The Lifework of Juan Díaz, Ray Bradbury

The Lifework of Juan Díaz

Filomena flung the plank door shut with such violence the candle blew out; she and her crying children were left in darkness. The only things to be seen were through the window—the adobe houses, the cobbled streets, where now the gravedigger stalked up the hill, his spade on his shoulder, moonlight honing the blue metal as he turned into the high cold graveyard and was gone.

“Mamacita, what’s wrong?” Filepe, her oldest son, just nine, pulled at her. For the strange dark man had said nothing, just stood at the door with the spade and nodded his head and waited until she banged the door in his face. “Mamacita?”

“That gravedigger.” Filomena’s hands shook as she relit the candle. “The rent is long overdue on your father’s grave. Your father will be dug up and placed down in the catacomb, with a wire to hold him standing against the wall, with the other mummies.”
“No, Mamacita!”

“Yes.” She caught the children to her. “Unless we find the money. Yes.”
“I—I will kill that gravedigger!” cried Filepe.

“It is his job. Another would take his place if he died, and another and another after him.”

They thought about the man and the terrible high place where he lived and moved and the catacomb he stood guard over and the strange earth into which people went to come forth dried like desert flowers and tanned like leather for shoes and hollow as drums which could be tapped and beaten, an earth which made great cigar-brown rustling dry mummies that might languish forever leaning like fence poles along the catacomb halls.

And, thinking of all this familiar but unfamiliar stuff, Filomena and her children were cold in summer, and silent though their hearts made a vast stir in their bodies. They huddled together for a moment longer and then:
“Filepe,” said the mother, “come.” She opened the door and they stood in the moonlight listening to hear any far sound of a blue metal spade biting the earth, heaping the sand and old flowers. But there was a silence of stars “You others,” said Filomena, “to bed.”

The door shut. The candle flickered.

The cobbles of the town poured in a river of gleaming moon-silver stone down the hills, past green parks and little shops and the place where the coffin maker tapped and made the clock sounds of death-watch beetles all day and all night, forever in the life of these people.

Up along the slide and rush of moonlight on the stones, her skirt whispering of her need, Filomena hurried with Filepe breathless at her side. They turned in at the Official Palace.

The man behind the small, littered desk in the dimly lit office glanced up in some surprise. “Filomena, my cousin!”
“Ricardo.” She took his hand and dropped it. “You must help me.”

“If God does not prevent. But ask.”

“They—” The bitter stone lay in her mouth; she tried to get it out. “Tonight they are taking Juan from the earth.”

Ricardo, who had half risen, now sat back down, his eyes growing wide and full of light, and then narrowing and going dull. “If not God, then God’s creatures prevent. Has the year gone so swiftly since Juan’s death? Can it truly be the rent has come due?” He opened his empty palms and showed them to the woman. “Ah, Filomena, I have no money.”

“But if you spoke to the gravedigger. You are the police.”
“Filomena, Filomena, the law stops at the edge of the grave.”

“But if he will give me ten weeks, only ten, it is almost the end of summer. The Day of the Dead is coming. I will make, I will sell, the candy skulls, and give him the money, oh, please, Ricardo.”

And here at last, because there was no longer a way to hold the coldness in and she must let it free before it froze her so she could never move again, she put her hands to her face and wept. And Filepe, seeing that it was permitted, wept, too, and said her name over and over.

“So,” said Ricardo, rising. “Yes, yes. I will walk to the mouth of the catacomb and spit into it. But, ah, Filomena, expect no answer. Not so much as an echo. Lead the way.” And he put his official cap, very old, very greasy, very worn, upon his head.

The graveyard was higher than the churches, higher than all the buildings, higher than all the hills. It lay on the highest rise of all, overlooking the night valley of the town.

As they entered the vast ironwork gate and advanced among the tombs, the three were confronted by the sight of the gravedigger’s back bent into an ever-increasing hole, lifting out spade after spade of dry dirt onto an ever-increasing mound. The digger did not even look up, but made a quiet guess as they stood at the grave’s edge.

“Is that Ricardo Albañez, the chief of police?”
“Stop digging!” said Ricardo.

The spade flashed down, dug, lifted, poured. “There is a funeral tomorrow. This grave must be empty, open and ready.”
“No one has died in the town.”

“Someone always dies. So I dig. I have already waited two months for Filomena to pay what she owes. I am a patient man.”
“Be still more patient.” Ricardo touched the moving, hunching shoulder of the bent man.

“Chief of the police.” The digger paused to lean, sweating, upon his spade. “This is my country, the country of the dead. These here tell me nothing, nor does any man. I rule this land with a spade, and a steel mind. I do not like the live ones to come talking, to disturb the silence I have so nicely dug and filled. Do I tell you how to conduct your municipal palace? Well, then. Good night.” He resumed his task.

“In the sight of God,” said Ricardo, standing straight and stiff, his fists at his sides, “and this woman and her son, you dare to desecrate the husband-father’s final bed?”

“It is not final and not his, I but rented it to him.” The spade floated high, flashing moonlight. “I did not ask the mother and son here to watch this sad event. And listen to me, Ricardo, police chief, one day you will die. I will bury you. Remember that: I. You will be in my hands. Then, oh, then.”

“Then what?” shouted Ricardo. “You dog, do you threaten me?”

“I dig.” The man was very deep now, vanishing in the shadowed grave, sending only his spade up to speak for him again and again in the cold light. “Good night, señor, señora, niño. Good night.”

Outside her small adobe hut, Ricardo smoothed his cousin’s hair and touched her cheek. “Filomena, ah, God.”
“You did what you could.”

“That terrible one. When I am dead, what awful indignities might he not work upon my helpless flesh? He would set me upside down in the tomb, hang me by my hair in a far, unseen part of the catacomb. He takes on weight from knowing someday he will have us all. Good night, Filomena. No, not even that. For the night is bad.”

He went away down the street.
Inside, among her many children, Filomena sat with face buried in her lap.

Late the next afternoon, in the tilted sunlight, shrieking, the school-children chased Filepe home. He fell, they circled him, laughing.
“Filepe, Filepe, we saw your father today, yes!”
“Where?” they asked themselves shyly.

“In the catacomb!” they gave answer.
“What a lazy man! He just stands there!”
“He never works!”

“He don’t speak! Oh, that Juan Díaz!”
Filepe stood violently atremble under the blazed sun, hot tears streaming from his wide and half-blinded eyes.

Within the hut, Filomena heard, and the knife sounds entered her heart. She leaned against the cool wall, wave after dissolving wave of remembrance sweeping her.

In the last month of his life, agonized, coughing, and drenched with midnight perspirations, Juan had stared and whispered only to the raw ceiling above his straw mat.
“What sort of man am I, to starve my children and hunger my wife? What sort of death is this, to die in bed?”

“Hush.” She placed her cool hand over his hot mouth. But he talked beneath her fingers. “What has our marriage been but hunger and sickness and now nothing? Ah, God, you are a good woman, and now I leave you with no money even for my funeral!”

And then at last he had clenched his teeth and cried out at the darkness and grown very quiet in the warm candleshine and taken her hands into his own and held them and swore an oath upon them, vowed himself with religious fervor.

“Filomena, listen. I will be with you. Though I have not protected in life, I will protect in death. Though I fed not in life, in death I will bring food. Though I was poor, I will not be poor in the grave. This I know. This I cry out. This I assure you of. In death I will work and do many things. Do not fear. Kiss the little ones. Filomena. Filomena . . .”

And then he had taken a deep breath, a final gasp, like one who settles beneath warm waters. And he had launched himself gently under, still holding his breath, for a testing of endurance through all eternity. They waited for a long time for him to exhale.

But this he did not do. He did not reappear above the surface of life again. His body lay like a waxen fruit on the mat, a surprise to the touch. Like a wax apple to the teeth, so was Juan Díaz to all