Medallions by Zofia Nałkowska

Author:Zofia Nałkowska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

GAZING FROM THIS MOST EXALTED POSITION IN

EVOLUTION

INTO THE INFINITE ABYSS OF THE FUTURE,

WE DISCERN THERE

NOT THE DESPERATE DUSKS OF ETERNAL DEATH,

BUT THE VIVIFYING FLASH OF ETERNAL AND OMNIPOTENT LIFE.

The woman who tends the flowers on the graves approaches along the row of the dead. In her hands, she carries the emblems of her station: the broom and pitcher. She places the pitcher on a flat stone by the iron well and pumps water into it.

The cemetery next to the hedge is drowned in greenery. Graves lie like dwarfed beds of indigo and yellow pansies. Fragrant lilies bloom; soon the lilacs will also be in bloom. In this green breeze, a yellow thrush calls, as it has called each spring at the childhood home. A field mouse trips lightly among the pansies and, clinging to their stems, nibbles away at something.

Every fifteen minutes from the airport, a slow airplane ascends the silent expanse above the cemetery and, tracing out a gentle halfcircle, veers off behind the ghetto walls. Invisible bombs drop in silence. After a long while, spirals of smoke curl upward in the traces of flight and dissipate. Later, flames can be seen.

Having filled up the pitcher, the cemetery lady heads toward the flowers. It is with her that one speaks about death.

In times of danger, the cemetery is the one place of refuge—like the garden at the family home, like the most certain address.

She shook even my certainty.

“The graves are better here,” she informed me. “The graves are better here because it’s dry. The body doesn’t rot. It just dries out. Down below, where it’s wet, the plots are cheaper. Just two coffins can lie there, one on top of the other.”

She had a gentle, tender disposition. Moreover, she was competent. She always dispensed advice, even compassion. She was round and pale, not much could upset her, forbearing as she was toward everything.

“And it’s higher here,” she continued. “When they dug up one woman, she hadn’t changed a bit. The husband requested it. She was young, buried in a white dress. And the dress was still completely white. Like she’d been buried yesterday.”

It wasn't clear just why he’d requested the exhumation.

She explained: “They dug her up because he accused the hospital doctors of not providing proper care. After bearing her first child, she jumped out the window and killed herself. There was no one watching over her as there should have been. So they dug her up and took her to the hospital to examine her. And later they brought her back and buried her. But she wasn’t wearing the white dress anymore. Just a blue one.”

They buried her, but not for long. Three months had scarcely passed when they again removed the coffin.

“Why?”

“Because the husband hanged himself and they had to bury him.

They deepened the grave, supporting the sides with a wall. And now they’re resting there together.”

How the affair against the doctors really ended is also unclear. Apparently, however, the outcome hadn’t assuaged the husband’s grief, so he sought to escape his suffering in death.

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