A Graveyard for Lunatics

I seized it as if I might sway and fall to the streets of the Beast?s Paris, below.

We held tight.

With his free hand, Roy worked at the rest of his mask. He balled the substance, the torn-away wax and powder and celadon scar in his fist and hurled it from Notre Dame. We did not hear it land. But a voice, startled, shot up.

?God damnl Hey!?

We stared down.

It was Crumley, a simple peasant on the Notre Dame porch below. ?I ran out of gas,? he called. ?I kept going around the block. And then: no gas.?

?What,? he shielded his eyes, ?in hell?s going on up there??

73

Arbuthnot was buried two days later.

Or rather reburied. Or rather, placed in the tomb, carried there before dawn by some friends of the church who didn?t know who they carried or why or what for.

Father Kelly officiated at the funeral of a stillborn child, nameless and so not recently baptized.

I was there with Crumley and Constance and Henry and Fritz and Maggie. Roy stood far back from us all.

?What?re we doing here?? I muttered.

?Just making sure he?s buried forever,? observed Crumley.

?Forgiving the poor son-of-a-bitch,?. Constance said, quietly.

?Oh, if people out beyond knew what was going on here today,? I said, ?think of the crowds that might come to see that it?s over at last. Napoleon?s farewell.?

?He was no Napoleon,? said Constance.

?No??

I looked across the graveyard wall where the cities of the world lay strewn-flat, and no place for Kong to grab at biplanes, and no dust-blown white sepulcher for the tomb-lost Christ, and no cross to hang some faith or future on, and no?

No, I thought, maybe not Napoleon, but Barnum, Gandhi, and Jesus. Herod, Edison, and Griffith. Mussolini, Genghis Khan, and Tom Mix. Bertrand Russell, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, and The Invisible Man. Frankenstein, Tiny Tim, and Drac?

I must have said some of this aloud.

?Quiet,? said Crumley, sotto voce.

And Arbuthnot?s tomb door, with flowers inside, and the body of the Beast, slammed shut.

74

I went to see Manny Leiber.

He was still sitting, like a miniature gargoyle, on the rim of his desk. I looked from him to the big chair behind him.

?Well,? he said. ?Caesar and Christ is done. Maggie?s editing the damn thing.?

He looked as if he wanted to shake hands, but didn?t know how. So I went around, collected the sofa cushions, like in the old days, piled them, and sat on them.

Manny Leiber had to laugh. ?Don?t you ever give up??

?If I did, you?d eat me alive.?

I looked beyond him to the wall. ?Is the passage shut??

Manny slid off the desk, walked over, and lifted the mirror off its hooks. Behind it, where once the door had been, was fresh plaster and a new coat of paint.

?Hard to believe a monster came through there every day for years,? I said.

?He was no monster,? said Manny. ?And he ran this place. It would have sunk long ago without him. It was only at the end he went mad. The rest of the time he was God behind the glass.?

?He never got used to people staring at him??

?Would you? What?s so unusual about him hiding out, coming up the tunnel late at night, sitting in that chair? No more stupid or brilliant than the idea of films falling off theatre screens to run the world. Every damn city in Europe is starting to look like us crazy Americans, dress, look, talk, dance like us. Because of films we?ve won the world, and are too damn dumb to see it. All that being true, what, I say, is so unusual about the given creativity of a man lost in the woodwork?!?

I helped him rehang the mirror over the fresh plaster.

?Soon, when things calm down,? said Manny, ?we?ll call you and Roy back and build Mars.?

?But no Beasts.?

Manny hesitated. ?We?ll talk about that later.?

?Unh-unh,? I said.