Саймон Морден - The White City

He descended to almost the bottom, and turned to face the slope. He cut through the tough grasses and their long, fibrous roots, sawing with the machete blade until he could pull back a mat of vegetation. Underneath was grey-brown sandy soil, some of which spilled out of the hole, but as he dug further, it kept its shape and the sides didn’t slump into the void. He cut and pulled and dug and scooped, until he had a trench six foot long and a couple of feet wide, big enough to shove a body into, without much ceremony, and cover over again. If he went much further into the dune face, the ground would slip, and as well as working hard for no result, he’d be in danger of getting caught in a major slide.

So he stopped, thought it good enough, and went to collect the Wolfman.

He walked back to the beach, wondering how to do it. If someone died in Southall, the family gathered and the undertakers were called. Prayers were recited, the Guru Granth Sahib read, the body burned in the local crematorium and the ashes scattered into the Thames.

Death was, in reality, messy. There was the head wound, the hand wound, and the post-mortem bowel movement, none of which he wanted to get close to. He circled the Wolfman, lips pursed, and made an abortive grab for the wolfskin cloak. He pulled, realised it would simply come off in his hands, and let go again.

Mama frowned at him, and dipped her head towards the Wolfman’s feet.

‘Come with me, sweetheart,’ she said to Elena. ‘Dalip’s going to see to things here.’

Dalip waited for them to reach a respectable distance before reaching down and grasping the Wolfman’s ankles.

How much did a soul weigh? In the Wolfman’s case, it must have been a lot, because his mortal remains seemed incongruously light. Dalip dragged him away, face down, arms trailing, then at the top of the first dune sent him rolling down the landward slope to the bottom. The body tumbled and flopped, coming to an awkward rest on its back.

He stood over the Wolfman, staring at the way the sand clung to his grey skin and infested his glazed open eyes. Where had the animating spirit gone? Had it merged with the Godhead, as he hoped he would one day? Had it already been recycled as some base creature with no thought or consciousness? The tattered remains of the Wolfman were just that: discarded clothes, an empty husk, worn and used. There was nothing there to be mourned. He took hold of the ankles again and dragged the corpse up the next rise, before easing it down next to the freshly prepared grave.

It turned out that the Wolfman had been shorter than Dalip, which surprised him as he’d loomed very much larger. His feet, however, looked roughly the same size. He remembered a conversation with Mary, weeks ago, just after they’d arrived in Down. His own boots had been ruined by the fire, and she’d suggested taking someone else’s◦– after they’d died, of course.

And here they were, a dead man’s boots. Dalip stared at them for a while, before unlacing them and slipping them off. They were worn, and their construction was workmanlike. The laces were thongs, the sole thick tanned leather, the uppers soft and supple. He knocked them out, and tried them on. His own feet were hard with calluses, but it felt good to wear them.

It got Dalip to wondering if the boots were the only thing the Wolfman could offer him. He’d already started down that road. It would seem foolish not to take it to its logical end, even if it meant rummaging through a dead man’s pockets◦– distasteful, perhaps, but in a world where manufactured goods were at a premium, necessary.

He put his doubts aside, and started to peel back the layers of clothing.

There were a lot of them, accreted like paint on an old door. Some of them were almost dust, a few spidered threads suggesting the outline of a garment. Some were more substantial, and a few had items of note in them: coins of various ages, dull brown wheels of copper and blackened silver, impressed with the unreadable faces of kings and sometimes queens; jewellery◦– a chain, a bracelet, again tarnished to inglorious trinkets, a gold ring worn so thin its edges were sharp; a tooth, an actual tooth, roots and everything, with half its mass made of yellow metal.

Dalip guessed they were trophies of a sort, things taken from the Wolfman’s unwilling, unwitting victims as tokens of his prowess at lying, cheating and killing.

Then there was a white oval that sat in the hollow of his hand like a small egg. He frowned at its incongruous natural shape and its obviously artificial origin. Its surface was rough with a thousand tiny scratches, and there was an obvious finger-shaped dimple on the fat end so that it would sit up when placed on a table.

It wasn’t made of stone, more a hard plastic that was warm to the touch. He tapped it with a fingernail, and it sounded hollow. There was no obvious way in, no continuous line describing its circumference, no screw holes or cover to open.

There was no way of asking after previous owners, either, which gave Dalip a moment of wry, black humour.

‘Take your secrets with you, Wolfman,’ he said to the corpse. ‘We’ll work it out without you.’

He pocketed the items and arranged the body the best he could on its ledge. He took a double handful of dirt and cast it up. It settled in clumps, and he went back for another and another, scooping and flinging, until the human shape became softened and obscured. He hesitated for a moment when the last of the Wolfman’s face was about to be swallowed by the rising soil, then came to some sort of accommodation with what he was doing◦– burying a man that he’d killed◦– before finishing the job by relaying the square mats of scrubby plants he’d cut out.

He pressed them down, wiped his hands on his thighs, and acknowledged that he hadn’t done a bad job, considering that it was his first attempt.

But if burying someone who hated him and wanted to kill him had been hard, how much more difficult would it be for a friend, who he’d shared meals and journeys and captivity and escape with?

As he tramped back to the beach, his new-old boots unfamiliar on his feet, he thought again about cremation. The sheer amount of wood they’d need pretty much ruled it out for Luiza: the one he’d witnessed in India had had a bier of densely stacked cut logs almost as tall as he was, that extended out both lengthways and widthways beyond the body laid neatly on top. Anything less wouldn’t be sufficient to make ashes◦– and the memory of the thick black smoke spiralling away into the sky had stayed with him for weeks. He didn’t think that Elena was ready for that.

Then there was also the matter of a ceremony. Luiza was a Christian of some sort, while he most certainly wasn’t. Mama was, but he didn’t know what type. And he didn’t know how seriously Luiza had taken her religion. Not that she was necessarily going to care, because her soul had returned to the cycle of rebirth that included all of humanity. Or there was Heaven and Hell, neither of which he believed in.

He’d leave it to Mama. That seemed safest.

Dalip climbed back up the shoreward-most dune and stared out to sea. There was no sign of either Mary or Crows’ boat. He checked the sun, and was surprised to see it had slid around to the south-west. Hours had passed. He scanned the horizon again, from side to side, but there was nothing.

He ignored the ice-water feeling in his stomach, and slipped down the face of the dune to where Luiza was lying. Mama was with Elena down on the strand line, Mama’s arm over Elena’s shoulder, and looking determinedly away from the land.

He really didn’t want to have to do this, and yet there was no one else.

Was this what defined adulthood, then? Doing what was necessary? His own father was so mild and inoffensive, intent on passing through life with barely making a ripple, he couldn’t imagine the man doing what he was doing now. His grandfather◦– yes, he knew that he had, in those numerous jungle engagements conducted at almost point-blank range, where the enemy dead were hurriedly hidden in shallow scrapes in the ground.