Read Online Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson - Free Book Online Page B

“It seems to me, Doctor—like this—if we lay him across our shoulders, like a plank, I could maybe do it myself . . .”
    “Impossible! You think with a dead body . . . !”
    “Or I could have him on my back, piggyback, and you could prop him up from behind so that he doesn’t fall backward”—and he lightly bent forward and pulled the arms into two curves at chest height, as though putting them into two stirrups—“like this.”
    The doctor hesitated before he answered: “The joints are still too stiff.”
    Wim was silent.
    “Have you ever actually seen a corpse?” the doctor asked suddenly, and turned the body onto its back. Wim gave a start.
    “Of course,” he said hastily, “my father, a long time ago, I was very young.”
    “I see.” And then he went on, staring at the blankets: “I am always surprised how few grown men and women have actually really seen a dead body. That is, in normal times. A lot of people see one for the first time in their thirties. It’s strange. Everyone has a lot more to do with love, earlier and more often, of course. But they should have to see a dead body at least once a week. Then everyone would have a better sense of equilibrium, and lots of fears and anxieties would just disappear.” He pulled his gaze back from the blankets and raised it to Wim. “Do you still remember it, then?”
    “Sure I do,” Wim answered, and reflected back, thinking hard.
    He was a boy, seven years old, when one day—hewas wearing a black velvet coat with a cream-colored pointed collar—his mother called him into the music room, where there was an open coffin. She herself was standing, with tear-swollen eyes, in a posture that he would never forget, tall and straight with her thin figure, as though she were growing from one minute to the next, leaning against one of the double doors and saying in a soft, melodious voice—she was a singer—and a tone he had never heard her speak in before and would never hear again: “Wim, that’s Father. He is dead. Say goodbye to him, my boy.” And Wim had stepped up to the open coffin, which had a long piece of glass lying across the top, lengthwise, and had looked closely at Father. What was that under his chin? A long, wide block of wood lay on his chest and held up Father’s chin. His face looked serious and was almost totally without wrinkles. He looked different, better than he did before when he was lying sick in bed. He was wearing a frock coat with a big white carnation from the garden in the buttonhole. Wim examined the carnation and noticed that you can’t smell a flower through glass. Only in this flower, blooming behind glass but giving off no more scent, did the astonished child recognize the sign of death. His father also lay behind the glass covering and you could see him but not smell him. Two thick, burning candles stood at the head end of the coffin, and at the foot end lay a big wreath with a blue ribbon, on which was written in golden letters: TO THEIR BELOVED DADDY—THE CHILDREN .
    “He’s still too young,” his aunt whispered to his mother when she saw the boy standing there.
    “Thank God,” his uncle whispered back. Father’s brother had been living in the house for a week and taking care of all the necessary business. The following year, he married Wim’s mother and moved to India with her. The children were sent to boarding school.
    When Wim’s aunt led him quietly out of the room, Coba came in through the other door. She was very pale and sobbing uninterruptedly. Even though she was older, the rules of family precedence demanded that the son take his leave of his father first . . .
    “The two of us will manage it.” The doctor interrupted the silence.
    “Yes,” Wim answered with conviction, as though he had had the exact same thought at the same time. How yellow Nico’s teeth looked already, like wax. Were they cold to the touch too?
    “Grab his feet,” the doctor said as he gripped under the armpits