The Shortest Road by David L. Robbins

Author:David L. Robbins [Robbins, David L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637587669
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2023-02-02T15:18:48+00:00

Mrs. Pappel explained to Vince that he was Hugo’s shomer, his guardian, so Hugo’s spirit wouldn’t be alone the eve before burial. Then she carried a lantern and book out to the porch, to leave Vince and Rivkah in the dining room with Hugo.

Zichron’s humidity clung well past sundown. The candles beside Hugo’s upturned face drained his color past death. By the little flames, Rivkah read aloud from the Old Testament. She read Psalms. The passages were all in praise of God, nothing about mortality or grief, as though God had lost Hugo, too, and needed to be cheered up. Vince listened with half an ear.

Vince leaned his chair back against the wall. He lost track of time. At some point Mrs. Pappel entered the house and without a word went off to bed. Somewhere in the night Rivkah stopped reading. She folded shut her Old Testament and left it between the shortened candles by Hugo’s ear. She touched Vince’s neck then hung back a moment, perhaps for him to thank her. He didn’t and she left the deathwatch.

The air was close, the candles lulling, but Vince never grew sleepy. He folded his arms against the slow march of hours and listened to the crickets, owls in the vineyards, the squeak of a delivery truck. He heard these more attentively than Rivkah’s readings.

The candles melted slowly like the hands of a clock, at a pace Vince could not catch. Moonlight sifted through the windows until the moon went all the way down.

When dawn came, Vince had yet to grieve. He eased the legs of his chair down to the floor.

“Okay.”

He dragged the chair beside Hugo’s head.

“Well, pal. You’re done.”

Vince blew out both candles. Smoke twisted off the wicks. He patted Hugo’s shoulder. The stiffness recalled Buchenwald, that brittleness when Vince picked him up.

He touched Hugo’s cool knuckles. Vince had never seen Hugo’s hands so clean.

“Funny. In the end, you know, you got yourself killed by the Jews.”

Vince stood quickly, unsettling the mist.

“I never killed anyone ’til I met you.”

He climbed the stairs to Rivkah’s room. From her bed without lifting her head, Rivkah watched Vince remove his clothes.

“Throw them in the hall. Mrs. Pappel will wash them before the funeral.”

Naked, Vince went to the window’s view of the grey-skinned sea.

She said, “Come lie down.”

Vince jackknifed to fit in Rivkah’s short bed.

She wore a cotton smock; her round belly looked like a birdcage covered for the night. Vince tugged up her night dress. A knurled little wad filled her bellybutton. He ran the same hand over his child that he’d lain on Hugo’s shoulder, and everything of death that he’d brought upstairs in that hand dissolved.

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