The old glass-fronted sign read Morga, and repeated the word in German, Leichenschauhaus, but the building hardly needed a sign, because everything about it spelt morgue. It was an old breezeblock structure in the grounds of what once must have been a hospital, but most of the buildings had boarded windows and there were weeds growing in the cracks between the paving stones. Odd, forlorn figures walked around, and there were two lab assistants smoking by a double door covered with strips of thick, industrial plastic. Where the ambulances backed in, I surmised, as Istvan parked the car and we walked towards the drab entrance.
Gertrude held my arm again and cradled her dog with her other hand. We signed forms at the reception through the door and nobody made mention of the canine. A pretty lab assistant in a clean white coat led us past what must have been a pathology room, where two women worked over a marble slab, towards an industrial lift. And as the lift groaned its way downwards, I wondered at how death was so often attended by women. Was that brisk, feminine practicality what was needed to deal with dead bodily tissue? Or maybe our exits and our entrances to this world needed female guidance. By those lights mythology had got it wrong. Charon should have been a woman and the Grim Reaper a uniformed girl.
Anyway, she led us forwards, our pretty white-coated Charon, out of a lift and through a series of subterranean corridors. There was an overpowering smell of formaldehyde. The dog moaned, as if sensing the otherworld.
Hush hush, Phoebe, Gertrude whispered.
We entered two swinging double doors and the temperature had dropped perceptibly. We found ourselves in a long room with fluorescent tubes fixed to the concrete ceiling, throwing a bilious light on a metal wall of trays, each tray with its own number and handle.
The girl murmured to Istvan and he murmured to me.
She asked me, do we want to see them all?
And Gertrude was looking, painfully, at the row of handles.
A small room, said Istvan, that she cannot leave.
How many? I asked.
And the assistant turned her head to me. She understood my English.
Fifteen, she said, currently.
There is no need, whispered Gertrude, who seemed alarmingly fragile, for once.
Hold Phoebe.
She placed the dog in my arms, and it whined in protest.
Give me Petra.
And I eventually understood, she meant the Polaroid. I took it from my pocket with my free hand and placed it in hers. She held it towards that wall of metal.
I could see her hand, her painted nails, the young girl smiling, dangling from them, all of the colour bleached by whatever the years does to acetate. And the Polaroid was trembling slightly, although Gertrude’s hand was steady, tense with all the veins showing.
Achh, she whispered, and seemed to glide towards that bank of steel. The Polaroid fluttered as if in its own private breeze. And I wondered what was I to understand about what was going on here.
The faded image of Petra was drawing her towards that metal wall. Or so it would appear. Her feet moved forwards, slowly, her eyes were half-closed, there was that familiar half-smile hovering round her lips. And the young girl held between her finger and thumb stared back at me, flickering in the invisible breeze, as soft as an image on a magic lantern.
There was a row of handles from ceiling to floor. And behind each handle was the emptiness of death, a cadaver awaiting identification, the pale and frozen flesh the spirit leaves.
There was a smell, like plastic burning. The Pomeranian moaned. And I could see the faded colours on the young girl’s cheeks turning slowly brown.
This one, said Gertrude, and she stopped by a steel handle. The number said 11.
This is most irregular, the assistant began, but Gertrude cut her off.
I know, she said. And the image was fading on the Polaroid, as if the chemicals had given up the ghost. It flared, like a negative after-image, and became an out-of-focus blur. It curled, as if the impossible had happened, and it was burning.
Little Petra, she whispered. What happened?
She placed the Polaroid in my free hand and I had to blow on my fingers, it felt so hot. She wrapped her painted fingers round the metal handle.
May I? she asked the assistant. And the assistant nodded.
She began to pull the tray.
I stepped to one side, to give her room.
A mist came out, as she pulled the handle back, as if a ghost had exhaled. I told myself it was the refrigeration. But what I saw next told me it wasn’t.
I saw a pair of coloured canvas sandals on the horizontal tray. Then a pair of ankles, slim calves, whitened by their spell in this dead refrigerator, but I knew their skin colour had once been sallow, almost dark. I saw a dress then that I recognised and the outline of underwear beneath it that I would have recognised too, because they both had lain on top of mine on the bare floor, when she pointed them out from the mattress and asked, Don’t they look good together, our clothes? I saw the hands, which must have been placed across the stomach by some dutiful lab attendant. There was a torn V at the neck of the dress, and part of her frozen breast was exposed. The dark, inert hair curled around her chin and her mouth, which seemed pursed slightly, as if ready to ask a question. A question, perhaps, about this absurd cold metal bed she was lying on.
Her eyes were closed. The same dutiful lab attendant, probably. I thanked him silently for it. Her eyelashes were stiffened with hoarfrost.
How long has she been here? I asked, though my voice seemed too loud, even to me. There was a hush in this moment that was beyond speech.
The assistant turned her canvas shoe sideways, and I saw an identification tag attached to the strap.
Close to three weeks now.
Where was she found?
Floating in the river.
A suicide? I asked.
Most likely. No one has claimed the body.
You get them all the time? asked Istvan. His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he had seen nothing out of the ordinary. And for once I wished I could be like him.
Every now and then.
Autopsy?
If one is requested.
We think we know who this girl is. Right, Jonathan?
Yes, I said. Perhaps we do.
Petra, he said. And he checked the screen on his phone. Pavel.
And I excused myself. I said I needed some air.
I stood out by the plastic strips where the lab assistants had been smoking. I tried to breathe, slowly. I heard the clack of heels on the dull cement then and saw that Gertrude had followed me. She had a cigarette packet in her hand, with one already dangling from her mouth.
You want one?
I don’t smoke.
There is a time for everything.
And she placed one in my mouth, took a lighter from her pack and flicked the little wheel.
Tell me, she said, as the cigarette burned and the unfamiliar smoke filled my lungs.
I know that girl, I said.
How could you? she asked.
I don’t know, I said. I pulled her from the river.
You saved her?
In a manner of speaking.
And now she’s dead.
Maybe she was dead then.
You really mean that?
You told me, some time ago, there was something dying inside me.
Something dead.
Maybe you meant her.
Maybe.
Can you make sense of it for me?
She looked at me and exhaled slowly, through those carefully painted lips. A small stream of grey smoke came with her breath.
Some things don’t make sense, Jonathan.
She separated the syllables.
One long and two short.