Tolstoy in Mourning

"And the candle by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up brighter than ever, lit up for her all that had once been darkness, sputtered, grew dim and went out for ever."

Cass put down her battered and dog-eared edition of Anna Karenina and stared up the hall at her parents. She was sitting cross legged in a corner, on top of the landing, hoping they would forget to call her into the living room. Or rather would give up on forcing her into joining the rest of the family gathered around the sleek silver screen.

She had watched them through the glass panelled door onto the living room since she arrived that morning. Her mother had sent her a text: "Wake up. Nurse calling at 9 am, be here."

Wake up? It' been days since she'd gotten any asleep...she'd laid in a groggy state, wrapped up in her duvet thinking of the white snow on the Nevsky avenue, the warm locomotive smoke rising through a pine wood forest...and of love and all its deceptions. Any words to cling to, any thoughts to entrench her and keep her away from the realisation.

There they were. Her glass menagerie of a family. Aunt Jane snivelling nestled into Sebastian's imposing chest, her sister Helen, ever so composed, showing her slight discomfort by periodically shifting her ankles, their mother alternating between pacing and leaning on one hip, adjusting the sofa's many pillows and glaring with disappointment at her. Add this to the list of Cassandra's failures. Her father stood looking somber, behind Helen, glancing at the screen ever so often and nodding tiredly with a semblance of resignation.

What a charade. They'd never been a happy family and even in their unhappiness they were far from unique. Even that she couldn't cling to; even in loss she wasn't part of other's sorrow, their sense of injustice, or of their fear -- only of some's solitude.

"Cassandra, that's enough." called out her mother sternly, "You can either come in and join your family or go exhibit your abhorrence of us some other place."

Cass sighed, adjusted her mask (which kept sliding off her upturned nose), straightened her curls, and reluctantly made her way into the living room.

As she suspected, sound was worse than glass-filtered silence.

The large white figure in the screen wheezed, periodic bips interspersed its ragged breaths. Shuffling in the background, the brushing of a curtain and the clicketi of a door, now open then closed, completed the clinical sonata.

She didn't want to contemplate the length of the tubes, take in the sound of the nearby ventilators, reflect on the whiteness of the room. All that white light ever exposing without a trace of warmth. Cold, white, and all alone. That's how it was going to be.

This wasn't a goodbye. He wouldn't wake and he wouldn't just pass. He would just be till he came to be no more. And that was it, all they would get was the end of the call. The earnest but mechanical 'we are so sorry for your loss'. The automatic reply of, 'we know you did all you could,' stifled in with a general thank you along with a solemn, resigned, closure-less goodbye.

Gamps, Gamps.. don't go. Please don't go. There's so much...I'm sorry, it's selfish, I know, but there's so much I need from you. I just don't know what to do, I never have. I really never have, thought Cass.

"Cassie, Cass, look he's waking." said her father while tugging her arm and dragging her out of her recluse state.

Her grandfather was stirring feebly. He grunted and opened his eyes to meet the cluster of faces the nurse held in front of him.

Dazed, he attempted to take them in, and smiled, trying to imbue as much love and goodwill into it as he could muster.

"Cassandra" he called out, "my little Cassandra,I euh, the bookshop, I..." , "the little black book, it's got what you need it" "it's been passed down honey, to every first born, it will guide you..."

"What? Gamps. Gamps, I, I just need you, I don't need a book...we need you to be here with us." Cass was on the verge of tears, she just wanted to hold him, for him to be in the house with them in his chair. Asleep, with his glasses about to tumble off his nose, a book on his knees. Sometimes a Herman Hesse novel, or maybe his favourite, Ivanhoe, which he religiously insisted on reading every year to remind him of the little boy he never stopped carrying within.

" Gamps? Mom, what's wrong with him..?Let me talk, let me talk to him!" she cried out as she tried to grab the phone as if she somehow could shove them all out of her way, as if she held the device in her hands she would be there with him, he wouldn't be alone, he'd clutch to life, he'd be with her. He'd wait. He had too.

Her mother pulled the phone away and coldly pushed her to the side.

"Cassandra that's enough. Will you compose yourself and stop behaving like a child. Grandparents die, that's the way it is. Perhaps if you stopped being so selfish and had been here when you were asked to be, maybe if for once, just for once, you started acting like you are a part of this family and not like a rugrat, then you would've had your goodbye."

"What are you on about? What family! He was my family! The only one who was there for me.You don't care about him like I do...And what goodbye? You think this is goodbye..what a black book?That's suppose to replace him. I don't want it!"

"Cassie, Regina" her father interrupted " I think this is it... the nurse said he's gone back to rest, that they'll let us know how things evolve periodically."

"Okay I'm leaving" Cassandra announced.

Her father walked her to the door, hugged her awkwardly and told her that she could always move back in for a while. That her mother would come around, that she was more open...or at least that she was coming to terms with it. Coming to terms with what she mumbled under her breath, that she hadn't had the pristine daughter she'd wished for, that it was okay for her to be gay, or just the way that her cuticles looked from her incessant nail biting? The little black book, her father finally urged her, just got to the shop and get it. He knew he kept it there, under the cashier's desk in a green velvet box, he'd given it to Thomas before he left to Afghanistan and gotten it back with his belongings and a folded flag. It was hers to have.

Cassandra flagged her studio bound bus down with no intention of going to her grandfather's bookshop. That's the last thing she needed as he tittered on the verge.

While he was locked away in a world so alien to him, she would be immersed in his colourful clutter, in the scent of crisp paper or the tangy mould-like odour of the collector's volume, and the rhythmic ringing of the perched doorbell.

Yet, as these things go, while she sat enumerating all the reasons why she'd no intention of retrieving the book and convincing herself that there was no worse place to be, she found herself getting off at the next station and ambling in the direction of "Fictitious Feathers & Inventive Inkwells".

Maybe the little black book would help her... of course the book didn't matter, her grandfather did. He was the guidance she needed. In any case how could she be more lost than she already was? She'd lost her waitressing job, she still owed around money on the student loans of the degree that she'd essentially butchered, and was far off from the extra 20,000$ she needed for her postgrad, Gini had moved out and wanted nothing to do with her...Gamps bookstore had been physically closed for months, he'd fallen ill and she'd barely help him pull thru with his virtual deliveries. And on top of it , while all her friends seemed to be adopting pets, starting their inspirational self-help or foodie accounts, or even just getting fit and filling her feed with it...here she was. Just as she was pre-covid and worse off for it. No little black book would heal her self hatred, no little black book would fill the void he'd leave.

She'd arrived. Cassandra unlocked the door, breathed in deeply, and reluctantly approached the desk. Here goes nothing she whispered to herself.

She opened the box and took out the little black book. It was creased with the lines of time, passed on from hand to hand along one bloodline, all these men and women who would give her their advice, tell her how they succeeded where she'd failed, guide her through this time of the struggle and imminent loss.

Cassandra held it hopefully and opened it. First page, flip, second page, flip,fith, flip, six, twelfth, faster, flip and flip. Nothing! They were all blank, there was nothing. Not one single blot of ink, pencil scrape, not even a tear or a crease.

This was her guidance? Just absolute nothing? Gamps was leaving her this, an empty blank book is all that her family had to give to her? How, how could this be it!

Cassandra threw the book across the floor in frustration and began sobbing profusely. All the pain and exhaustion she'd held inside for weeks came rushing out with every tear, every cry, every anguished scream.

As she slumped in the corner and drew her knees in, staring at the damned little black book of nothingness, she saw it. A folded cream coloured paper sticking out from under it.

Cassandra reached for it and unfolded it. Out of it came a little envelope which read "20k for my dear Cassandra" with a key to her grandfather's safety box. Cassandra cried a little harder and starred at the paper.

Over and over, in ornate script, in squiggly scribbles, neat or untidy, small and large, faded or clear as day, over and over the cream coloured page were written dozens of simple Thank You.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! That was her family's guidance. A combination of eight letters and a blank book to say write you own story. We love you, we accept you, nothing you are doing is wrong.

This was their message, this was Gamps message:

You chose the pen by which you write your book of life.