The Things We Can't Let Go of Are the Things that Won't Let Go of Us

The Devereaux-Shields House Bed & Breakfast: 05:50 on the morning of August 6, 2011

Renny sat on the edge of the bed, peeling off his watch and placing it on the stand beside the bed. The glasses followed and he massaged the bridge of his nose though it didn’t hurt and rubbing it brought no relief.

What a colossal fuck up. And tonight’s gonna be worse. Gotta figure out if I’m going to side with the Sisters of Conspiracy, The Old Money, or pull up stakes entirely and leave the place to the dogs.

Outside the south facing, heavily curtained windows, the sky was lightening and Renny could feel it. I'm gonna crash soon. No sense in changing into pajammas. Just lie down and hope no one murders you in your sleep.

"Renny! Renawicz! Hey, you!" called an eerily disembodied voice. "I've looked everywhere, and here you sit, on your duff like a meshugana! Looks like Uncle JJ has found his long suffering and spiritually sensitive so-called ‘great’ nephew.”

• * * * * * * *

It is a common held belief, and one that Renny would certainly agree with, that meeting one’s heroes, while they are still alive is asking for disappointment and disillusion. Rare is the hero that can stand beside the legend that surrounds him and still find that he is not eclipsed by his own story.

Renny would add the corollary that meeting one’s heroes after they are dead can be worse.

As a child Renny knew Jacob Janovich Junior not as a human being, but as a series of six framed photographs occupying an honored space next to the main staircase in Baba Anya’s brownstone. Each picture came its own cycle of tales. The first one was of a smiling boy, not quite yet a man, in a British Army uniform with the patch of the Jewish Brigade prominently displayed on his sleeve. The last, some 40 years later, showed the boy, now well grown into an intense, elderly man standing amongst the ruins of Chateau de Puilaurens about 2 days before his death.

Renny met JJ in the flesh only once. It was a dark, rainy Saturday morning in 1982. Renny had been watching the weather through a window when a black Mercedes, seemingly spit from the clouds above, screeched to a halt in front of the Baba Anya’s brownstone and out stepped an elderly man wearing a black suit with matching umbrella. He seemed a bit shorter than the legend, but the face was unmistakable.

Renny ran to the door but found Baba Anya already there wearing a face that she usually reserved for her brothers in law. Renny had only provided the briefest of greetings when Baba Anya in full feather pulled JJ into the drawing room. A heated argument ensued, but Renny never found out the details. JJ left the house never to return and Baba Anya refused to talk about it.

In his mind Renny imagined that JJ had arrived to take him off on an adventure and his grandmother refused. He always resented that a bit.

The next time they met, JJ had already been dead for 8 years. Any thoughts of childhood adventures had disappeared.

Then, of course there was the problem with ghosts. Ghosts are not the entirety of the person who was alive. In Renny’s experience, they are typically the Id plastered together with just enough Ego to sound reasonable; both pointed in a single, emphatic direction that brooked no interference.

Thus the ghost that appeared all those years ago, that appeared now was not the seventeen year-old who ran away to England to fight Nazis in opening days of World War II nor the soldier who singlehandedly destroyed a dozen T34 tanks in the Suez. Not the explorer who discovered the secret layers of Hatshepsut’s tomb nor the one who died in a ruined Cathar castle in Aude, whether due to a poorly reinforced ceiling or poisoned brisket apparently being a matter of conjecture.

No, the remnant that became revenant was not quite any of these. Nor was he the hero of his grandmother’s tales and each time he returned he was a touch less human, a touch less a hero, and a touch more an unreasoning psychic force trapped in an ever-repeating loop; an unfortunate parody of what had been.

• * * * * * * *

“Oy, can this day get any better?” thought Renny. “Sheesh, he shows up and I’m even thinking like Hassidim.”

The intonations had even crept into his voice. "JJ I thought you was done with me. Last time we spoke you said you’d rather spit on my grave than talk to me again."

"And so I'm going to what, spit in an empty hole and curse the dirt?" JJ kvetched. "You're a vampire, bubbela. It ain't kosher, but it tends to be a long term gig."

With obvious exasperation, the spirit continued to hector, "So I work hard and make a fortune, even forego having a family so I can provide for my father and my brothers. Then after making sure my , my Father, Mother, brothers' kids, my sisters' kids, none of them should know from what hard work is, and then finally, late in life, after so much work, I get to explore and search for the hidden secrets... and I leave that to YOU, Ren. My library, my stories, the notebooks and all the secrets I'd discovered." With a loud, exagerated sigh, he concluded, "You up and marry a rich goya with criminally un-kosher dietary restrictions, and off you go. Fortune telling for shiksas and drinking blood. In schule they should have taught you that human blood is worse then pork and cheese sandwiches on sabbath."

“Your memory is getting selective in your afterlife,” thought Renny, “Like you didn’t inherit the business from Grandpa Jacob, just like Baba Anya and you didn’t drop it all to run off to fight in the war so fast Grandpa’s yarmulke spun.”

Instead he said, “It wasn’t like I actually married her, I became her dead husband for five years, possessed by his spirit and everything. Not like you provided much help during that time as I recall. Wait, no I don’t recall anything because I was a hundred year old dead man named Julius Swartzbaum during that time.”

“Ren, Ren... we all got our crosses to bear," JJ said in a consoling tone. "The trick is finding a shagetz to get nailed to yours. See, a little humor. We was friends, Renny. I was just patschkieing. So pack your things, and tonight we'll head off for the monastary. They owe it to us; if it wasn't for Solomon, they never would have had the Templars."

Friends? We only met when you were alive was when I was like, 9 and your present to me was a piece of candy you’d had in your pocket since the Suez Crisis.

“JJ, much as I’d like to do exactly that, I think you’re unaware of two major impediments to my imminent departure”

Well," JJ answered, "you can wire my nephews, the real ones, the providers, and get money for the tickets. Find a nice shiska and take her with, something to knosh on for the trip.

"Candy will rot out your teeth, I told you that way back then. Sitting around waiting for blood sucking freaks to eat you up isn't good for all the rest of you. Those wop necromancers aren't to fond of you, and I for one would like them to forget you ever existed. How can I go, Reynard, until my final request is honored? Theleme waits for no man, so be a mensch and finish my life work."

Yea, I’ll go contact the mobsters that got me thrown into Riker’s. I’m sure they’ll pony up the cash right away and probably tip off the FBI and the Gio’s just to see who’ll nab me first.

“So, settin’ aside the whole ‘burst inta flames in the daylight issue fer now, how am I supposed to find a place that’s entirely fictional? That Rabelais just made up ‘cause 16th Century French academics were just as fulla hot air as the modern ones? You know Crowley was full of it, right? He never found the place, he just liked the name and the whole ‘do as though wilt’ thing so he stole it.”

"So, mister big shot goes no where, knows everything! The expert on subliminal alchemical references in Enlightment French satire!" With a loud harrumph, the spirit settled in for a long argument. "What do you think they told Schleimann about Troy? And don't sell the French short, boychik. The Rosetta stone, found by a French seargant looking for a softer rock to wipe his ass with. The sphinx, target practice gotten out of hand when they got bored with shooting Arabs. How anyone can get bored of shooting Arabs, but that's another story."

Yea, yea, you single handedly founded the IDF and Moshe Dayan learned all his tricks from you. Tired of shooting Arabs? What I wouldn’t give for a gun for shooting annoying ghost uncles!

“So what you’re saying now that “Gargantua and Pantagruel” is actually, what exactly? a series of encrypted couplets based on the numerology of the Emerald Tablet? That’s nuts! And even if it were true, which I doubt, I aint got my copy of the Tablet, or Gargantua for that matter. It’s all “in Transit” if you know what I mean.”

“Speaking of dat, did you know that there was a guy in town who actually knew how to use the Type 26 glyph you found on Hatsepsut’s tomb? A local enforcer Vamp, who was shaking down this old sorcerer vamp. Hey maybe the three of you should get together and compare notes, or prostate sizes, or whatever ghosts compare. Anyway, the type 26 is actually for preventing Vamp spirits from departing for wherever Vamp spirits go when their body’s dusted.”

"So, now you got a honeydew list for uncle JJ? I told you that the whole Vampire thing started off with new style mummy stuff in Khartoum, right? You're talking about that angry dark black ghost screaming down by the river? I wouldn't go looking if I were you."

"Enough with the side chatter and the trying to distract an old, dead man. You need a book... ever heard of Amazon.com? You want translations? You're the con man. If I passed myself off as a Rothschild to get free work done at the Albert Victoria Museum, you don't think you could get a weasely Englisher to brush dust off a tablet or two? What kind of shyster are you, Renny? Live large or go home. The angry wops should be enough to convince you NOT to go home."

“Far be it from me to suggest that my dead uncle should develop an interest in conversing with someone other than his nephew but maybe, just maybe, you might be able to pass some time and maybe learn something that might be of use to the both of us. At least tell me where he is, I need to talk to him tomorra night”

“As to the tablet, I wanna use your annotated copy and that ain’t showin’ up for another 3 weeks. Chase and her banker buddies are depositing it in a U-Store-it place across the river. I’d hate to lose track of all that stuff.”

"So I should just cool my heels by hotfooting around this one horse town with no stables running errands for you? I don't do windows, you know. The ectoplasm leaves smears," JJ said. "Three weeks you say, and the books will be here? Are they using the boxes for a Special Olympics Relay race? Why the hold up? Same day air, now... that's a waste of money, I'll grant you. This is the twenty-first century, though. What takes three weeks to get from anywhere to anywhere?"

"I tried talking to the ghost by the river, but it didn't do no good. I can tell you what he'll tell you if you try to talk to him...."

He began flying around the room waving his arms and screaming. "AHHHHHHHHHH! Fire! AHHHHH!"

"So, that help with your local investigations?" JJ asked in a conciliatory way. "I warned you, for years I warned you. Don't go messing with the schwartzes. Steer clear of politics. Donate generously to Isreal. There's another Holocaust coming, I tell you Renny. Between the Saudis and the Texans, they're going to make Hitler look like a boyscout with shaving problems."

Warnings? What warnings? A stopped clock that’s right twice a day is what you are. On the plus side I can feel dawn coming and I’ll soon lapse into a coma for the day so yammer on all you want.

“Look, the stuff had to travel what you’d call a ‘circuitous’ route so that the Gios didn’t track it. Sorry, if my current condition of being wanted by the mob is inconvenient to you.”

"Anyway, what's up with this Holocaust Nuevo, your talking about?"

"So I should take lessons from the boychick in how dangerous necromancers are? OY! You're only half dead. I'm full on dead and let me tell you, bubbeleh, you don't like the things they could do... you'd be verklempt by what they do to you when you don't have a body to cling to. That's why you got to get to Thélème. If you don't, THEY will. Once they find the Seal of Solomon and the Coin Purse of Ezekiel, and the Knife of Moyel Schiemel... whatever other great treasures of our people those Christians are using... the half dead like you will PRAY to be the full dead like me!" The disembodied voice made a spitting sound. "The tribe of Abraham made the covenent with Him to keep the tip. The Saudis and Texans won't be satisfied until the got all the Jew's yarbles, too."

“So, after all this time suddenly this is suddenly an emergency? How far into their investigations are they?”

With a loud, "PFFFT" noise, the spirit of uncle JJ responded, "Excuse me for being merely DEAD, instead of all knowing, Reynard! If I have to be here trying to impress upon you the fact I can't pass over until my dying request is honored... how can I be keeping tabs on OTHER, LIVING peoples' research?"

JJ's voice took on a timbre of exasperation. "I died, remember? Before I could find Thélème? Like I asked you to continue the search? 'Cause I couldn't continue looking for it, what with the inconvenience of being dead-dead, not dead-alive like you? Is this all a news flash to you all of a sudden?"

“If you’d spent less time crawling up my no longer functioning colon, you might actually have found what you were looking for,” Rene thought irritatedly. Instead, he said “JJ, Look I am in the middle of screw-up central here, but in a couple of days, I think I’ll be able to take off from here and maybe look Thélème up. You OK with that or do you wanna continue to bug the crap outta me just for the hell of it?”

“Perhaps ‘need to’ would be closer than ‘be able to’,” Renny thought wryly. “But no point in making JJ’s point for him”

The voice of JJ got quiet, introspective. "You're right of course. I'm being selfish." The ghost sighed, a sound like leaves rustling. "After all, I never did for you. All I did was work my fingers to the bone, making a fortune that means you'll never, God forbid, have to work like I did. Research so thoroughly that all you have to do is follow the instructions on the map I drew by hand... painstakingly drew by hand. After all, I only left you one of the finest, most complete occult and kaballic libraries, like you were a Rothschild. I should maybe go finish my life's work myself, not, mind you, that I can affect the mortal world, or travel outside of the sight or hearing of someone who knew me when I was alive. No, you are dead but walking around have fun adventures to do, not fulfill the dying request of a man who was never anything but good to you, gave to you like his own sons, maybe better because he saw the promise in you, the talents, and nourished those talents like a mother nursing her infant even if she herself is starving." With a harrumph, JJ concluded. "I'd be alive today, finding Thélème myself if I hadn't invested in the car motor that ran on water. The Saudi's and Texans did me in,, selling that brisket to your aunt Ruth. Kosher, my ass! The cow that gave up that cut was conceived in evil, maybe washed in the blood of Jewish babies or something. Kosher! PSHAW! If they had injected it with cheese and wrapped it in bacon it could no more be accursed then that brisket!"

Again he brings up the money I don’t have, that my uncles ‘the Providers’ arranged to send me to Prison for; Ten boxes of random crap he calls a library; the map . . . that damned map . . . and the brisket, I know he a ghost and has trouble with this sort of thing but he should let go of the brisket

“You do know that the map you have is crap, don’t you?” Renny snapped. “The Zero latitude line you are using is Versailles. That was just a hunting lodge owned by Albert Di Gondi when Rabelais was alive. The real 0 line is probably the Observatoire de Paris, but that was over 40 miles to the east and that’s just the first thing I noticed

"Excuse me, you seem so very informed! You know so much about Thélème, tell me boychik, were you ever planning on FINDING it, you know so much from Thélème?" JJ exploded with indignation. "Businessman, researcher, adventurer, and kosher gourmet! And now should I get grief from my nephew the vampire I'm not an expert cartographer?"

Renny could feel the dawn creeping towards the windows. “I ain’t ever been happier to pass out,” he thought. "Calgon, take me away"

He sat down on the bed and leaned against the pillows, hands behind his head. His voice became conversational. “I’m just sayin’. You claim to hand me the world on a silver salver, but it ain’t quite so. You act like this quest is the whole of the World and that I should be as obsessed with it as you’ve become, but I can’t.”

“As for the brisket, I’m not sure what to tell you. Maybe it was poisoned. Maybe you should have eaten less meat. I don’t know. Maybe I can hire 38 to look into it for you.

"Wait, boychik!" JJ screamed... his shouting falling on deadened ears.

"Say goodnight, JJ," Renny mumbled as he wandered off to sleep.