A young woman's head in a mob-cap came into view. She wore a green and
purple smock, and a cigarette hung loosely from her mouth. She looked at
me at first as if I were an old-fashioned poem or a bundle of modest
drawings, but cheered when I told my errand. There was a cup of steaming
soup on an alcohol burner, and half a loaf of bread. On a string across
the window handkerchiefs and stockings were hung to dry. A desk was
littered with papers.
I paid my money and was enrolled. I was given a current number of the
_Shriek_, and was told not to miss a poem by Sillivitch.
"Sillivitch?" I asked.
"Sillivitch," the lady answered. "Our greatest poet--maybe the greatest
of all time. Writes only for the _Shriek_. Wonderful! Realistic!"
"Snug little office," I said to the poet, when we were on the stairs.
"She lives in there, too?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "Smart girl, that. Never compromises. Wants reality
and all that sort of thing. You must read Sillivitch. Amazing! Doesn't
seem to mean anything at first. But then you get it in a flash."
We had now come to the top of the building.
"There isn't much smell up here," I said.
"You don't mind the smell. You come to like it," he replied. "It's
bracing."
At the top of the stairs, a hallway led to rooms both front and back.
The ceiling of these rooms, low even in the middle, sloped to windows of
half height in dormers. The poet waved his hand. "I have been living in
the front room," he said, "but I am adding this room behind for a
study."
We entered the study. A man was mopping up the floor. Evidently the room
had not been lived in for years, for the dirt was caked to a half inch.
A general wreckage of furniture--a chair, a table with marble top, a
carved sideboard with walnut dingles, a wooden bed with massive
headboard, a mattress and a broken pitcher--had been swept to the middle
of the room. There was also a pile of old embalmer's journals, and a
great carton that seemed to contain tubes of tooth-paste.
"You see," said the poet, "I have been living in the other room. This
used to be a storage--years ago, for the family that once lived here,
and more recently for the embalmer."
"Storage!" I exclaimed. "You don't suppose that they kept any--?"
"No."
"Well," I said, "it's a snug little place."
I bent over and picked up one of the embalmer's journals. On the cover
there was a picture of a little boy in a night-gown, saying his prayer
to his mother. The prayer was printed underneath. "And, mama," it read,
"have God make me a good boy, and when I grow up let me help papa in his
business, and never use anything but _Twirpp's Old Reliable Embalming
Fluid_, the kind that papa has always used, and grandpa before him."
Now, Charles Lamb, I recall, once confessed that he was moved to
enthusiasm by an undertaker's advertisement. "Methinks," he writes, "I
could be willing to die, in death to be so attended. The two rows all
round close-drove best black japanned nails,--how feelingly do they
invite, and almost irresistibly persuade us to come and be fastened
down." But the journal did not stir me to this high emotion.
I crossed the room and stooped to look out of the dormer window--into a
shallow yard where an abandoned tin bath-tub and other unprized
valuables were kept. A shabby tree acknowledged that it had lost its
way, but didn't know what to do about it. It had its elbow on the fence
and seemed to be in thought. A wash-stand lay on its side, as if it
snapped its fingers forever at soap and towels. Beyond was a tall
building, with long tables and rows of girls working.
One of the girls desisted for a moment from her feathers with which she
was making hats, and stuck out her tongue at me in a coquettish way. I
returned her salute. She laughed and tossed her head and went back to
her feathers.
The young man who had been mopping up the floor went out for fresh
water.
"Who is that fellow?" I asked.
"He works downstairs."
"For the _Shriek?_"
"For the embalmer. He's an apprentice."
"I would like to meet him."
Presently I did meet him.
"What have you there?" I asked. He was folding up a great canvas bag of
curious pattern.
"It's when you are shipped away--to Texas or somewhere. This is a little
one. You'd need--" he appraised me from head to foot--"you'd need a
number ten."
He desisted from detail. He shifted to the story of his life. Since he
had been a child he had wished to be an undertaker.
Now I had myself once known an undertaker, and I had known his son. The
son went to Munich to study for Grand Opera. I crossed on the steamer
with him. He sang in the ship's concert, "Oh, That We Two Were Maying."
It was pitched for high tenor, so he sang it an octave low, and was
quite gloomy about it. In the last verse he expressed a desire to lie
at rest beneath the churchyard sod. The boat was rolling and I went out
to get the air. And then I did not see him for several years. We met at
a funeral. He wore a long black coat and a white carnation. He smiled at
me with a gentle, mournful smile and waved me to a seat. He was Tristan
no longer. Valhalla no more echoed to his voice. He had succeeded to his
father's business.