(continued) tables the size of pianos. And dozens of samovars survived, passed down to grandchildren or deeded to new homeowners like mineral rights, dovecotes, and garage apartments. And they are still fueled by those familiar little paraffinized, charcoal cubes, special-ordered from a commercial wax-broker in Chicago. It is the overheating of the paraffin and subsequent ignition of the oak tables that account for most of the fires, and it is the natural flame-retardant property of that densely tea-penetrated oak that minimizes damage.
Our last full-blown house fire was ten years ago—the Monteleones, across the street from my house. During another November week of rain. An astonishing sight: flames erupting from the Monteleones’ rooftop in the middle of a downpour. The result was a kind of hurricane and fantasia of boiling white steam, the heat and flames straining upward then back down due to the over-hanging tree branches and the drafts off the levee and the weird eddies created by our narrow streets and our too-close houses. All of it terrifying and superb: the low night sky and everyone standing outside in the deluge to flag down the firetruck which appeared all at once, gleaming and rain-slick, its diesels roaring, the truck barely able to squeeze down the street and tearing off branches and vines until it finally made it to the Monteleones’, its bright, metal flanks strewn with leaves, honeysuckle, and Spanish moss like the garlands of a king. Catastrophe and disaster! Claire has run away! No one knows where. Probably to New Orleans, but rumors circulate of Seattle, Chicago, Boston, habitations inconceivable to us in Louisiana. The neighborhood has adopted Santiago, shuttling him from house to house, although he spends most of his time with Claire’s parents who are as protective of him as a son. A meal schedule has been drawn up. Spare rooms dusted and beds fitted. A travel fund is being accumulated, since Santiago will need money for his journey. He will fly after her, we know, won’t be able to help it—first to New Orleans, then if necessary to those foreign cities of the north. It will be the quest and journey of his life, with who knows what trials and sufferings. He’s nineteen and has never left the city.We are fattening him up for the trip, so to speak, out-fitting him with warm clothes, a suitcase, vitamins, maps, traveler’s checks. He is both terrified and calm, and the oldest of us recognize in him an ancient simultaneity of fear and joy; the joy stronger, perseverant even during the upcoming days of fleabag hotels, a growling stomach, dingy bus stations, every town like the one just left. But the ecstasy is in his eyes. He is already on the road, searching. On the seventh day, the rains stop. I tell my wife that I am inviting my friend, the bookstore owner, down for a drink. He needs a break from his house, from this week of turmoil. Before he gets here I sit for a moment on the back porch. I’m allowed only five minutes since I’ve had a cold all week. Through spaces in the tree branches, I can see the full moon rising. It is so large, it looks like a magician’s prop, an orange moon glowing in the branches. Then I hear a noise, a low roar, to my right somewhere in the distance. It is the six P.M. Delta jet from the airport, banking into view. I can just make out the plane’s silhouette amid the limbs and branches of the trees. It appears in view, then disappears. Finally, in one of the larger spaces, I can see it clearly as it dips its wings left, then right, then straightens itself and sails into the moon. << Return to TSAR Volume 7, Number 2 |
