Visit to the Grave of Abraham Lincoln
Fran Kursztejn
I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial quite a few times with the childish, stubborn understanding that Abe was buried there, that a memorial required an actual corpse to be complete, something to mourn beyond a field of marble embossments, but it came to my attention, really through a logical progression where I first noted the openness of the space, my pure and complete map of every portico, every chamber and the severity of its molding, like a mausoleum, a place designed to eventually fall into disrepair, to fall in ruin against the summer sun, heavy rain threatening the indifference of its tennessee marble; I recognized every excess, every inch of its embankment, from the north, south, east and west, I could make a reliable account of the relative shape, size and distortion of its reflection in the lake that forms its entrance, like an initial rehearsal, a preliminary sketch made by the architect, but as if a sketch madly doodled after a dream, as if the whole monument were formed so clearly in a dream, there was no guessing, as if the monument actually begins at its reflection in the water, and the stone just an imperfect rendering of that reflection, a model like the statue of Lincoln is the model of a decaying corpse that, as I now realize, is nowhere near, and that realization should’ve been obvious by the completeness of my image, for a tomb would not be so readily digestible, and the presence of death always manages to obscure some part of a space’s geography, by virtue of its mystery, its grotesquerie, or just eulogy, the gaze shies away from the corpse’s chamber like a child tiptoes to avoid waking their mother.
And Springfield is so far away. I’d have to take off a week of work and spend $60 on a bus ticket. Another $60 on a motel. All to see a President’s tomb, and by all means, I didn’t really care so much, at least not $120 worth, I’m no patriot, there’s very little of American history that appeals to me, much less the lives of presidents, and even less their tombs, I pay so little attention to the iconography of this country, to its romances or tragedies or horrors, the magnificent waltzes in shifting time and the frenzied, incestuous cancans which continue as if fired by a deathless engine, the pistons’ raucous pummeling like a massive stomach’s greedy rumble, I don’t care, I treat myself as an unwanted refugee passing through a mysterious land that should, above all else, stay mysterious, and to tell the truth, I have no reason to care so deeply for the tomb of Lincoln that I should even consider spending $120 to stand near it, for it’s just a monument, not so impressive, not like the memorial which I know so well and am so fascinated by despite such little interest in history, but the idea that the memorial is empty, like a temple in honor of a hellenistic god, maybe older, this notion is so overwhelming that suddenly the $120 doesn’t seem like such a steep price, if only to rid myself of this strange incompleteness, this phantom emptiness mixed with the shame of not having seen a relative before death, or failing to attend a funeral for a young cousin, who died suddenly from a winter illness, who left a young widower with very little since she had very little, and despite being fond of the cousin and the sweet memory of her wedding to the young widower who was smart and intensely loving I didn’t make it to the funeral, I didn’t come to comfort that young man who was a widower so young, that strange boy who talked like a man and wore clothes too small for him so he looked even more like an enormously large man stubbornly insisting he is still a child, yes, the world hadn’t managed to age him yet, he still walked in a land of buoyant dreams where all was deathless and kind, and even after my young cousin died, he was still known to dance with her in his dreams, or maybe she was dancing with him in her dreams, for it was difficult to tell who really died and who really lived, between these two mythic wanderers it was up to interpretation because both of them still lived with vigor in dreams, they danced the slow dances and the quick dances, all that was fashionable in their day, but the quick dances were danced slow and savory and the slow dances were danced quick and passionate, and they’d make love that way too, in dreams, quick when it was normally played slow and slow when it was played quick, like they both lived in worlds of intense opposites that swayed against each other like licks of orange and blue flames, they would dance so long, every night, and even when the young widower became a man of some stature, when he danced the rather difficult dance of the murderous machine, when he had to, as far as he could, keep in rhythm with the mad rustling of the pistons that scalded his feet, he’d still escape every night into the dance of dreams with my cousin, those slow dances and quick dances that weren’t in fashion anymore except in the realm of dreams, and even when the young widower found his own death and his own tomb, not so far from my cousin’s but with solemn fanfare that she never received, a glistening obelisk to her rounded granite, they would still dance in some unending dream, the slow and the fast and they wouldn’t change their repertoire, despite the man now knew all the dances of all the days, dances of the Italians and the British, the Spanish and the Arabs, the dances of Sultans and Kings, they still danced those same dances they taught all the American boys to court the American girls, and I realize I’ve been dreaming as well, my eyes had closed and I’d somehow been to Springfield with my $120 still in my pocket, but the feeling, that emptiness still wanders around me, infests me, and I go over all the reasons this could be, I investigate every orifice of my heart and my mind like I would the chambers of the Lincoln Memorial, but I came up empty, terribly empty, just like that tomb without a corpse I suddenly turned up empty, and that dream escaped from my memory, every detail just drifted away as if my mind were a sieve, and like water these romances and tragedies and horrors just passed through me, leaving only a cold touch and these untouchable dreams.
Fran Kursztejn (she/her) is a trans writer/filmmaker from North Carolina. She has written film criticism for InReviewOnline and Adam Moody's The HobbyHorse, and her fiction has appeared on donotsubmit.org. When she's not writing, she works a 9-5 retail job and reads Balzac on her lunch breaks.
