The story now turns to Bohemia, where a sad paterfamilias named Michael Liebesmann, with three young daughters in attendance, watched his dear wife’s coffin descend into the grave. All the neighbors were there, of course; even the butcher was weeping; I wonder if she owed him money? The priest gave a particularly fine sermon, and in signification of another kind of future consolation, there was visited upon Michael the full-lipped yet narrow smile of his widowed neighbor Doroteja, who wished to become his second wife. At the end, as was customary in their region, the members of the bereaved family masked themselves, and returned home circuitously, in order that the abandoned corpse could not follow them.
According to the astrologers, on that very night the moon had entered her seventh mansion, called Alarzach, which is good for lovers. And just before it set, while the children slept and Michael sat sadly in his doorway, his wife flitted back to him.
Among the reasons we ought to be grateful to death is that not until we lose the one whom we love can we feel how much we’ve loved her. Grief’s wound lets light in! According to the Book of Revelation, it is a very particular species of light. I refer you to that certain half-hour on a summer’s mid-morning in Torino when the charwomen are all finishing along the Corso Re Umberto, so that the floors of those squarish passageways they’ve tended, be they marble, mosaic-tiled or ordinary concrete, all glisten with comparable preciousness; and the walls, painted in burgundy and Naples yellow, achieve greater brilliance than they ever will again (until tomorrow, tomorrow); this goes especially for their far ends, which hint of sunlit courts. For we dwell within ourselves, losing sight, as Plato says, of the darkness; and when Death creeps up silently behind us on his bony tiptoes, strangles our cohabitant, and wrenches her outside of our flesh, we cannot but see that golden morning beyond us, which most of us fear more than Death himself. The light is nameless, while the wound is called loneliness. In time we teach ourselves to forget the light, straightening up within our bodies so that our soul-faces resume residence within our skulls; and that clotting gash in the chest (not mortal this time, evidently) admits the light only vaguely now; anyhow, it’s so far below our chins as to pose no inconvenience;* and the charwomen set down their buckets, stretch, massage their aching hips, shield their gazes with dirty sweaty hands and peer down those corridors which they’ve mopped for ever so many thousands of times; and while the light remains as hurtful as ever, the tunnels and corridors have dulled now, and the charwomen turn back into themselves, permitting me to do the same; in short, I follow a pair of immaculate policemen as we cross the Piazza Solferino untroubled by the red traffic signal. Such is light; such is life; and so the philosophers explained to me while we sat beneath Italian flags in Torino; and a double-chinned lady trolled through her magenta purse without looking, while a man in very dark sunglasses picked her pocket.
In short, Michael was lucky to get his wife back after bereavement taught him how to value her. But could he remember how precious she was?
Her eyes shone dully at him like copper coins in an algaed pool. She seemed very weak. Her cerements were stained with dirt, urine and blood. He took her hand, which resembled cool yellow marble. No one else was out, it being, appropriately, the witching hour. Tenderly he conveyed her to a secret place in the river-reeds, stripped her and himself, and bore her into the water, squatting down to lay her across his knees, with his right arm cradling her neck and his left supporting her ankles, and so he held her, singing her name to her while the filth oozed out to darken the water downstream. He rocked her in his arms, combing clean her long hair. Frantically kissing her drooping, bloody wrists, supporting her drooping head, he whispered loving secrets into her ear. Finally, he carried her to the grass and laid her across his lap. He massaged her with chicken-fat, arnica and lavender. Then he pulled her Sunday dress back over her, lifted her into his arms, and conveyed her into the hayshed where the children would not see her. In the corner where the forage was freshest and softest he laid down a bedsheet, which he tucked around her, then walled her away behind heaps of hay. Her eyes shone like candles, because she knew how much he loved her.
He kissed her and kissed her, fearing that she had fled him. At last she reopened her eyes.
He asked what death was like, and, just as the lid of an anthropoid Egyptian coffin slowly levitates, at first proffering nothing but a wedge of darkness, no long brown mummy-fingers yet, she parted her lips to speak. Terror poisoned him. She said, almost angrily: Are you sure?
Yes, Milena, I wish to know — for your sake…
Very well. You’ll find yourself choking in your tomb, however large it might be. Even an Emperor learns that his sepulcher is no refuge.
What is it, then?
A torture chamber to kill the dead.
Upon her breath was the bitter smell of sand. As he stood appalled, she sought his hand, whispering: Save me; don’t make me go back there! Do you promise?
I promise.
Thank you, husband.
Now tell me what happened to you.
Nothing.
And then what?
Then suddenly I missed you so much that it was worse than dying. I was blind and paralyzed, but aware. I wanted to be dead and not yearn for you, but I couldn’t be, and if I had been, the grave would have begun torturing me again. Then I felt a pain in my right breast as if a rat were eating me; and worms bored into my eyes. Through the holes they had made, I could see, and through the hole in my breast, my heart could drink from the moon. So I came to life again. See, Michael — feel my heart!
She laid his hand on her yellow-white breast, smiling pitiably.
Can you feel it beat?
Yes, he lied, kissing her blue lips.
Michael?
What is it, darling?
I think the sexton stole my wedding ring.
Let him keep it.
What will we do?
I don’t know, he said. But he did know the following: Since he loved her, he would not return her (at least not prematurely) to that, her coffin-prisoned head staring up forever into vile darkness.
But then matters got worse, for Milena said: It’s about to get light. I need to hide—
God’s sake, what do you mean?