“He’s not her husband,” Yasha said.
“What?” said his mother.
“No?” asked Haldor.
“He’s not your husband!” Yasha shouted. “You’re somebody’s girlfriend.” He turned to Haldor and said, “She lives with a man, in Tribeca.” He looked at his uncle, and then back at his mother, and then down into the hole. “I am his son,” Yasha said. “And that’s all.”
“You are also her son,” said Sigbjørn, pointing the shovel at Olyana.
“You are his mother, aren’t you?” said Haldor.
Olyana ran her hands through her hair and said, “I am Yakov’s mother. Vassily was my husband. The rest is only about cats and apartments.” She made a flicking gesture with one hand. “Let me bury him.”
Haldor whispered, “Dear Olyana,” but she snatched the shovel from Sigbjørn’s hand. Haldor, now defenseless, touched at his beard absentmindedly. Sigbjørn dropped to the ground and sat, holding his knees to his chest. Nobody knew what was wrong with him. He was not, in any case, attempting to retrieve the shovel from Yasha’s mother. Olyana stood with all her limbs spread apart, the red handle clutched in one fist. Frances kept her own hands behind her back, her hair covering her face. It did not seem possible to Yasha that they could both be called women.
Things had been moving very, very fast, Yasha thought, while everybody remained silent. It had begun the day his mother appeared on Oriental Boulevard. He’d chased her, they’d run a good distance toward Brighton Beach, and it seemed they hadn’t stopped running. Yasha had run off with his father to Russia, his father’s heart had run out, and they had all run up here to the damn North Pole, where he’d found the first girl he really—
“What’s wrong, Mrs. Gregoriov?” Frances asked.
That is what happened, Yasha thought, as her voice confirmed it.
Olyana lowered her shovel, but not completely to the ground. “I cannot remember the blessing,” she said, and then lowered the shovel completely.
The word blessing startled Haldor. He flipped furiously through his tiny book.
“There is a prayer we should say. I learned it for my father’s funeral and I do not remember how to say it. I do not remember how to say it!”
Haldor left his position at the head of the grave and walked around to Olyana. He gently freed the red handle from her fist. Frances came over and stood between them. Everybody was on one side of the grave now, except Yasha, who stood directly opposite, looking very tall and gangly against the open beach.
Olyana turned to Frances and said, “You’re Jewish.”
“What?” said everyone.
“I am Jewish,” said Frances simply.
“Of course she is,” Olyana said to the group. “New York, brown hair, I mean, look at her!”
“Mom,” said Yasha, who realized he’d never called her “Mom” before, only “Mama,” and not often that. “Mom” was what the kids at his high school said into their phones, after school, when they were begging for something.
“I only want to know if she knows the blessing,” Olyana said.
“What blessing?” said Frances.
“The one I said for my father.”
“Mom,” said Yasha.
“I am certain you know it. Of course, I should know it, only we were hardly Jewish at all. We pretended not to be. It was easier that way.” She turned to Haldor with an expression that begged his pardon. “And of course my father died, so I learned the Jewish words, all nine of them or whatever it was. It was the only way we could bless him, I mean your grandfather, Yakov.”
It was impressive, Yasha thought, the way she played to her audience, getting everyone involved. She was putting on a show, and she looked frighteningly radiant, like a star.
“I know the Mourner’s Kaddish,” Frances said. “That’s all. I think you say that later. I don’t think it’s for right now.”
“How does that go?” said Olyana.
Frances said, “Yitgadal v’yitkadash.”
“It’s not that one,” said Olyana.
Yasha said, “Let her finish.”
“No, no, it’s not that one,” his mother said, lifting one hand to block out the sun, which was getting higher and into her eyes. She squinted, and paced up and down the length of the grave. “Not that many y’s. It’s a short one.” She turned to Sigbjørn, who had no idea, and looked insulted by the words short one.
“I thought Papa wasn’t Jewish,” Yasha said. “Only you are, sort of.”
“I am,” she said, “which means you are, Yasha, dear, and we are the ones who are mourning.”
“The only Jewish thing Papa knew how to say was mazel tov,” Yasha said.
“He learned it at our wedding,” said his mother.
Haldor opened his book. “Perhaps—”
“The blessing is not in your book, my dear chief,” she said. “Lord,” she said, “I miss my father. I miss that man, herring and all. I miss this man.” She used her sun-blocking hand to point down at the casket. Her face was lit again, and shone as if the light came from under her skin. “I miss my son,” she said. “Look how tall he is. I can hardly believe it. Of course I am a long-legged woman, but Vassily was so short.”
Sigbjørn looked down at the casket.
“Heaven pity me,” Olyana continued. “I lose everything.”
“I don’t pity you,” Yasha said to his mother, across the grave.
Olyana was in her stride. What had happened by the Yggdrasil tree—when she had been crouched, and shocked, and nearly defeated—would not happen again. There were too many people watching this time, and her dress was thin, and she was cold, and strengthened by the cold. Yasha saw this, and braced himself.
“When I ask heaven to pity me,” his mother said, “I ask heaven, not you, Yasha, dear. Then, of course, heaven will need to pity you too, for sending your poor father off to Russia, looking for me, when you knew very well I was not there. We’ll see if heaven forgives you for that.”
Frances turned, confused, to Yasha. Yasha’s fingers cramped.
“When I call to heaven,” Haldor said, passionately raising one arm, “I am asking Baldur, and Frey, and Skirnir, Frey’s manservant—”
“I sent myself off to Russia,” Yasha said, “to get away from you.” He glared at his mother, but her expression did not change. He turned to Haldor. “We are not Vikings, Haldor,” Yasha said. “Frances, please, say the blessing you know. Stand where Haldor stands.”
Nobody argued. Frances pulled her hair off her face and gathered it at the nape of her neck in a twist that immediately came undone. The group stood evenly spaced around the hole. The circus, Yasha thought, was over, and the band of pink light that had lined the horizon was sinking, gradually, into the sea.
Frances said, “Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.”
There was a pause. She whispered to Yasha, “Say amen.”
“Amen,” said Yasha, with all his might.
“B’alma di v’ra chirutei v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon uv’yomeichon uv’chayei d’chol beit Yisrael, baagala uviz’man kariv. V’imru—”
She looked at Yasha. Yasha said, “Amen.”
“Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya. Yitbarach v’yishtabach v’yitpaar v’yitromam v’yitnasei, v’yit’hadar v’yitaleh v’yit’halal sh’mei d’Kud’sha—”
Olyana shouted, “B’rich Hu!” She beamed.
Frances went on. “L’eila min kol birchata v’shirata, tushb’chata v’nechemata, daamiran b’alma. V’imru …”
At the sound of the pause, Yasha said, “Amen.”
“Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya,” Frances said, “v’chayim aleinu v’al kol Yisrael. V’imru—”
“Amen,” Yasha said.
“Oseh shalom bimromav, Hu yaaseh shalom aleinu, v’al kol Yisrael. V’imru,” Frances said, followed by a final “Amen,” which Yasha missed.
Olyana was delighted. “I simply don’t know how I remembered it,” she
said, in the silence after the prayer. “Of course, my mother would have known it, maybe taught it to me. I haven’t forgotten it all, bless me.”
Yasha looked to Frances, attempting to communicate a gratitude he’d never felt before. Frances looked back with a sleepy, glad face.
Olyana walked around to the other side of the grave. “Your girlfriend has been a wonderful help, Yakov,” she said. “Thank you,” she said to Frances.
“Oh, no—” Frances said.
“You have been wonderful,” Yasha said, hoping that Frances might let the “girlfriend” part slide, or even roll with it.
“Is anybody in need of refreshments, coffee?” Haldor asked. “Cheese?”
“We are not finished with the burying,” Sigbjørn said.
Haldor opened his tiny book, and then closed it and put it away somewhere under his tunic. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “Let us dig.”
With the prayer said, and the sun rising, and the wind slowing down, it was—everyone seemed to agree—time to dig, time to bury the casket and the skins. It was cold, and the sand would undoubtedly make Papa warmer, in one way or another, whatever warmth could mean to him now. Frances left her spot at the head of the grave and motioned for Yasha to step forward.
I am still alive, Yasha thought. He picked up the yellow-handled shovel and joined Sigbjørn in shoveling sand. When the casket was no longer visible, he gave the shovel to his mother, an action that made him feel profoundly merciful. He watched her heap a few rounds and was moved, despite himself, because burying was the worst sport, and his mother performed it gracefully. Toward the end, Sigbjørn handed the shovel to Haldor. To prevent Haldor and his mother from finishing the digging together, Yasha asked Haldor for the red-handled shovel, and heaped, with his mother, the last of it.
• • •
They sat on the beach with the grave filled in behind them. Rocks the size of station wagons filled the shore; there weren’t many good places to sit. A few rocks had smooth tops, with lichen for padding. They all sat facing the sea. Yasha had his own boulder, and his mother had her own—a larger one way down by the water, with a slight incline, like a pool chair. Daniil got up and washed his face with a little seawater.
Yasha turned back to the now barely discernible grave. Haldor, and the blacksmith, and now Papa—they belonged here, Yasha thought. This was their place. Daniil would go back to Russia, which had always been his place. Yasha, and his mother, and Frances—they did not seem tied to the idea of place altogether, as far as he could tell. They were the anywhere sort, just like his cat had been.
His mother leaned back with her eyes closed, sunbathing. There was nothing left of the sunset-sunrise that had stretched out around midnight. The sky was simpler now, less theatrical, and it was strangely unsurprising to see her there, taking in the early light, saying nothing. It was as if they were all waking up, waking up their bodies, each still grappling with a question from a dream. His mother, reclining on her rock, with her body unfurled, looked unquestionably like a woman. Yasha had in some sense never understood her this way—he didn’t know if she shaved her armpits or legs, what creams she kept by the mirror, whether she slept naked or in yellow shorts, like Frances. No—his mother would not sleep in shorts. Yasha wondered if it had been a pleasure for his father to sleep beside her. He could hardly count the pleasures now divided from his father by sheepskins, wood, and his uncle’s flimsy brass nails.
Under an ordinary sky, blue and recognizable as morning, they started to pack the truck. They had forgotten to use the blankets, though the blankets would have made the rocks more comfortable, and the pile lay folded on the bed of the truck. The only sheepskin that remained above ground was the coffee-stained one from under the refreshments; the thermoses were mostly empty now and the plastic tables cleared, ready to be collapsed. They had less to bring back, Yasha knew, than they’d carried out to the beach. The trailer lay empty, still hitched to the pickup truck.
Haldor again took the driver’s seat, Olyana the passenger’s. Daniil sat alone in the backseat. Yasha and Frances sat out on the bed of the pickup, with only the one stained sheepskin beneath them. The two shovels rattled across the floor as the truck moved, slamming into their feet. Sigbjørn sat on the empty utility trailer, facing Frances and Yasha. It was perverse, Yasha thought, for Sigbjørn to sit in the casket’s place. Besides, he didn’t know what sort of hand-holding he would have dared had Sigbjørn not been there, but he couldn’t do any of it now.
“My grandmother,” Sigbjørn said, apropos of nothing, “is waiting at home for me. I wonder if she soon will die.”
It hadn’t occurred to Yasha that Sigbjørn had a home outside the Viking Museum, much less a grandmother.
“How old is she?” asked Frances.
“Eighty-seven.”
“How old are you?” asked Yasha.
“Thirty-one,” said Sigbjørn. “And you?”
“Twenty-one,” Frances said.
“Seventeen,” Yasha said, simultaneously. Hearing Frances’s answer, he added, “I’m turning eighteen in August.”
“I’m turning twenty-two in August.”
They drove very slowly up the hill and out of the parking lot, the German radar station blinking apathetically behind them. Yasha turned back one more time toward the beach. It looked like a beach. It did not look like a cemetery. It was what Papa wanted, Yasha told himself, and not not beautiful—
“How old is your mother?” Sigbjørn asked.
“I have no idea,” Yasha said, dazed. “Fifty?”
Sigbjørn went quiet.
“What did your mother mean when she talked about going off to Russia?” Frances asked Yasha.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Yasha said.
“All right,” Frances said. Yasha recognized the flash of disappointment in her face and didn’t know how to fix it. “In other news,” she said, “I guess we might share the same birthday?”
“We might,” Yasha said.
They passed the head sculpture, the fishing cabins, and the sheep. The dirt road gave way to Eggumveien, and the truck picked up speed. Haldor was speaking to Olyana as he drove, but Yasha couldn’t hear what he said. They would soon be back at the museum, and then what? Would they leave in the morning? It hadn’t been possible to think of anything after Saturday, and now it was Sunday. The party would be dispersed. The world seemed open to them, and Yasha wanted to stay put.
“Well, what’s yours?” Frances said.
“We could just find out,” Yasha said, trying to buy time. “Every day in August, it will either be both of our birthdays or not.”
“It’s only July.”
“Your barn gets inspected in a few hours. Then where will you go? I’m not going anywhere,” Yasha said, with so much conviction he surprised himself.
Frances was surprised too; she leaned back slightly and rested her head on the back of the truck’s cabin. Yasha didn’t dare face her. He waited.
“I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I have to be at a wedding in September.”
“I’m going to work for the Viking Museum,” Yasha went on, too anxious to ask whose wedding she meant. “They must have something for me to do here, and who knows where my mother is going?”
Frances did not seem prepared to engage in the details. She was still leaning back, out of Yasha’s peripheral vision. She did not reply.
Yasha said, “I’m done with high school.” He didn’t know if that had been a smart thing to say to a girl who was almost twenty-two. “I’d rather stay here than go back to my father’s bakery without my father.” Frances said nothing.
Sigbjørn said, “If my grandmother died, I would not want to dig for her. That would hurt all of me. Arms and heart. Better to burn her. Or ask someone else to dig. Ja, ask someone else to dig.”
Yasha stood up and stumbled across the moving bed of the truck. He stepped over the shovels, pushed both his hands down on one of the side walls, and jumped ou
t of the truck, onto the road. His legs were long and shortened the fall. He only had to shake his ankles out for a moment before starting to walk. Then he followed the truck at its donkey pace, head down and hands in his pockets.
Sigbjørn turned around in the trailer to face him. Frances leaned against the side where he’d jumped.
Yasha slowed his pace to create more distance between himself and the truck. There was only a short way left to drive, and he was inexpressibly thankful to be walking it alone, without Frances’s silence or Sigbjørn’s mumbo jumbo. The night had been impossibly long.
• • •
Nils stood in the parking lot. Beside him stood a short blond woman. Haldor parked the truck and opened the passenger-side door for Olyana. He and Nils patted each other’s backs. The woman shook hands with Olyana, who, to Yasha’s relief, hadn’t noticed his jump. His mother was shivering. Yasha had almost caught up with the group when Frances bounded past him and threw her arms around Nils.
Yasha ran after her, but could not join the embrace. When they finally separated, Nils began a hurried, whispered account of his trouble sleeping and his decision to check the barn once more. Yasha stood slightly too close to the two of them, trying to catch Frances’s eye.
“I am Yasha’s mother,” Olyana told the blond woman.
“Frida,” the woman replied. “The sous chef.”
“Our head chef, Kurt, is already preparing breakfast,” Haldor said. “Frida prepared the refreshments for tonight’s funeral.”
Everyone remembered that there had been a funeral. Olyana’s shivers were intensifying. Haldor lifted Yasha’s discarded sweater from the gravel, shook out the trailer’s dust, and wrapped it around Olyana’s shoulders.
“Let me take you inside, Olyana,” Haldor said, and led her toward the museum.
“Let me clear out those trays,” said Frida, and she rushed over to the truck. Daniil followed her, offering to carry the thermoses.
“You ought to get some rest,” Frances told Nils.
“That’s right,” Yasha said, too eagerly. Nils turned to Yasha, arched his eyebrows, then turned back to Frances and said she was probably right.
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