smother him. Just take care of him, and let it evolve slowly. That’s my advice.
I thought you were a terrible mother, the man said.
I never said that, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. I was a wonderful mother. I just had recalcitrant children.
Ha, said the man. And then: Can I ask you a favor?
Of course.
I left all my wife’s things at the hotel. I packed everything into her suitcase, which I left in the room. Can you get it and—well, do whatever you want. You can throw it all away or donate it or sell it or keep it. I don’t care.
Of course, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. There’s a shelter for battered women in Kronskatjen. They can always use women’s clothes.
Thank you, said the man.
What are you doing about her?
What do you mean?
What are you doing with her body? You didn’t just leave that in the hotel too, did you?
No, said the man. I left it with Brother Emmanuel.
You’re just leaving her behind? With her suitcase and her clothes?
She’s dead, said the man. There is no her to leave. And besides, she wanted to stay there. She felt good there, safe. She will be cremated.
But what about a funeral?
Neither of us really cared about things like that.
Oh, but you should. You must. Even though you don’t care about it now. It isn’t about now. It’s about then. After.
After doesn’t matter, said the man.
Oh, but it does, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Of course it matters! I’ve got my funeral all planned. And paid for. I’ve heard too many hair-raising stories of agnostics encountering God on their deathbeds, so I’m not taking any chances. I’ve got a plot with my name on it in the graveyard at Saint Innocent of Irkutsk. And I’ve arranged for a High Mass with all the trimmings: incense, altar boys, a castrati choir, six elephants, and one hundred blind white doves.
You’re kidding me, said the man.
I am, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. Except about the incense. Sometimes I think you’re not really listening to me. I know that’s the price one pays for talking too much—people stop listening. But I’d rather talk and not be listened to than not talk at all. At least then you’ve gotten it out there.
What do you mean?
I mean your words, your thoughts, your ideas. If you don’t utter them, what’s the point? They die with you. But when you utter something, it’s in the world. Who knows what happens to sounds? We think they disappear but it’s just as likely they continue vibrating and float out into the universe and perhaps someone or something will feel that vibration a hundred million years from now. Perhaps they’ll hear exactly what I’m saying to you now.
That’s a horrible thought, said the man. Imagine the din!
I think it would be a lovely sound. Like an orchestra, tuning up. I so enjoy that part of a concert. It’s so hopeful. Music itself can be so predictable.
The man looked out the window. They were passing through the narrow, winding streets of the old town.
Where are we going? he asked.
What do you mean, where are we going? We’re going to the train station.
Are you sure it’s this way? We didn’t come through this part of town when we arrived.
Of course you did. You just weren’t paying attention. You were exhausted from your journey.
Yes, said the man. We were. It seems a very long time ago. The taxi slid off the road into a ditch. We had to push it out.
At this time of year the roads are very much in flux. It’s hard to keep track of them with all this snow. Each day the plow veers a little off course, and by spring we realize the roads have been shifted across someone’s front garden or into a ditch. We call them haamu tie, a phantom road, a ghost road. It’s very nice in the spring, when the snow finally melts. All the things that have been hidden for so long are revealed. The earth is, quite literally, given back to us. I’m sure it’s why we revere it. People who don’t live in polar regions take the earth for granted. The soil, I mean. We don’t. In fact it’s customary for everyone here to eat a spoonful of dirt on May Day.
They had by this time passed through the old town and were traveling through a newer part of the city the man had never seen. Before long they pulled up in front of a boxlike building made of steel and glass.
What’s this?