Woman of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

right, but not just yet. There’s half a bottle left to go.’
    ‘Drink up quickly, my lovely.’
    ‘There’s no hurry, my good sir.’
    ‘Hurry up, the stars will soon be setting.’
    ‘No, they won’t.’
    ‘They will.’
    ‘Then I suppose I really ought to drink more quickly.’
    ‘We don’t want to lose any time.’
    ‘Do the stars just fall out of the sky, or what?’
    ‘Yes, they all fall into the sea, just like that. They dive into the water and disappear. One after another. Until the sky is empty.’
    ‘I’d like to see that.’
    ‘It’s a beautiful sight, Blum.’
    ‘That’s what you are.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘A beautiful sight.’
    ‘Mhmm … Do you think you’ll ever tire of this? You’ve been sailing in these waters for twenty-five years.’
    ‘They’re my home.’
    ‘Home?’
    ‘I was always happy here.’
    ‘Until the day I found you.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘That was a very sad time.’
    ‘Do we have to talk about it now?’
    ‘I’m sorry. Forget it, Blum.’
    ‘I wish it was as easy as that.’
    ‘I can kiss you.’
    ‘Will that help?’
    ‘I’m sure it will.’
    ‘My happiness began the day you came on board the boat. Before that, I wasn’t really happy except in summer. There was one season, not four. No autumn, no winter, no spring. Just a couple of weeks in summer.’
    ‘Lovely.’
    ‘What’s lovely?’
    ‘You. Everything. You’re like a poem.’
    ‘I’m drunk, don’t you forget.’
    ‘You’re like a beautiful turn of phrase.’
    ‘A turn of phrase?’
    ‘A beautiful turn of phrase which intoxicates you and will never let you go. Not a word too many, simple and clear.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘The sky has been turning slowly.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘The sky has been turning slowly.’
    ‘You’re crazy.’
    ‘But it’s beautiful, right?’
    ‘Mark, darling Mark, my romantic cop. First the stars fall out of the sky, and then the sky itself is turning.’
    ‘That’s exactly it. And all just for you.’
    Somewhere off Zadar, they were naked on deck, entwined with one another, the sea as smooth as a mirror, and as silent. The sea was their home. But now their lives have been switched off, there is no sound of waves breaking, no blue sky. Mark will never see it again. Nothing is left but the munching of the children, their sad eyes, the silent kitchen. Blum forces the images of the sea back into her mind the way she wants to remember them; she wants to go back to yesterday, back to the boat, back to his warm skin. That’s where she wants to be. She can’t get there. She has to hug her children, play with them, read to them, she has to look after them. Until their little eyes close, until night rescues her. Then she will go to those images. Then, not now.

five
    She looks at his ruined body, his injured skin. They have cut him open and sewn him up again, they have opened up his head, they’ve tested his blood and internal organs to ascertain whether he was under the influence of drink or drugs; they wanted to make sure that he was not to blame. After her collapse, he had been taken to the forensics lab. No one wanted to make a mistake. It was up to the investigators and the public prosecutor to decide whether there should be an autopsy in the case of a hit and run, and the public prosecutor had decided to cut his skull open, remove his brain, open his ribcage like a shopping bag, and stitch it up again. They have left him looking worse than before, even more wounded.
    Blum wants to be alone with him. She has asked Reza to leave them. She doesn’t know what will happen, whether she will weep and scream. She doesn’t know anything any more, except that her husband is lying motionless in front of her, naked and dead. Like all the others she has tended to over the past twenty years. Corpses, lifeless bodies with open mouths, torn away from life. But she has never had to shed tears, never felt pain and grief, never. Death is an everyday thing for Blum,