MINSK, 1987; ODESSA, 1988 1. Dust settled onto dust, on and on-- a lilac-grey layer of feathery motes, repeated over months--years, in fact-- forming an intricate patina born of deathly sickness and indifference to life. Human strength does not suffice to alter the awful circumstances. They arrived, sat down and unpacked groceries from the shopping bags, then hurried to the antiquated kitchen in order to warm the broth in a soup pot coated with enamel. There were two usable plates, one fork, one spoon and a teapot-- all the rest was too vile to touch. Even a short time ago, Raya could rise from her bed and, leaning on a cane, make several feeble steps. And what to do with him?--who came to the town where Raya had lived for twenty years at the same address, receiving the quarterly postal checks from her namesake aunt in Odessa, the same house she never went out of for years on end. His job had been to forward the money, fill out the forms, compose the postscript birthday greetings. (God--when was her birthday? What day did she die?) How the place would look had never occured to him. The texture of her world, he would have no need to know. Their connection was indirect. So what should he do with himself at night in the apartment from which Raya was removed to hospital one week ago? No way will she return from there. He stands amid the grey dust and the flickering lamps, in the twilight and the squeaking from the corners, not unlike the old Christmas story, but minus the Yule tree, the music and the dancers. 2. She never replied to the letters or acknowledged receipt of money orders; after her (likely unwilling) departure for Minsk, her Odessa relatives ceased to exist, just as she once decided death didn't exist, and therefore graveyards and the graves of parents also did not exist. Now things have changed--but after death there remain fewer opportunities to influence the course of events. And so, one month later, he and his father stood within the brick hulk of the Minsk crematorium. A loud voice said, "Go over to your old lady." Raya was past sixty, but what he saw, her wasted, withered body-- while it was possible to incinerate it, it was impossible to obliterate it-- and when father whispered, "This isn't Raya." (though it was, aged, if that is possible, after death), the master of ceremonies nearly keeled over. He talked in an unctuous voice about the dear departed who had sacrificed all to her children, to the ordering and care of her household (a preposterous fairy tale when applied to Raya, though she, preoccupied remained unsmiling); then the bier ratcheted downward, the hatch flapped shut. 3. Half-a-year later still, a famous actor brought to Odessa a glossily-manufactured plastic urn bearing the image of something remotely resembling a flaming torch. They drank tea, syrupy with amber-clear quince jam and talked of this and that. A monthafterward, he and his father brought the ashes of Raya-the-neice to the ashes of Raya-the-aunt, who died the year before just short of age ninety. Was it the third (or fourth) in line to finish with the shovel?-- the work was minimal. On the way over, Father kept saying that this is a burial, that he must carry the urn before him, in outstretched hands. Rich gypsies are buried now in this section with monuments twice as tall as a man so he can no longer see the gravestone of grandmother or mother's cousin. He walks along the lane of the third Jewish cemetery (the first two were destroyed and there will never be a fourth); faces crowd him from all directions, carved in the black stones in defiance of tradition. The eyes seem to follow him as he moves-- tracking effect, it's called--so it's only natural, the shape of his dreams, and the meaning: Here lies so-and-so--died. . . and was gathered to his people. . . died. . . and was gathered to his people. . . died. . . and was gathered . . . and. . . © 1996 Boris Khersonsky. All rights reserved. Translation by Ruth Kreuzer and Dale Hobson.