Farewell Persephone by Virginia Revel

“I see her always as she was then, lit with lucent yellow from a jagged tear in the eternal cloud cover, eyes locked with mine, mutely but unmistakably saying farewell.”

            This is the first sentence of the novel ‘Farewell Persephone’ by my uncle Marcus Carradine. Below the title he inserted a quotation:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

 

I found the manuscript of ‘Persephone’ in my uncle’s house three weeks after he died. ‘Manuscript’ is a literal term in this instance; Marcus despised word processors and wrote his book in longhand. He used to tell me that the movements of his hand and arm made the creative juices flow. Literary composition was a physical thing. He said, too, that his aim was to ‘possess the world and make it gravid.’

In a critical essay on Marcus that I began when I was seventeen, I wrote that for him the pen was the equivalent of the begetting phallus. I labeled him an eroticist, although as far as I know, he never begot anything but his manuscript. I deferred all mention of his many and various bedmates until I could make their acquaintance, but at some point I planned to disclose his habit of referring to them by Greek-sounding pseudonyms—‘vexatious Chloe,’ ‘sweet, foolish Penelope’—and then draw insightful parallels with features of the novel. I never did this, for reasons that will become clear in due course.

I saw my college career as preparation for my future role as Marcus’ literary executor. My father, himself a CPA, would have preferred to see me study accounting, but I saw nothing impractical in my choice of comparative literature. I would one day write Marcus’ biography. I would edit and explicate his work. I would, moreover, collect his royalties; he had told me early on that I would be his heir. That the royalties would be substantial, I did not doubt. The editor-in-chief of one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses had been begging for The Novel for years. “Sam has been after me again,” Marcus would say.  “He’ll have to wait.  Nobody hurries me.”

According to my calculations, Sam waited for at least seven years. I felt he shouldn’t grumble. Compelling and seminal works of literature are not written in a day. Marcus was jealous of his literary reputation and he said that if he ever realized he would die before completing The Novel, he would give the manuscript a Viking’s funeral. I looked up this allusion, not a Greek one for a change, and discovered that he intended to burn ‘Persephone.’ Silently, I begged the Fates to spare the world this desecration. I reminded him that he was only fifty-one. He clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Richard, I’ve been living large. I’ve just about used myself up.  But it’s been worth it.” I vowed to make ‘Living Large’ my personal motto.

In the event, Marcus had no forewarning of his doom. A massive heart attack felled him on a Caribbean beach as he raised his hand to order his last piña colada. The postcard from him that reached me a week later bore only the message ‘Living L.’ above the signature.

My uncle’s funeral was less elaborate than ‘Persephone’s would have been. Besides my parents and me, the mourners included his lawyer, his cleaning lady, two fellow golfers, and the man who used to tune up his car. ‘Sam’ did not show up, nor did Chloe, Penelope, or any other inspirational women. They must have missed the announcement we had inserted in the local paper. Without telling anyone, I sent an obituary notice to the New York Times as well, but it was never printed.

When the estate was settled, I went to my uncle’s house to take possession of the precious manuscript. I was sure he had left a publishable draft. I couldn’t find it in his desk, or in the drawers and cupboards in his study. I did unearth six volumes of paperback porn, all by an author improbably named Todd Slash. I put them aside for later private delectation and continued my search. I found nothing to speak of on the ground floor, but I rejoiced when I entered the upstairs bedroom and saw another desk. The top drawer was empty, and the bottom one was locked. Feverishly, I sorted through my uncle’s keys. I guessed that I was within inches of ‘Persephone,’ and I was right. Hugging the thick pile of inky foolscap, I flung myself into a chair and started to read.

“I see her always as she was then, lit with lucent yellow from a jagged tear in the eternal cloud cover, eyes locked with mine, mutely but unmistakably saying farewell.”

“I see her lucent in the rays of a dying sun, eternally frozen in time, gesturing a mute farewell.”

“Lucent in eternal memory, she stands transfixed, mute and immobile, her dark eyes bidding me farewell.”

“Her lucent eyes….”

I scanned page two, then three, then all of them, more than a hundred. I found nothing but the opening sentence of ‘Persephone,’ mute, lucent, and eternally recasting itself.

Things fall apart. My uncle’s authorship, his loves, his whole philosophy of life had been a lie, an elaborate façade.  His center could not hold because he did not have one. No, that was wrong. He had one thing to fill the void: fear. Fear of failure.  No sentence he could write was ever good enough.

Was the quote from Yeats a kind of coded confession? I think so. I sat among the shattered fragments of his fragile self, and mourned him.

I have changed my college major to physics, even though it means redoing all my course work. The degree will cost a lot of money in the end, but to pay for it I’ll have the royalties from the pornographic novels of Todd Slash. I found the statements from the literary agent in my uncle’s safe deposit box.

 

Virginia Revel

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