FREE VERSE POETRY
LAURA RUBY
GUIDE BOOK: YOUR VISIT TO THE SEDLEC OSSUARY
Wear layers and comfortable shoes. Not those, everyone will know
you’re American. Everyone knows. Even before you get on the bus,
practice saying, “The last time I was in Prague,” and “Such a haunting
place,” and “You can’t miss it!” And you can’t miss it. This is why
you flew over continents, over oceans, splurged on the full day
trip with lunch: High Gothic architecture, skull & crossbones
marking the spot. Practice saying, “You can smell the history!”
as if you can smell the history and not the sausage sweat of the
tourists who won’t stop touching the bones. “Stop touching the
bones,” you’ll mutter. You’ll touch the bones. You are not the sort
who believes in ghosts, but you’ll still see the abbot of the Sedlec
monastery trekking back from the Holy Land in the 13th century,
his pockets stuffed with earth from Golgotha. (You’re sure abbots
have pockets. Secrets.) The abbot blessed the ground with his pockets-
full of dirt soaked with the blood of Jesus. “After that,” your guide
will pause for effect: “Everyone who was anyone wanted to be
buried here. You might say they were dying to get in.” Your guide
will be American. He’ll tell you there was plenty of room until
the plague of 1318. You know too much about plagues. But how
to make room for all your dead? That, you haven’t learned.
The abbot exhumed the skeletons from the cemetery and heaped
them in the basement chapel. That’s how to make room for all
your dead—have a party and invite the whole lot. A hundred years
later, another monk, half-blind, stacked the bones in piles, leaving
paths through thickets of femurs and spines. In 1870, woodworker
František Rint bleached and sorted them. Rint was like you, or you are like
him. He wasn’t into any of this ghost nonsense, but he couldn’t help seeing
the abbot, seeing the half-blind monk, seeing the parade of the dead, their
remains a puzzle—nameless, faceless, rich mixed with poor, royal
with peasant. But even dead, the body is art. Rint strung garlands
of ulnas and skulls above, a grand chandelier, the Schwarzenberg
coat of arms—complete with a raven pecking at a severed head.
There are chains of phalanges and chatters of mandibles, cages
of ribs— little pyramids, bone Jenga. At lunch, you will eat every
bite of the terrible food, delight at saying the words “charnel house”
because you’ll like the way it feels in your mouth, chewy as fat.
You’ll say you knew European history was bloody and violent
but not this bloody and violent—"Hey, did you catch that severed
head?” No selfies allowed but you’ll get one anyway, your grin
against the backdrop of that coat of arms. You’ll say you look
at life in a new way, now. You’ll say you’re wrestling with your
own mortality, the inevitable anonymity of death. You’ll say this
last three more times because it is smart and you are American.
You’ll demand more wine. It is inevitable that you will get too
drunk to walk back to the bus. It is inevitable that you will post
the selfie, inevitable that someone will call you crass, disrespectful,
inevitable you’ll cry next time you catch a glimpse of a chicken
carcass in the trash: that plundered body, that kindred spirit.
you’re American. Everyone knows. Even before you get on the bus,
practice saying, “The last time I was in Prague,” and “Such a haunting
place,” and “You can’t miss it!” And you can’t miss it. This is why
you flew over continents, over oceans, splurged on the full day
trip with lunch: High Gothic architecture, skull & crossbones
marking the spot. Practice saying, “You can smell the history!”
as if you can smell the history and not the sausage sweat of the
tourists who won’t stop touching the bones. “Stop touching the
bones,” you’ll mutter. You’ll touch the bones. You are not the sort
who believes in ghosts, but you’ll still see the abbot of the Sedlec
monastery trekking back from the Holy Land in the 13th century,
his pockets stuffed with earth from Golgotha. (You’re sure abbots
have pockets. Secrets.) The abbot blessed the ground with his pockets-
full of dirt soaked with the blood of Jesus. “After that,” your guide
will pause for effect: “Everyone who was anyone wanted to be
buried here. You might say they were dying to get in.” Your guide
will be American. He’ll tell you there was plenty of room until
the plague of 1318. You know too much about plagues. But how
to make room for all your dead? That, you haven’t learned.
The abbot exhumed the skeletons from the cemetery and heaped
them in the basement chapel. That’s how to make room for all
your dead—have a party and invite the whole lot. A hundred years
later, another monk, half-blind, stacked the bones in piles, leaving
paths through thickets of femurs and spines. In 1870, woodworker
František Rint bleached and sorted them. Rint was like you, or you are like
him. He wasn’t into any of this ghost nonsense, but he couldn’t help seeing
the abbot, seeing the half-blind monk, seeing the parade of the dead, their
remains a puzzle—nameless, faceless, rich mixed with poor, royal
with peasant. But even dead, the body is art. Rint strung garlands
of ulnas and skulls above, a grand chandelier, the Schwarzenberg
coat of arms—complete with a raven pecking at a severed head.
There are chains of phalanges and chatters of mandibles, cages
of ribs— little pyramids, bone Jenga. At lunch, you will eat every
bite of the terrible food, delight at saying the words “charnel house”
because you’ll like the way it feels in your mouth, chewy as fat.
You’ll say you knew European history was bloody and violent
but not this bloody and violent—"Hey, did you catch that severed
head?” No selfies allowed but you’ll get one anyway, your grin
against the backdrop of that coat of arms. You’ll say you look
at life in a new way, now. You’ll say you’re wrestling with your
own mortality, the inevitable anonymity of death. You’ll say this
last three more times because it is smart and you are American.
You’ll demand more wine. It is inevitable that you will get too
drunk to walk back to the bus. It is inevitable that you will post
the selfie, inevitable that someone will call you crass, disrespectful,
inevitable you’ll cry next time you catch a glimpse of a chicken
carcass in the trash: that plundered body, that kindred spirit.
Laura Ruby is a novelist with eleven books published, including Bone Gap (HarperCollins, 2015) and Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All (HarperCollins, 2019), both National Book Award Finalists. Her short fiction has appeared The Florida Review, Pleiades, and the Beloit Fiction Journal, among other magazines, and her poems are published or forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, the Nassau Review, and more. She teaches fiction writing at Hamline University and Queens University.