“How shameful for the firefighting force!” says the neighbor who has just called the police. In a matter of seconds they hear the wail of sirens and, soon afterwards, cursing the elevator that’s still out of order, two policemen appear, handcuff the firemen, and take them downstairs to the ground floor, out in the street, to the police van. Apart from their understandable annoyance at being mistaken for murderers (wrongly of the opinion that their innocence will be proven), they feel relieved to reach the ground floor.
•
The neighbor who was wearing the padded quilt dressing gown is now wearing a black dress and sitting in front of the coffin that is home to what’s left of her husband. From time to time she puts a handkerchief to her eyes and wipes a tear away. Her relatives keep her company: the brother-in-law (her husband’s brother), two sisters, her son and his fiancée. Not very far away are the neighbors, among whom the pianist enjoys pride of place; she thinks she has a certain right to the privilege, to a kind of superiority over the other neighbors and even over some relatives, especially the ones who are very distantly related—the firefighters were arrested in her house. Nonetheless, reasonably enough, the widow is the center of attention and is hugged methodically by everyone present.
When the funeral parlor staff arrives, everyone standing in the circle moves back towards the walls and creates a space around the coffin. When the staff closes the coffin, the widow bursts into a more intense bout of crying: she will never see her husband again, dead or alive. Her son gives her a hug, the funeral parlor staff carry the coffin on their shoulders as her sobbing reaches a crescendo. As the coffin exits the apartment via the door, the widow’s sobs reach an even higher pitch. They are all on the stairs now. One of the widow’s sisters locks the door and puts the key in her purse. The parlor staff climbs the stairs and slowly starts to bring the coffin down. There are lots of steps, and ensuring they don’t drop the coffin is a long, annoying process. Finally, however, they reach the ground floor, open the front door, and walk out. There is a strong, cool breeze. The funeral car is waiting in front of the door, loaded down with wreaths. There are so many that they’ve had to leave some on the ground—it’s impossible to fit them all in without them sticking out of the car, which is against the law. The staff makes one last effort and lifts the coffin inside. The funeral parlor staff dusts their jackets and gets into the car. The relatives divide themselves between the other two, incredibly immaculate cars. The pianist gets into the third car. She is the only person allowed in who isn’t a relative; she is truly very proud and watches the rest of the neighbors who remain by the front door, smiling half contemptuously. Some of the women are carrying handkerchiefs and wipe tears and snot away.
They have to drive across the city to reach the highway that will take them to the cemetery. They proceed in a caravan: the first is the funeral car. The other two drive behind in a strict single file. They scrupulously respect the traffic lights and drive very slowly. They take the main road leading to the avenue leading to the highway. There is a lot of traffic, and inevitably, some passengers in the cars overtaking them turn round and gawk. If they are children, their mouths are wide open with fear. It’s the first time many of them have seen a car carrying dead people, and they look at the coffin with terror: there’s a dead man in there. They finally reach the avenue. The traffic is flowing well now, and the further they drive, the fewer cars they meet. They drive like that for a few minutes until construction suddenly forces them to take a detour. The driver of the funeral car follows the signs, indicating the route of the detour, until gradually there are fewer and fewer signs and the driver has to use his intuition. He decisively takes a turn but finds it’s a dead end. He should back out, but the two cars behind him are jammed too close together and he can’t. He gets out of the car and asks them to back out, so they can take one of the side roads they’ve just left and try to get back to the avenue that should take them to the highway, or at least, to the signs. They back up: first the last car, then the second, and finally the funeral car, which accelerates ostentatiously as soon as it’s out the bottleneck; this has a negative impact both on the relatives and the pianist. The other two cars, nonetheless, follow on, screeching their tires. They are in an area of the city that’s full of shops. There are large industrial parks and (huge) parked trucks. The roads have names unknown to most citizens, them included.
The absence of traffic isn’t helpful. On the contrary: if there were traffic, if people were driving along these roads, they could ask someone how to get out of their impasse. They are suddenly forced to turn right and come to a beach that runs parallel to a road. It would make reasonable sense to head left, but when the driver of the funeral car indicates which way he intends to turn, the driver behind honks his horn. He lowers his window and says it’s a dead end. They should go right or back the way they came. Although it’s in the wrong direction, it is the only way to return to the signs. The driver of the funeral car acknowledges that he doesn’t know where they are, but deduces that as the metropolitan cemetery is more or less to the north, beyond the first ring of suburbs, they should head northwards along the road: that is, to the left. The few occupants who by this stage haven’t gotten out to voice their opinions finally do get out, slamming their doors. The son, the son’s fiancée, the brother-in-law, the father, the father-in-law, the mother-in-law, and the pianist have very clear ideas about what to do, even though they’re at odds with each other. The widow starts crying again. Finally they decide to take heed of the suggestion made by the driver of the funeral car, simply because they think he’s an expert: of the three drivers he is the only one who drives professionally. They return to their cars. They drive off. They head left along the road that runs parallel to the beach. They carry on for a mile or so, until the road runs out in front of a swimming club. The only asphalted exit is to the left, a road even narrower than the one they’ve just negotiated. They take it. That narrow road soon joins four other equally narrow roads, where there are a few homes. They are simply styled, century-old houses with a ground floor and an upstairs with a balcony and green wooden shutters. All the houses are painted white. The doors on the ground floor are made of glass and wood. They can see people inside: a man watching TV, a girl studying, a man repairing a radio, and a girl at a sewing machine. Some children are playing ball in the street. The driver of the funeral car stops, gets out, and speaks to the women sitting and sewing on chairs outside the door to their house. He asks them how to get off of these side roads and on to the highway. They raise their arms and point their index fingers to the road they’ve just driven up. The driver says that is precisely where they’ve come from and that they hadn’t been able to find a way off those roads. The deceased’s relatives get out of their cars once again. The deceased’s son suggests they drive back across the city, go south, along the other highway, the ring road around the whole city, to get to the north, to the small town where the cemetery is. The deceased’s brother doesn’t agree. They are north of the city. It is ridiculous to drive back across, simply to drive all the way around to where they are now. What they should do is not get into a panic and look for the street that leads to the highway. It must be very close to where they are now: One road or another is bound to lead there. The driver gets back into the funeral car, the others follow suit, drive to the next road, turn left along it, and the next one also to the left, trying to find the wider road that ran out by the swimming club and the beach. But there seems to be no way to get there, and they suddenly find themselves in a rectangular square. It is a square that bears the name of a general from a couple of centuries ago; planted in its center is a tall tree with a gnarled trunk, where two kids are trying to make the other fall off and where there’s no other road apart from the one they have just driven along.