The Pocket Handkerchief

  Phil Kerr

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  The Pocket Handkerchief

  Philip Kerr

  (With Apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)

  I cannot remember precisely when I met Scipio for the first time, but I have the strong sense he knew me before I ever came to live in the house of his master, Mister A–, in Richmond, Virginia, during the year of our Lord, 18–.

  I was aged only two when that happened. My natural father having died of the consumption, my mother married Mr. A– with a haste that would have put Queen Gertrude to shame and which, to my mind, bordered on the indecent. For myself, I do not remember my own father at all but, if the reader will permit the apparent contradiction, I have never forgotten him. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John’s Episcopal Church where, it is said, General Benedict Arnold, the ignominious traitor, quartered his troops and their horses during the War of Independence.

  Another six years passed before my beloved mother, Elizabeth, also succumbed to the same malady as my father, leaving me and my brother, William Henry, alone with our stepfather. She was just aged twenty-nine. I was myself but eight years old at the time, yet not a day has passed since then when I have not thought of her or the cruelty of the God who took her from us so young. If I had any Christian faith at all, I think it probably died then, with my beautiful young mother.

  Scipio, who was one of my adoptive father’s three house slaves, and very well-educated (it was he, not Mr. A–, who usually helped me with my Latin homework), told me that on several occasions, he saw my mother on the stage in Richmond—for she was an actress—and thought she was one of the handsomest ladies he ever saw. This is also my own opinion.

  Memories grow dim, however, and the one portrait I have of her is, I think, a porcelain miniature indifferently rendered. It makes her look like a child’s doll and, at the very least, something not alive, and that is its greatest failing. Would that were all. But I am also reminded of my mother as something not alive whenever I look at the only other thing of hers I now possess: a white pocket handkerchief with her initials stitched upon its corner. This is to hardly state the truth of the matter, however, which is that whenever I contemplate this handkerchief—as, from time to time, my strange nature compels me to do—I am obliged to think of her as something dead and in awful torment. I confess, I have often thought of burning the handkerchief, and yet cannot—by reason of the fact that it serves to remind me that my living suffering is deservedly shared with her infernal one.

  I was but a boy of twelve at the time of the ill-advised adventure, and while I am eternally grateful to Mr. A– for taking my brother and me into his home, the want of true parental affection had been the heaviest of my trials. Indeed, my sense of absolute grief and loss were sometimes so large and oppressive that it might have reasonably been supposed that I had been bereaved but recently, especially since it was my habit to go walking through cemeteries. I confess, I could no more pass a newly-filled grave without stopping to consider the fate of the poor wretch who lay beneath the soil than another boy of my age could ignore the sight of a jar full of candy in a grocery store.

  My stepfather—for so I should call him, although the title does not sit comfortably with me—said I had a morbid disposition. And I must own that, as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by death; rare is the night that I do not stare into the too-solid darkness of my room and imagine death’s hard unseen face staring coldly back at me.

  Scipio said that it was perfectly natural that any child alive should be interested in death, for you couldn’t have one without the other, and that back in Africa, where he came from originally, a boy such as myself who demonstrated such an interest in the afterlife would have marked himself out as a future hougan, which is a kind of priest or witch-doctor. Scipio also told me that his own grandfather, Msizi, had been a great hougan and knew better than anyone how to connect the world of spirits and ancestors with the living world of human beings.

  “All the same, young Master Edgar,” said Scipio, “it seems to me that you have all of eternity to find out the answers to these questions. So maybe it’s best you don’t go rushing that particular enquiry.”

  I persisted however, with the result that Scipio and I often talked about what might lie on the other side of death’s mildewed curtain—although the poor man might easily have felt by reason of his lowly station that he was obliged to indulge my youthful questions and speculations upon the matter of what it was really like to be dead.

  Persistence paid off with the discovery that Scipio, himself, was in possession of a hougan’s secrets and knew very well how the world of the living might become better acquainted with the world of the dead; and I must reluctantly confess that I took unfair advantage of our relationship, constantly badgering that unhappy African to give me a clearer account of exactly how such a closer acquaintance might be achieved.

  Finally, and with great reluctance, he told me something of what I wanted to know.

  “Anybody who wants to find out what it’s really like to be dead,” he explained, “has no choice but to go and visit the folks in the underworld. That ain’t easy. And it ain’t for the fainthearted, boy. If you are going to visit the underworld, you need to find yourself a door. There ain’t but one place in Richmond to find a door like that, and that’s the cemetery. And don’t think I’m talking about a stroll around those headstones, like you are partial to. I’m talking about something much more profound—in the true Latin sense of that word.

  “The plain fact is, Master Edgar, you need to get yourself buried alive. Just like one of those Vestal Virgins from Roman times, when they were accused of violating their vows of celibacy. They got sealed up in a cave with a small amount of bread and water so that the goddess Vesta might save them, supposing they were innocent, of course. Or, like Saint Castulus, who was chamberlain to the Emperor Diocletian. You remember what happened to him? They buried him alive in a sand pit on the Via Labicana.”

  I knew the story well, of course, and might have added that it wasn’t just Saint Castulus who had suffered the fate of a live burial. Vitalis of Milan, for example. The poet Dante refers to the practice in the Inferno. And I had read that in feudal Russia, women who had murdered their husbands were subject to a self-explanatory mode of execution known as “the pit.” The last known case of this punishment happening had been in 1740. So I was hardly as horrified at the idea of premature burial as perhaps Scipio had hoped I might be.

  “It’s not just that,” continued Scipio. “It’s the way you are buried, too. You’ve got to be buried alive with the lid of the coffin facing down. Now, most folks who get themselves buried do it the other way, of course. With the coffin lid facing up—on account of that’s the general direction they want their souls to travel in. But if you are going calling on the underworld, you’ve got to be going the other way. You’ve got to go in face down.”

  “That’s it?”

  Scipio laughed. “That’s it, he says. Listen to yourself, white boy.” Scipio laughed some more. “Being buried alive, even for a short while, isn’t any Sunday school picnic, boy. For one thing, you’ve got to last from dusk until dawn without going plumb crazy. Why, one solitary hour being buried alive would be enough to drive most folks mad—let alone one whole night.”

  “If I am going to visit the underworld then, strictly speaking, I can hardly be buried alive for the whole night, can I?” I said, with precocious logic. “The coffin lid has to open like a door, you said. In those circumstances, it doesn’t make any sense for me to be afraid.”

  “I do believe you’re not,” he said, with some admiration. “Very well, Master Edgar. You figure out a way to get yourself buried alive, and I promise I’ll have a quiet word with my granddaddy to come and fetch you out of the coffin to give you the five cent tour of the underworld.”

  Sooner than either of us expected, fate provided me with the chance to do exactly that, albeit in circumstances that were tragic, to say the least.

  A boy called Wilson in my class at Richmond Academy began regularly to bait me for being an orphan and Mr. A–’s adopted son. One day, when he started to make light of my poor mother’s death, I called him a coward, and when he denied this, I challenged him to swim the span of the Mayo Bridge, which is some four hundred and fifty yards—and Wilson accepted.

  I have always been a good swimmer. At the age of eleven, I could swim the James River from Shockhoe Bottom to Rocky Ridge. The distance of our swim was not so great for me, but when the river is in flood, as it was then, the current is strong, and even a good swimmer risks being swept away—which is what happened to poor Wilson. And when, eventually, his drowned body was recovered from the water at Hampton Roads, several miles downstream, they buried him in Shockhoe Hill Cemetery.

  I felt bad about what had happened to Wilson; at the same time, something infernal crept into my heart, and almost as soon as he was in the ground, I was pestering the understandably reluctant Scipio to help me put my plan into nocturnal action. No, that is incorrect. I plagued him like he was that hard-hearted Pharaoh of Egypt, and I the prophet Moses.

  “Wilson’s grave is just soft earth,” I told Scipio, “so his coffin should be easy enough to dig up. We can disinter the body tonight, and I will take his place in the coffin until morning.”

  And finally a great cry was heard in the town of Richmond: “Will you ever let me alone about this, Master Edgar? You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Scipio, please try to understand that it’s something I feel compelled to do.”

  “Aren’t you afraid, Master Edgar?”

  “Yes, of course I am,” I confessed. “But I still want to do it.”

  “Very well. I’ll help you. But listen here, you can never talk about this. Never, d’you hear? Not to anybody. If we get caught, or if anyone ever finds out what we’ve done, they’ll hang old Scipio for sure.”

  “Yes,” I said. “So long as you are alive, Scipio, I won’t ever peach.”

  By which you may reasonably deduce, gentle reader, that poor Scipio is dead. But more of that anon.

  St. John’s Churchyard was largely full by 18–, which is why the city of Richmond established Shockhoe Hill Cemetery. It was outside of the city and to the northwest of the river and, as cemeteries go, rather a pleasant place, being full of trees such as Virginia elm, pin oaks, silver maple, locust, Kentucky coffee, eastern red cedar, and yew—all enclosed by a high brick wall that Scipio and I were obliged to scale after dark, for the gate that was locked every night after eight o’clock. This was to our advantage, however, as the locked gate and the high wall of Shockhoe Hill made it seem unlikely that we would be disturbed in our miscreant endeavour. It was also fortunate that Mr. A–, who owned a small tobacco plantation in Mecklenburg County, was away at the time, and there were only the other house slaves, Mammy and Thomas, to notice that we were not at home, and neither of them would ever have split on us.

  In the lowering darkness, we set to our nefarious work with pick and shovel, excavating the unfortunate Wilson’s coffin. It was a hard task for a man and a boy and took the best part of an hour. By the time we had hauled the simple pine box out of the grave, I was exhausted and almost looking forward to resting in peace awhile. But I was certainly not looking forward to seeing the dead face of my enemy. Perhaps it was guilt, but I had half an idea that he still might awaken and accuse me of getting him drowned. This apprehension was hardly diminished by the sight of the dead boy’s face, for he hardly looked dead at all and, indeed, so life-like did Wilson appear to me that I felt compelled to offer him a double apology—once for bringing about his untimely death and again for disturbing his eternal rest.

  Gently, Scipio collected the body from the coffin and carried it to the shadow of the brick wall that enclosed the cemetery, and there he laid him down and covered him with some sacking the sextons had used to line the edge of another open grave that was to be occupied the following day.

  Then, equipped with a burning tallow candle and a few provisions, I lay down in the coffin on my front. Before Scipio closed the lid on me for the night, however, I sought some assurance from him that all would be well.

  “You did remember to speak to your granddaddy, the hougan, Scipio, and tell him to expect me tonight?” I asked.

  “I can’t say for sure that Msizi will be there,” said Scipio. “But I told him, all right. The man knows you’re coming to visit awhile. I reckon it would be rude not to show up and say hello, given all the trouble you and I have been to here.”

  “You won’t leave the cemetery, either,” I said. “Not to go and get a drink from that still in Rocky Ridge, like you did last Saturday when you didn’t come home until late. I sure wouldn’t want you to get drunk and forget to come back here and dig me up again in the morning, Scipio.”

  “No, sir. I’ll be here all night. Like we agreed.”

  “Because I think it would be a terrible way to die. Like Antigone. Inhumation, they call it—being buried alive.”

  “Don’t worry, Master Edgar,” said Scipio. “I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy. Besides, I’ve got to come and get you, or else there is nowhere to put your friend, Wilson.”

  All the same, as Scipio put the lid on the coffin and hammered in a few small nails so I might more easily be lowered into the grave, I wished I had thought to bring a Bible so that I might have made the slave swear a solemn oath not to leave me buried alive forever. But were there not many other things that might go wrong with my plan? What if my air ran out? What if Scipio had an attack and died before he could dig me up again? What if he was apprehended before he could tell his story? And what if, having been apprehended, he did tell his story, and no one believed him, as well they might not? My imagination generated a hundred different anxieties as I felt the coffin containing my living body descend into Wilson’s grave.

  There was no room for a lamp inside the coffin, only a tallow candle. Scipio had made a small hole in the wood and covered it with a piece of metal gauze so that the flame would not cause the coffin to catch alight. But before I dared to place the candle under this spot, I waited until I had felt myself settle on the floor of the grave—for fear that the candle might be overturned and my light lost—then waited again until I heard the explosive sound of earth being shovelled back onto the coffin, which was sufficient confirmation that I would not move again.

  It is the most wretched, ghastly sound, perhaps the most ghastly thing I have ever heard, and it would surely have terrified someone who did not have the hope of escape from burial that I, myself, did.

  Fearing discovery, Scipio worked quickly, and eventually, the noise of earth and stones crashing onto the wooden box diminished as the layer covering me grew thicker until I could hardly hear anything but the unnervingly close sound of my own breathing. Perhaps it was the slight smell of damp and decay or a little dust that might have been clinging to the wooden interior, but something caught my throat and, for a moment, I was convulsed by a violent fit of coughing and found my head turning one way and then the other as I tried to clear my lungs of irritation. But I was not yet worried that the air inside the casket was about to run out, having been assured by Scipio that a whole day might pass before that finally happened, and hence I did not panic—at least not until the expulsion of air from my mouth blew out the candle that was my only source of light.

  Immediately, I forgot about my coughing and reached for the little tinderbox in my breast pocket containing flint, fire steel, and charcloth to relight the candle. Horrified to discover that it was not there, my fingers scrambled like a spider over my chest and body, searching the other pockets of my clothes—only the tinderbox was not there. And in my mind’s eye, I suddenly saw it quite clearly on the table in my room at home where, foolishly, I had left it.

  If I had not panicked before, I started to panic a little now, for there is something about the darkness inside a coffin that is so palpable and close that a person might actually bite it. But equally, there exists the very strong and alarming sensation that something might reach out of the darkness and bite you.

  I shouted for Scipio and kicked the toes of my boots on the coffin, but to no avail. He was surely gone by now—cowering by poor Wilson’s pale corpse in the shelter of the Shockhoe Hill cemetery wall—and wouldn’t be back at my graveside until dawn the following morning. Half stifled by the intensity of the darkness, I stared hard into the black air above my head and willed my mind to detach itself from my nerves, to pretend that I was back in my own bed at home, and that I was half-asleep and dreaming, beset by the usual tricks of my own nocturnal imagination.

  I do not know for certain how long I lay there like this, for although I had a pocket watch with me, I had not the means to see even the hand that might have held it. Perhaps I may even have dozed a little, for I was tired after the exertions of the exhumation. But gradually, I became aware of a muffled sound beneath the coffin and, thinking that this might at last be Scipio’s grandfather, the hougan called Msizi come to play Virgil to my Dante, I cried out to hurry up and open the coffin, for I had no light.

 

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