Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

He suddenly wonders — he has never thought about it before — whether a funeral has any meaning, that is, whether there is any real difference between being buried or not being buried, between being tossed nameless and alone into the mute maw of nature and this group farewell with chanting and wailing, so solemn, so formal, a combination of invoking the deceased, taking leave of him, and perhaps even longing to join him. Of course, symbols have a calming effect on both the dying and those who mourn them, but Blam is not interested in psychology; he is interested in the existence or nonexistence of an essential difference. Would he feel different about his parents, about Estera, about other relatives, or friends, like Aca’s brother, Slobodan, if they were buried here, in a cemetery, rather than having been tossed into a pit somewhere? Nor is he interested in the comfort that comes of a place you can go to once or twice a year or every month and mumble a few prayers — or not, if you are atheist, as he is. No, he is after something deeper. Would they seem more real to him if he knew where they lay? No, not seem, because that would mean going back to illusion and deceit. Would they be more real? Would he be able to derive strength from them, or would that strength be self-deception? Illusion, illusion everywhere, even in this painful question! He tries to picture their graves — stone after stone, all in a row and surrounded by grass — and himself standing and facing them, but it gives him no insight. They are silent now, like Aca Krkljuš, though it happened long ago and long before their natural time, though what is natural time, if Aca reached his because of a congenital disease or drinking too much? Death could easily have come to him earlier, if instead of his deaf brother he was the one to kneel by the old man who fainted, or if his section of the column had simply reached the Danube before the order to stop was given. He would have been just as dead as he is now, but an older corpse, eaten away by the water, the slime, the fish, while today he is being turned over to the descendants of those fish who were deprived of his body then. Or, rather, to those worms. Fish or worms — is that the only difference?

The umbrellas in front begin to sway again, breaking the raindrops’ monotonous fall, scattering them this way and that; the coffin under the black cloth bobs a little in the hands and then on the shoulders of the four pallbearers, floating in the air under the crowns of trees whose green merges with the white, gray, and pink rocks of the woods ahead. The people are confused when the procession makes a turn, but the priest rallies them, showing them the way, and moves on with the sacristan in a slow, dignified pace behind the coffin. They are followed by two hunched women in black, Mrs. Krkljuš and a relative (or a neighbor, if she has no relatives), and two men in black coats supporting them under their elbows, then two more men and two women. Old Mr. Krkljuš is not among them; he is at home, Blam assumes, too weak to move. Blam pictures him slouching listless in his chair, his head sunken on his chest, his eyes fixed on the floor, eyes that think rather than see, think of what is happening to his son, though the old man may have made his peace by now with not seeing the reality of his son in the hospital bed, ill and dying. Aca was simply taken from him one day, and now Mr. Krkljuš no longer has him; Aca went almost as fast as Slobodan all those years ago. Mr. Krkljuš has never seen Slobodan’s grave, and he will never see Aca’s; he seems condemned to his chair forever. So the murdered and the dead by disease can end up very much alike.

Blam trudges after the procession, at its tail end, slowly, because the path between the graves is narrow and people keep joining it on all sides. He comes up to Spasojević, who has been separated from Jović by the crowd, and nearly bumps into him, and although he and Spasojević have recognized and greeted each other before, Spasojević holds out his hand and, raising his black, almost false-looking eyebrows, says with a sigh, “I bet you didn’t expect it either. Our ranks are starting to thin now too, so it seems.”

Blam nods, though his thoughts are still dwelling, almost longingly, on the comparison of different yet identical deaths. “It started a lot earlier,” he wants to say, “with Slobodan and Čutura,” but he is afraid it would sound like a boast or a hint at the sacrifices his own family has suffered — if Spasojević knew about them, that is — so instead he decides to say something that is in fact a boast and a hint at his own circumstances, though more in keeping with the occasion.

“I went to see him a month ago. He asked me to come.”

Spasojević is taken aback: his eyebrows go all the way up to his hairline, and he stops in his tracks.

“Who? Aca?”

Blam nods.

“Yes. We sat next to each other in school, remember?”

“I remember, I remember,” Spasojević says, passing over Blam’s explanation lightly and moving on to what really concerns him. “But that means he was perfectly healthy!”

“Yes, perfectly healthy,” Blam says, “and even full of plans for the future.” But he suddenly feels terrible going on about things so obviously of concern only to them, the living.

“No one can tell what’s happening inside,” he hears Spasojević say just as he is separated from him, mercifully, by the procession, which has now paused and is spreading along the narrow pathways between the graves.

The coffin with Krkljuš’s body first rises in the pallbearers’ arms, then sinks to a pile of freshly shoveled earth. The coffin is yellow against the black walls of the pit around it. They swiftly and skillfully push it onto the two thick ropes that have been thrown across the pit and, releasing the pressure on them evenly, ease the coffin down into the earth. The priest and sacristan sing out in full voice; the two women wail. The shorter of the two bends over the grave, and for a second the veil reveals the delicate profile of Aca’s mother. She makes as if to hurl herself onto the coffin, but the two men in black have anticipated her move and grab her arms. The priest raises his voice almost threateningly, and the sacristan not only follows suit but also points his umbrella with unexpected bravado at the sky and pushes his tinny voice a third octave above the priest’s. The people around the grave bow and sprinkle the coffin with handfuls of earth, which hit the wood with thuds reminiscent of distant cannon fire. Now everyone seems in a hurry. The pallbearers, their hair dripping with rain, grab shovels that lay hidden behind a tombstone or tree and briskly, energetically fill in the grave.

This is the end. Aca Krkljuš is now exactly what he would have been had he not returned from the Danube, and what Blam would have been had he remained with his family in the house in Vojvoda Šupljikac Square, had he not been so taken with Janja or perhaps with the salvation he sensed in her. Was it worth it? Inhaling the moist air redolent with freshly dug earth, drawing it deeply into his lungs, he feels it was: life is wonderful, sweet, fragrant, palpable, engrossing. He feels a thrilling, irresistible impetus in the cold contact of the raindrops on his neck, feels it in the sticky soil that cools the soles of his feet through the stiff soles of his shoes, feels it in his frozen hands that seek warmth in the pockets of his coat. Death is terrifying no matter where and when it comes, and life, though it brings us closer to death with every instant, is wonderful.

ČUTURA DIED ON the day he left Blam’s Dositej Street love nest, having locked the gate behind him as he was told and having left the gate key and door key in the place agreed upon. He set off early in the winter dawn and by half past six was on the road to Bačka Palanka, where he was to find refuge with a miller whom he did not know but whose name and address he had been given. He moved quickly along the firmly packed snow on the right-hand side of the street, but stopped whenever a horse and cart came up behind him, raising an arm to beg a ride. But, given the dangerous conditions of the area and the not particularly prepossessing picture he made in his floppy hat and threadbare city coat, the peasants would turn their heads the moment they saw him and even whip their horses to get past him as quickly as possible. He also attracted the attention of two gendarmes patrolling the area between the railway barrier and the hemp factory far out in the fields: the way he kept raising his arm and his brisk, determined gait made them suspicious. They waited behind an abandoned woodpile and then set out after him, shouting, “Halt! Halt!”