TM 231.
231. "Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live." - Haruki Murakami.
She couldn't attend his funeral. She just couldn't.
Bunny's funeral had been a farce. It had been hard on Camilla's nerves, hard on everyone's nerves, yes; but in essence the entire event had been a black comedy, weird incongruities and discordances adding touches of the surreal to make reality bearable. Mr. Corcoran trumpeting brays of laughter and fussing over his little dog in between crying fits. The awful Corcoran brats, Bunny's nephews, running amok. The bizarre collation of food, foie gras next to the neighbors' casseroles. Francis screeching at Charles for leaving the convertible's top down in the rain. Cloke smoking joints behind Mrs. Corcoran's back and trying to hide the evidence, like something out of a sitcom.
Henry's funeral would be none of this. It would be unmitigated, unrelieved horror. It would be Camilla at the side of a clayey furrow of bared ground, reliving in her mind the moment he let go of her. I love you, he'd said, for everyone to hear, and then he had whispered to her something only she could hear, and then he'd let go of her, dropped the embrace he'd called her into (she'd been afraid to go, and she'd seen it hurt his feelings: you think I'd hurt you? Come here), and then - the gunshot. Impossible. Impossible and inevitable.
He had let go of her. He had made her let go. This was not what she had been led to expect. This was not what they had been taught to want. It contradicted even his final words to her, whispered for her alone, the only time he'd quoted Julian since their teacher abandoned them: Live forever. By this she understood Henry did not mean her to follow him; no inversion of Orpheus and Eurydice, no despairing suttee. This for his conscience, and perhaps for his love too, because he would not want to think of her dying. But how was she supposed to accept that? She wanted to shout at him, somehow, from the other side of the insuperable barrier between living and dead; to pound on the shatterproof glass and shout: You were supposed to live forever too.
She could not even mourn, then. Too angry, too confused. For Henry she'd betrayed her brother, given up what had been the love of her life; she'd been accomplice to murder; she'd alienated her dearest friends. He had led her to make these choices, by reasoning and by coaxing and by simple unprompted pressure, led her down this primrose path, and she had gone where he directed, with the tacit understanding he would escort her every step of the way. That they would be together in the end, after everything, after all obstacles to tranquility were removed. His final action had made all that a lie.
Later she would think about it - think about it obsessively, think about it when she wished she could think about almost anything else; what else was there to think about, how could she escape it? - and she would come to what might be the beginnings of understanding. She would understand he never meant to betray her, or at least she would believe this in her more charitable moments. It took years to arrive at this uneasy truce with her memory of Henry Winter. At the beginning, there was only anger and confusion and denial. She was not able to say So it goes. She was not able to say This too shall pass. She was not able to mourn him.
She was not able to attend his funeral like a dutiful friend, to see the proper rites observed. Funeral rites had been of prime importance to the ancient Greeks. She should have cared to see the body buried, to know he'd be laid to rest.
That would have been closure, of a sort. And maybe she did not want closure. Maybe she wanted to keep holding onto her anger and her loss. Maybe she wouldn't let him go.
Maybe it wasn't only his own tenacity that drew his phantom back to earth.
Camilla was used to playing for keeps.
Muse: Camilla Macaulay
Fandom: Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Word count: 686
She couldn't attend his funeral. She just couldn't.
Bunny's funeral had been a farce. It had been hard on Camilla's nerves, hard on everyone's nerves, yes; but in essence the entire event had been a black comedy, weird incongruities and discordances adding touches of the surreal to make reality bearable. Mr. Corcoran trumpeting brays of laughter and fussing over his little dog in between crying fits. The awful Corcoran brats, Bunny's nephews, running amok. The bizarre collation of food, foie gras next to the neighbors' casseroles. Francis screeching at Charles for leaving the convertible's top down in the rain. Cloke smoking joints behind Mrs. Corcoran's back and trying to hide the evidence, like something out of a sitcom.
Henry's funeral would be none of this. It would be unmitigated, unrelieved horror. It would be Camilla at the side of a clayey furrow of bared ground, reliving in her mind the moment he let go of her. I love you, he'd said, for everyone to hear, and then he had whispered to her something only she could hear, and then he'd let go of her, dropped the embrace he'd called her into (she'd been afraid to go, and she'd seen it hurt his feelings: you think I'd hurt you? Come here), and then - the gunshot. Impossible. Impossible and inevitable.
He had let go of her. He had made her let go. This was not what she had been led to expect. This was not what they had been taught to want. It contradicted even his final words to her, whispered for her alone, the only time he'd quoted Julian since their teacher abandoned them: Live forever. By this she understood Henry did not mean her to follow him; no inversion of Orpheus and Eurydice, no despairing suttee. This for his conscience, and perhaps for his love too, because he would not want to think of her dying. But how was she supposed to accept that? She wanted to shout at him, somehow, from the other side of the insuperable barrier between living and dead; to pound on the shatterproof glass and shout: You were supposed to live forever too.
She could not even mourn, then. Too angry, too confused. For Henry she'd betrayed her brother, given up what had been the love of her life; she'd been accomplice to murder; she'd alienated her dearest friends. He had led her to make these choices, by reasoning and by coaxing and by simple unprompted pressure, led her down this primrose path, and she had gone where he directed, with the tacit understanding he would escort her every step of the way. That they would be together in the end, after everything, after all obstacles to tranquility were removed. His final action had made all that a lie.
Later she would think about it - think about it obsessively, think about it when she wished she could think about almost anything else; what else was there to think about, how could she escape it? - and she would come to what might be the beginnings of understanding. She would understand he never meant to betray her, or at least she would believe this in her more charitable moments. It took years to arrive at this uneasy truce with her memory of Henry Winter. At the beginning, there was only anger and confusion and denial. She was not able to say So it goes. She was not able to say This too shall pass. She was not able to mourn him.
She was not able to attend his funeral like a dutiful friend, to see the proper rites observed. Funeral rites had been of prime importance to the ancient Greeks. She should have cared to see the body buried, to know he'd be laid to rest.
That would have been closure, of a sort. And maybe she did not want closure. Maybe she wanted to keep holding onto her anger and her loss. Maybe she wouldn't let him go.
Maybe it wasn't only his own tenacity that drew his phantom back to earth.
Camilla was used to playing for keeps.
Muse: Camilla Macaulay
Fandom: Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Word count: 686