in meaning. There are flowers and butterflies and items of nature which emulate the resurrection but do fall short under the curse of the flesh. The cross? It’s just a relic of torture; a slap to the face of each true seeker craving something to clutch in an hour of need. Nothing is left for a Christian to grasp but save for an empty black hole in the ground and the myth of an empty cup. “Christ” quantifies no thing. Christ is emptiness.

Observe my reflection in the curving gold. I glimpse Wolf racing through snowy tree-covered hills of North America morphing from man to beast with a grace no one could have taught him. I follow Jack, smiling his charms upon an unsuspecting lover. I see Zoltan fading off to a gentle sleep, handing me a box that through time would convey one last lesson that he was too weak to say in words and knew I was too stubborn and young to hear with my heart.

After all the ages I have survived and fits of emotion I’ve force marched myself through, my present is an empty vessel. Sitting on this little bench, surrounded by the wreckage of discarded packaging I gaze into that void. It is there, in the refracted beauty of empty, that at long last I recognize priceless gift of now.