Free Being Dead by Jim Crace

‘The acid nature of the thorn is not hospitable to fungi,’ he observed, “but mushroom pickers should be warned of other trees.’ The migraines and the dreams, it seemed, the never-ending slumbers and the shits were what they’d get from symbiotic fungi growing trader olives, figs and oaks, or from the rings of coffin fungus living under pines. ‘ ‘‘Come to the pines, you suicides,” ’ he quoted, ‘ ‘‘and dine on these grey buttons in the earth. They’ll box you up and bury you . . . New pines will grow where blood is spilt; though it be human, animal or from the wounds of clashing skies, their thirsts are never satisfied.” ’
    Not strictly true. Not scientific on the whole. But this was wisdom widely honest in a way that Celice found comforting. As she imagined it, there was no hose-pipe and no car. There was just the Mentor on his back, awaiting her, the wispy canopy of pines, the deadly buttons on the ground, a ladder leading to his underworld and hers, and everlasting sin.
    According to the Goatherd’s wisdoms, then, it should have been entirely safe for Joseph and Celice to lie down on the lissom grass amongst the salt dunes of Baritone Bay. The nearest pine was a kilometre away, but there were sufficient sea thorns there to make their slumbers ‘free from harm’. Had Celice read on, amongst the Goatherd’s later observations (page 121, ‘Green Favours’) she would have found good news about the lissom grass itself. The Goatherd listed all its common names, sweet thumbs, angel bed, pintongue, pillow grass, sand hair, repose, and then the luck that it could bring to fishermen and lovers if they tied a snatch of it to their bonnets or their nets. Good fishing with the lissom grass was guaranteed. There was no ancient promise of misfortune for any ‘fools and giddy-heads’ who rested on its cushions, no ladders to the under or the upper world to tempt Celice and Joseph from their second day of grace.
    Their tenant crabs dispersed once it was dark. Their flies stayed put, lodging in the damp recesses of the wounds, until the early hours of the Wednesday when an undramatic storm ran down the coast to chase the starlit sky away and flush the warmth out of the night. No noise or gusts or lightning, just relentless water smudging ocean into land, and steady wind. Even the gnawing rodents that had crossed the dunes to feed on the unusual prize of human carrion could not endure the beating rain or the chilling blocks of air that squeezed it from the sky. They fled back to their burrows. The three sets of footprints leading from the coastal path into the dunes, the one set leading out, were quickly washed away. The
Entomology
was soaked. The flattened grass where they had walked, resuscitated by the rain, sprang straight again.
    The storm cleaned out their bodies. Much of the blood that had coagulated around their wounds was now reliquefied and thinned to pinkish grey. The rain loosened and washed off most of these weaker stains. It dislodged, dissolved, the clots. Celice’s jacket was saturated. Her shirt was black with rain. The water and the cold wind of the storm had some benefits, though. The rotting of the bodies was retarded for an hour or two during night. Bodies decompose most quickly when they’re dry and warm, and when insects are at work, taking off the waste. But even the weather and the night could not delay the progress of death by much. Their lives were irretrievable, despite the optimistic labours of the nails and hair to add their final millimetres. Joseph, normally so meticulous, was stubble-faced.
    He and his wife were also waterlogged, two flooded chambers, two leather water-bags. Nothing in the world concerned them any more. They’d never crave a song or cigarette or making love again. At least their deaths had coincided. There can be nothing lonelier than to outlive someone you are used to loving. For them, the comedy of marriage would not translate into the tragedy of death.