Lustre

 

The delivery of the body for the wake at Block 11 was an old Chinese ahma, as shown later by the smiling photograph that was mounted before the casket when she was brought into the Void.

The small turn-out surprised, perhaps a dozen mourners in all. It had been a modest, quiet life no doubt, and likely she had outlived many.

In a couple discreet passes along the walkway looking the lady couldn’t be recalled in that quarter. Reflexively, one steeled oneself a fraction scrutinising the portrait, hoping the individual had not been one of the regular neighbours.

Often people from other blocks, other estates even a kilometre or more away, came to the Void at 11, for the space offered there, it had been explained. This had now been compromised since the new health centre had appropriated a large part of the area.

The casket looked a heavy item in dark, highly polished wood, but it was not enclosed there that the deceased had arrived at the Void.

Returning from the morning teh the day before the seating & canvas awning was still being arranged, a Chinese company involved that had never featured at the Haig before. The absence of crosses signalled a Buddhist affair, which was soon confirmed with the colouring & script. Across on the other side of the grass a 10-12 seater van had pulled in beside the recycle bin, a small group of men waiting in attendance. After the rear door had been lifted open one of the men, an older chap, went down on his knees before it. From within on a trolley a bundle in the most vivid yellow gold cloth emerged, for which the kneeling man spread his arms wide and bowed his head. The bright colour positively dazzled and the bundle seemed to stretch two metres, rising up as if a large mammal of some kind from the sea was contained.

A dutiful son one could more easily understand like that here, rather than this old man who needed to be helped to his feet afterward. It had been a beautiful marriage, clearly.

            The night before Zoro in Montenegro had announced another death over there, this time a maternal cousin in her late 80s. A day or two before an earlier message had arrived from Zdravun, telling of his visit to the mourning house to offer his condolences.

            Forty-five years ago Cousin Danica had been met 3 - 4 times. In the early ‘80s she had worked in a little kiosk by the water and once Zdravko’s younger brother had accompanied for a farewell dinner of her son for his national service. Parents, especially mothers, were terribly anxious in such circumstances, where sons were sent to far flung corners of the country.

            Danica was the eldest child of Aunt Saveta, who when she lost her father to the mines in Amerika, soon after lost her mother too when she married grandad Rade. Grandad had insisted the child be left behind in the birth clan; even a couple hundred meters away little contact had been allowed.       

Another of the astounding facts of that harsh former life high in the karst.

The response that followed the announcement of Danica’s passing had been learned long ago from the earlier generation. It was the only thing that could be decently managed. A particularly striking form of words.

Laka joj crna žemlja.

The black earth light on her.

The rich alpine soil in the plateau on Uble was indeed black. Finer folk along the water below tagged the mountaineers from whom they bought their foodstuffs dirty. Šporki Ubjani. Down near the water the soil was friable; at the heights more black and heavy.

Not for the first time, the thought arrived that in the old days, in the poor mountain settlements like Village Uble, the dead had routinely been buried with the dirt directly shovelled onto the body of the deceased. 

Of course. Naturally. What else?

And not just in the Montenegrin mountain refuge settlements of course.

The clods were difficult to bear. Partings were harder. The Montenegrin hill people were famous for their graveside keening, drawing literary types like Goethe and Vuk Karadjić to the gravesides.

One wished for loved ones, for any deceased grieved, that lighter burden of piled soil. Not the heavy dirt the people turned over all their lives in the narrow fields.

Gold leaf for the Pharaohs would hardly have glinted more brightly deep within the dark burial vaults of the pyramids than that cloth arriving at the Void, received into the arms of the grieving widower.