The Festival of the Dead
Trouble and sorrow are for the living
———
The summer air was warm and musty, the spring breeze pulling the putrescent fish aroma out of the river valley. A tinge of lilac fluttered in the gusts. It all reminded me of a thousand forgotten bouquets shriveling in a thousand forgotten cellars. I was out for a walk, as was my habit in those days, haunting sleepy neighborhoods in the sleepy hours of the evening.
It was the first truly warm night of spring and the transformation of my brisk winter pace into my summer saunter was almost complete. I had been walking for almost an hour and beginning to consider heading home—the thought of tea and a chapter of Crusoe sounding perfect.
As I was about to start looping back toward home, a throbbing hum hit my left ear, a distant rhythm bouncing through the blossoming canopy. I couldn’t think of any festivals or celebrations on the calendar, so I decided to delay my nightly ritual of tea and reading to see what this noise was about.
I kept straight. From the low, pulsing hum, a lively syncopated melody bubbled up. I continued east toward the river, and the music continued to expand in my ears. The texture of the instrument grew clearer into the unmistakable body of a pipe organ, with it an inchoate chorus of talking, laughing, and singing.
A few blocks before me lay one of the city’s oldest graveyards. It was perched on the top of the river valley, a thickly forested slope holding the corpse-laden soil up from the water. Skirting the grounds was a cast-iron fence webbed between masonry pilasters. The chapel looked like a pile of embers to the south, glowing windows and dark brick walls stacked as if to hold in the mirth and warmth. Oak and hickory trees, older than the dead among their roots, were decked with giant, radiant globes. Gossamer strands of lights hung from limb to limb.
I was quite surprised. I had never heard of any graveyard festivals. To see a place, usually so solemn and macabre transformed into a mass of warmth, color, and celebration was like seeing a mariachi band at a funeral. As I passed the gate, I saw a great crowd swarming among the gravestones. But there was something peculiar about these people. The guests of this festival were not the usual, living sort. These were ghosts and ghouls and phantoms, corpses rotted and rotting, but somehow alive, alive and undeniably vivacious.
If one ignored the smell—a bizarre mixture of blooming lilac and daffodil, blooming algae and dried fish slime wafting from the river, and composting human flesh, and also if one could stomach the sight of leathery sinews clinging to desiccated bones and crumbling tarps of skin draped over partially empty rib cages and eye sockets empty or half-filled with dirt, one might have felt quite jovial. Indeed, I was enchanted. I couldn’t help inserting a small bounce to my step as I noticed a group of phantoms dancing the quadrille near the columbarium. Adjacent to the dancers, a group of women in exploding hoop dresses sat tittering among an array of sepulchers. A boisterous guffawing followed by squeals and giggles erupted from a nearby mausoleum. There were people and apparel and customs from every era since the day of the first burial.
No one seemed to notice me in the surge of party-goers. I kept to the narrow asphalt road that circled the inside perimeter of the graveyard. As I passed the chapel, I noticed five older, or so I assumed, ladies sitting on a cluster of low-cut tombstones. They were seemingly in a deep conversation, and like me, observing the revelry about them. Between the scathing critiques of other guests’ dresses and neckties and lipstick shades, they were elaborating on the inevitable decline of civilization as evidence by their grandchildren’s abandonment of writing thank-you cards. I passed on as one lady began bemoaning her husbands persnickety appetite in contrast to his uncharacteristic fondness of cheese.
Skeleton jesters juggling bowling pins, old hounds shaking decades of dust and dirt from their wrinkly hides, and rotund butchers turning rock bass on open fires. It was a spectacle indeed.
Nearby the grumbling old ladies stood a massive willow tree, bedecked in twinkling strings of light and glimmering fireflies. Under the drooping canopy several gentlemen stood in a semicircle laughing and shouting. I will forego a precise transcription of their conversation as I don’t think ribaldry of the sort coming from their lipless mouths has any value in being written down. Probably lies anyway, or at least, gross exaggeration.
On the other side of the willow’s great trunk, a small gathering of dancers swayed to the music pulsing from the chapel. Each pair was a different wonder of structural engineering. How these decaying bodies kept themselves upright, I could not tell. They appeared to be nothing but heaps of rotted flesh, bones, and frayed and faded cloth. But I couldn’t ignore the upswell of joy in my heart. What affectionate embraces, what peaceful respite in the mutual dependence. I lost myself for a moment, thinking of past lovers.
A crash jolted me from my revery. Another crash, followed by a metallic shiver. I spun around. The path bent left, and a little ways onward a band of ghouls were setting up their instruments. Their faded and holed uniforms spoke of a far-gone era of music and nightlife. Red and white stripped suit coats and red pants, once shiny red shoes. They brandished and polished and tuned their instruments. Trumpets and trombones and saxophones let out squeals and grunts, little hips and hops from the hi-hat—a dissonant and unrhythmic vitality converging into an ordered and grooving music. The trumpeter whistled. The instruments froze. Silence. The trumpeter called out time.
A smooth, trilling melody oozed out. Lazy like the fireflies and the trees above, the drummer and bassist roped out a nice syncopating rhythm. Then, like a firework shell exploding, the trumpeter let out a peal that tickled the spine. A few short bursts here, then a long undulating rumble. In a flurry of tarnished brass and revolving cymbals, the saxophonist and trombonist joined in. A music so hopping and fine splashed against the tombstones like pure ocean waves.
Perhaps swept up in the music, perhaps hypnotized, I though I heard the organ from the chapel pepper the music with low, popping chords. I glanced behind me. The dancers were now awake, swinging, spinning, gyrating to the new music. I let it soak into my bones then reluctantly moved on.
The road was running parallel to the river below, and every now and then the garbled reflection of the rising moon hit my eyes through the forest. A rookery of boys swarmed past my legs, waving flashlights and sticks, yelling in hoarse voices. I watched them until their swarm passed three men reclining on a low, wide sepulcher. A flask sat between two of the men, which they employed intermittently to fill up their small snifters. Though half-necrosed , their faces betrayed their drunkenness—unmistakably lazy smiles and half-shut lids. They mumbled about the fine spring weather, how fine it was to drink fine sherry on a fine spring evening with fine friends. Everything was fine. I felt very fine myself and strolled onward
The music from the band and chapel grew dimmer and duller as I walked towards the northern tip of the cemetery. I looked back on the scene, the moon now rising above the eastern tree line. It was a warm sight—the bottoms of the leaves ablaze with the glow of lanterns, the tops a cool blue-green, with glints of silver moonlight, the music lightly throbbing and the mass of human putrescence swaying, convulsing, and rotating about itself.
I was about to turn left and loop back toward the gate when an almost imperceptible sniffling struck my ear. At first I thought it was a wave on the riverside below, but it continued in an irregular, sharp sort of way. I stopped. I listened more closely and discovered it was accompanied by a soft sobbing. This sudden contrast of merriment and sorrow gave me a chill. I moved towards the sniffling sound. A few meters from the path stood an ornate sepulcher. Sprawling angels encircled a solid stone sphere. This was set upon stone traceries writhing down about a small stone cube. It stood upon a thick beveled platform above the earth.
As I approached the tomb and appreciated its fine craftsmanship, I discovered the source of the quiet weeping. A young woman sat upon the back edge of the platform, her arms embracing her knees. She gazed through a clearing in the trees toward the river below. Somewhat embarrassed of my nonchalant curiosity, I pretended not to notice her. I felt her glance at me and hush her heavy breathing. From the corner of my eye, I noticed she was not like the other party-goers. She was immaculately preserved, beautiful and soft. Perhaps she was different, alive even. What a sad thought—the only living human in a graveyard being the saddest. I stepped away, back towards the path. I glanced back and saw an inscription on the sepulcher, “Not a breath in this world.”
Back through the now quieter music and now calmer crowds, I began my walk home. Exiting the cemetery, I re-entered the infinite grid of slumbering houses and unlit alleyways. I skipped my tea and Crusoe and fell into bed—the penetrating music from the graveyard seeping out of my marrow and soothing my tired muscles. Half-asleep and entering the dream world half-conscious, I found myself back at the cemetery, my heart beating in time with the thumping music of the band.
———