Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“Will you all go in together?” asked the funeral director.

No, I wanted to scream. I don’t want to go in at all, and as far as I’m concerned I don’t think Ferdi should either. I don’t want to be even partially responsible for another source of lifelong pain for the boy. I didn’t put any stock in East European social conventions about kissing corpses. Please get me out of here.

But Tammy looked up at me with her eyes wide open.

“I’ll go first,” I said.

“Together,” she sighed.

The funeral director held the door for us. Ferdi squealed again from the squeeze of my hand. The scent of melted wax hit us. I realized that I’d been holding my breath.

Now we were inside. The funeral director closed the door. I turned around for a second, he was waiting at the exit with his hands folded and his eyes down.

I looked forward again and would like to have screamed.

Against the far wall was an open coffin. A man was sleeping there. Obviously I knew this man was my father and that he wasn’t sleeping. I tried to move toward him but my legs wouldn’t respond.

There was a click behind me and the sound of an organ filled the room. My father was lying in a coffin, he was dead, deader than dead, he would never be able to get up again. And yet he was just as I remembered him. Like a perfect replica, a wax figure. In all the years I hadn’t succeeded in forgetting him.

But I had forgotten Ferdi. He was no longer holding my hand. I turned around. He was standing next to the funeral director, watching me. Tammy was collapsed in the corner.

“Come, Ferdi,” I said. “We’ll go back out.”

He was at my side in a flash. I took his fingers, which were warm and sweaty and slipped trustingly into my hand. Together with him I could keep my feet under me. He pulled me forward adamantly, and I couldn’t do anything but follow him. He stood on his tiptoes and looked into the coffin. Then he let go of my hand to touch the lace blanket with which our father was covered to his waist. The blanket shifted.

“Ferdi,” I whispered, shocked.

“What is that?” He pointed with his little pointer finger at the scrape that our father had on his forehead. His finger hung in the air above the face, then it sunk and touched the skin for a moment.

“Cold,” said Ferdi.

“He hurt himself, but he can’t feel it anymore,” I mumbled. The longer I stood there, the more at ease I became. I no longer wanted to scream and run away. I looked down at the body of my father. He had on a suit, a white shirt, a white tie, that’s the way he always went to court and he put his robe on over that outfit. The tie was crooked. Without realizing what I was doing I reached out my hand and straightened it.

Ferdi walked around the coffin. His fingers ran across our father’s face again. Then without warning he stuck his finger into our father’s ear.

“Careful,” I whispered, but he ignored me. He walked a few more times around the coffin. His hands ran along the edge.

“It’s just a box, Ferdi.” I had the stupid feeling I needed to say something. Not for him, more for me to know that I could still speak. My voice, dulled by the organ music, sounded strange to me. He nodded; he could see it all himself. Then he stuck his hands in his pants pockets and pulled out several matchbox cars and a couple of already squishy chocolate bars. He parked the cars along his father’s tie; one fell, Ferdi rummaged around in the coffin to find it and pulled it out again.

“Ferdi, perestan !” Tammy had gotten herself together and was now standing next to us. I took a step to the side to let her in at the head of the coffin. She was trembling so badly that the floor beneath us seemed to shake. Everything trembled with her. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed her to stop her from shaking so much. She reached out a hand and touched the stubble on the dead face. She drew her hand right back, surprised by the coldness. Then she shook off my arm and threw herself onto my father’s chest.

She sobbed so loudly that I was afraid something might break inside her. I turned for a second toward the funeral director. He had left the room. I didn’t hear the awful music anymore, either. My young stepmother kissed the face of my dead father, and two feelings welled up in me that I did not know well. One was awe, and it filled me so thoroughly that I thought I might burst. The other was envy.

Tammy grew quiet and lay there with her head on the pillow, her cheek against his. Then she got up, wiped the tears from her face, and began to straighten up the blanket.

“Does he have shoes on?” Ferdi showed the persistence of a young scientist in trying to figure out a way to get a peek under the foot-end of the blanket.

“ Perestan ,” said Tamara. Suddenly it occurred to me that my father might be covered that way because the funeral director hadn’t clothed him below the waist, and I pulled Ferdi away from his feet.

“Why does he have his hands like that?” Ferdi fidgeted with his folded hands.

“He can sleep better that way.” Tammy’s voice wafted tenderly through the room.

“I don’t think so.” Ferdi tried to unfold the hands. And instead of barking at him Tammy suddenly started to help him.

“Come on, help us,” she said over her shoulder to me.

“No,” I said with the same resolve in my voice that I felt inside myself. I was afraid they would break something. I had no idea why I ended up helping them after all. It was futile, though: the hands were permanently wedged together, hard and cold, and suddenly I shouted. It felt like a finger had moved.

“What are you screaming for?” Tammy began to pull on the forearm, concentrating. Ferdi helped from the other side.

“I think he moved.”

She threw her head back and laughed. It echoed through the room.

“Ferdi, I don’t think we’re going to manage it,” she said. “We’ll leave him this way. It’s fine this way.”

Ferdi hung his arms dejectedly.

I had no idea how much time had elapsed. The door had opened and closed a few times. Tammy kissed my father a few more times and the smacks filled the room.

“Ferdi, do you want to as well?” she asked.

He nodded and I lifted him up. He touched the dead cheek with his lips. I put him back down. Christ, I thought, he’s only six.

“And now you.” Tammy poked me in the back.

“I don’t want to,” I said. I had long since crossed the line of what was possible for me. I wasn’t planning to stray any further beyond it.

“You have to.”

“I do not have to do anything.”

“You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise.” Tammy’s hand was still resting between my shoulder blades. I could feel its heat through my T-shirt. The room was cold.

To get her to stop, I bent down over the coffin. I wasn’t planning to kiss my father. I was afraid to. But the tip of my nose touched his and didn’t fall off, so I moved a little higher and felt his marble forehead beneath my lips. I couldn’t remember the last kiss he had given me.

I straightened back up with my eyes closed. It was burning beneath my eyelids.

Tammy handed me the sunglasses, which had fallen into the coffin when I leaned down. She took my hand and with her other hand held Ferdi’s. We stood for a moment in the doorway and all turned around together. My father lay in a coffin, next to him burned a meter-high white candle, and I thought that it was now time to leave him behind forever. Ferdi craned his neck to look at him even after we had passed through the door and were back in the sun. He kept turning around until the door closed. The funeral director was waiting next to a stone angel with his hands crossed and considerately avoided looking us in the eyes.