Michael Tallo
Fiction
And I take the phone out of my pocket and read a message from Mother, she writes that the funeral home from that small Czech town contacted her, and on Thursday at five, we can come to stand by the body and say our goodbyes, and if I feel like it, I can join, and I reply that I don’t know yet because I have a discussion in the city at six on Thursday, and I deliberately don’t mention what my role in the discussion is, because I’m hoping it will sound like I’m one of the guests, which would make the excuse better, but the truth is that I only want to go to the discussion as a spectator, it’s a discussion about the depiction of Rome in contemporary Italian literature, and the actual guest is a well-known translator and former ambassador to Italy, it’s up to you, Mother writes, if you don’t go, me and your Stepfather will, it’s not necessary, she adds a minute later, and I respond that I’ll think about it and let her know, ok, Mother replies, and then I’m thinking about what to do, and I keep thinking about it for a few more days, and something tells me that Mother doesn’t really want to go to the small Czech town to stand by the body and say goodbye at five on Thursday, and Stepfather certainly doesn’t either, and Mother is only planning to go out of obligation, only because the funeral home contacted her and offered her this option, and she thought it would be inappropriate to say no, it would look bad, and so she said she would come, and now she’s silently cursing this idea, and thinking that in these dog days, in this dreadful, sweltering summer, she’ll have to drive two hours to a small Czech town just to avoid looking like a bad daughter, and I, I really want to go to the discussion about the depiction of Rome in contemporary Italian literature, partly because it’s being moderated by a publisher I need to meet, and this way I could kill two birds with one stone, and I don’t feel like traveling for two hours at all, and yet, what if there’s even the slightest chance that if I don’t go, I’ll regret it one day, I’ll regret that I missed the chance to say goodbye one last time, and yet, what if there’s even the slightest chance that Mother attaches much more importance to this than I think, and she only sounds like she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to go anywhere, and what if Mother gets offended if I don’t go because of the discussion, and what if she gets sad or angry, and I think like this until Wednesday evening, and when Mother finally sends me another message and asks what I’ve decided, I say that I’ll go with them, that on Thursday at five, instead of going to the discussion, I’ll go to the small Czech town to stand by the body and say goodbye, ok, Mother replies, and the next day, they pick me up in the parking lot under the apartment building, Mother gives me a call and asks me to come down, and I quickly put on some black pants and a black shirt, and I can’t find any decent shoes, so I put on blue sneakers, there’s nothing I can do about it, and in this heat, even the shirt and pants are quite a sacrifice, and Stepfather is driving, and on the way to the small Czech town, I try to take the pulse of my parents, to see what kind of mood they’re in, and eventually, I decide to ask Mother directly, so, how are you feeling about this whole thing, and Mother replies that she doesn’t feel anything at all, and I nod because I understand, and so we travel, and we talk about everything and nothing, and I complain about how they can have the car’s AC off when it’s so hot outside, and the parents say the AC makes their necks and backs hurt and I should just open a window, but the breeze from the open window makes my ears hurt, and so I suffer and fan myself with a piece of paper the entire trip, and when we finally arrive in the small Czech town, we realize that we’re almost an hour early, and according to the clock, it was only four, and so we park in front of a Tesco and agree to buy something to drink and maybe some basic groceries since food is cheaper in the Czech Republic than it is back home, and as we enter the store, we hear a loud crash, and when we turn around, we see that a car in the parking lot has driven onto a concrete barrier that was blocking one of the turn-offs, and a woman jumps out of the car and helplessly stares at the front wheels, which are now suspended above the ground because the car had mounted the barrier, and it got stuck under the chassis, and the woman stands there helplessly, not knowing what to do, and Stepfather is visibly interested, but we all sense that staring at the car and the helpless woman for too long is impolite, and so we enter Tesco, and I buy a citrus juice with ginger, and my parents get some sweets, and then we pay and head outside and the woman and her car are still there, with a few people gathered around, trying to solve the situation, and the woman is angrily talking on the phone with someone and all attempts to resolve the issue are unsuccessful, and we watch the situation for a while longer because there’s shade by the wall of the store and because we have plenty of time and nothing else to do, and finally, we make our way toward the funeral home, and we walk very leisurely because we still have plenty of time, even so, we arrive at the funeral home fifteen minutes early and Mother rings the doorbell, and after a moment, an employee comes out, and he’s wearing a suit and has long gray hair tied in a ponytail, and Mother laughs apologetically and says we arrived earlier than we were supposed to, well, here we are, and the man shakes all of our hands, and I sense that he finds Mother’s cheerfulness a bit strange, and while shaking our hands, he offers his sincere condolences to each of us, as if to remind us why we’re here, and then he says, she’s not ready yet, but it will only be a moment, and in the meantime, I’ll open the waiting room next door for you, please take a seat and wait, and he gestures to the door beside him, and Mother asks if there’s a restroom, and he says yes, over here on the opposite side, and here’s the key, you can unlock it yourself, and so we all take turns using the restroom, I’m first, and the restroom is surprisingly dirty, and there’s a huge spider hanging above the toilet and I wonder if such large spiders are common in Central Europe or if it’s something new, perhaps tropical insect species migrating north due to climate change, and I don’t tell Mother or Stepfather about the spider, so they can have their own surprise and something to think about while they’re in the restroom, and afterward, we lock the door and sit down in the waiting room, and there’s a row of black leather chairs along one wall, and on the opposite wall, there are two doors, and one leads to the ceremonial hall where funerals are held and the other leads to an unmarked room, and above the doors is a lovely square clock, which I estimate to be from the 1980s based on its style, and the waiting room is very cold, and I think to myself that the same chill is likely present throughout the entire building and I understand why that is, and the second door to the unmarked room finally opens, and the employee with the gray ponytail comes out again and says, come with me now, she’s ready for you, and we enter a small room, and in the corner, there are several coffin lids made of the cheapest unvarnished wood, and cheesy sad music is playing from speakers on the ceiling, and we step inside, and when I turn to the left, I see a metal table with wheels, exactly the kind I’ve seen many times in morgue scenes in movies, and on the table is an open wooden coffin, and inside lies Grandmother’s body and I think it looks strange, and I don’t know what I expected, but it still unsettles me a little, her skin color is different than it was in life, it’s yellowish-gray, and it seems that her mouth is sewn shut, and she’s wearing a cheap long black-and-white blouse made of synthetic fabric, which Mother bought for her about a month ago at the shopping center when we visited Grandmother at the hospice because she had lost weight and all her old clothes were too big for her, and the funeral home employee with the gray ponytail says he’ll give us some privacy and return in about ten minutes, if that’s fine with us, and Mother says that’s okay, and then quickly pulls out a bouquet of artificial flowers from her handbag, and before the employee leaves, she asks him if she can put them in the coffin, of course, the employee replies, and then he leaves and gently closes the door behind him, and the three of us stand over the coffin, and suddenly I don’t know where to look, the whole situation feels very strange to me, and we are silent for a moment, and then Mother says that she doesn’t look like herself at all, and then she repeats it again, she doesn’t look like herself at all, right, and I reply, no, she really doesn’t look like herself at all, and the cheesy sad music keeps playing, and I ask Mother when she managed to buy the artificial flowers, and Mother says she didn’t buy them, she took them from Grandmother’s house when she was last there cleaning, and they’ve probably been there for twenty years, collecting dust in a vase, and I chuckle quietly, and then we continue standing there in silence and staring at Grandmother’s body, and Stepfather suddenly gently caresses Mother’s shoulder, as if trying to comfort her, and Mother turns to him, confused, with a look of surprise on her face, and she doesn’t say anything, but I sense that she’s caught off guard by the fact that Stepfather thought she needed comforting, and I sense that Stepfather feels slightly embarrassed that such a thought even occurred to him, and he withdraws his hand, and we continue standing in silence, and I don’t want to look at Grandmother’s body anymore, so I start looking around the room, and first, I count the lids of coffins made of the cheapest unvarnished wood in the corner, and then I observe the speakers and I think about the playlist of cheesy sad music and who might have put it together, and whether there are custom albums made specifically for funeral homes, and whether it’s a specialized music industry, and then, having nothing else to look at, I consider excusing myself and saying that I’ll wait in the room outside, but a sense of duty keeps me from speaking up, and so I keep standing there, unsure of what to do with myself, and indeed, after ten minutes, the employee with the ponytail does return, and he asks if it was enough, and Mother nods, saying that it was, and the employee responds that in that case, we should follow him, and we follow him through a door at the opposite end of the room into a small office, where he seats us in chairs around a table, and on the table is a small vase with a bouquet of real flowers, although they are already a bit wilted, and the employee with the ponytail sits down at the computer and then prints out several sheets of paper, and places the papers on the table in front of Mother, pointing to individual items with a pen, and it’s an invoice, with the costs for each service itemized on the first page, and the employee explains to Mother how much each thing costs, and Mother nods and then signs the paper, and the second copy is yours, the employee says, he then adds that he will need copies of the birth certificates, both Grandmother’s and Mother’s, and he says it’s to verify their family relationship, and suggests that Mother can scan them and send them by email, and at that moment, it occurs to me that this won’t prove any relationship, and I mention that at the time of Mother’s birth, Grandmother had a different surname because she was married to my grandfather back then, but they later divorced, and she married two other men after that, and so she changed her name several times, and the name on Mother’s birth certificate will be different from the name Grandmother had when she died, and on her own birth certificate, she has yet another name, and actually, her birth certificate is even in an entirely different language, and Mother nods and says yes, that’s true, I hadn’t thought of that, and the employee says it’s okay, we’ll figure something out, either way, just scan and send me both birth certificates, he adds, alright, Mother replies, and the employee then explains the next steps, saying that today they will send her to the nearest larger city to the crematorium, and she’ll likely be cremated tomorrow, depending on how busy they are, and in any case, the urn should probably be ready in about a week, and it will then be returned to them, and they’ll handle all the necessary paperwork, and in about fourteen days, we can come to pick it up, he’ll let us know to schedule an appointment and arrange when we can collect it, and Mother asks if it could be sent by mail, and the employee is silent for a brief moment, just a fraction of a second, and I think again that he’s judging us, but then he quickly regains his composure and replies, of course, we can send it by mail, and Mother says in that case, send it to my son, because we live in Hungary, and he doesn’t, and the Hungarian mail service is even more unreliable than the Slovak one, and the employee with the ponytail replies of course, and asks for my address, noting it down, and says, so, in about fourteen days, we’ll send it to you by regular Czech post as a package, and I reply alright, I’ll be expecting the package and will pick it up, and then Mother asks if that’s everything, and the employee nods, yes, that’s everything, and so we stand up and once again shake hands with the employee, first Mother, then Stepfather, then me, and we say our goodbyes, and head back to the parking lot at Tesco, and the woman with the car is no longer there, and I think to myself that the situation must have been resolved, but neither Mother nor Stepfather notices, they’re probably lost in their own thoughts, and we get into the car, and I mention that the woman with the car is gone, and Mother responds, oh, really, yeah, I guess so, and then we start the car and head off, and there’s a moment of silence in the car, and then Mother breaks it, the whole time we were standing there above her, she says, I tried to recall a single nice moment, at least one good memory I have of her, and then Mother falls silent, and Stepfather asks, and what did you come up with, and Mother replies, nothing, I couldn’t recall anything at all, and then we discuss Grandmother, and I talk about how I perceived her as a child and how everything changed radically during my adolescence, and Stepfather tactfully remains silent, as he often does when Mother and I talk about Grandmother, I think he considers this topic to be our territory and feels that it’s not his place to intrude, that the subject does not belong to him, that’s the kind of person he is, and my parents drop me off in front of my building, and the days go by, and on Monday I try to pick up a small package containing a book from Australia at the post office, but the postal employees don’t know what to do with it, they don’t know how to clear customs on a package from Australia or how to correctly pay the customs duty of 2 euros and 50 cents and so, for a week, I visit the post office every morning, and study their website, and call the helpline every afternoon, and after a week, I finally get the package, but while studying the post office’s website, I notice something else as well, and I call Mother and tell her that I’m not sure if the package with Grandmother will arrive, because human remains are excluded from international shipping, sending human remains by mail abroad is prohibited, and Mother says that she hadn’t thought of that, and that it could be a problem, and I reply that yes, it could be a problem, and time passes, and three weeks go by, and the package still hasn’t arrived, and I’m starting to get nervous, and Mother tries to calm me down, texting me that ashes might not even be considered human remains, but apparently, she isn’t calm either, since the text arrives at 2 AM, and then, two days later, Mother calls and tells me that the employee with the ponytail contacted her and asked if Grandmother had arrived yet, and she said no, and shared our concern with him that the postal service might not deliver her, and the employee responded that we shouldn’t worry because they send urns all over the world, and there’s never been a problem, and Mother laughed and replied that they might be able to send them all over the world, but that doesn’t mean anything, because Slovakia is like a separate universe with rules that no one understands, not even the post office itself, and then Mother says over the phone, you know what, listen, and I say I’m listening, and she continues, if Grandmother doesn’t arrive by Friday, you’ll have to keep her for a month because we’re leaving for Greece on Sunday morning and will not be back for four weeks, and the only time we can pick her up is on Saturday, and I reply that I don’t want to have her with me for a month, and Mother says well put her on the balcony or lock her in the basement, and maybe she won’t arrive at all, Mother adds, which might be for the best, because the package would be returned to the funeral home as undeliverable, and Mother could pick it up there after they get back from Greece, and then, something occurs to me, ask the funeral home employee for the tracking number, I suggest, and Mother says yes, I’ll ask them, that’s a good idea, and in the evening, she sends me a message with the tracking number, so I enter it into the postal service’s tracking website and find out that the package with Grandmother has been sitting at the post office for four days, and the post office didn’t notify me, they didn’t send any text, didn’t call, didn’t ring the doorbell, and didn’t even leave a slip with a notice, and I notice something else on the tracking website, the package is insured for 83 euros, and I inform Mother about this, and she sounds amused, and asks how they came up with such an amount, how they assessed it, and how they priced Grandmother at exactly 83 euros, and then it’s a Friday afternoon, and I walk through the scorching streets of our neighborhood to the post office, and I show the postal employee my ID and provide the tracking number, and the employee disappears into the back room for a moment and returns with a small rectangular package, and it’s smaller than I expected but significantly heavier, and I thank her and leave the post office, and walk back through the streets of our neighborhood towards our building, and I’m increasingly uncomfortable, and the package keeps getting heavier, and the awareness of what I’m carrying makes me uneasy, and as I approach the apartment building, I slow down and become more alert, I don’t want to run into anyone with the package in my hands, and especially not the caretaker’s wife, the shadow caretaker, as we all call her, because she actually makes all the decisions around here, that cheerful woman with short blonde hair and glasses from the eighth floor who is newly retired and has way too much free time on her hands, and so she constantly chats with everyone she meets, and if I run into her, she’ll undoubtedly ask what I’m carrying in the package, and without thinking, I’ll reply that she really doesn’t want to know, and then I’ll realize that it sounds like there are sex toys in the package and decide that admitting the true contents is still better than having her spread rumors throughout the building that she saw me bringing home a package full of sex toys, and so I’ll tell her it’s my Nazi Grandmother, you know, that grumpy German lady who visited a few times over the years, you must have met her, and the neighbor won’t be sure if I’m joking or telling the truth, and she’ll just laugh nervously and say oh, and the elevator will stop on the seventh floor, and I’ll wish her a good day, and say goodbye, and get out, and I’ll close the door behind me and see on the display that the elevator continues to the eighth floor, but in the end, I don’t run into the neighbor, and luckily, I don’t run into anyone at all, and I take the elevator to the seventh floor completely alone, just me and Grandmother in the package in my hands, and when I pull the keys from my pocket and open the apartment door, I let out a sigh of relief, and thankfully, the cat is asleep and doesn’t notice that I’ve brought a new package, and that’s a good thing because if he had seen it, he would have immediately wanted to investigate, the cat loves packages and cardboard boxes and always tries to get into them, and so I quickly tuck the package into the closet because I don’t want to look at it for a second longer than necessary, and I count the hours because my parents are supposed to pick up the package tomorrow, Saturday morning, when they go to the city to do their shopping before leaving for Greece, and that means it will remain in my closet all night, and for a brief moment, I even think that Grandmother’s ghost might haunt me during the night, but I quickly dismiss the thought, and the night is unusually calm, and despite the heat in the apartment, I sleep quite well, and in the morning, I take the package out of the closet and carry it to the parking lot, where Mother collects it, and she remarks that it’s surprisingly small, and I nod in agreement, yes, I thought so too, and then Mother says that we will discuss the date of the ashes’ scattering later, after they return, and I wish them a good trip to Greece, and say goodbye, and walk back to the entrance, to the elevator, the apartment, inward.
Michal Tallo (born 1993) is a writer and translator from Slovakia. Writing in Slovak and English, he is the author of three books of poetry: Antimita (Antimacy, 2016), Δ (Delta, 2018) and Kniha tmy (The Book of Darkness, 2022). His most recent work is a short story collection titled Všetko je v poriadku, všade je láska (Everything’s Fine, Love Is Everywhere, 2024), which won the Tatra Banka Foundation Prize and is forthcoming in German, Czech, and Ukrainian translations. Apart from his own writing, Tallo has translated Andrew McMillan’s poetry collections Physical and Playtime, McMillan’s novel Pity, and Seán Hewitt’s memoir All Down Darkness Wide into Slovak.
Photo Credit: Norma Barksdale a writer, editor, and photographer from Oxford, Mississippi. She has her MFA from the University of Montana. Her fiction has been published in The Ekphrastic Review.
L'Esprit Literary Review 