Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 1

Unearthly cries rose from the group in black in Section Ten. The women were keening in shrill, high-pitched tones alien to a land accustomed to stifled sobs and low moans. There was something counterfeit about this grief, something entirely too public and overdone, like a Mediterranean funeral packed with hired mourners. Dyce knew the real sound of sorrow, and it was no banshee cry for general display. True grief was something to be borne, not vented. It froze the heart and stilled the soul, transforming everything within to a heavy, leaden state that never truly lifted. It weighed like pennies on the eyes and dragged the body to a torpor that matched the spirit’s. One did not have the energy to wail or pound fists so theatrically for the benefit of others. A real sufferer withdrew to a dark place like a wounded animal and conserved himself.

Dyce knew the sounds of grief, the slow measured tones of sorrow, the drained, pale, dolorous look of sadness. This black-clad band of shriekers were indulging themselves and seemed as foreign to the graveyard of New England as a desert dweller’s tent. He looked at them with contempt, willing them gone. One of them caught his eye: a little girl with dark hair and enormous eyes who had drifted from the group. She seemed as offended by this overly demonstrative expression of grief as Dyce was. One of the adults in the group, perhaps her father, turned once and summoned her to return with a quick motion of his hand, then turned back to the open grave, adjusting his hat.

Instead of obeying the paternal command, the girl moved toward Dyce like a mote in sunlight. Her progress slowed as her attention drifted first to a bouquet of flowers on a grave, then to twigs on the walkway, and finally to the cawing of a distant crow.

Dyce liked children because, although they questioned everything, they did so out of pure curiosity. What they discovered, they accepted without censure. They never questioned the fact of him. He fit neatly enough into the wide category, adults; children, unlike their elders, did not distinguish certain members of that category as “odd,” “different,” or “peculiar.”

Dyce knew she was still approaching even after he’d turned his back to her. He heard her stop a pace behind him where he squatted on the grass. He knew without looking that she was wondering what he had found to study so intently. Using a blade of grass, he gently touched one of the threads of the spider’s web that was strung between the headstone and the plastic flowers in the funerary urn. The spider raced forward, then stopped. Sensing trickery, it quickly withdrew to the edge of the web. Dyce knew he would not be able to fool it again.

“I got lucky,” Dyce said, as if he had been speaking to the girl all along. “Usually the spider will react only to the movement of its real prey. They make very specific movements when they’re caught, and if I happen to duplicate them, it’s just luck.”

The girl squatted beside him on the grass. Dyce did not look at her. Now using the blade of grass as a baton, he pointed to the web. “It’s like a tightrope act in the circus. There are some threads he has to walk on to keep from getting stuck himself The other threads are very sticky, and even he can’t go on them. But he never makes a mistake. Or at least I’ve never seen one caught in his own web.”

The girl reached forward and Dyce caught her hand at the wrist. He was careful not to squeeze or frighten her. “You’ll break it. It’s very strong on its own scale. The main threads are stronger than steel for their size. But it’s not meant for humans.” He released his grip but did not remove his hand, letting her do that, wanting her to feel she was still in control.

“You can blow on it,” he said. The girl hesitated. Dyce blew softly and the web swayed, the spider riding the bucking threads with unruffled ease.

The girl leaned forward and blew, softly at first, then harder. Dyce allowed himself to look at her. Her dress, a pale blue party frock with the ribbons removed in concession to the occasion, had been ripped in several places at the hem. Dyce felt a surge of anger at the ritual being imposed upon the child.

“Who died?” he asked.

“Sydney’s bubbe.”

Dyce looked at the group of mourners. They were chanting now, the shrieks of grief easily and conveniently converted into the sonorous, false comfort of religious rhythm. No one in the group seemed to miss the child’s presence.

“They made you look at her, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” The girl blew at the web again, trying to dislodge the patient spider with her wind.

“Did you want to?”

“I told them I didn’t want to,” she said.

Dyce nodded. “But they said you should, they said you had to.”

Dyce could picture the event, adults pushing the child toward the open coffin, telling her to show a love and respect she neither felt nor understood. He imagined the faces of the adults bent over her, serious but urgent with their own needs, leaning too close to her, breaths fragrant with smoke and garlic. One of them would have picked her up, held her over the deceased, prodded her to kiss the waxen skin, fuller and less wrinkled now than in life. She would have been lowered toward the mask of death, protesting, powerless, frightened, as voices murmured their notions of duty to her and the odor of preservative and heavy cosmetics filled her nostrils. Dyce quivered with a deep pang of sympathy.

“Did they make you kiss her?”

The girl made a face of distaste. “She was Sydney’s bubbe,” she said.

“Did you look closely?”

The girl stood, losing interest. Dyce resisted the urge to restrain her. “Did you look closely?” he repeated.

The girl took a hesitant step away from Dyce. She did not want to stay with the man and his spider but neither did she want to return to the moans and foreign chants.

“Wasn’t she beautiful?” he asked.

The others wandered past him in their informal procession, adrift and purposeless now that the ceremony was over. The little girl was in the middle of them, each hand held by an adult, like a prisoner shackled to warders. She looked toward Dyce through the shifting bodies. There was no particular meaning in her expression; he was just a momentary diversion to her, and he accepted that but nonetheless could not suppress a desire, a longing really, to have a child of his own.

Dyce reflected on the women he might marry, the kinds of mothers they would make, and the kinds of children he might have. There was Gisella in accounting, a shy, serious young woman who did not shave her legs. Dyce felt a certain warmth in her presence, but her intensity made him uneasy. He suspected her of strong convictions about things like macrobiotics and holistic medicine. There was a blonde who tended the cash register where Dyce shopped for groceries. She was plump and sweet and always acted as if Dyce’s arrival were the event she had been awaiting all day long. In the few minutes it took for her to price and pack his few supplies, the blonde always managed to have a conversation with him. Thinking about it, Dyce realized he actually knew quite a bit about her. Over the past few years she had volunteered information about her birthday-which Dyce had forgotten-her mother’s failing health, her own weight problems. She had a habit of commenting on his groceries, declaring whether or not she was allowed to eat each item-a minor smash with her car, which cost her more than she could afford, her feelings about the melodramatics of the royal family as reported in the tabloids by her counter. She had spoken to him of airline crashes, her new hairdo, a rash of racial incidents in Boston. Once, Dyce recalled, she had been uncharacteristically quiet and her eyes were red from weeping. Surprising himself, he had asked her if anything was wrong. When she told him she had had a fight with her boyfriend, Dyce had felt a surge of jealousy that puzzled him.

He speculated on life with the blonde checkout girl. He could not decide what kind of mother she would be. Nor could he remember her name, although the tag on her uniform seemed to dance before his eyes.

Dyce rose from the graveside and swept the spider web away with a swipe of his hand. He rolled the threads into a tiny ball and flicked them away, then walked to where the workmen were shoveling fresh gravel on the paths. A tall, weary-looking worker raked the stones level, reforming the edges with an almost geometrical sharpness. The man watched Dyce pick up a few of the stones and examine them.

“For my grandfather,” Dyce explained.

The man shrugged and returned to his raking.

Dyce selected one of the more symmetrical of the stones, one that was nearly round and as wide as a quarter. The dust of the rock crusher was still on the pebbles, and he felt it both grainy and slick between his fingers. Dyce placed the stone on the gravestone and walked away, feeling the other two stones in his palm, rolling them as if they were dice.

When he reached his car he tossed one of the stones aside and dropped the other in his pocket. It was only then that he remembered what he had waiting for him at home.

The man dreamed he was dreaming. The inner nightmare had him wrapped in the coils of a human-headed serpent that bobbed its face close to his own, staring at him with oddly benevolent eyes. His limbs were wrapped and immobile, but somehow the familiar face of the serpent kept him from feeling great fear. There was a certain comfort in the bondage, just as there was a degree of reassurance in the mildly bobbing face. Even when the human head detached itself from the serpent and drifted off on its own, he was more interested than frightened.

In his dream he watched himself within the nightmare and wondered at his lack of concern. Within the dream as in the dreamer’s dream he felt only a sort of somnolent unconcern. Perhaps I am drugged, he thought, meaning within the serpent’s coils. Perhaps I feel so relaxed and torpid because I am drugged, or there is magic in the serpent’s scales, a soothing poison that has lulled me into serenity.

The detached human head opened its mouth as if to speak and more serpents slithered out. The dreamer told himself not to be alarmed: It was only a dream, and even when the little serpents attached themselves to his eyes and cheeks and ears he was more curious than upset.

The dreamer watching the inner dream analyzed it detachedly. They are not true serpents but eels, he thought, and they are there only to suck your blood. And that is why the man caught in the nightmare was so calm-he was losing blood. He was weak from the loss, but the blood was being siphoned out for medical reasons. There seemed no cause to be agitated. There was nothing to be done about it in any event. He could not move and did not have the strength to try.

The detached head opened its mouth again and issued a scraping sound. That is something else, thought the man in the nightmare, which then dissolved and left only the dreamer within the dream. And then another sound, and the dream evaporated and the man dreaming opened his eyes.

He came to consciousness as if stepping out of a set of Russian dolls. Even once he was finally awake, he did not at first believe it. With the same calm as in the dreams, he beheld the scene before him. Clumps of black lace, like moss from a Mississippi oak, hung down in a series, moving from left to right. The older ones to the left were black as soot but they grew lighter, lifting through shades of gray, as they progressed toward the right. In the far right corner of the ceiling were threads of nearly translucent white, not clumped in a mass but spread with geometric precision. He realized the sooty clumps were cobwebs, spun and abandoned and left to gather dust and decay, while another new one was built by the spider that moved now on the latest web in the corner.

An insect had flown into the web and was still struggling violently as the spider pounced. With speed and dexterity it wrapped the insect, paused, wrapped it again. The insect continued to struggle within the cocoon as the spider retired to the edge of the web to wait. Several other packages hung down on single threads, moving in delicate sympathy with the one still-living prey.

He observed with the serenity of a Buddha as the struggle of life played itself out before him. Spiders must live, too, he thought. There was a place for all things in creation and nothing they did could disturb him. He was vaguely aware that he could not move, but this did not trouble him, either. There seemed no need for motion; the spectacle before him was enough for anyone and he had never felt more comfortable. His body seemed to collapse into the padding with the complete surrender of a man into the arms of his lover. The straps were as reassuring as swaddling to a babe. They did not restrain him so much as hold him together.

He slowly became conscious that something was in his mouth, but it did not matter either since he had no need to speak. He did not want to think about it in any event; he wanted merely to drift, perhaps sleep some more.

And then the cobwebs moved in a breeze created when a door was opened, and the man felt a sudden wave of terror. His skin lurched to life, then tingled. He tried to scream, but the obstruction in his mouth kept his tongue down. Forcing air from his lungs, he could feel the tape across his lips tug against his skin. Only a muffled sound emerged, more a moan than a cry.

He heard the sounds of someone approaching and strained his gaze to the side. He hoped desperately that he would awake yet again, but his body knew this was not a dream. This nightmare was real and coming toward him.

As Dyce approached, the man squeezed his eyes closed, hoping to feign sleep.

“I’ve been to see my grandfather,” Dyce said. “I go to see him about once a month. Some people might find that a bit-I don’t know, sentimental, morbid, something-going that often, but I don’t. It comforts me. I hope it comforts him. I haven’t really decided about that, life after death, that whole thing. Maybe. What do you think?”

Dyce checked the needle leading from the femoral artery in the man’s groin. The connection was secure, the tape undisturbed. The bottle between the man’s feet was nearly full of blood. Dyce squatted to determine the precise level in the container.

“That’s good, you’re doing well. I mean, it would be nice to believe the spirit lives on. It would be great, but can you really believe it, that’s the thing. It makes people feel better. I guess that’s the point. I know you’re awake, you know. You breathe differently. There’s no way you can fake that.”

A syringe was taped to the inside of the man’s upper arm. Dyce carefully read the amount of the drug still in the cylinder and made a note of it.

“My boss is such an asshole. He passed me over again today. I mean, it’s not official yet or anything, but he gave the Steinkraus job to Chancy, and it’s obvious whoever handles Steinkraus is on the way up. He doesn’t like me, he just doesn’t like me. No flash, you see. I’m not one of the flashy ones. I just do my job better than anyone else in the office, that’s all. But I don’t tell jokes, I don’t suck up to him, I don’t charm him. Chaney practically oozes oil he’s so pathetically slick. I mean, it is pathetic. To have to get by that way. He’ll run out of grease some day, and suddenly everyone will look at him and say, wait a minute, what does he actually know? Is he a good actuary or is he a fake? Does he really do the work or is he living off of Roger Dyce’s figures? There’s got to be some justice sometime, don’t you think? What the hell kind of world is it, otherwise?… How long have you been awake?”

The man kept his eyes closed and tried to breathe in what he felt was a sleeper’s rhythm.

“How long have you been awake? I need to know so I can adjust your dosage. Open your eyes… Open your eyes.”

Dyce touched the man’s eyeballs gently. The lids shot up.

“There you go,” said Dyce. “Now I want you to close your right eye if you’ve been awake more than an hour. You would know because you would have heard the clock chime at five o’clock. Did you hear it? Close your right eye if you heard it.”

The man’s eyes stayed open, wide and frightened.

“It’s for your own comfort, so you’d be smart to cooperate. You’ll feel better if you’re asleep, don’t you think? Yes? Did you hear the chime? No? All right, now I want you to estimate for me just how long you’ve been awake. Close your right eye if you think it was more than half an hour. No? More than fifteen minutes? No? Did you wake up just a minute or two before I got home?”

The man closed his right eye and kept it closed.

“Good, good,” said Dyce. “So five point five cc’s is just about right. It varies a lot, you’d be surprised. It’s not just body size. Personal tolerance seems to have a lot to do with it, too. Some men just seem to want to be awake more. I don’t know. Some like to sleep. You’re sort of a sleeper yourself This is your third day-did you know that? This is your third day with me-and I must say you’ve been very good, very little trouble.”

The man was secured to an inclined board, tilted back at an angle of a few degrees, so Dyce’s face was level with him as he spoke. The nearly vertical position was helpful in draining blood when the subject was comatose, Dyce had found. Gravity did the job when the heart weakened.

The man could see Dyce’s face swimming in and out of his line of vision like a beach ball riding the waves.

“I’m just going to empty this bottle for you,” said Dyce, dropping out of sight. “It’s nearly full; you’re doing very well, very well, you’d be surprised.”

Dyce straightened again and held the bottle of blood in front of the man’s face. “See?”

The man’s eyelids fluttered and his eyebrows arched upwards. Dyce laid a hand on the man’s cheek.

“Now, Bill… I’m sorry, I don’t remember your real name. Is it all right if I just call you Bill? It’s less confusing for me that way. You didn’t like looking at that. I should have asked you first. It’s funny how some people react to the sight of blood. Frankly, I’m indifferent to it myself It makes some people queasy, though. I realize that, and it looks like you’re one of them. Sorry, I won’t do that again. It takes a while for us to get to know each other, after all. I can’t be expected to guess your likes and dislikes right away.”

The man had broken into a sweat. He felt the stirrings of nausea in the pit of his stomach and tried to swallow to fight them back. He was afraid that if he threw up he would choke on his own vomit. The object in his mouth depressed his tongue and made it very difficult to swallow and he thought for a moment he would choke to death.

Dyce stroked the man’s face with a dry cloth, then put something very cold on his temples.

“It will pass,” Dyce said comfortingly. “You’re fine, you really are. There’s no reason to be upset. Just breathe deeply. That’s it, breathe deeply.”

Dyce gently massaged the man’s throat with one hand while running the ice cube across his forehead to the other temple. Droplets of ice water ran into the man’s hairline.

“It’s just your imagination that has made you feel upset. You don’t need your tongue to swallow, you know. You just think you do. Relax those throat muscles, just relax them. That’s it, let them go. Now swallow. There, you see? You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you like that. You’re perfectly all right. I won’t let anything happen to you, you know that, don’t you?”

Dyce wiped the man’s forehead dry and touched his hair, fluffing it with his fingers.

“I’m here to help you. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you? Think how silly I’d be if I let anything happen to you. Now, I’ll just pour this out and be right back and I’ll have a little treat for you, all right?”

Dyce poured the contents of the bottle down the drain of the kitchen sink and rinsed it out, then went to his bedroom. The room was dark even during the day; the sun was perpetually blocked by heavy brown drapes. Like all the windows in the house, those in the bedroom were covered by double-glazed glass and a board of sound-proofing material pitted by peaks and depressions like an egg carton. Dyce did not like the drapes. For several months he had been thinking of changing them for something brighter and more cheerful. The bedroom was gloomy, no matter how many lights he turned on, and he spent no time in the room except to sleep. There were times when he had long-term guests, such as the man in the living room, when Dyce considered moving the television set into the bedroom so he could have some privacy at night, but the tomblike quality of the room decided him against it.

In the top drawer of the heavy oaken bureau he found the stiff-bristled military hairbrushes and the matching hand mirror. The backings were made of thick, dull silver, and his grandfather’s initials were engraved into the handle of the mirror and burned into the leather straps on the brushes.

Dyce slipped his hands through the straps with a sense of ceremony and felt the presence of his grandfather. The feeling came upon him as a flush, an overall surge of emotion that filled and dominated him. He stood for a moment watching his reflection in the mirror atop the bureau, trying to see if the strength of the emotion were visible to the eye. Heat was suffusing him and the pattern of his breathing had changed, his stomach had tightened, and tremors seized the base of his spine-but nothing was apparent in the mirror. His plain, everyday face looked back at Dyce, eyes a bit too close together, mouth a little crooked, one nostril higher and larger than the other, hair thin and getting thinner as his forehead seemed to grow larger by the month. To the eye there was no trace of the joy that made him shiver with anticipation.

He had to have a look today, he realized. It was early, maybe a full day premature and it might even diminish his satisfaction when everything was perfect, but he could wait no longer. He would have a look today, a preview, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Dyce opened the oaken wardrobe with its simple, patterned surface-the pattern of the polished oak had been ornament enough in the days when his grandfather acquired the furniture-and withdrew the length of cream-colored silk, the pillow of the same material, the dark blue suit, the stiffly starched shirt, and his grandfather’s favorite paisley tie. He hesitated over the hair pomade, the lipstick, the mascara, then decided to leave them in the wardrobe. It was only a preview, after all. It was always better to save the full treatment for the end. Dyce believed in deferred pleasure, although his needs sometimes overcame his patience.

He had forgotten to replace the collection bottle; a few drops of blood had dribbled to the floor. Dyce wiped them up, then put the bottle back on the end of the plastic drip. This kind of mistake annoyed him and normally made him angry with himself, but now with the fever of anticipation, he scarcely noted his error.

“Sorry I took so long,” Dyce said. “I had to get a few things together.” He held the brushes up so the man could see them.

“Like I promised, a treat for you, then one for me, too.”

Dyce stood behind the man and began to brush his hair.

“His hair was pure white and thicker than yours. You’re a young man, but believe me, his hair was thicker even at his age. He used to say there was an Italian in the woodpile; he couldn’t figure out how else to explain a head of hair that full. And with just a little wave, not crinkly at all, just a little wave-but so white. A hundred strokes a night, no matter what, that’s what he said the secret was, one hundred strokes a night. It kept the scalp alive, he said.”

Dyce pulled the brushes gently through the man’s hair from brow to neck, one hand following the other. First the top, then the sides, then the top again. Dyce heard the man moaning softly in appreciation.

“Funny how it always feels better when someone else does it, have you noticed? It’s never quite the same when you have to do it yourself There’s a girl where I have my hair cut who does the shampoo-I can’t just go to a barber anymore, my hair’s too thin, there’s no Italian in my woodpile, I guess. I need a real artist to take care of it these days, and women just know more about these things. Actually, the person who does the actual styling is a man, but you know what I mean, he’s used to working on women, but what was I saying? There’s this girl who gives me a shampoo before the guy does the cutting and her fingers feel so good I want to propose to her every time I go in… I don’t, though… His wife used to do his hair before she died, and then I took over. One hundred strokes a night, no matter what. It was practically a religious thing and that makes me what, an altar boy or something… There, that’s more than a hundred.”

Dyce stood in front of the man, admiring the results of his work. A tear seeped from the man’s eye.

“I know I promised you a treat and that was it, but I think I’ll give you another one, and then it’s my turn.”

Dyce pressed the syringe in the man’s arm, studying the level in the cylinder carefully. Contented with the dosage, he held the hand mirror so the man could see himself. The second treat.

The man looked at the face of his own death. His skin was the ashen pallor of a corpse, more deathly pale than the tape that covered his mouth. His eyes were an impossibly bright blue in contrast with his flesh, and his hair, fresh from the brushing and crackling with static electricity, stood up like the caricature of a man in terror.

Behind the mirror, Dyce’s face swam in and out of focus, nodding approval and smiling. The man closed his eyes and gratefully allowed the drug to lower him into unconsciousness as softly as a mother with a babe.

Dyce covered the man’s face while he worked so that he wouldn’t be tempted to peek and spoil his first viewing. He laid the board flat on the sawhorses that were draped with black felt crepe to hide their rough-hewn legs. The shirt, tie, and suit jacket were awkward to put on and the covering slipped from the man’s face several times. He drew the creamy silk up to the man’s waist and then crossed his arms, which had already been freed from their restraints, in order to put on the clothing. Working by feel, Dyce removed the tape and took the darning egg out of the man’s mouth. With the pillow under the man’s head, Dyce finally removed the covering from his face, carefully avoiding even a glance.

With Mozart’s Requiem playing softly on the tape machine, Dyce selected a tray of spicy chicken wings from his freezer and heated them in the microwave. Working with his back to the man, he set up the television tray in front of his favorite armchair and put out his napkin and a fork for the simple tossed salad. The chicken wings he would eat with his fingers. Normally he would not eat during such an occasion, but since it was only a preview, he reasoned, and because he was very hungry and would not want to have to interrupt himself as long as the emotion gripped him, he would do it this way just this once.

Throughout his preparations he felt the excitement of anticipation stirring him. With an effort he made himself slow down and go through every step methodically. Finally, when all was ready and the microwave sounded its buzzer, he took his tray of chicken wings to the television tray, sat in the chair, and for the first time allowed himself to look at the man.

In the gloom of the living room, the pale face and hands seemed to be lit with an inner light. The man’s features had relaxed under the drug and his expression was one of utter serenity. From this distance, Dyce could not see the man’s chest move with his shallow breaths, but, of course, he knew. He knew, and that detracted from the pleasure somewhat. And the man’s color was not yet perfect. It never was while they were alive, but it was close. The difference between what was and the perfection he could so easily attain detracted, too. Life itself was the problem; it refused to be completely disguised. But still, it was close. And as long as they lived, they did not decay.

“So beautiful,” Dyce murmured in the gloom.

He sat perfectly still for a long time before he reached for the first chicken wing.