The Woman From Prague
Page 23
I had a long night with Kaz in Pats. I drank a little more beer than I should have and woke up with a bit of a headache, but I’m glad I did. We worked through some of our shit. Yes, he sold me out, but then he stepped up, so that’s what I’ll judge him on. I can look back on this and say I came out of this with a friend.
It used to be I wasn’t so good at making new friends.
Other than that, I think I covered everything. Except this. When I got my passport, the woman at the expediting office told me to visit the Sedlec Ossuary and I told her I would. I don’t know that I’ll ever be coming back to this part of the world. I’d like to, but there’s a lot of world left to see, and a lot of living to do, and I may as well do the smart thing. Do it now, rather than regret it later.
Outside the ossuary, I stand close to a tour group. An elderly woman in a puffy black coat speaks German-accented English and explains the history of the church. That in 1278, the church’s abbot was sent to the Holy Land and returned with a small amount of earth from Golgotha, the site where Jesus was crucified. He sprinkled it on the ground and it became a popular burial site for people throughout Europe. The land was expanded after the Black Death and Hussite Wars. Around 1400, the Gothic church was built, with a vaulted upper level and the ossuary underneath. And after 1511, a half-blind monk was charged with exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel.
Satisfied that I’ve gleaned the bullet points, I head inside, pay the admission fee, and walk the stone staircase down into the ossuary, the place full of ornately stacked remains. Many of the piles are behind cages, but others out in full view, and it all culminates in an obscenely beautiful, impossibly intricate chandelier of human bones hanging from the ceiling.
I walk the space slowly, taking it all in. The woman in Georgia was right. I forget her name now and I’m sad about that. But she was right. It’s incredible to see. I stop in front of what looks like a crest, and a raven built of human bone—a hand and a hip and split femur—pecking at the eye of a skull. A dark-skinned woman next to me is looking at the same thing.
After a moment, she clears her throat. “It is so sad,” she says in a Spanish accent.
“What’s sad?”
“All these people. There was so much life here once. And this is all that is left.”
I look into the skull’s eyes. Wonder if it was a man or a woman.
If the person was good or bad.
If his or her life was regretted or celebrated.
Where they are now.
“I don’t know that it’s sad,” I tell her.
“But these people were loved. And now they are here for tourists to take pictures. For our entertainment.”
“Is it for our entertainment? The care and thought that went into this, it’s like the people who made it wanted us to know that even death can be beautiful. That even after a person is gone, the thing they left behind can be special.”
She smiles. “You are an optimist, then?”
“I’m coming around to it.”
She turns to me and smiles. She’s beautiful, like a museum statue taken on life. She’s also incredibly polite, because she doesn’t mention anything about my face.
“Then what about you?” she asks. “Would you like to be displayed like this after you are gone?”
There’s something about being here, alive after the last few days, and the comfort of anonymity—we don’t even know each other’s names—that compels me to dig a little.
“Maybe,” I tell her. “I don’t know. There was a time not too long ago I was indifferent to the concept of dying. I felt like I would blow away in a stiff breeze.”
She arches an eyebrow. “And now?”
“I don’t feel that way anymore.”
“You are very strange, Mr. Optimist. You are an American?”
“I am.”
“Are you on holiday?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
“Where will you go next?”
“Home,” I tell her. “It’s time to go home. I’ve been away too long.”
Rob Hart is the author of three previous Ash McKenna novels: New Yorked, which was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, City of Rose and South Village, which was named one of the best mysteries by the Boston Globe. He is the publisher at MysteriousPress.com and the class director at LitReactor. Previously, he has worked as a political reporter, the communications director for a politician, and a commissioner for the city of New York. He is also the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella. His short stories have appeared in publications like Thuglit, Needle, Shotgun Honey, All Due Respect, Joyland, and Helix Literary Magazine. His non-fiction has appeared at LitReactor, Salon, The Daily Beat, Mulholland Books, Criminal Element, The Literary Hub, Electric Literature, the Powell’s bookstore blog and Nailed. He has received both a Derringer Award nomination and honorable mention in Best American Mystery Stories 2015, edited by James Patterson. He lives in New York City.
Find more on the web at www.robwhart.com and on Twitter at @robwhart.
The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Rob Hart
Cover and jacket design by 2Faced Design
Interior design and formatting by:
www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com
ISBN 978-1-943818-70-9
Library of Congress Control Number: tk
First hardcover edition July 2017 by Polis Books, LLC
1201 Hudson Street, #211S
Hoboken, NJ 07030
www.PolisBooks.com