Victor Serge - Unforgiving Years

Don Gamelindo rode back to San Blas to purchase the coffins personally, for this task could be entrusted to none but the most dependable friend. Don Cuauhtémoc’s store, The Keys to the Kingdom, made sure to stock, along with ordinary coffins, a pair of deluxe caskets, big ones because a short customer can always be accommodated, whereas there’s no way around the opposite problem, is there? To each his size in this world, but once inside there, a human being’s got to have the room he needs! You can deny a man his rightful space in the sun, sir, but not in the grave! Don Cuauhtémoc knew that the Reaper tends to reap by twos, if not two the same day, then it’s within the fortnight, take my word for it. The twin body boxes were made of good pine lumber logged on the far side of the lake, upholstered in gray silk and embellished with brass handles. Don Cuauhtémoc and Don Gamelindo discussed the price for a leisurely quarter of an hour, taking alternate sips of tequila, for its fiery taste, and Coca-Cola, for its refreshing one; courtesy of the seller, of course. The negotiations were hard-headed but amicable. “That’s genuine silk, Don Game-lindo! Do you know how much real silk is fetching these days in town? No, you do not. Those brass handles, they don’t make ’em anymore! These are my last from before the war, compadre!” By the third little glass, Don Gamelindo had won a reduction of forty-two percent. Had he held out for two more glasses, he might have obtained fifty percent. But while Don Bruno was his dear departed friend, Don Cuauhtémoc had been his compadre for the past nineteen years. It was a good bargain for both of them and one from which Don Gamelindo, out of friendship, took nothing.

A mule cart driven by boys who whistled and sang and chucked small stones at one another or skimmed them over the lake, making as many as six bounces, transported the deluxe caskets under a hard, festive sun.

Padre Maclovio, who had promised to come around four, trotted over on the back of his own mule, balancing the little suitcase with his vestments against the pommel of his saddle. He complimented Doña Luz on her improvisation of a simple altar in the dining room, where the two coffins lay open on the great table, surrounded by candles and flowers; such an abundance of flowers that their savage, heady scents masked the odor of corpses. It was a beautiful funeral, something rare in this parish where many poor folk and too many children die, but rarely people of means. To be fair, the Battistis were not rich, only comfortably off. A more active owner could have made himself a fortune out of that plantation.

Thoroughly estimable people, in any case: naturalized Italians who lived (or had lived…) quietly, never wronging a soul. Padre Maclovio was well aware that they were atheists, from reading too many books — the punishment of a fallacious science; but it is just that the Holy Church triumphs in the end, and it is just that her minister should intercede for the souls of hardened sinners. Once upstairs, these can do their own explaining.

Mr. Brown, whose recovery, quite possibly miraculous, made him the object of unanimous goodwill, faced up to the trying day with authentic courage — maintained by the alcoholic beverages and delicacies Harris made him ingest at regular intervals. He took several photographs of the deceased, promising to send copies only if the roll of film were not spoiled, as he had reason to fear it might be… “He that in life was Don Bruno Battisti” (as they say in this country) — the seasoned traveler, the indefatigable worker, the educated man, culto , the obliging neighbor — lay there, displaying a grave countenance of pacified strength. The dome of the forehead stood out, the acute convexity of imperfectly closed eyes concealed an enigma; the closed mouth suggested a faint expression of disdain. That’s what Harris thought, at any rate, during the hours he spent gazing down at the pair of them, arms folded across his chest, eyebrows knit, concentrating on the two inanimate faces. Daria was beautiful. How could a woman who was no longer young radiate such a youthful beauty, blanched by an invisible frosting of snow, modeled out of purity itself? She was smiling — just barely. It’s common for dead faces to smile, nothing but a muscular contraction apparently, but that glow of deliverance within the smile, where did that come from? Harris found the fragility of it echoed in the pale face of Noémi, who often stood next to him, chin in hand, huge eyes unmoving.

Her eyelids never blinked. Nothing about this sudden denouement had taken her by surprise, as though it were merely the fulfillment of her night’s dream. When Doña Luz carefully broke the news to her, she accepted it with childlike simplicity. Except that she seemed to dry up then and there, like a plant that has consumed its last sap. “It had to happen, Doña Luz, I’ve been expecting it for so long! But why was I left behind, why?” The old woman regarded such prescience as a gift that came naturally to the simple-minded. “You must give thanks to God, my little girl,” she said. “Oh no,” Noémi said harshly, with a peculiar laugh.

The burial took place during the late afternoon, in the desert cemetery where the dead of some thirty families sent into the wild lay sleeping along with several of the plantation workers’ children. It was Harris who insisted that the remains should not be moved to San Blas. “If I croaked here, I’d want them to put me to earth here too… They’d agree with me, you know they would!” The priest made no objection. Our perishable remains can rest anywhere, so long as the soul has been taken care of… It was an invisible resting place halfway up to Las Calaveras. A rugged slope climbing toward the sierra. The hillside contained pockets of soil which were impossible to farm, since they were deposited at random among sharp outcroppings of naked rock. Thus, a very big cemetery for a few scattered dead. Few crosses to be seen. A merciless sun quickly burned the flowers. Cactuses pushing up here and there. After the rains the field was covered in a glorious profusion of wildflowers, submerging the tombs, for this was only intermittently a graveyard! On All Saints’ Day the families who came to share the midnight meal with their dead enjoyed an incomparable seclusion; their fluttering candles seemed closer to other stellar worlds than to one another.

Don Bruno’s workmen dug a single pit. Padre Maclovio, in his white surplice, spoke the prayer. The women and children of the solitudes formed a speechless group. Monica and Doña Luz were supporting Noémi, who had no need of their support but who was murmuring, amazed, “Sacha, Sacha.” (At moments she imagined that none of this was real, that Sacha would turn up by and by, as he always had throughout life… Why should he be there?) Thirty clay-brown faces, tragically concentrated, were massed behind the important people: Don Gamelindo, Mr. Brown, Don Harris, and the elegant doctor in his gray gabardine coat. The rites performed, Noémi cast the first spadeful of earth — since they told her to — clumsily, between the two coffins. Doña Luz, like an ancient fairy with sharp, dark features and a silver mane, told her: “On your husband’s coffin, little girl” and guided her hand for the second shovelful. The oldest friend, Don Gamelindo, came next and acquitted himself like a true gravedigger — and what gravedigger could be better than the truest friend? He grunted “ugh” and the back of his neck turned crimson as he stooped to drive a spade deep into the dry, light earth. “ Adios , Don Bruno!” The whole circle heard his authoritative voice and the noble, machine-gun clatter of earth showering onto wood. But now Don Gamelindo realized that he did not know Daria’s first name, so he stepped back and wiped his face with a red bandanna so as to inquire it very quietly from Harris. Then, voice raised, he intoned “ Adios , Doña María!” and once again the earth fell nobly. Mr. Brown’s shaky shovelfuls made a stealthy sound, while Harris’s, rageful, produced a dull thud. The peons finished the job off energetically. Vultures circled low in the pink sky.