Chapter 56
There has always been a part of her that knew it would come to this. Burying her husband.
They had never discussed it over the years, but the knowledge was there regardless: that Gregor would be the one to die first – to die first again – and that Jasmina would live long enough to live without him.
It was not a feeling based on health or risk, but on fate.
There had always been a sense that her husband was living on borrowed time. They had both known it.
In some ways, it had helped. It had made every day precious, and cast even the quietest of loving moments into gold.
But it leaves her worse than empty now. It is as though, having known this was to come, even more should have been made of the time they’d had together.
Even though that makes no sense, because you can never have loved anybody enough to make up for their sudden absence.
You must think of the good memories.
That was what her sister Corinna had told her this morning, in the car on the way to the chapel.
She meant think not of the manner of his death but the manner of his life, and the life they had lived together.
Jasmina has been doing that, of course, but it does not help in any way.
Thinking of that life only reminds her it is over, just as happy memories of her daughter’s life inevitably bring her to the vast hole of that absence.
What good does it do to recall happy memories from the past when the future is empty? Better to think of nothing at all.
Already, she has cleaned the house from top to bottom. Already, her beautiful husband’s shop is immaculate, as though at any moment he might return and place a pan of rattling wax on the cooker.
You must think of the good memories.
In the car, she had squeezed her sister’s hand, pressing her own against its good intentions.
Just as she does now, seated at the front of the chapel.
The coffin is larger than she has been expecting. It would have to be, of course, to hold him.
The casket is closed, but a photograph of him rests on top.
In the picture, he has a full head of black hair and a thick moustache, and although it is a photograph primarily of him, you can make out – if you know – the faces of his wife and daughter squeezing in from the sides to touch their cheeks to his.
He is smiling. However haunted he might have been – whatever omens hung above him – at that moment he was happy.
Behind them, there is the hush of movement – of bodies gathering – the sound of suits brushing suits, of throats cleared politely, of quiet, understated talk that forms a soft sea in the air.
Jasmina turns to watch the rows filling. So much black. There is love in this room too, but it has nowhere to go anymore, like a lost animal.
Death is disgusting, she thinks, turning back. Despite their inevitability, there are too many funerals in this world, because even one is too many. Their inevitability is the tightest knot of life.
Corinna leans in and asks quietly:
‘Are you all right?’
She nods once. ‘Yes.’
It is true in the sense that it matters – she will survive this. She has survived a great deal, and this will be no different.
At the front of the chapel, the priest is waiting patiently; he catches her eye and smiles gently.
She does her best to return it. It is different for him, perhaps, being a man of confident faith.
Jasmina is not sure what she believes anymore, although she has always tried to respect her husband’s worldview.
He believed, as much as he could – though again, perhaps it was easier for him, given his second life.
Regardless, it is not too much to hope that he is in heaven now, beginning a third, and that whatever impenetrable purpose God kept him alive for is over now.
Even if nobody can ever know it.
Even if they would never be able to understand it if they did.