Read Online The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks by Russell Banks - Free Book Online
Authors: Russell Banks
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simultaneously shocked and relieved by a person who presents himself as demystification, disenchantment, and clarity personified. Both right and good —for those are the modern vices we set against the ancient virtues of faith, hope, and charity!
You hold your head in your cool palms. Oh my! Oh my! To aspire to purge one’s mind and all its manifestations of every taint of unreason—such an aspiration must be blasphemy ! To be pure reason, to be self-generating, to be unable to remember your mother—is to be a god ! Is that why you can’t remember your mother’s face, her smell, her touch, her voice? Is this painful absence the necessary consequence of your o’ervaunting ambition? Evil. You say the word aloud, over and over. Evil. Evil. You draw off your socks and your trousers, your jacket, vest, shirt, and necktie, your underclothes, all the while murmuring, Evil, evil, evil .
Until at last you are naked, the poet Edgar Poe, author of “The Raven,” naked in the dim light of a hotel room in Richmond, Virginia. You peer down at your toes, bent and battered, each toe topped with a thin wad of black hairs. Your knees, knobbed, the skin gray and crackled, and your gaunt thighs, your genitals, dry, puckered, and soft, half-covered with a smoky patch of hair. You look at your drooping belly and your navel, that primeval scar, and your breasts, like two empty pouches. You study your hands, twin nests of spiders, and your thin arms, the moles, freckles, discolorations, fissures, hairs, and blemishes, and your gray, slack skin.
You try to look at your face—but you cannot. There is a dresser mirror across from you to your right a few paces, but that will not do. You want to look upon your face directly. And you cannot. You know that if you look directly at your own face, you will be able to remember your mother’s face. And then her touch, her smell, her voice. You touch your face with your fingertips, rubbing them across nose, lips, eyes, ears, and cheeks. You can get the facts of your face, but you cannot look upon it directly. Just as you can get the facts of your mother’s life, from the memories of the women, those young women now old, but you cannot remember her directly yourself. Is that why you have for so many years aspired to what is evil? Because it was easier for you than to become a “natural” human being, easier than remembering your mother? Easier to be evil than good? You are weeping silently. Which is it? Are you unable to remember your mother because you are evil and persist in blasphemy, or are you evil and persist in blasphemy because you cannot remember your mother? Which? For one must be a cause, the other the effect. Which the cause? Which the effect? Why are you weeping? Why are you naked? Why are you the poet Edgar Poe author of “The Raven”? Why are you not a particular, remembered, and memorialized mother’s son?
In the graveyard beside the church on the hill is your mother’s grave. You will depart this city in an hour by train for Baltimore. You have eaten breakfast alone in the hotel dining room and have arranged for a driver to carry you first to the church on the hill, then back into the city to the railroad station. You pay your bill, lift your satchel, and leave the hotel for the carriage waiting outside. You stop a moment on the veranda and admire the soft morning sunlight on the brick buildings and sidewalks, the elm and live oak trees that line the streets, the white dome of the capital building a few blocks east, and beyond that, with the river between, the white spire of the church next to where your mother’s body was buried nearly four decades ago. This will not be the first time you have visited your mother’s grave, to stand before it with your mind mutely churning, and then, after a few moments of vertigo, to leave. You have made this pilgrimage hundreds of times, as a young boy, as an adolescent, and as a man, even in military uniform, even while drunk. And it has
You hold your head in your cool palms. Oh my! Oh my! To aspire to purge one’s mind and all its manifestations of every taint of unreason—such an aspiration must be blasphemy ! To be pure reason, to be self-generating, to be unable to remember your mother—is to be a god ! Is that why you can’t remember your mother’s face, her smell, her touch, her voice? Is this painful absence the necessary consequence of your o’ervaunting ambition? Evil. You say the word aloud, over and over. Evil. Evil. You draw off your socks and your trousers, your jacket, vest, shirt, and necktie, your underclothes, all the while murmuring, Evil, evil, evil .
Until at last you are naked, the poet Edgar Poe, author of “The Raven,” naked in the dim light of a hotel room in Richmond, Virginia. You peer down at your toes, bent and battered, each toe topped with a thin wad of black hairs. Your knees, knobbed, the skin gray and crackled, and your gaunt thighs, your genitals, dry, puckered, and soft, half-covered with a smoky patch of hair. You look at your drooping belly and your navel, that primeval scar, and your breasts, like two empty pouches. You study your hands, twin nests of spiders, and your thin arms, the moles, freckles, discolorations, fissures, hairs, and blemishes, and your gray, slack skin.
You try to look at your face—but you cannot. There is a dresser mirror across from you to your right a few paces, but that will not do. You want to look upon your face directly. And you cannot. You know that if you look directly at your own face, you will be able to remember your mother’s face. And then her touch, her smell, her voice. You touch your face with your fingertips, rubbing them across nose, lips, eyes, ears, and cheeks. You can get the facts of your face, but you cannot look upon it directly. Just as you can get the facts of your mother’s life, from the memories of the women, those young women now old, but you cannot remember her directly yourself. Is that why you have for so many years aspired to what is evil? Because it was easier for you than to become a “natural” human being, easier than remembering your mother? Easier to be evil than good? You are weeping silently. Which is it? Are you unable to remember your mother because you are evil and persist in blasphemy, or are you evil and persist in blasphemy because you cannot remember your mother? Which? For one must be a cause, the other the effect. Which the cause? Which the effect? Why are you weeping? Why are you naked? Why are you the poet Edgar Poe author of “The Raven”? Why are you not a particular, remembered, and memorialized mother’s son?
In the graveyard beside the church on the hill is your mother’s grave. You will depart this city in an hour by train for Baltimore. You have eaten breakfast alone in the hotel dining room and have arranged for a driver to carry you first to the church on the hill, then back into the city to the railroad station. You pay your bill, lift your satchel, and leave the hotel for the carriage waiting outside. You stop a moment on the veranda and admire the soft morning sunlight on the brick buildings and sidewalks, the elm and live oak trees that line the streets, the white dome of the capital building a few blocks east, and beyond that, with the river between, the white spire of the church next to where your mother’s body was buried nearly four decades ago. This will not be the first time you have visited your mother’s grave, to stand before it with your mind mutely churning, and then, after a few moments of vertigo, to leave. You have made this pilgrimage hundreds of times, as a young boy, as an adolescent, and as a man, even in military uniform, even while drunk. And it has
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