Woman of the Dead (4 page)

She senses the fear and desperation in their small fingers. She hears her children’s consoling words; they are trying to be strong, they want their mother back, they want her to get up and go on living.
Mama, you mustn’t be dead. Please get up, Mama. You must open your eyes, Mama. Please
. Nela’s voice. She wants to be cuddled, she wants Blum to dry her tears, she wants to be told that everything is all right. Those two magical little creatures don’t understand why their Papa isn’t there or why he was covered with blood or why he was taken away. They don’t want their world to collapse; they want to snuggle up to their mother, crawl into her, hide in her, be safe. They want to act as if everything were still the same. As if Mark were still there beside them. Breathing, smiling.
Mama, you must get up now. Please, you must. Grandpa won’t stop crying. We need you, Mama.
Their words sink far down into Blum. Their words tear Blum away from sleep and suddenly give her strength. She can’t lie here for another moment. With all her might, she sits up and comes back to life.
I’m not dead
, she says.

‘We’ll manage, my big girl.’

‘What, Mama? What will we manage?’

‘Come here, you two.’

‘What’s the matter with Papa, Mama? I want him to come back.’

‘Papa won’t be coming back.’

‘Why not?’

‘Nela, don’t you know that Papa is a prince?’

‘So?’

‘So princes ride through the forest fighting dragons.’

‘Dragons aren’t real, Mama.’

‘Oh yes, Nela, there are dragons, and your Papa has gone away to fight them. Your Papa is a very brave prince.’

‘Why was there all that blood, Mama?’

‘That was dragon’s blood. The dragon wounded your Papa, but he’s better again now. Now he is riding through the forest on his white horse.’

‘You’re telling stories, Mama.’

‘Imagine it, Nela, think of him smiling as he rides.’

‘Papa doesn’t have a horse, he has a motorbike. And the motorbike is broken. It was lying in the road. Just like Papa.’

‘Your Papa is all right.’

‘Papa is dead.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, Mama. Papa is a corpse now too.’

‘Hush.’

‘They’ve just brought him back.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Papa is in the cool room.’

Blum jumps up. Nela’s words are like ice-cold water into which she is falling, nearly drowning, while her heart almost stops because it hurts so much, because everything is suddenly real again. Because the idea that the children have seen their dead father is like a blow in the face. It mustn’t be real. Not like that, not before she has done what needs doing. She must get up, she must think clearly, she must see to everything, bring the sinking ship back on course. Where is Karl? Where’s Reza? Why does everything hurt so much?

Mark. She is screaming inside, she is weeping, pleading.
Come back, please. I need you. I can’t do it without you. I can’t. The children. How am I to do it without you? I don’t know. Please, Mark. Look at them. They’re so small. Look at them clinging to me. I can’t do it, Mark. I can’t do it without you.
But all the same she gets dressed and goes into the kitchen with the children. All the same, she opens the fridge and makes them something to eat. All the same, she acts as if she had everything back under control. Never mind how loudly she is screaming inside, never mind if everything in her is collapsing; every piece of skin crying out, every centimetre of flesh. It hurts as if she were being torn apart by a herd of wild beasts. But she spreads butter on her toast and even tries to smile, to soothe the children’s fears. She mustn’t cry now. Mustn’t lie there motionless and desperate, never to stand up again, as if she were dead.

They are sitting side by side at the table. The children are munching away; Blum watches them. Everything will be all right, she says, knowing that’s not true. Nothing will ever be all right again. Everything that was once all right is now lying in a cool room on the ground floor. He will never read the children a story again, never play with them again, never make them another bonfire in the garden. No more singing together, no more suppers together, no more outings, no holidays on the boat. The children were so happy when he put their life jackets on. In her mind’s eye Blum sees them on the loveliest beaches in Croatia, a month ago. They ran into the water, he tossed them up in the air, they were so happy, and nothing threatened their little world, Mama and Papa were there, and when they went to sleep Mama and Papa sat out on deck, drinking wine. She heard their voices, their giggling, there was such confidence that no storm in the world could make their boat capsize. Love was there, everything was all right. By night on the sea.

‘Do you still want more?’

‘Lots more.’

‘My dear young lady, you need to get your sea legs.’

‘I’m on holiday.’

‘You’re drunk, my flower.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing.’

‘Well, there we are.’

‘I’m afraid you may molest me again tonight.’

‘You’re right, but not just yet. There’s half a bottle left to go.’

‘Drink up quickly, my lovely.’

‘There’s no hurry, my good sir.’

‘Hurry up, the stars will soon be setting.’

‘No, they won’t.’

‘They will.’

‘Then I suppose I really ought to drink more quickly.’

‘We don’t want to lose any time.’

‘Do the stars just fall out of the sky, or what?’

‘Yes, they all fall into the sea, just like that. They dive into the water and disappear. One after another. Until the sky is empty.’

‘I’d like to see that.’

‘It’s a beautiful sight, Blum.’

‘That’s what you are.’

‘What?’

‘A beautiful sight.’

‘Mhmm … Do you think you’ll ever tire of this? You’ve been sailing in these waters for twenty-five years.’

‘They’re my home.’

‘Home?’

‘I was always happy here.’

‘Until the day I found you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘That was a very sad time.’

‘Do we have to talk about it now?’

‘I’m sorry. Forget it, Blum.’

‘I wish it was as easy as that.’

‘I can kiss you.’

‘Will that help?’

‘I’m sure it will.’

‘My happiness began the day you came on board the boat. Before that, I wasn’t really happy except in summer. There was one season, not four. No autumn, no winter, no spring. Just a couple of weeks in summer.’

‘Lovely.’

‘What’s lovely?’

‘You. Everything. You’re like a poem.’

‘I’m drunk, don’t you forget.’

‘You’re like a beautiful turn of phrase.’

‘A turn of phrase?’

‘A beautiful turn of phrase which intoxicates you and will never let you go. Not a word too many, simple and clear.’

‘Like what?’

‘The sky has been turning slowly.’

‘Doing what?’

‘The sky has been turning slowly.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘But it’s beautiful, right?’

‘Mark, darling Mark, my romantic cop. First the stars fall out of the sky, and then the sky itself is turning.’

‘That’s exactly it. And all just for you.’

Somewhere off Zadar, they were naked on deck, entwined with one another, the sea as smooth as a mirror, and as silent. The sea was their home. But now their lives have been switched off, there is no sound of waves breaking, no blue sky. Mark will never see it again. Nothing is left but the munching of the children, their sad eyes, the silent kitchen. Blum forces the images of the sea back into her mind the way she wants to remember them; she wants to go back to yesterday, back to the boat, back to his warm skin. That’s where she wants to be. She can’t get there. She has to hug her children, play with them, read to them, she has to look after them. Until their little eyes close, until night rescues her. Then she will go to those images. Then, not now.

She looks at his ruined body, his injured skin. They have cut him open and sewn him up again, they have opened up his head, they’ve tested his blood and internal organs to ascertain whether he was under the influence of drink or drugs; they wanted to make sure that he was not to blame. After her collapse, he had been taken to the forensics lab. No one wanted to make a mistake. It was up to the investigators and the public prosecutor to decide whether there should be an autopsy in the case of a hit and run, and the public prosecutor had decided to cut his skull open, remove his brain, open his ribcage like a shopping bag, and stitch it up again. They have left him looking worse than before, even more wounded.

Blum wants to be alone with him. She has asked Reza to leave them. She doesn’t know what will happen, whether she will weep and scream. She doesn’t know anything any more, except that her husband is lying motionless in front of her, naked and dead. Like all the others she has tended to over the past twenty years. Corpses, lifeless bodies with open mouths, torn away from life. But she has never had to shed tears, never felt pain and grief, never. Death is an everyday thing for Blum, it doesn’t frighten her, or at least it didn’t until now. This time is different. Entirely different. Everything she’s ever seen in her life is a joke, ridiculous compared with what lies before her now.

All she can do is stand there, surveying his torn, hollowed corpse. She can’t cry yet. The dried blood, his face that, as if by miracle, has been preserved intact. Blum’s eyes move over his body; it is all familiar to her. She has kissed every centimetre of his skin. She loves every centimetre of him, so much that she doesn’t know whether she can go on living without him. She stands there, looking, breathing, swallowing. She wants to die so much, simply to be done with it all, to feel nothing any more. She doesn’t want to be reminded that life was once good, that she was happy. Blum feels like bashing her head against the wall, smashing it a hundred times against the white tiles, she wants the pain to stop, she wants the knife in her breast to stop burrowing and digging and cutting. She wants to be dead like him.

She works in her usual way, as if operated by remote control. All of a sudden she sets to work preparing him. Rubbing the blood away from his skin with cotton wool and albumen solution, she cleans his injuries, lovingly treating them all. Her hands do not tremble as she stitches up his wounds, she tries to reconstruct everything; she opens the stitches on his head, removes clotted blood and carefully stitches the cut up again. She puts him back in order as best she can. She fills deep wounds with cellulose, restores the distorted parts of his body to their proper shape, washes his hair and blows it dry. She shaves him. Blum goes about her work. For a split second she even forgets that it is Mark lying there, that it is his mouth she is closing for ever, exactly as Hagen taught her. She inserts a curved needle into a fold of skin behind his chin, runs it through the soft palate, brings it up below the right-hand side of his upper lip and into his right nostril, and out again into a small fold of skin by his septum. Then she puts the needle through the septum into the left nostril, and takes it back in the opposite direction, through the left half of his upper lip and down. She stitches his mouth up, a mandible ligature just as she has learned to do. It is the most natural thing in the world for her to run the needle back through his chin, pulling the jaw shut with the ends of the thread and tying the knot, forming his lips into a smile. She stares at those lips, and begins to cry. Her tears collect on his skin. Then she forces herself to go on and bandage his head to hide the wounds. Next his clothes. With great effort, she gets him dressed. His body is heavy, but even without Reza’s help she rolls him on to his side. His broken legs. His favourite trousers, his white T-shirt.

Blum climbs up on the preparation table and lies down beside him. She can’t help it, just one more time. She will lie beside him, hold his hand, feel him very close before he disappears underground. Only briefly, no one will see. Reza won’t come back, Karl will not come into the preparation room either, they are alone. Two bodies fitted snugly on the narrow table. Blum’s fingers are entwined with his, but they don’t move, however hard she squeezes them. However much she wishes they would, there’s no movement, only his cold skin, something like closeness this one last time, a memory of times past before she puts him in the coffin. Before they come to see him for the last time: Reza, Karl, their friends, the children. They will say goodbye to him tomorrow, everything will take its familiar course, the body on show, the blessing, the burial. They will lower him into the grave and shovel earth into it, he will decompose in an oak coffin, be eaten by worms. Soon there will be nothing left but the bones, and later not even those. But now his hand is still in hers. She can still touch him, feel him, he is lying beside her, his body, his face. He is still there, just for a night, only for a few hours. So she stays where she is. She makes no noise, tries not to breathe, she holds her breath, desperately trying to catch some sound, some small sign that he is still alive, only asleep. But there’s nothing apart from her breathing, the rise and fall of her ribcage. Only Blum and her dead husband. Only her thoughts, her pain, her rage, her despair, her own heart burning, crying out. Blum and Mark. Mark eradicated, just like that.

Massimo is weeping. His wife stands beside him, and Karl next to them. Blum and the children are standing beside the grave, right at the front, throwing sunflowers into its depths. The yellow petals lie on the coffin, a comforting image but just for a moment. Flowers for Papa. The sight of the flowers hurts; the hurt is even greater than it was at first, now, after three days without him. Three days in which they have been searching desperately for their ordinary lives. Reza was at the helm, organising everything. He was there for Blum, for the children, for Karl. But for him the boat would have capsized. He is strong, he doesn’t shed tears, but his smile has disappeared, the smile that had come to his face years ago when his life at the villa began.

Reza helped to carry the coffin; he coordinated everything, drew up the death announcement, organised the funeral. Blum didn’t have to worry about anything because Reza was in charge; she could devote herself to the children, to taking their minds off sad subjects, preparing them, explaining step by step what would happen. Trying to tell them that the coffin will simply disappear into the ground. That death is a part of life and takes what it wants, like a wild beast tearing apart a sheep. A car coming out of nowhere. Sunflowers falling. She put it in prettier, less truthful terms, not wanting to frighten the children, wishing to spare them.