Again I’m boiling water, bringing the pots into the big tent, and helping Victor bathe the sick. They look at us with admiration and don’t stop thanking us. Once in a while one of them props himself up on his mat, looks at us, and says, “Who are you?”
The snow has ended, and it is raining. We can hear avalanches of snow detaching from the summit. Michael came over and asked if the uncles and Aunt Miriam have reached heaven yet.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Why do they have to be buried before they go up to heaven?”
“That’s how it’s done.” I couldn’t find other words to explain it.
“Will they appear to us?”
“In dreams, I assume.”
“If they are going up to heaven why do we mourn for them?”
“Because they are far away from us.”
“Will we see them in dreams the way we used to see them?”
“I assume so.”
Michael stands beside me and looks like an angel who hasn’t yet grown wings. I remember him sitting on a little crate, copying verses from the Bible or sitting hunched over and solving math and geometry problems, totally focused. His questions are startlingly sharp. Grandma Tsirl loved him and would answer him with serious attention.
The delicate fabric we wove among us is unraveling. We are left bare, and the few words that served us in the past no longer do us much good.
It’s impossible not to keep seeing Karl—his height and broad shoulders and magnificent smile. Always ready to give of himself, always fishing in his pockets to find something sweet or funny. When he doesn’t find anything, his smile widens with embarrassment.
We remember fondly the study evenings when he would recite some Marxist teaching and remind everyone that he was a communist and the son of communists and that until communism ruled the world everything was flawed. Despite the clichés, you couldn’t be angry with Karl. When he spoke, you could see the child in him, and many fighters wondered how that cruel ideology had infected this man who wanted only to do good. Sometimes he would ask Danzig’s permission to take Milio in his arms. Milio would look at him with wonder, as if to say, Your height, Karl, you’re a giant, but I’m not afraid of you.
Milio’s face is so expressive. You can understand him with no effort. I sometimes think he grasps our situation better than we do. Now and then I detect pity in his face.
After the shelling, he covered his eyes with both hands. Danzig asked him to uncover them, but Milio did not respond. Now, too, he keeps closing his eyes. Milio’s existence is a perpetual riddle. I look at him with the fear that he will soon utter a sentence that will shock us all.