Tintin was his hero, because he was
a boy who saw justice, and fought
to set the world right in all places and in all times of day.
"What does that ship want out there, dad?"
He asked.
"Who knows?
Nothing much.
It's just floating about until something better comes along."
The odd truth was that she didn't
drift much the whole day.
Her position they stayed--
her position, staying fixed as the sea itself,
dragged it out of its anchor.
And the wind pulled her from stem to stern, roving it about.
"You know," he said, "there is a ship just like that in Tintin,
where the sailors keep the captain drunk so they
can do whatever they want."
"What do they want, my son?"
"To do mischief, dad."
You must know a lot about that stuff," I said.
"Not me, dad I just do good mischief."
"The mischief is that you just tricked me
into letting you stay up awake for three more minutes."
He left, having seen the justice in that.
"Good night then, dad."
He waited for me to kiss him, the final one until morning,
and the protective seal against the bumps in the night.
I turned out the light and left the door open a fist wide,
so that he'd see the reassuring hall light if he woke up
in the dark.
I stood by the door a few moments
until I was certain he was asleep and safe in his dreams,
then I made another visit.
My mother was in her room, reading.
Ever since I could remember, she read in bed
before going to sleep--
one of a few certainties.
"Everything else just slips away," she always said--
as her husband did in good health, in good mood,
in love with his wife, with his work, with his son, with me.
In a second, he was gone.
Mid-sentence so to speak.
On the phone, laughing with an old friend one minute,
and in the mute other world the next,
the phone still in his hand.
Comical actually, as if death had no interest in hearing
the whole conversation.
What is so pressing that makes death so curt, so
interruptive of the narrative?
Death clearly has no sense of desire
for the complete story, which means, he has no curiosity.
Which is why he is so flat, so empty.
Just the silhouette of action.
"Reading again, mom, after lights out?"
"Oh, just catching up at the past," she said.
She had earlier gone down to my library
and pulled out Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
"A heavy stone before sleep, don't you think, mom?
Not heavy enough."
She said.
"I was looking for the Magic Mountain,
but you seem to be all out."
"I'll have it for the next time."
I said, and in German.
"Does he miss her very much?" she asked, too abruptly.
He doesn't say.
But until a little while ago, he used
to call out for her in his sleep.
"You know, I generally love you,"
she said, turning from her book.
"But I love him much more."
"Maybe you just love him more freshly," I said.
"In any case, I would feel the same."
"I'd like to be around a little while longer, long enough
to see him when he first falls in love.
That would be sweet," she said.
"He's always in love now," I said.
"Every week, a new fling."
"Not that way," she said.
"The passionate way, I mean."
She was once a beautiful woman, my mother.
She was a handsome one now--
more vain of her figure than when she was young,
when she said that only the mind mattered.
While the body grew old and ugly,
the mind lasted in its attractiveness.
Mothers always tell sons that, hoping they
will not be stupid when they grow up.
Hoping they will not mistake the beautiful form
for the soul in it, although sometimes,
the two may be joined.
"You mean, the sexual way, mom, isn't that what you mean?"
"That too, of course.
But mostly, I want to be there to help mend his broken heart,
the first time it gets broken."
"Anyway," I said, mouthing the platitude, one--
mouthing the platitude, one says to the old.
"You still have a long time ahead of you."
She gave me a sly look, "who's kidding whom?" it said.
"Let me have 10 more years until he's 17.
He'll be fully ripe for love then."
"What about you, mom?"
I asked.
"Are you ripe for another love?"
"Not just now," she said.
"Right now, I'm just roving.
I'd rather meet a new book than a new man."
"I thought you had read them all," I said.
"Just the good ones," she said.
I took her hand and kissed it.
"You'll outlive us all mom," I said.
"I'd rather not," she said.
"I'd just be left alone with bad books and bad bindings."
I kissed her hand again, longer this time.
And then once again.
It was an old hand, like the parchment of a pirate map.
"Sweet dreams," I said, "till morning," I said.
Exactly her words to me at bedtime
when I was my son's age.
She'd blow me a kiss, and I'd imagine a cloud of her breath,
coating me with an invisible armor against all
the world's harm.
"I may make an early start," she said,
"I may be gone before you wake."
I shrugged and turned up my palms as if to say,
as you wish.
My protest would have been pointless.
Not my son's, though.
What's more persuasive after all than a child's earnest plea.
I went out and across the field to my studio.
My mother's light was still, on even some while
after I started trying to work.
Where was she now in Bunyan's Pilgrimage?
I wondered.
And what was so compelling about it
to keep her awake for so long?
The world and its stories.
We're famished for them.
And maybe, I thought, that is why death is so jealous of us,
since he has no story and is just an agent of terminations.