Fra Keeler Read online

  FRA KEELER

  Copyright © Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, 2012

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-0-9844693-4-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9844693-6-9

  Art on cover: dead tree © Elijah Burgher, 2012

  Used with kind permission of the artist

  Design and composition by Danielle Dutton

  Printed on permanent, durable, acid-free recycled paper in the United States of America

  Distributed by Small Press Distribution

  Dorothy, a publishing project

  PO Box 300433, St. Louis, MO 63130

  dorothyproject.com

  FRA KEELER

  AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI

  DOROTHY, A PUBLISHING PROJECT

  1. “It’s on the edge of a canyon,” the realtor said, raising his eyebrows when I offered to buy the home without having looked at it first.

  “Fine,” I said, though I wasn’t sure exactly what the realtor meant. Then I didn’t say anything for a long time because I was thinking of Fra Keeler’s death. And it seemed the realtor wanted to repeat what he had just said, his eyebrows even more tense. “Some things aren’t worth looking into,” I said, and the realtor’s eyebrows slackened a bit. Then I asked, “Where are the papers?” “Here they are,” he said. “I’d like to sign them,” I said, and he pushed them across the table with his middle finger. What an ugly finger, I remember thinking while I signed the papers, and then I got up and left.

  We are said to die of one thing on paper, but it is entirely of something different that we die, I thought as I left the realtor’s office. And it is dangerous to take the discrepancy between the two for granted, what one actually dies of and what one is said to have died of on paper; there is hardly ever a correspondence. And I’m thinking now that some people’s deaths need to be thoroughly investigated. I’m more than certain that I thought this then, too, as I left the realtor’s office, but the thought wasn’t as highly illuminated in my head. I’m thinking now, it isn’t every day one comes across a death that is especially timely and magnificent, for example Fra Keeler’s death. And then, one really has to wonder, one has to begin to think, to retrace the mental footsteps of the deceased person, e.g., Fra Keeler, since the chance that such a timely death would remain unexplained on paper is that much more significant.

  And it is true that certain events of the unfriendliest category are now unfolding. I cannot put my finger on these events; I cannot pinpoint the exact dimensions of their effect. The truth is, I haven’t been the same since Fra Keeler’s death. Some deaths are more than just a death, I keep thinking, and Fra Keeler’s was exemplary in this sense. And it is the same thought since I left the realtor’s office: some people’s deaths need to be thoroughly investigated, and, Yes, I think then, Yes: I bought this home in order to fully investigate Fra Keeler’s death. And now that I own it, the home Fra Keeler used to own, I’m beginning to witness certain events. I can’t help but think: he died just in time, Fra Keeler, he must have known certain things to have known to die just in time. Some deaths can only be understood in relation to the events that proceed from them. People pretend it is the affairs that lead up to a person’s death that are most important. That life accumulates up to a point, the point at which one does one’s dying, and that nothing after that is relevant to the life one leads. But no, I think. And the word No moves across my mind the way the realtor’s finger inched its way across the desk. Things are illuminated retrospectively, I keep saying to myself. And it is these unfriendly events that will tell me the most about Fra Keeler’s death. Only, they are still forming, they are still taking shape. I am only beginning to put my finger on them, as directly as the realtor put his finger on the papers when he slid them across the desk.

  It is not for nothing that the reels in our minds start revolving at a speed we might find difficult to bear. And timely as it was, Fra Keeler’s death raises questions unanswered by hospital records, or any other death-related paper there is. Hospital records do not reflect the whole truth, nothing close to it. How is one to make sense of the facts that are listed when the deceased person’s place of birth and death are so distant from one another; how is one to know how the person got from one end of the earth to another? And more odd things are listed in the margins. Occupation at time of death—surgeon, butcher, logger, office clerk, etc.—listed on the one hand, and burial, cremation, removal, etc., on the other. It is not as if the person died in the midst of performing their job, or perhaps they did, perhaps they had a cardiac arrest while harvesting trees in the forest, and they looked up and thought, I am a logger, and then dropped dead. What an absurd list of facts. There are no complete sentences; how is one to conclude anything from a death certificate? And the reasons given for Fra Keeler’s death are nothing short of nonsense, and if they do make sense, their sense is limited. Everything is listed as plainly as a chicken lays its eggs. All the death-related records indicate the same thing, they all point to the same condition. I have leafed through them all, traced Time and Place of Death with my finger—but who, I keep thinking, who would undertake such massive coordination, who would want to hide Fra Keeler’s connection to the unfriendly events? Sheet after sheet the same thing is written, which means the same thing must be read: Fra Keeler died of lung cancer, cancer of the lungs, pulmonary cancer. And the handwriting is always the same, a low squiggly line resembling rolling hills with a dark horse or two traversing them. Cancer. Fra Keeler died of pulmonary cancer. And it’s a squiggle, a line. Nothing else.

  But no: I lied. To be fair, I omitted, I didn’t lie, there is one record that does not match the others. There is one discrepancy. And how could I not have seen it before? The unfriendly events cannot hide forever. I must look for incongruities; I must probe them with my finger. The truth always gives way; I have heard the saying—hovering beneath one’s nose. And it is true. I found the truth in the drawer. I opened the drawer and it was simply there, a sheet of paper like any other sheet of paper. Except a little tarnished on the edges, a little yellowed here and there. The ink smudged in certain places, so that I could tell which keys, while the document was being written, had been held the longest on the typewriter. But the words can still be made out. One never needs all the letters to make out a word—the word is there in the brain, an image of it one can pull into the light, and ah, one thinks, ah, that is the word that is written there, Death Certificate, and then Palma de Mallorca next to Place of Death.

  Quite suddenly I am confused. Some things, I keep thinking, are unprecedented. And what can a person do? The name, Palma de Mallorca, as if it were a ghost, has taken hold of my tongue. Pal-ma, I keep saying, Pal-ma. The word lingers in my mouth, hums in my brain. I see myself opening the desk drawer as I opened it that day. I must have seen the paper and returned it to the drawer right away. Shut it out of my mind. Why else would it take hold of me this way? Things creep up on us when we deny their existence. And of all the papers, it is the only one that reads, Palma de Mallorca, Place of Death. The words peel off the page to sing brightly before my eyes.

  I must retrace.

  It was a few days after I had moved into the home, this home I had just bought thinking it belongs to Fra Keeler. Though I am now beginning to suspect that I am wrong, or that there are two Fra Keelers, the right one and the wrong one, and that the death certificate in the drawer belongs to one, and the rest of the papers to the other, but this is a matter for later. In any case, I had just moved in, I was grinding beans for my morning coffee wh
en I spied from the kitchen window behind some trees a small, circular wooden cabin—a yurt. From where I was standing in the kitchen, behind the sink, looking through the window, it seemed the door to the yurt was unlatched. It was swinging to and fro against the wind. I decided to go and have a look. I crossed the yard and walked through the trees I had seen from the window. Their branches, interweaving, made a huge tapestry above me, and then, as if from nowhere, it was sky again: the trees were behind me and I was standing in a clearing with the yurt directly in front of me. It all seemed quite sudden, for when I was standing behind the sink and looking through the kitchen window the yurt seemed to be appearing from another time altogether, it was as though the yurt had traveled through time to make a momentary appearance and I couldn’t reconcile this feeling with how close the yurt was to the house when I ventured toward it. There it was: right behind the cluster of trees. And the door to the yurt was creaking loudly, since the wind had picked up in the time it had taken me to walk toward it. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped in. It was pitch dark inside. No light from the world was creeping through. I still had a box of matches in my hand since right before spotting the yurt I had wanted to light the stove to make my coffee. I lit one, the wind blew. I lit another and held it right above my face, where one would hold a portable torch if one had one, and saw rows and rows of shelves on the walls. I wanted to walk toward them, but there was something obstructing my path—it looked like a wooden canoe, and then I saw an oar and the match blew out. I couldn’t confirm anything. I lit another match and looked down at my feet. There was, in fact, a canoe, and I stepped into it and out of it on the other side, the wall side, and came close enough to the shelves that I was able to touch them. They were dusty. I was holding the match in my other hand, and I could see things only in small portions as I held the light of the match up to them. I must get out, I thought. And then the wind slowed and I could hear the leaves shuffle in the low breeze, outside, just beyond the yurt. “There is a reason for everything,” I said to myself, “a reason for having come to the yurt.” And then his name formed in my chest: “Fra Keeler,” I murmured, I hummed, the wind picked up, “Fra Keeler,” I said, and his name poured from my lips the way water pours from a fountain, in long streams, uninterrupted, and just as I said his name I was standing out in the clearing again.

  I noticed the leaves on the trees looked greener, as though the bark had bled into them. I didn’t know how long I had been inside the yurt. The sky was heavier now, a morbid color; I could feel it pressing against the back of my neck, folding me down to the ground. I pressed back against it and walked as quickly as I could through the trees. The air grew cold, and then quite suddenly everything was wet with rain. It was as though a tap had opened in the sky. Water was dripping off the leaves, pouring in streams, the way his name was pouring from my lips, uncontrollably, when I stood in the yurt.

  Had I fumbled my way out of it without knowing? I turned around to look beyond the trees. I wanted to see it again, to confirm its existence. I looked hard through the clearing, to where the yurt had been. My boots were caked with mud from the rain. There was a streak of lightning. The yurt flashed before my eyes. I heard the door swing open. It blasted hard against something, the canoe, I thought, the hinges on the door must have loosened in the wind. I couldn’t see clearly. I looked again through the trees. I was squinting in the wind. I looked down at my hands, to see if they were still dusty from the shelves, but they had been wiped clean by the rain. Water was pouring, violently coming down through everything. My face was burning now in the cold rain. The yurt flashed again before my eyes, silver and radiant in the lightning. But it was an image of the yurt, an instant, a flash, nothing else. It was I who was reproducing it there, an image of the yurt I kept projecting. Blood was swirling in my brain. I looked again, but this time nothing appeared, and I ran through the yard, toward the house. I pulled the storm door open. Inside, everything looked the same. Only it was a little dimmer than before, a dull, gray light had settled around the edges of things, and the countertops seemed heavier; all the machinery of the kitchen seemed older in the gray light, and rounder, more anchored into the ground.

  Inside, I rested against the sink. I was panting. I reached to turn on the tap; water gurgled, then flowed in steady streams. Everything was in order: the coffee grinder, the cup, the sponge with which I had wanted to wipe the counter. I looked again, through the window, to the other side of the trees, into the clearing that lay beyond them, but could see nothing. Only the wind thrashing the branches of the trees. And it was then his name rose again to my lips. “Fra Keeler,” I said, though this time more exasperated than before; I was wheezing from the wind, and I could hear myself hissing his name under my breath, “Fra Keeler,” I rasped, “Fra Keeler,” I said again, until I was hissing like the wind.

  I awoke hours later. It was pitch dark and there were papers strewn all around me. I remembered standing by the sink, watching the trees thrash around in the wind. I looked on the floor. My clothes were scattered about here and there on the tiles. I had undressed myself. I sat up and reached across the floor. My clothes were still damp from the rain. There was a musty smell in the house, like something old had crept in and settled itself in the furniture, on the countertops, in the cabinets, between things. My head was throbbing. Any minute now, I thought to myself, it is going to explode. I couldn’t remember falling asleep or undressing. The last visible point in my mind was the kitchen sink, myself standing over it, looking through the window for the yurt. I couldn’t understand where all the papers had come from. I couldn’t remember carrying anything back from the yurt. In fact, hadn’t I looked down at my hands, weren’t they empty? The papers did a wild dance around me, the room turned and turned. I closed my eyes. I drifted.

  I woke up again hours later. It was light now; a very clear day was coming. The sun’s rays were bronze, that early morning orange color, and they were piercing through my window. I lifted my head. I saw the papers again. Certain words were illuminated by the light creeping through the window, and the rays of the light, firm as needles, were pointing out certain words to me, and I thought, this is a clue, this is a sign. I lifted my head off the ground a little more, and it was pulsing, as though two hearts were about to leap out of its sides, but it wasn’t throbbing like before. The room was steady. I reached across for my clothes. They were dry now. I put them on and leaned over the pages. Propped up on my elbow, I was halfway off the floor. I looked at the words with the needles going through them: the Netherlands, I read, and I thought: the Netherlands, low lands, lower lands, under something. And in such a handwriting: a low squiggly line resembling rolling hills with a dark horse or two traversing them. I followed the handwriting back and forth across each page. The words cancer, pulmonary cancer, cancer of the lungs, poured out toward me. And there it was: next to the Netherlands, the words Place of Death. Fra Keeler, I thought: he died of cancer in the Netherlands.

  And I had to retrace again.

  The papers, how had they come to me? But then the doorbell rang. It made the sound of a large rock hitting against hollow metal and the sound was violent through my brain, and I had to get up because I couldn’t chance it ringing again. I fumbled across the living room and down the hallway to the front door. It was the mailman. He looked pink and happy and I could tell that someone had just ironed his clothes, a very loyal wife, I thought. The creases were perfect, straight lines and angles down to his sleeves. I leaned against the door.

  “Hello,” I said. I was still dizzy; my head was still throbbing a little.

  “Hello,” he said back. And then he handed me a package. “Here you go,” he said. “Good day, sir,” he said.

  I said, “Yes,” more in the form of a question than a statement. And then I took the package from him and saw that he looked slightly confused. And I was forced to say something. So I asked, “Do you hand deliver the mail every day?”

  “No, that’s a special package,” he said.
“You have to sign for it.” And right as he said the word special, he placed his hands on his hips, and puffed up his stomach, as if saying so gave him a feeling of buoyancy.

  I looked down at the package. It said EXPRESS in big, bold letters. “Oh,” I said, “I see,” and signed for the package.

  He turned to leave, a little less light in his eyes than when he had first announced himself, and I wondered, what have I done to deflate him? Just as I was thinking this, he stopped, not quite facing the post office truck and not quite facing me either. He tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth like a fish, to show that he was thinking. Then he sucked in some air and puckered his lips a bit, but nothing came out, only silence. I watched him, a bit stunned and a bit weary, until he prepared to leave again, placed one foot behind the other and rocked backward and forward, not in a cautionary way, but to suggest that he was still thinking, that what he had wanted to say was still on the tip of his tongue, that he was just turning it over in his head. Then he tapped the tip of his shoe on the pavement as though his whole body was an exclamation point and came out with it:

  “Those are some nice plants,” he said.

  I was surprised. If that’s what he had wanted to say why had it taken him so long to say it? Maybe he had wanted to say something else, something along the lines of you don’t look so good, Mister, but had regretted it, shoved the thought and all the words that went along with it back into his head and said the thing about the plants instead.

  “Yes,” I said without a pause because I didn’t want him to know I was thinking all those things while I was watching him. “Cacti,” I said, “they’re my favorite.” He walked down the driveway alongside the prickly plants, inspecting them sidelong. I took a step out of the doorway and thought, this is no ordinary mailman, and watched him some more.