Woman of the Dead Read Free Page B

peace in the middle of Innsbruck, a modern Funerary Institute in the shade of the apple trees, managed by a young woman who treated both the dead and the mourners with respect. The business began to flourish. Like Blum herself.
    After the kiss in the cool room, Mark moved in with her. Love suddenly filled the old villa. It was all like a dream, a fairy tale come true, just like in the books that Blum had read, the stories in which she had taken refuge. It was the happiness of others that had kept her alive, and her own longing for it. Something she had never really believed in now lies beside her. She wants everything to stay as it is, nothing to change. She says so every day, every day she asks him not to stop loving her. A kiss before they begin each new day, and then, thankful for it, she moves away from him and jumps out of bed. In the old days Blum would never for a moment have thought that happiness could fill her like this. That she would be granted little human beings and would love them. Back then she didn’t like to think of what would happen next, she simply flung herself into Mark’s embrace. She hadn’t dared to think of children. She was afraid the happiness would go away if she asked too much of it, that love would disappear overnight. Having her own children, seeing them grow up, loving them – for three years Blum dismissed the idea from her mind. She couldn’t imagine being a mother, she was afraid of repeating what she had learned. Lovelessness, coldness of heart, she didn’t want to find out whether she was another Herta or Hagen. When Mark broached the idea, fear constricted her throat, kept her quiet. She didn’t dare to try for them, not for a long time, but in the end she overcame her fears. Her wish for children was too great. But she was granted her wish twice. They were miraculous little creatures. Blum worried over every tear they shed, every fit of crying, she took care of them and touched them whenever she could, she carried them around for hours, caressed them, spoke lovingly to them. She lay awake at night looking at her angels as they slept. To this day she sometimes doubts that it can be true, that they are really here.

two
    Uma and Nela are upstairs with Karl, Mark’s father, who is sitting reading the morning paper when the girls storm into his kitchen. He is a kindly old man who makes cocoa for the children, laughs with them, helps them to play with their building blocks, who loves them and would do anything for them. Uma is in the crook of his arm, Nela is spooning up cocoa from a pink cup. Karl tells them stories over breakfast; he is a blessing to everyone in the house. Mark and Blum brought him to live with them two years ago. He had suffered an infection from a tick bite, and then took early retirement after a stroke. He now needs help in many situations – he would never ask for that help, but he is glad of it. There are things that he forgets these days, things he can no longer remember. Mark didn’t want to leave him on his own in his little apartment, and so Blum suggested converting the unused second storey of the house. Knowing how much he meant to Mark, she wanted Karl to live with them. For a long time he had done everything for his son. Mark’s mother died young, and Karl was the only parent Mark could remember. When he woke up, when he went to sleep, Karl and only Karl was there. Karl brought the boy up on his own: two men at the breakfast table, fatherly advice when he had a spare moment. They stuck together as much as they could. Mark spent a good deal of time on his own, a little boy under the covers, but a little boy who could always trust his father to come back. Who knew that nothing bad would happen to him, that the bond between them was stronger than anything else. Mark was a loner; as a teenager he knocked around like a stray dog, but he was happy, as happy as possible, because of all the trouble that Karl took. He told Blum about his life as a motherless