Liss studied herself in the wardrobe mirror. It was a long time since she’d worn this dress. More than fifteen years. How clothes changed you. Just fabric and colour – and there stood a stranger. But it was also good to be able to wear what she wanted. She just felt unfamiliar to herself. She stood perfectly still and looked herself in the face, as if she were meeting an old schoolfriend, someone she hadn’t seen since those days. What still remained of the withdrawn girl from back then, whose mouth could be set so firm sometimes, if she really wanted something?
In the glass, a shadow slipped past the half-open door. Sally had got up; on the way to the bathroom, she paused and looked into the room at her.
‘All in black?’
Liss nodded and looked at her in the mirror. ‘I have to go to a funeral.’
She could see that Sally was thinking about what she ought to say. No automatic murmur of ‘I’m sorry,’ without even knowing who’d died.
‘Someone you knew well?’
Sally was also talking to the woman in the mirror. It was as if it were easier to speak this way.
‘Old Heuberger. As a child, I always played on his farm when…’
She finished the sentence in her head. When I couldn’t bear it here any longer. When I wanted to travel at least one street over, into slight freedom. When I couldn’t stand the old smell in this house any longer.
‘He hadn’t lived in the village for a long time,’ she said instead. ‘He died in a home. But he insisted on being buried here.’
‘Can I come?’
Surprised, Liss looked away from the mirror, straight at the girl.
‘You won’t…’ she began hesitantly, before stating firmly: ‘You probably can’t go in those clothes. It’s not like the city here.’
‘You can lend me something,’ said the girl, still standing in the door.
Liss opened the wardrobe door. The whole room coasted across the mirror, and she beckoned Sally in.
She liked the bells. The very first night she’d slept here, she’d realised that. Although the church was so close, they never sounded too loud. She’d never paid any attention to church bells in the city, but here she noticed: their tone sounded softer than the ones at home. They rang for much longer here too.
Churches. She couldn’t care less about churches. And now she was going to the funeral of a man she’d never even known. Liss had lent her a black skirt. It wasn’t entirely suitable because it had a pattern of colourful stripes round the bottom hem – kind of a bit Indian-looking – but at least it was mostly black. But the white blouse she was wearing felt much more peculiar. More like a shirt really. It would never have fitted Liss, it would’ve been far too small for her. Another of those things…
It was only a few steps from the farm to the church, but there were more people walking that short distance than she’d seen in a week in the village.
‘Why are they staring like that?’
A malicious little smile was playing around Liss’s lips.
‘Because they don’t know you.’
Sally saw that some of them were blatantly looking her over, while others quickly turned their heads away if she stared challengingly back.
‘And maybe because they’re afraid of me. I don’t often go to church.’
Sally had figured that much out. Liss didn’t seem like a churchgoer. Afraid? Yes, some of them were looking timidly at Liss.
‘So why now?’
They’d reached the iron gate in the church wall and, suddenly, they were surrounded by women in black. Many of them were wearing headscarves. Images popped into Sally’s head – her father’s black-and-white photos of Italy that used to hang in the hall. They showed women like this – in black, with headscarves. And now here she was in the middle of them.
‘I liked old Heuberger.’ Liss’s voice was dry. ‘So standing at his grave is what you do.’
It’s what you do. What’s what you do?
‘Nothing is what you do!’ Sally said, unexpectedly sharply. ‘Just because people have always done a thing doesn’t mean you have to…’
She left the sentence unfinished. Liss stopped in the church door. The bells were ringing, and from inside you could hear the organ.
The autumn sun makes her face beautiful, thought Sally, disjointedly.
‘Yes,’ said Liss, ‘you’re right. But some things are embedded so deeply within you that you do them anyway. I liked him. He might not’ve known that, but that’s why I’m here. You don’t have to come.’
Sally said nothing, but she walked past Liss into the church. It wasn’t big. Just a village church. There were only a few seats free, in the rearmost pews. Liss nodded over to her left, and Sally slipped into the pew. Liss stayed standing a moment, then sat down. Everyone who came in after them did the same thing.
‘What are they doing?’ Sally asked quietly.
‘Saying the Lord’s prayer before they sit down.’
‘This can’t be real, can it?’ she asked, fairly loudly. Liss looked enquiringly at her. Sally pointed at the pews to the right of the aisle. There were only men sitting there. Here, on the left, were only women and children. Sally almost laughed.
Liss leant over and said quietly: ‘That’s how it is here. Still.’
Sally was surprised that she wasn’t angry. It was a very different feeling. Again, it was like the feeling she’d got from looking at her father’s photos. Like you’d plunged into an ancient world, one that lay very close to the real world, but that she’d never noticed. A feeling like … fascination. Yes. As if you’d walked round a corner you’d known forever and suddenly found yourself in a different country.
She didn’t take in any of the sermon. She felt like a researcher. She stood up when Liss stood up and sat down when Liss sat down. She observed the women in their rows of pews and the colourful light falling through the windows onto the black fabric of their dresses. She took a look at the men’s faces. Was she just imagining it, or did they really have different expressions here from the men in the city?
Liss didn’t sing, but the book lay open in front of her. Sally read the words of the hymns. Had it always been like this for Liss, since she was little? Always going to this church, always in the pews to the left of the door, always the same hymns? If you grew up here, you didn’t just have your own history, you had the whole village history behind you. Maybe sometimes it even felt good to be a part of the whole. To be the village and not herself. She was scared by the idea.
Standing at the front was the open coffin, on two trestles wrapped in black cloth, inclined slightly towards the congregation. Sally had never seen a dead person before. His face was yellow and looked a bit like a bird of prey. Sharp. Not evil, but sharp. She was surprised when four men stepped forward, lifted the lid onto the coffin, screwed it down with rapid movements and then picked the whole thing up.
‘What happens now?’ she asked Liss quietly.
‘We walk to the cemetery,’ she answered, standing up. She left the hymn book behind.
The men carried the coffin down the aisle, and everyone stood up. As they moved, the hundred dresses and hundred suits sounded like the rushing of a wave, breaking in the quiet of the church.
Whoa, Sally thought to herself, whoa. She had no idea what she liked about it. Perhaps that nobody had to tell them what to do. Everyone knew when to stand up. Everyone knew that they had to wait until the coffin had passed before they stepped out of the pews; the front rows first, and then the others, one pew at a time. It was a bit like … yes, a bit like a ballet.
They’d sat right at the back so they were pretty much at the end of the procession.
‘Nice to see you, Elisabeth,’ an elderly voice said, next to Sally. It was an old lady, very small, who had spoken to Liss. Aha, Elisabeth. OK. She’d have called herself Liss too, if her parents had named her that.
Liss merely nodded.
‘Quite uncalled for,’ muttered another voice. ‘Shameless. Shameless!’
Sally saw that Liss tensed, but she didn’t turn to the other woman. She might have been a bit older than Liss. Bitchy face. And she’d said it loudly enough for everyone standing nearby to hear. Sally wanted to say something, but then the elderly voice spoke again:
‘In church? Shame on you, Weber Katti.’
‘Thank you, Anni.’ Liss said it loudly and very clearly.
The old woman nodded.
‘We’re moving on,’ she said in that thin, old voice that still had something solid about it. The procession began to move.
They walked along the village street: a long, black train. It was hot, and wearing black was making Sally sweat. There were apple and pear trees in the gardens they passed. The apples shone amid the deep-green leaves like blobs of paint. How good it felt sometimes just to be alive. Nothing else. Just to be alive.
‘Who was that?’
Liss looked enquiringly at her. ‘Who?’
‘The old lady.’
Liss gave a thin smile.
‘Anni.’
Anni. Sally gave Liss a challenging look, but she said nothing else. OK. Don’t then.
The procession was making only slow progress. Sally had time to study the houses. Many were clearly older than Liss’s. Patches of plaster had fallen off some of the walls, and you could see that they were built of the heavy grey-white limestone from the area. There was barely a straight wall to be seen, because the plaster couldn’t entirely balance out the natural unevenness of the stone. Many of the roofs were topped with slate rather than brick tiles. They had to be incredibly heavy, and Sally wondered what it must be like to grow up with a weight like that over your head. On the other hand, you didn’t need a slate roof to feel a weight above you. The air at home was sometimes as heavy as stone. Her shoulders twitched involuntarily … She didn’t want shitty images of home today.
All along the street were children with white handkerchiefs in their hands, one every hundred metres or so, all the way up to the cemetery entrance.
‘What are they doing?’
Liss followed her gaze.
‘There’s no bell at the cemetery chapel,’ she answered. ‘But when they pray the Lord’s Prayer in the chapel, it has to ring. So Anni gives the first boy a sign, and each of them waves their hankie to the next one, up to the church, and then the sexton rings the bells.’
‘No way. Don’t they have mobiles here?’
Liss smiled again. Again it was only a very thin smile. ‘That’s the way they’ve always done it here.’
It sounded unkind. But then she smiled properly and pointed ahead.
‘Besides: can you imagine old Anni with a mobile, tapping out a text at the blessing?’
Sally couldn’t help grinning.
It was like a film. The sun on the gravestones. The huge chestnut trees in the cemetery, the wind rustling in their crowns, like the sea. The pastor on the thin plank that had been laid right over the grave because the grave was right by the wall. The mumbling of the prayers. The children waving their hankies. The bells, striking up along with the Lord’s Prayer. The thud of the earth on the coffin in the grave. And Liss who, without a word, turned to leave as the others started to offer the family their condolences. Sally was so fascinated by the images that she didn’t immediately follow her. She watched her stepping between the tall trees to the cemetery exit. Somehow you couldn’t describe it any other way. A tall, slim woman, all alone on the path. The midday light shimmered around her, and then Sally did have to follow.
They walked in silence, side by side. It was hot, and when a tractor, piled high with bales, chugged past them, there was a smell of dust and of straw.
‘Has it always been like that?’ Sally asked in the end, as they turned into Liss’s farm.
‘Always,’ said Liss, going upstairs to change. Sally stayed standing in the yard, looking over at the church. The golden ball on the tip of the spire shone in the spotless blue of the sky. What was it even for? And how had Liss sounded just then? Proud? Sad? Mocking? Or just bitter?
She couldn’t have said.