Free Woman of the Dead by Bernhard Aichner Page B

die.’
    ‘It was an accident.’
    ‘That was no accident.’

thirteen
    They sit at the kitchen table. Blum has cooked, for Reza, Karl, the children and Dunya. She brought the woman home with her, led her back to the car park and got her into her car. Blum ignored Dunya’s protests and dismissed her objections; she wasn’t going to let the woman out of her sight. Blum wanted to know what Dunya meant when she said it was no accident. She shouted at Dunya, begging her to tell her what she knew. But Dunya merely shook her head, apologising over and over again. She tried to escape but Blum restrained her. Wordlessly, anxiously, they sat in the car as Blum drove to the villa. Dunya didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.
I’m so sorry
, she said.
    Dunya seemed surprised to find that the villa and garden belonged to an undertakers’ business. Hesitantly, she shook hands with Reza and Karl, and did not move from Blum’s side. She was shaken, overwhelmed by so much hospitality, by the fact these people she didn’t know were smiling at her. As Karl opened the wine he didn’t hear Dunya asking in a whisper why Blum had done it, why she had brought her home, why she hadn’t simply looked away like all the others.
    Blum was burning inside, but she tried to smile and said nothing. All she wanted was the truth. She wanted to know exactly what had happened to Mark, and she wanted to persuade Dunya to stay. In silence, she tipped spaghetti into boiling water. Dunya couldn’t hear any of what was going on inside Blum. Doubt, fury, hatred. Soundlessly, Blum was screaming for the truth.
If you’re lying, then stop. If you’re telling the truth then get out, leave us in peace, don’t put us in harm’s way. I wish you’d just say something, Dunya. Say something? I want to see what’s there. After that I’ll throw you back into the sea, I just want to know if what you say can be true. Or if you’re out of your mind. Because surely it can’t be true. No one would ever do such things to you. Dunya, tell me you were just using Mark because you were lonely, because you needed someone to listen to you and take you in his arms. Tell me that. Anything else is madness. No human being could endure it. Tell me it isn’t all true. Please
.
    Blum was staring at Dunya with a forced smile. She wore that smile while the pasta cooked, minutes passing without words, only the meeting of glances and the chopping of onions. She wanted to weep, scream, fly off the handle; she wanted to switch everything off – Dunya, this day, life. Simply turn off a switch as she was dicing the tomatoes. But for the moment she needed to act as if everything were all right, as if none of it had happened. Smile, lift the corners of your mouth, and press your lips together. How she was burning, how her ideas were tumbling over one another. Because the mere idea of what the woman had been through was so inhuman.
    And now they sit eating the pasta and it feels almost as though Dunya has always been there, at the large kitchen table. They don’t talk about Mark, although there is nothing Blum would have liked more, nor do they talk about the undertakers’ business. There is no talk of their dead. They just talk about the weather, the approaching autumn, about the garden that Karl and Reza will be preparing for winter. And about the children. Uma and Nela are curious, and want to know more about this stranger in their home. They have shown her everything, and willingly let her have their bedroom. Taking her hands in theirs, they have shown Dunya round the house; she is their mother’s new friend and an old acquaintance of their father. It doesn’t seem to bother them, or anyone else round the table, that she says so little. They eat and drink, an extended family at the dining table with spaghetti, salad and wine. Plenty of wine. After Blum has put the little rascals to bed, they open another bottle, and it is almost an enjoyable evening, the first time since