Kateryna Kalytko "God in Town"

Kateryna Kalytko was born in 1982 in Vinnytsia. Graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy having majored in Journalism. Has published four books of poetry and one book of prose, "M(h)ysteria" [2007], from which the short story "God in Town" was taken. Currently lives in her native town. Besides being a writer, she is a translator from Balkan languages and a photographer.

Original Ukrainian text of the story

GOD IN TOWN 

by Kateryna Kalytko

My funeral is fixed on Sunday. It’s not much of a day for a ceremony like this. But it cannot be helped; I died on Friday, and with the heat wave we’ve got, there’s no time to linger. I never knew how to lay plans for days ahead, with sang-froid. And so I died unexpectedly, suspiciously silent, on Friday night in the midst of summer when most decent citizens are on holidays or trips.

The one who feels worst now is my husband. When I was already gazing at myself standing six feet off the bedstead (just like they show it in movies), he brought me some warm drink and tried to tuck up my plaid. Now he’s weeping like a child, his face even turned blue. I should tell our son to keep an eye on dad and not to let him take too much Valocordin, but how could I do that without scaring both of them to death? I keep sitting in the armchair, cross-legged, and watch my husband sobbing on his knees next to my bed, rocking back and forth like a sleepwalker, and throwing his arms around his head. My poor boy. I would even return into my body to soothe him, but the corpse already seems cooled down and somewhat shrunk, so I might not fit in it. What really hurts in a situation like this is that I can’t, say, stroke him on a cheek, adjust his hair, or kiss him. In fact, I can do all that, but he will not feel anything. This is very bad. I have to do something about it.

The most terrible thing, however, is not death itself or the pain of losing the nearest and dearest, which remains blunted and not fully acknowledged for the first few days, but all those fussy chores one should pass through while arranging the journey to the other side for the loved one. All that running about, the worthless customs, formalities, and unnecessary paperwork. The smell of strange people and wood and varnish from the coffin. The rustle of fake flowers on wreaths. And that ghastly funerary band; when they strike their first notes, your poor heart would pop up, hit against the roof of your mouth, bathe in blood, and collapse like a stone falling out of (beg you pardon) your anus. However, as I was alive, I think I’ve made myself clear enough that I never wanted any band music at my funeral.

Death is not a terrible thing, it’s just heavy. With every death of a friend or in the family, you lose a part of yourself and should get lighter and lighter until the wind would throw you up in the air; but in fact you get heavier as the gravity clings on to you, not letting you go ever again. But as for fear, there’s nothing to feel it about. Our dead stay, as it were, actually dead only for those few days when they lie in their coffins under the roofs of their homes. All the rest of time they are alive, inside of us and by themselves. Of course, my boys still have to face the sheer emptiness on returning from the cemetery, when they’ll have to walk on the crushed flowers scattered in front of my coffin hours before, to pick a plastic daisy from the anteroom floor, to wash away the three tiny spots of blood that fell on the pillowcase as I coughed for the last time, and then to recollect the rubbery resistance my arm gave as they were putting my favorite sweater on me. But to make all those and many other things happen, they have to go into the hardest spurt of arranging my funeral.

Having plunged out of the huge wave of primary shock, my husband crawls to the telephone and sits down on the floor in front of it; he has to call the ambulance and to have my death certified. The receiver lets out long dark grey signals. “Levko”, my husband calls out to the kitchen, “call the ambulance with your mobile; something seems to be wrong with the phone”. My son dials the number and puts his cell phone to his ear. In the meantime, Slavko staggers across the room stopping all clocks. “No answer, Dad”, says Levko showing his phone to him helplessly. “They must be watching the game, it’s Dynamo vs Shakhtar on now, and there must have just been the deciding goal". My husband runs to the phone, cursing. Only fifteen minutes later they pick up. “What’s the address? How old was the deceased? We’ll bring the officer along. Wait.”

I even like the girl who comes to certify my passage to the other side. She flips through my medical history, listens to my husband’s tale, then examines my body from a safe distance and nods at the officer who stands in the anteroom, meaning to say that the woman has died of natural cause. The relieved officer takes a cigarette out of his pocket and vanishes into the doorway. The girl follows him, then stops and tells my boys to tie my open jowl with a kerchief before the onset of rigor mortis. She expresses compassion and even tries to jerk a tear. I will remember bright spangles on her blue sandals.

My Slavko, totally exhausted, has to pick up the receiver once more; they should notify some more people of my death, at least my old aunt. They must find eight men to carry the coffin and its lid, the women to cook the funeral dinner and tie towels on the arms of people in the funeral train, and relatives to sit the night at my body, and lots of other people who will scrap together all those ancient traditions we have lost on the concrete ground. The aunt sobs. Then, I have to be washed and dressed, striped mats for other people's feet have to be laid over carpets, mirrors and other reflective surfaces have to be covered. “Haven’t we forgotten anything, Levko?” To stay at home awake all night long, with lights on and chests full of nippy cold. That’s all.

My husband meets the dawn flipping the book of Márquez. He tries to find the passage in Love in the Time of Cholera where Dr. Urbino climbs the tree to catch a parrot and falls off the ladder; he wants to read what happened next, how his wife got over his death, how she felt sleeping in the empty bed alone, burning her husband’s clothes, and giving away his belongings. The suddenly lonely Slavko tries to find someone else’s story akin to his own and to rest on it as if on a crutch. To try and hold the world that crumbles like a tooth lacking calcium. The book cover falls apart in his hands and pages scatter.

Levko rubs his red eyes with his fist and gets dressed. “I’m going, Dad. I got to go to the cemetery, order the place, arrange the time for funeral, hire diggers. Buy the coffin and wreaths from me and you.” Gotta do this. Gotta do that. Slavko nods. As the son goes out, he leaves the door slightly ajar; they say it should be so if there is a recently deceased in the house, so that anyone could get in and say farewell. And so they do get in; a whole bunch of stinky tattered Gypsies infiltrate the apartment. They sweep off the money left on the desk yesterday, Slavko’s watch abandoned on the vanity table, some petty jewelry, and then they disappear blabbering on the way before the bewildered Slavko manages to rise from the armchair. He starts twitching all over. Pressing his hand to his forehead he walks towards the door to lock it and stumbles into four men in black standing in the doorway. They are private morticians. They have learned our address from yesterday’s death certifiers. Stepping back, the totally flabbergasted Slavko lets them in. The four enter and form a rank like well-drilled soldiers. Even the buttons on their coats and their bootlaces look mournful. Their chief steps forward, breaks into a huge Hollywood smile and says: “Good afternoon!” Slavko stares at him blinking silently. He blinks so vigorously that the visitor finally realizes that the demon of aggressive marketing has prompted him something way too wrong this time. “I’m sorry”, he mutters as his glance crashed into the floor. “Of course, there’s hardly anything good about it. I mean nothing good at all. My condolences, but— In a word, would you like a nice coffin, exclusive arrangement of the ceremony, a qualified director, wreaths, flowers, and more? We can provide all those services.” To get rid of those men in black, one could do a number of tricks, but the crushed Slavko simply puts their phone number down and promises to consider the things. The four tarry on the doorstep and then leave, reluctantly. Slavko locks the door and, with a groan, crawls onto he couch where my body lies and curls into a coil next to it. They say it’s a subliminal desire to return into embryonic state.

Meanwhile, Levko is going through another rather unpleasant mission; buying wreaths at the market called Osiris. As the name suggests, this market specializes in goods that facilitate the transfer into the realm of shadows. The saleswoman with mascara smeared under her eyes and lips nearly black with lipstick looks quite otherworldly as well. The wreath ‘From Husband’, that is from Slavko, is already in the boy’s hands, now he wants another one, from himself. Once they used to make those captions in golden letters over the bands, and that was done by persons with perfect handwriting skills. Now, the messenger of Osiris grips the black marker: “What should I write? To Dearest Mama from Son?” — “Huh? What?” — “To Dearest Mama from Son.” — “To De-e-earest Ma-a-a-ma, er— from Beloved Sonny, eh?” — “No, just Son.” — “Why don’t you want From Beloved Sonny? They all write it like this!” — “I just want it to be simple!” — “You’re a bit weird, I tell ya what. I’ve just made a ‘From Beloved Sonny’ for that man over there, and he’s happy, alright.” She nods aside. Levko follows her glance instinctively and sees a man in dark-colored clothes, a suspiciously neat shirt, with a wreath marked ‘From Beloved Sonny’ in his hands. The man looks at his watch, then, he fixes his eyes on my son. “I think I saw him somewhere”, they both think at this moment. And then Beloved Sonny comes up to my son. “Could you help me find 15, Panas Myrny Street?” My son coughs nervously. I can understand his surprise as that is our address, and nobody else but me is dead there now.

One can make sense of the situation if one sees what Slavko is doing in the meantime. While Levko is away, my ex calls him on the phone to present his condolences. As they notified my aunt of my death yesterday, now the whole wide world is dejected by the sad news. “Well, you, little dick”, says my ex to my husband (Slavko is younger than him, indeed). “So, little dick, how does it feel now?”

Years ago, I used to have a husband Myrko and his son Olko. There was a phantom of harmony, decencies and family life that seemed warm; days followed days, our son was growing up, and the morning bags under my eyes were growing heavier. Every morning the ceiling lowered a bit further, just a petty hundredth of a millimeter, but steadily and inexorably. I applied for a divorce only when I felt that my reflection in their eyes looked like a cloud of mist that could be dispersed by a single puff. The court adjudged all the jointly acquired property to Myrko. Olko, who was about to leave school that year, scolded me and wished to stay with father. Later, we accidentally met in town, at parties, in financial and community service establishments, at alumni reunions, even at the Easter vigil once. Every time we found less common things in each other. And then I met Slavko, and later, we had Levko. They shaped a human being out of the cloud of mist again. And now Myrko is telephoning Slavko.

Amongst all other things, he inquires acidly about our financial state. Thank God, they didn’t have to borrow money for the funeral. I always earned enough due to the royalties from my development. As a matter of fact, I invented— But let’s not talk about this now. I met Slavko at a press conference after my invention was patented. That time I was in the climax of divorce proceedings. “Can’t you see that kid wants your money? Only your money, can’t you see? He’ll use you and dump you!!!” that’s what Myrko was shouting, stamping his feet and pulling buttons off his shirt dramatically. I managed to knock him out asking whether he really did not care for my money himself and whether the outburst of his rage was truly altruistic. A year later I married again. And now, as Slavko sees it, Myrko wants to square all accounts at once. “My son’s coming over to your place”, says Myrko menacingly and hangs up.

My son Levko is standing in the doorway looking at Slavko, his father, both are utterly confused. Of course, Slavko saw my son Olko a lot of time before, but now it turns out so unexpected that thoughts and situations run asunder like startled cockroaches, and he feels that he cannot manage them all at the same time. And Levko doesn’t know how to tell dad that cemetery administration refused to allocate two plots of land together; the city necropolis is expanding, most land has already been seized, and father is eager to be lying next to mother when his time comes. “What shall we do, Dad?” The news make Slavko silently slide to the floor. My heart aches for him, if I dare say so now that I’ve got no bodily heart, I even take the liberty of stroking his head, but Slavko thinks that his hair is stirring because of horror and feebleness. And then Olko joins in.

“There’s no issue that cannot be solved”, says he in a voice that allows no objections, in his father’s trademark manner. “I’ll sort this bullshit out, no sweat, but I gotta warn you that my father wants to reserve a place by mother’s grave for himself, not you. In fact he wants to find three plots next to one another; he's gonna be buried in the middle, my mother right of him, and Olena Serhiyivna, my stepmother, on his left. Dad wants me to build a family crypt on that place someday. Do you follow me?”

It’s only the arrival of the movers who have brought the coffin that inhibits the blowup. They carry it into the house where three men are standing in sinister silence. The movers put the coffin on the living room floor and cross themselves, glancing at my corpse. “Who’s the master here? Is that you?” the elder one nods at Slavko. “Well, then—” Slavko staggers to the kitchen and brings a glass of vodka. They drink from it by turns, wipe their mouths with their sleeves, mutter a may-she-rest-in-peace, and exit. No sooner has the lock clicked than the flat shatters into pieces behind the door. Slavko throws the empty glass to Olko’s feet; Olko jumps away from the fountain of shards; Slavko advances towards him. “What does your father think he’s doing? To lay women all around himself even when he becomes the worms’ fodder?” Slavko yells. “What else is he gonna take along? Drag all his possessions into the grave too, eh? All the things he ever touched in his life? Will he even order you to bury yourself alive in the family crypt? Come on, speak up!” Olko tries to maintain his dignity. “Father loves my mama”, he says. “Loves her? Bullshit! Where was his love when she was alive, and he treated her like dirt? And why didn’t he remain single all these years, but married again?” Slavko throws his arms. “And now you say he loves her?!” Slavko casts a glance at my cold body, his voice fades, and he starts crying. “Father loves my mama”, repeats Olko firmly. “And they will be buried side by side”. “No way! No way!” Levko mutters with his whitened lips and rushes towards Olko. And then someone rings the doorbell.

In every house, there’s an activist who’s always the first to learn all news, who collects the freshest rumors and hangs them out to dry in the kitchen, and always knows what is to be done in any situation. Sometimes there are several guardians like this. And now a crowd of neighbors turns up at the door; somebody has already walked around all apartments and collected money from those who were at home, not in Alupka, Antalya, or the village of Antonivka; a wreath has already been bought even though we didn’t ask for it. I say we, as I got used to saying, because I haven’t got away from Slavko and Levko. We will always be us. Of course, it’s nice that all neighbors have come to suavely bid me farewell, all except one, named Dusya, who’s lying in bed, sick, also because of me. I think I’ve told that I died unexpectedly, and that is why Dusya was terribly scared when she noticed the coffin lid next to my door. She says she saw me only two days ago, coming back home from shopping. Such an odd thing. Two days ago was two days ago.

“But why haven’t you put her into the coffin yet?” squeals one of the neighbors, a plump lady, looking at the three red-faced men who wheeze heavily. “And have you invited the priest to the funeral? And have you—” “She was such a good person”, someone in the corner sighs. “So she was, and, you see, people like her are getting scarcer these days”, comes a voice from another corner. Slavko and Levko accept condolences with dignity, they thank everybody trying to restrain themselves and not to let out a bit of fury that makes the palms of their hands turn green. Neighbors lay flowers to my feet and disappear one by one, silently. Some of them even wipe away quite natural tears. Damn, I like it.

As soon as they leave, Levko runs to the kitchen and brings three stools, on which he and Slavko install the coffin. They cover its inner part with lacy fabric, grab me and lay me inside carefully, as if trying not to break my sleep. Levko weeps quietly, his tears drop off the tip of his nose. And my elder son Olko, left alone for some time, drags out his mobile phone. “Sirozha, you hear me?” he speaks into it. Olko asks the mysterious Sirozha to get the cemetery supervisor and find out if there are any old abandoned graves, over which they could make a new burial. “Sirozha, you know, money’s no problem. No problem, tell ‘im that”.

The air Olko has put on is meant to say that it’s Slavko and Levko who’s got problems. Perhaps somewhere out there, Olko’s father, all doubled up with rheumatism, is rubbing his hands together as he’s wont to, thinking that he couldn’t break them down when I was alive but now that I’m dead he shall do it. You find it sounds too bombastic? I don’t think so. You just don’t know what Myrko is like. But here, in our home, we have got Olko instead. “You jerk!” my Levko attacks him. “It’s his father who’s the true jerk!” Slavko explodes again. There’s not much room in the apartment; my coffin is placed in the center; a pretty good coffin, I must admit, neat and clean, varnished, pleasantly cherry-colored, with no foofaraws (they’ve guessed it right); at my head, there’s a candle in a wine glass filled with buckwheat to keep it steady; a TV set covered with towel is in the corner, flowers are in a vase, wreaths are leaned along the wall (“To My Beloved from Her Husband”, “To Dearest Mama from Son”, “To Dearest Mama from Beloved Sonny”, “To Our Dear Neighbor”.) Levko and Olko lean over the coffin, grab each other’s shirt front and start dancing sideways like game-cocks, and my husband is dancing between them trying to hold the coffin and not to let it fall off the three stools it’s mounted upon. After a few minutes’ rumble Olko tears himself away and gets locked in the bathroom. His phone rings. That’s Sirozha.

From the cemetery supervisor, Sirozha has learnt that there is an old family sepulcher, just for three. In fact, an old woman used to visit the place, but for the last three years, she did it too seldom, so the graves got overgrown with grass and sunken underground. The supervisor thinks that those graves can be bought as they don’t seem to be important. From his side, he promises to arrange all documents in apple-pie order. He's already managed to find that woman and she turned out not to be related to the buried but only hired to look after the graves and now she’s too old and feeble to do that. The son of the people buried in the ground Olko needs so much emigrated long ago, he happens to be at home too rarely, but the woman agreed to tell his phone number. And fancy that, Olko’s lucky star keeps on shining; the man is in town! He got back only yesterday. Without getting off the john, Olko dials the number, hellos into the receiver, and finally hears his expected interlocutor who turns out a harsh, even somewhat brutish elderly man. Of course, he won’t reject the money. The graves, huh? Well, he can think about them. Anyway, he’s abroad all the time. They could meet tomorrow. “Oh no, tomorrow’s too late, tomorrow’s the time for funeral, look how hot it is!” Olko sings into the receiver pleadingly. The earpiece responds that they can’t meet today because of the soccer game. “What game?” asks Olko bluntly. “Didn’t Dynamo and Shakhtar play yesterday?” “You idiot!” says the man abruptly. “To hell with Dynamos and Shakhtars! The good old Nyva of our town has been revived and it’s playing its first post-revival game today! I’m going there now, you see, soccer’s everything to me!” “Sure, I understand”, Olko says. "But you should understand me too—” “If you want you may come”, the receiver shoots out. “Meet you at the entrance to the stadium, fifteen minutes before the kickoff. Bye now”.

Olko’s no fool and he realizes that this is his only chance to fulfill the father’s errand. So much the more, it’s the matter of honor for him to work it all out in a tough and grown up way. Having barely buttoned his pants he jumps out of the bathroom without even flushing the toilet. He swerves into the living room and yells to my boys that he’s got it all sorted out, the place to bury me has been found, and they will be notified of the time of the funeral later. He disappears with a loud slam of the door. You remember what a leg feels like when it’s fallen asleep after long sitting? That’s what my Slavko and Levko feel like now. Silent and gloomy, they sit at my body. A moment of peace, at last.

We all worry about the beauty of our bodies escaping this world, we crave for leaving a vague illusion of an ideal, but in fact our deceased on the other side already know all of our most shameful secrets that are buried along with us in this world, so perhaps, it’s more important to put up a good show on the way out there.

I have always been a collection of heresies. I knew that God did exist but I didn’t know what he looked like or what he disliked. I always tried to anthropomorphize him and to bring him closer to myself. The abstract and imaginary God always slipped away from me. I did not put my trust in him and constantly awaited some perfidy from him. The last two days of isolation from the world only made that feeling deeper. When I came back from the store and went to bed with the sense of heaviness in my chest I felt no fear yet; so what, I just got rotten lungs, there was gonna be another bout of severe bronchial cough with bloody sputum and then it would go away. But having started it wouldn’t go away. I felt like asking God what it was and why. I managed to stop the smothering cough by warm drinks for short time. Then, I was lying supine and Slavko was kissing my hands and I felt that God was running away from me again, carrying the whole world in his pockets this time. Death by suffocation is the worst death imaginable. You can feel capillaries burst in your eyeballs and all your mucous membranes, feel your uneasy viscera stand still, feel your finger-pads stiffen and darken, feel the fatal compression in your throat— and at the same time, you feel the bitter betrayal of the people around you who can walk, talk, and breathe and breathe and breathe! And you are sinking deeper into your own abyss. But from that abyss, I finally saw God.

When I was able to get outside, my body was left in Slavko’s arms. And outside, there was God. He was letting swallows out of the palms of his hands and smiling. And everything was so light, festive, and true as it is on your fifth or seventh birthday. God was everywhere now, but not in that distant ‘everywhere’, in which he had been before. God was in town. Imagine me entering my favorite bookstore, sneaking in through the door after a late visitor; and God was there. I peeped through the window of my and Slavko’s favorite café; and God was there. I sat down on a bench in the park, and there he was, beside me, as you might guess. And what was most important, I no longer felt like asking him anything.

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you start doing something the things will work themselves out; the most intricate imbroglios will get disentangled and the heaviest stones will grow lighter? Of course, this is God too. I’m not preaching or something; I just always wanted to talk to someone who sees more than I do. Along with him, God carries lengthy lists of options to urgently rescue each one of us in particular; and the lists of things we can by no means survive and the debts we already paid and overpaid, too. Every night he browses through those lists and crosses off the items that have lost relevance. What if he looks into one of those lists right now?

“You know, sonny,” Slavko says suddenly. “While you were away, a couple of guys came from a firm. Some sort of firm that handles funerals, privately. What if we go to them?" “Where’s their number, Dad?” Levko cries. Both rush to the phone. They've got to hurry up. Olko has just met the owner of the abandoned graves, they've already walked to the stands having secretly taken along some vodka in a small Coca Cola bottle poked into pants and inside the plastic blow airhorn. They are sitting on the stands, gulping their first drinks, and Olko sets forth his problem to the interlocutor with his tongue stiffened by vodka. “Forget it,” his fellow retorts not taking his eyes off the pitch. “Hey, hey, you call that a shot, man? No worries, I’ll sell you the graves. I do get it all. The game will end and we'll make a deal. And now let’s have some more.”

They walk out of the stadium arm in arm, blushing and happy. They take four more beers at a stall by the entrance. The wander through the town and finally sit down on a fragrant flowerbed in front on the regional council. “The game was cool”, the foreign benefactor says, to which Olko agrees. “But the town is bitchy”, he continues. “But don't you worry, I do understand you. My ma died here long ago, and so did my dad.” “My ma’s dead too”, Olko says. “And there’s no place to bury her”. “A bitchy country. A bitchy town. So let’s make a revolution!” the son of the buried suddenly utters. “C'mon, let’s make it!" Olko yells.

Their preparations for revolution are scrupulous; they crawl in the nearby shrubbery, dig in garbage bins, pick up empty bottles holding polemics and even fighting over each of them with homeless gatherers. In the long run, they set bottles up in a line and start throwing them into the council windows. Well, everyone’s got his own vision of a revolution.

At the very moment they get arrested, my younger son is speaking over the phone with the suave funeral home owner who is telling him that they have managed to find a double scrap of land for us at the cemetery, however, this will cost twice as much, because the company has to buy it out from a young married couple who were presented that plot by their relatives for an anniversary. No problem, Levko shall agree to greater expenses. Alright then. If everything’s fine, they’ll come over to fill in the paperwork. My son puts down the receiver and runs to the bedroom where the money are hidden in the chest of drawers; his rush is so vigorous that he slips on the floor and falls down.

I got over the parting with my first family not easily, but without too much pain. On our last evening together, Myrko and Olko were watching some rare movie Olko’s friend had copied for him. Myrko’s friends came too. They invited me, but I was lying in the bedroom, suffocating, wishing but to be left alone. And when I felt relief I went out, though. They were drinking brandy and having fun. The couch and the three armchairs were occupied, and as I would not draw anyone’s attention I remained standing in the doorway until the end of the movie. Of course, I could turn around and walk away, but something made me stay, perhaps, the desire to have one more look at my husband and son, at least their backs. When I was about to leave, Olko called out to me: “Mum, there’s still some brandy left. Help yourself!” I suddenly felt so placid, not even dejected by the fact that I was leaving home like a poor companion. I was happy to go away. I only feel sorry now that when I’m buried Olko will be in the jug.

Now, I have to make my body ready for the last journey. The ceremony’s fixed on Sunday, eleven a.m. They say you can tell how many true friends you have got by the number of guests at your unexpected funeral party. It turns out that my friends are not so few, indeed. Slavko and Levko are bending over my coffin, straightening my already translucent fingers, and stroking my wrinkled skin, thin as cigarette paper. All dead faces are somewhat alike; they become sad and stern and acquire the ancestral traits of all the deceased kinsfolk. But my boys will surely know to remember me looking different. Here, they both are coming to the kitchen. Slavko pours himself, then Levko, a glass of brandy. “You see, son”, he says as his hand shakes, and the brown fluid spills. Levko put his arms around father’s shoulders. “You see, son, when she was lying here, at home, I had a feeling that everything could be mended. I sometimes even would forget everything and tried to step quietly, not to wake her up. And now they are going to take her away, carry her out of her own home, where she’s no longer a mistress; and how can I let them do that?”

It turns out that I am still able to cry. I feel like hugging them, falling prone before them, grasping their knees with my arms. I had two farewells with my family; and how different they were.

There will be a perfect funeral. There will be warm, caramel-colored air, an orchestra of crickets instead of a traditional brass band, no stupid funeral directors who recite life stories of the deceased in a whining voice and then break into a howl: “But behold whose hearts are the heaviest now; the dearest Husband’s and the Son’s, for they shall never see the beloved Wife and Mother again, they shall never hear her sweet voice again, they shall never look into her shining eyes again, for she is about to be buried in the ground and shall never, never, ever—” All that is a big lie and so it shall never happen. The grass chopped with spades will smell pungently. The wind will stir hair on the men’s heads. And of course, God will be nearby. If only Levko would not weep aloud. Then, there will be a pretty decent funeral dinner in a cafeteria next to the cemetery. And after that, they will start recalling me. Later still, my Slavko will sow flowers at his side of the plot and plant evergreen boxwood and set a bench for sitting at mine. And everything will be alright as we shall be ourselves forever.

And you know, I’m not feeling much worried. Firstly, I still have my lawful forty days to wander around the world and enough time to pack the most important memories I’d like to take along. And then I’ll be gone. I shall not be alone at the steps of the invisible station on the other side; the ones to whom the earthly Ukrainian railroad traditionally refers as receivers will be standing there. My mother and father, my grandpa and grandma. They will be standing there, bewildered and happy, as they once were at the steps of the nursing home when I was just brought out.

The sun squints playfully and sinks into a cloud casting prickly sparks all around. Slavko and Levko throw back their heads and stare upwards. Sunbeams spread out like a fan, and the sky shuts down. Like a child playing hide-and-seek peeps from behind a curtain, God is peeping from behind a cloud.


© 2009 Translated by Gennady Shpak