Death is the Only Sign

My grandfather used to be known for walking through graveyards. He was a famous writer back then. He’d stroll through aisles of graves with a small, sharpened pencil on the nook of his ear, a notebook in his coat, and a marigold in his hand, glancing reverently at the tombstones around him. He had a graceful way of walking through the cemetery, making sure never to step on a grave or an offering of flowers. Whenever the press, eager to get a glimpse into his mysterious writing methods, began following him, he would simply go to the older side of the cemetery, where the tombstones were crooked and falling, and weave through them in a way no one else could, lest they step on a tomb and disrespect the dead. After pacing a couple of times around the area, my grandfather would choose a gravestone that he liked, place the marigold in front of it, and sit down. The few people that were lucky enough to see him said that oftentimes they found him singing, and others claimed they’d seen him reading a book aloud. No one ever saw him write, but somehow, everytime he left the cemetery his notebook would be filled with hastily scribbled words, and from these he would produce books that would drive all of Mexico crazy.

My grandfather was famous for writing ghost stories. Everytime he released a new novel, it would be the only thing people talked about. People would not sleep for days in order to finish his books, and throughout Mexico City, the only thing one could hear were the cries of horror and sobs of compassion that came from all of his readers. His stories, although fantastical, were so well-written that many people believed them to be true.

In his old age, my grandfather believed so too.

***

My grandfather was sitting down on his chair, his glasses on as he bent over the pages of my novel. Although there was a cacophony of birds sitting on the trees around us, each squawking their own unique tune, my grandfather was completely immersed in my story: his pale eyes roamed over the page with patience, and his skin glowed in the sun as he licked his finger and turned the page. I looked down, tapping my fingers on the table impatiently. My grandfather ignored this noise too.

After a couple more minutes of tapping and staring at my grandfather’s garden (beautifully green, filled with bougainvilleas, birds, and a pool, unused despite the dreadful Cuernavaca heat) my grandfather looked up with a smile.

“My dearest Nora! You are on route to becoming a fantastic writer!” he exclaimed.

“You think so?” I said.

My grandfather chuckled. “Of course! I’ll be praying for next week to come just so I can read the next chapter! That is, if you are visiting me again next week?”

I gave him a small smile. “When have I not visited you this summer, Grandpa?” He smiled, his eyes lighting up. I stood up, went over to where he was, and gave him a hug.

“I thank whatever spirit made you come here during the weekends. Lord knows how much I miss you when you leave,” he said, giving me a kiss on the forehead. I turned away, feeling a sharp pang in my heart.

“I’d better go now, if I want to avoid the traffic to the city,” I said somberly. “Remember to take your medicines. And don’t go wandering off into graveyards again! Ms. Luisa called us in hysterics last time you did that.”

“You worry too much,” my grandfather said with a grin, but I had already left.

In reality, that whole novel thing was a sham. It was just an excuse for me to visit my grandfather every weekend. The real reason for my visits had come in an envelope all the way from Spain, containing a college acceptance letter. Due to this, and my grandfather’s old age, my mother had begged me to stay with him every weekend during the summer, instead of visiting him every two months, as we usually did. In addition, fearing for the shock that my acceptance would have on my grandfather’s fragile mental state, she decided I should break the news to him myself.

I had accepted quickly, looking down at my hands, feeling a bit of guilt twinning in my insides. I only had one question:

“What am I supposed to do while I’m there? There’s not much to do in Cuernavaca.”

“Entertain him. You could tell him a story, or write one yourself. You remember how much he loved your stories when you were little,” my mother replied.

So that was what I did. I went to my grandfather’s house, telling him that I was writing a novel and needed his expertise as a famous author. Although he hadn’t written a book in at least twenty years, he accepted with joy. So I made up a story, with a protagonist who was, essentially, myself, and gave a new chapter of it to my grandfather every time I visited him. 

Every week, my hands would shake as I set my pen to paper, dreading the day I would have to write the last chapter, where I would break the news to my grandfather. Everytime I would hand him a new manuscript, I would stare at his placid face, his wrinkles contorting in odd ways, and wonder how he would react when he received the last few pages of my novel.

It’s horrible lying to an old person. You have this small voice in the back of your mind constantly warning you that the sadness you’ll bring them might be the thing that kills them. They might die knowing only sorrow. And really, is there any worse way to die?

Nonetheless, I tried keeping that out of my mind, and would instead only focus on my phony novel whenever I was near my grandfather. We would sit in his garden for hours, proofreading my work as Ms. Luisa, my grandfather’s caretaker, hovered in the background. Both she and my mother had encouraged me not to let my grandfather delve into his crazy stories, and for the most part, I tried not to, gently steering him back to reality whenever he began to speak nonsense. They also highly advised me not to let my grandfather wander off into the cemetery, so everytime he suggested doing so, I would quickly refuse. However, one day, while Ms. Luisa had been out sick, my grandfather had convinced me to go. 

We were sitting outside. I was half-listening to my grandfather’s affable critique of my chapter, which had been particularly bad that week. Most of my attention was focused on the scorching heat, which I could feel sizzling on my skin.

“You know,” my grandfather said. “I don’t think that we can talk about this here. We should go somewhere else… somewhere filled with life, and a little shade.”

I agreed immediately, so we set out. I was quite surprised when he led me all the way to the entrance of the local graveyard. 

“Grandpa, you know I can’t let you go here,” I said gently.

“Well,” my grandfather said, looking around. “We’re already here, aren’t we? We might as well go in. Besides, the trees here provide the most magnificent shade!”

He had a good point. I sighed.

“Fine,” I said, fixing him with a glare. “But this is the last time. And you need to hold on to my arm while we walk.”

My grandfather smiled and wrapped his arm around mine. And with that, we entered.

“Why do you like coming so much to graveyards, anyway?” I asked, glancing at our surroundings. The whole landscape was unusually dead and empty, and gray seemed to be the only color for miles. “They’re such morbid places.”

“Nonsense!” my grandfather exclaimed, looking down at the ground, wavering in his step. He wasn’t as agile as he used to be. “Graveyards are one of the liveliest places on this planet! All around us, there are remnants of life from hundreds of years.”

“There’s that in museums too,” I argued.

“But museums don’t have individuals,” he said, beginning to gesticulate wildly. “Cemeteries are a writer’s best resource. A writer never thinks of his own stories, merely gets them from others. And in here, there are thousands of people, just waiting for their stories to be told. You just have to learn to speak to them.”

“Speak to the dead? How do you do that?” I asked.

“Like this,” my grandfather replied, then took out a bright, orange marigold from his pocket and placed it on a grave.

I stared at him for a while. Then, I began to smile.

After that, I began listening to all of my grandfather’s stories. I didn’t believe any of his wild tales, but I was addicted to hearing them. He told me about his life as a young boy in Comala, where he had worked in his mother’s funerary business (he didn’t know who his father was, but strongly suspected it was Pedro Páramo). It was his mother that had taught him the secrets to talking to the dead, and that marigold flowers attracted the dead like sugar did flies. He spent his entire childhood learning the songs and poems the dead liked to hear. By the time he turned eighteen, everyone in Comala had died. He insisted that the funerals he had thrown (which, at the end, had been attended only by himself) had been so beautiful and grandiose that the villagers’ ghosts had come out of their coffins sobbing, not knowing that they could have in death the opulence they never had in life. They tipped generously (“Ghosts are always generous tippers,” my grandfather reassured me), giving up their entire life savings, although for some ghosts that meant giving my grandfather the meager amount of one hundred pesos. Despite that, he quickly gained a fortune and moved to Mexico City. 

My grandfather had lived through many adventures in his lifetime. He told me he had been there when Artemio Cruz died. He claimed he had met the Mulata from Córdoba first hand, but had driven off her seductions by putting beeswax in his ears (“Like Odysseus!”). He said he had fought La Nahuala and La Llorona and ridden away in an alebrije. He told me he had gone abroad only once, to Colombia. He had visited Macondo, where he had bought little golden fishes from Colonel Aureliano Buendía (“Ms. Luisa must have thrown them away, I can’t find them”) and seen Remedios la Bella rise to Heaven. He had also travelled to Cartagena, where he had contracted a terrible case of cholera, and been cured by the renowned Dr. Juvenal Urbino himself. 

My favorite story, and probably the craziest one, was the one about Julio Cortázar and the cockroaches.

“Did you know that Julio Cortázar used to look for cockroaches in his food?” my grandfather blurted out one evening.

“I did, actually,” I said, laughing. “I read an article about it in school. He wrote “Circe” based on that. He saw them because he had a nervous breakdown, right?”

“That’s what Julio told the press,” my grandfather confided, lowering his voice so Ms. Luisa didn’t hear him. “But he told me the real story. Apparently, while he was working at a sales company in Prague — he couldn’t live off of his stories back then — one day, one of the travelling salesmen failed to show up to work. The fellow — his name was Samda, or Samsa, or something of the sort — was usually very responsible, so the company told Cortázar to go look for him. Julio did as he was told, but when he got to the man’s house — oh Nora, you won’t believe what happened! When he got there, and asked for the young fellow, he found a giant cockroach in his stead! Julio ran out of the room, and was so traumatized by the whole affair, that he left Prague immediately and began searching for cockroaches in his food.”

I became so immersed in my grandfather’s stories that I had almost forgotten about my own. Now more than ever, I dreaded writing that last chapter that would reveal the truth to my grandfather. Everytime he told me his crazy tales, I would see the spark in his eyes ignite like the brightest fire. I didn’t want to be the person that snuffed that out and dragged my grandfather back to reality. In panic, I began writing pointless filler chapters, just so I could stay in my grandfather’s fantasy world for a little longer. 

My grandfather noticed.

One day, he stopped reading my manuscript halfway, put down the pages, and stared me blank in the eye. “I know what you’re doing,” he said.

I felt a chill go down my back. He knows, he knows, he knows. “What?” I said calmly.

“Your character,” he said.  “She doesn’t want the book to end. She’s afraid to die. That’s why you keep adding more chapters.”

I let out a deep breath, relieved. So he didn’t know. “Isn’t everyone afraid of death?” 

“Not me,” he replied confidently. “What is there to fear? I know that I’ll die surrounded by flowers. Even if I die in the middle of the desert, there will be flowers around me. The ghosts have promised me that. So really, would it be so bad? To die among the beautiful, the living?”

“But wouldn’t you miss things, people? Miss Mom, miss me? Aren’t you scared about going somewhere new? Aren’t you afraid of the sheer nothingness of death? Of the abyss?”

Tears were beginning to pool in my eyes. My grandfather took my hand gently, caressed my forehead, and looked at me warmly.

“My dear,” he said. “Death is the only sign that there was life in the first place.”

I handed him the last chapter a week after that. 

“I can’t stay this weekend,” I said when I gave it to him, unable to look him in the eye. “I have some events I have to go to in the city. I just came to drop this off. It’s the last chapter.”

“That’s alright,” my grandfather said. “I’ll be sure to read it as soon as I can.”

I nodded, already turning away, when I heard:

“Thank you, by the way. For visiting me every weekend this summer. I’ve enjoyed it,” my grandfather said. 

I stood still, breathing harshly. Then I spun around and gave my grandfather a hug, shaking. My grandfather stumbled, surprised, but held me tight.

“I love you,” I muttered, digging my fingers into his back.

“I love you too, Nora,” he replied softly. 

I broke apart and, after looking at my grandfather’s face, peaceful and full of wrinkles, ran away.

I wasn’t there when it happened.

Ms. Luisa called my mother in hysterics. She couldn’t stop crying. She blurted out a million things at once, how my grandfather had snuck out again, and how she hadn’t seen him, and that he must’ve been weak, or tired, or old, or he must’ve tripped on a rock, but that she was sorry, so very sorry about what had happened —

I left the city immediately, driving my car at insane speeds, not even bothering to wait for my parents to join me. I got to Cuernavaca in half the time that I usually did, and ran to the cemetery. There, I found my grandfather. 

He was sitting down, reclined on a tombstone with a smile on his face. On his lap lay my novel, open on the last page. There were a couple of tear drops splattered on the paper, blurring out the ink. 

Yet I only noticed these things once I had calmed down, once my mother and father had caught up with me and held me in their arms.

Upon first seeing my dead grandfather, I’d fallen down to my knees in shock and sobbed. 

For he was surrounded by marigolds.