The Wisdom of the Barber

I walked through the rain, weaving between the tombstones, until I came to his. I’d been here before. Many times, in fact. No, I never knew the man in life. He died eight decades before I was born. But we were connected. He was my great-great-grandfather.

I didn’t mind the rain. It was like an old friend. And I was more or less sheltered from it by the thick cover of tree limbs. There are a lot of trees in this cemetery. His grave is right next to one, his body rests in its roots, in its cradle. I can think of nothing better for an eternal slumber.

I know which stone is his, though the engraving has long since worn off. Age and weather do that to the things we make. Some people are put off by that reality. I find it quite comforting.

I don’t know much about this man, but the little I do know is enough to give me some sort of image, some kind of idea about who he was. Born in Switzerland in 1847, he came to the United States as an infant, carried in the arms of a mother who would die only days after arriving here. Cholera killed her, as it killed so many people of that time. He fought in the Civil War as a teenager, somehow coming through that experience unscathed. Well, unscathed physically, at least. He went on to become a barber in 19th century St. Louis. And as far as I know, he didn’t speak a word of English. Having married a local woman, he fathered two children, one of which was my great-grandmother. As one might expect of someone in those days, he died young, perishing at fifty years old in 1897. The archives list his cause of death as heat prostration, but medicine wasn’t half the science then that it is now, so who knows what really killed him? Maybe a heart attack. Maybe cancer. Anything’s possible.

On this day, I came to his tombstone and stood next to it, as I am wont to do, unable to understand or explain the strange connection I share with this man. I have a plethora of ancestors, as we all do, so why should this one forefather captivate my attention so? I cannot say. Nevertheless, I come to his grave often… and wonder.

I stood there for a while in the rain, silently looking at the weathered stone that no longer bears an inscription. Then, as absurd as it was in such weather, I sat down on the grass, leaning my back against the old tree. And there I lingered in that magnificent moment, oblivious or perhaps just indifferent to the rainfall. Each drop hit me like love and redemption concentrated in tiny globules of water, falling freely from the sky for anyone wise enough to stop and be still in their path.

I started thinking about all the dead people resting in the ground just a few feet beneath where I sat, including my great-great-grandfather. I’m not a guy who has much room in his worldview for the afterlife, at least not in the religious sense; still, I found myself foolishly wondering if somehow the souls of the dead were conscious of the rain falling above the place where their rotting bodies joined with the earthen chamber around them. It pleased my dreamer’s sense of the romantic to believe that, yes, they were aware of it, that the trickledown of rainwater, seeping into the mud and slowly making its way to their earthly remains, somehow felt refreshing and soothing and reminded them, not in sorrowful terms but in pleasantly nostalgic ones, of the life they once lived on the surface.

So enveloped in that peaceful moment was I that I actually fell asleep. I think it may be the only time in my life that I’ve slid into slumber in the rain. It’s not an easy thing to do, after all.

During that brief and unlikely nap, I dreamed that my soul left my body, though it still possessed all the physicalities thereof. Indeed, I stood as a kind of material ghost over my sleeping self, looking down at it with wonder. And that’s when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Startled, I turned to see a paunchy, ruddy-faced man of a prime but not elderly age, wearing a bowler hat and suspenders over a faded, frayed linen shirt. I knew instinctively that these clothes were from another time. His handlebar mustache told me this “other time” was most likely the late 19th century.

“You scared me,” I said to the man.

“Oh, apologies, mein sohn,” he replied in an extremely thick German accent. His broken English was a bit hard to follow. “But, uh, ve don’t have a lot of time… und I vanted to talk to you.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

He smiled wryly and inclined his head toward the tombstone of my great-great-grandfather.

Amazed, baffled, and scarcely believing my eyes, I said, “You mean…?”

“Ja. I am Ernst Bruheimer.”

“Holy shit!” I bellowed. “I must be dreaming. Oh, wait.” I looked down at my sleeping self, remembering. “Right. I’m asleep. Of course this is a dream.”

“Ja, ‘tis,” said Ernst, “but zat doesn’t mean it’s not, uh…. vut is ze vord?”

“Real?”

He winked. “Ja, exakt.”

“So then… this is real?”

“As real as you want it to be, junge.”

“I didn’t think you spoke English,” I mused.

“I didn’t ven I vas alive.”

What did that mean? I had so many questions! I didn’t even know where to start. No doubt sensing this, Ernst put his hand on my shoulder. It felt real. It felt heavy. Like the grip of a serious man from a serious age. “I’m not here to answer questions,” he said.

“What are you here for, then?”

“Ve’ve been, uh… vatching you.”

“We?”

“Ja, all your vorfahren. Ve vatch you.”

“Vorfahren?”

“You know… uh… vut is zis vord? Ancestors, I zink?”

“All my ancestors watch me?”

“Ja.”

This floored me. “Watching? Why me?”

“Not just you. Ve vatch all ze issue of our seed.”

I didn’t know what to make of this. That’s what heaven is? Dead souls stuck watching all the mistakes and dumb decisions of their descendants? The thought sounded awful to me.

“But ve’ve had our eye on you insbesondere… uh… especially,” he went on.

“Why?”

“Because you’re going down ze wrong pathz, mein sohn.”

“Huh? I am?”

“Ja.” Incredibly, he pulled a cigar from his back pocket and lit it. The unique scent wasn’t like any tobacco I was used to, and I smoke a pipe regularly. Ernst sighed, savoring the aroma. “Mein Gott!” he said. “I have missed zis.”

“What’s this wrong path I’m on?”

“Oh, ja, zat. Come, let us sit.”

Astoundingly, the rain vanished and a small table and two chairs appeared beneath the tree, next to his tombstone. Ernst sat, and I followed.

“Vut are you doing here?” he asked, smoking blithely.

“What do you mean?”

“At mein grave. Vhy are you here? Vhy do you come so often und just stand around looking down at mein, uh, mein grabstein?”

Grabstein? Assuming that meant “tombstone,” I thought about his question, unsure of the answer. “I don’t know, Ernst,” I said at length. “It feels good somehow.”

“Vhy? You don’t know me. I vas dead und rotted almost a century before you vere even zought of.”

“I know, but… well, I can’t explain it.”

He pulled the cigar from his mouth and looked at it. “I know you don’t believe in ze… you know—” he waved his hands “—ze next.”

“You mean the afterlife?”

“Exakt.”

“Well, I guess I was wrong. I mean, here you are.”

“Nein, mein sohn. Don’t forget, zis is a dream.”

“But you said that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“Ja, ‘tis real, but still a dream.”

“So there’s no afterlife?”

He shoved the cigar back in his mouth and again smiled wryly. “I told you, I’m not here to answer questions.”

“But—”

“Und I vouldn’t tell you even if I vas permitted to, vhich I’m not, by ze vay.”

This irritated me. I cast a quick glance over at my sleeping self, trying to make sense of all this.

He snapped his fingers, getting my attention. “Stay focused, now, ja?”

“This is nuts.”

“Mein sohn, I’m here to tell you zat you’ve got to change some zings.”

“What?”

“I know you’re as stubborn as a bull, but, uh, you need to really listen to me now, ja?”

“Okay.”

He drew deeply on the cigar and grunted with satisfaction. “Okay, here ‘tis,” he began. “Life is… a precious zing, mein sohn. You can, uh, trust me ven I say zat, for I speak as one who has tasted bothz life und deathz. Und I can tell you zat out of ze two, life is by far ze better.”

“Okay.” That didn’t seem like rocket science to me.

“But you, you’re not living your life. You’re stuck in ze Vergangenheit. You know, ze past. Stuck in fantasien. Uh… fantasies. Ja? Stuck standing around verdammt grabsteine… tombstones… all ze time, dreaming about people who lived und died long ago. Vut is zat? Vhere does zat get you?”

“I guess I’m a romantic.”

“Zat’s not romantic, it’s, uh… schiesse, vut is ze vord? Patze…?”

“Pathetic?”

“Exakt. You’re on a patzetic pathz, junge. So focused on ze deathz zat you are missing out on ze life.”

I thought about this. Was I focused more on death than life? It’s true that most of the time I walk around lamenting the fact that I was born when I was. I always tell people I was born too late, born in the wrong time, that I would’ve fared much better in the past.

“I know vut you’re zinking,” Ernst said. “You’re, uh, vondering if vut I’m saying is ze truthz. But you know ze answer, ja?”

Damn. He had me… dead to rights. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess I do know the answer.”

“Zen vake ze hell up, junge. Stop vasting your life. Live. Live now. Vhile you can. Before you become like me.”

“Like you?”

He looked sad for a moment. “A shadow. A memory.”

“But—”

“Nein, no buts. See? Stubborn like a bull. Lose zis… patzetic… notion zat you belong in ze past und get some sense into you, ja? You’re not in ze past, junge. You’re right vhere you are. Und zere’s nothzing you can do about it. So stop dreaming about, uh, how zings used to be und get busy vith how zings are, ja? Okay?”

I got up from the table and turned my back to Ernst, looking off into the distance. I knew he was right. But it was hard to hear it all the same. “I guess you make some sense,” I said. “I’ve been letting life pass me by. Maybe I do need to change that.”

I turned back to face him, to tell him I was glad he decided to visit my dream, but he was gone. So were the table and chairs. Only the smell of his cigar lingered.

And that’s when I opened my eyes. I was still leaning against the tree, and it was still raining. There were no sounds except for the patter of falling water. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and thought about the dream.

“That was some crazy shit,” I said to myself, standing up.

I cast my eyes down on the grave of Ernst Bruheimer and smirked. “Alright,” I said. “Alright, Ernst. I shall heed your advice. No longer will I let life pass me by.” And that was no empty promise. I intended to do exactly what Ernst had said.

As I turned to leave, I thought I could still faintly smell his cigar in the breeze, wafting through the air like some forgotten memory. It was a unique scent.