Weaveworld

II

THE BURIAL PARTY

uzanna and Cal’s first duty was to locate Jerichau’s body, which took fully half an hour. The landscape of the Fugue had long since invaded the place where she’d left him, and it was more by luck than system that they found him.

Luck, and the sound of children; for Jerichau had not remained unaccompanied. Two women, and a half dozen of their offspring, from two years to seven or so, were standing (and playing) around the corpse.

‘Who is he?’ one of the women wanted to know when they approached.

‘His name is Jerichau,’ said Suzanna.

‘Was,’ one of the children corrected her.

‘Was.’

Cal posed the inevitable, and delicate, question. ‘What happens to bodies here? I mean … where do we take him?’

The woman grinned, displaying an impressive absence of teeth.

‘Leave him here,’ she said. ‘He’s not going to mind, is he? Bury him.’

She looked down lovingly on her smallest boy, who was naked and filthy, his hair full of leaves.

‘What do you think?’ she asked him.

He took his thumb from his mouth, and shouted: Bury him!’ – a chant which was immediately taken up by the other children. ‘Bury him! Bury him!’ they yelled, and instantly one of them fell to her knees and began to dig at the earth like a mongrel in search of a bone.

‘Surely there must be some formalities,’ Cal said.

‘Are you a Cuckoo then?’ one of the mothers enquired.

‘Yes.’

‘And him?’ She pointed to Jerichau.

‘No,’ said Suzanna. ‘He was a Babu; and a great friend.’

The children had all taken to digging now, laughing and throwing handfuls of earth at each other as they laboured.

‘Seems to me he was about ready to die.’ said the woman to Suzanna. ‘Judging by the look of him.’

She murmured: ‘He was.’

‘Then you should put him in the ground and be done with it,’ came the response. They’re just bones.’

Cal winced at this, but Suzanna seemed moved by the woman’s words.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I do know.’

‘The children’ll help you dig a hole. They like to dig.’

‘Is this right?’ said Cal.

‘Yes,’ said Suzanna with a sudden certainty: ‘Yes it is,’ and she and Cal went down on their knees alongside the children and dug.

It was not easy work. The earth was heavy, and damp; they were both quickly muddied. But the sheer sweat of it, and the fact of getting to grips with the dirt they were going to put Jerichau’s body beneath, made for healthy, and strangely rewarding, labour. It took a long time, during which the women watched, supervising the children and sharing a pipe of pungent tobacco as they did so.

As they worked Cal mused on how often the Fugue and its peoples had confounded his expectations. Here they were on their knees digging a grave with a gaggle of children: it was not what his dreams of being here had prepared him for. But in its way it was more real than he’d ever dared hope – dirt under the fingernails and a snotty-nosed child at his side blithely eating a worm. Not a dream at all, but an awakening.

When the hole was deep enough for Jerichau to be decently concealed, they set about moving him. At this point Cal could no longer countenance the children’s involvement. He told them to stand away as they went to assist in lifting the corpse.

‘Let them help,’ one of the women chided him. They’re enjoying themselves.’

Cal looked up at the row of children, who were mud-people by now. They were clearly itching to be pall-bearers, all except for the worm-eater, who was still sitting on the lip of the grave, his feet dangling into the hole.

‘This isn’t any business for kids,’ Cal said. He was faintly repulsed by the mothers’ indifference to their off-springs’ morbidity.

‘Is it not?’ said one of the women, refilling the pipe for the umpteenth time. ‘You know something more about it than they do, then?’

He looked at her hard.

‘Go on,’ she challenged him. Tell them what you know.’

‘Nothing,’ he conceded reluctantly.

‘Then what’s to fear?’ she enquired gently, if there’s nothing to fear, why not let them play?’

‘Maybe she’s right, Cal,’ said Suzanna, laying her hand on his. ‘And I think he’d like it,’ she said. ‘He was never one for solemnity.’

Cal wasn’t convinced, but this was no time to argue. He shrugged, and the children lent their small hands to the task of lifting Jerichau’s body and laying it in the grave. As it was, they showed a sweet tenderness in the act, untainted by formality or custom. One of the girls brushed some dirt from the dead man’s face, her touch feather-light, while her siblings straightened his limbs in the bed of earth. Then they withdrew without a word, leaving Suzanna to lay a kiss on Jerichau’s lips. It was only then, at the very last, that she let go a small sob.

Cal picked up a handful of soil and threw it down into the grave. At this the children took their cue, and began to cover the body up. It was quickly done. Even the mothers came to the graveside and pitched a handful of earth in, as a gesture of farewell to this fellow they’d only known as a subject of debate.

Cal thought of Brendan’s funeral, of the coffin shunted off through faded curtains while a pallid young priest led a threadbare hymn. This was a better end, no doubt of it, and the children’s smiles had been in their way more appropriate than prayers and platitudes.

When it was all done, Suzanna found her voice, thanking both the grave-diggers and their mothers.

‘After all that digging,’ said the eldest of the girls, ‘I just hope he grows.’

‘He will,’ said her mother, with no trace of indulgence. ‘They always do.’

On that unlikely remark, Cal and Suzanna went on their way, with directions to Capra’s House. Where, had they but known it, the flies were soon to be feasting.