dead love
They heard he had died in the war, so when he came back to the village, prowling around the perimeter in his suit of skin and bones, they didn’t see him. When the children asked, ‘who is that?’ they shook their heads, saying ‘no-one, nothing, it’s only a shadow, a branch moving in the wind.’ The ghost cried pitifully, begging the villagers for food and shelter, but they didn’t hear him. They told the children, ‘hush now, it’s only the cattle lowing, only the dogs barking and rattling their chains.’
No one wanted the dead back there, hanging around where they did not belong. But the ghost would not leave.
Marya, neither blind nor deaf, saw the dead man and heard his cries. While everyone slept, she lay awake in her narrow bed and listened to the ghost’s sobs and pleas. She told herself it was nothing but the creak of the wind in the rafters. But she was restless and could not stop imagining the dead man out there: his hands curling into fists, his mouth cracked at the edges.
So Marya rose silently in the night and took bread and meat from the larder, and she walked in her bare feet and nightdress to the edge of the village where the ghost waited. When he saw her, he smiled, and Marya looked away. When she handed him the food, his fingers brushed against hers, and when she turned to leave, he called after her, come back.
She swore she wouldn’t go back. But the next night came, and with it the dead man’s crying, and Marya turned and turned in her bed and finally rose. She walked barefoot in her thin nightdress to the boundary of the village and gave over the bread and meat she had. This time, the ghost took her hand as she passed him the food, pulling it up to his mouth. She snatched her hand away from him, but not before he had put his lips against it. There was a patch of wetness on her palm where his tongue had touched her skin.
Each day Marya told herself she wouldn’t go back, but the night found her restless and lonely, and she crept out of bed to visit the dead man and bring him food. He grew stronger and filled out, until he no longer looked much like a ghost, and Marya forgot to be frightened. They talked of many things. Marya told the stories of the village without men. And the dead man spoke about the war, and the men who had died, brothers, cousins and uncles of this place. He showed her the wound on his leg, a deep gutter of seared flesh on his thigh. He spoke of hunger and cold as though they were animals that had walked alongside the army, patrolling the camps, keeping the men quiet and in their place.
It could have been pity, or love, or simple hunger that finally made Marya step across into the dead man’s arms. She could not say herself which it was. They lay together on the hard ground, Marya’s nightdress bunched up under her armpits, and the dead man’s trousers pooled around his feet, and when they were finished, there was nothing left to say. The next day the dead man was gone. Nobody remembered he had been there at all.
The baby was born dead, but Marya fed it anyway, holding it to her breast until the icy mouth froze her milk. For weeks she did this, and then she stopped. She buried the child behind her house, hoping it would grow somehow. Perhaps into a tree, or a rose bush, or a ghost.
