Nocturnes Read Online Free

automatically, to the obituaries. No familiar names. He was just about to turn to the redundancy of the headlines when something caught in the smoky webs of reluctant memory and demanded his attention.
    He glanced back over the obits and there it was, the vague little paragraph that marked the end of a life…and the end of a lullaby.
    Jane Doe. Unidentified elderly vagrant female.
Found dead in Piedmont Park. Cause of death
Unknown. Pending autopsy.
Police do not suspect foul play.
    Isaac rose and walked to the balcony’s edge. He looked out over the rooftops and the busy streets toward Piedmont Park. He could see the density of trees that marked the park’s interior. Dark questions of coincidence whispered like a rustle of leaves.
    “Hush little baby, don’t you cry…”
    He knew it was her. That pitiful wraith, singing herself to sleep on a park bench, would dream no more.
    Did the stranger in the shadows have anything to do with it?
    “Careful, Isaac. There’s a whole neighborhood of well-wishers back home just waiting for you to start chasing demons when you’re out in the yard with that broom,” he thought aloud.
    In fact, his own fear deterred him as well. He knew that he had an over-active imagination. He was a writer, for Chrissakes. There were times, especially during recollections of the camp, that he doubted if he would return to the world intact. Best not to ponder what is unseeable, and unknowable.
    But the question refused to die that easily. He had shared a bond with that old woman. He crossed himself and offered a prayer.
    “Give her a good home, lord. And a soft pillow, free of tears.”
    *
    The next day he caught a flight to Charlotte. By charging into his assignment, he was able to keep that old sorrowful ghost at bay. But that night, as he lay his head on the scented pillows, he was forced to succumb and invite her into the crowded haunts of his memory.
    Over the course of the next several nights a pattern developed, in which his memories oscillated between the homeless woman and his wife. Lessa seemed especially close now, almost reproving in her love. His conscience was curiously co-mingled with thoughts of how Lessa would deal with recent events.
    “There is nothing I can do for her, Mrs. Bloom,” he would say to an empty chair. “She is at peace now,” he would remark to the clothes in the closet. “This is ridiculous,” to the bidet.
    But still he could not free himself of the troubling idea that the old woman and the dark stranger were connected. And the notion that he should somehow get involved began to wear on his nerves.
    Nine days later he was in St. Louis and lack of sleep was taking its toll. He didn’t carry fatigue well, and when he checked in to the hotel the manager, who had known Isaac for a decade, politely inquired of his health. Isaac went straight to bed and into a dreamless sleep. When his call came at eight the next morning, he was already up and alert, feeling much renewed.
    He ordered eggs Benedict, sourdough toast, and French press coffee, then stood for fifteen minutes under a scalding shower. When breakfast and the morning paper arrived he was feeling as frisky as a fifty year old. He avoided the obituaries for the moment, unwilling to dampen his mood with the news of death. The deceased were interred there in their little columns. They weren’t going anywhere.
    He read through the news and shook his head. “What have we become?” He gazed up at the ceiling and wondered aloud at the cruel and violent obsessions of mankind, and suddenly felt fatigue wash over him again. He sat there, half a century removed from the butchery of the Holocaust, and had to admit that the species hadn’t learned a thing. He had avoided the obituaries, but why? Every newspaper in the world had become one redundant obituary for the planet, and for the most overrated species ever residing upon it.
    With disgust, he turned at last to those neat little rows of the dead to look for any