Tessa Dratt

Dead Weight
by Tessa Dratt Published in THE CRESCENT REVIEW Vol. 15, No. 1

"I began to write short fiction and memoir in 1991 when I retired from the corporate world. This story attempts to capture in a very compressed form the shock of my father's death in a foreign country."

The police car pulls up with a screech outside a drab, box-like building on the outskirts of Rouen. Rain, hard as hailstones, pummels the hood and roof of the car like a thousand angry fists. It's hard to see anything clearly.

The bald gendarme who's been driving, turns in his seat and swivels his torso so he can face us. His younger partner pulls a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lights it, filling the cramped space with clouds of dark tobacco smoke.

"Voilà," the bald man says to my mother, who's seated next to me in the back of the airless Renault. The expression on his craggy face is kind, which helps offset the unnerving effect of his wandering left eye.

"Voilà," he repeats. "La morgue."

My mother trembles. It begins with a shiver that passes through her body like a sigh, but escalates to an uncontrollable shaking in her hands and legs. The deep-blue velvet zippered pouch that's been resting on her lap falls to the floor in the back of the car. I pick it up and dust it off, smoothing the velvet cloth so the nap lies down in the same direction. I kiss the Star of David embroidered in silver thread on the center and say "amen".

"You know he never traveled without it," my mother says.

"Yes, I know," I answer. I unzip the pouch and finger the soft, white, woven wool of the prayer shawl with its traditional black stripes and braided fringe around the silk borders.

"Can you bear it?" I ask my mother.

"Come," she says, "Let's go in."

I help her out of the car, slide my arm through hers, and open my umbrella, a futile gesture given the horrific downpour, heavy as grief. A man dressed in white from head to toe, a morgue attendant, rushes out of the building. He confers with the policemen. They throw up their hands, shake their heads and light many cigarettes that get soggy in the rain.

"Is there a problem?" I ask, stepping forward.

"Oui," the bald gendarme says. "The body is naked. The clothes are gone. There's been some mix-up in the transport. We must find the clothes. We need the clothes for the identification."

My mother takes the pouch from my hand and holds it out.

"Take this. Cover him with this. Let me see my husband. I want to see my husband, now."

More conversation. More gestures. Raised eyebrows, air expelled through pursed lips. Many shrugs of nervous French shoulders, up and down, down and up.

"Bien, Madame," the bald one says. He takes the velvet pouch. "You will wait here one moment, s'íl vous plaît. Then you can go in."

Cold envelops us as my mother and I enter the main room of the morgue. My father's body lies on a slab in the center of an otherwise empty, tiled area, covered from the waist down, by the prayer shawl. His head is thrown back revealing the deep purple gash on his forehead. His chest and arms are shrunken and shriveled, with skin the color of rubber cement, his mouth open in a truncated cry of anguish. I can see from the peculiar shape and sharpness of his back molars, just how hard he ground his teeth.

No one has thought to close his eyes. They face the ceiling, colorless, empty and dry.

The room has an astringent smell like alcohol and mildew and damp, rotting mushrooms. Champignons. Fungus. Decay. I take shallow breaths to fend off the foreign odor.

"But he's, he's so...so small," I say.

"Yes," she answers. "He lost twelve pounds since your brother, after he...." Her voice catches. She breaks off mid-sentence. Her bone-thin body lists slightly.

"I'm afraid," I say.

"Why?" she answers regaining her balance. "He's dead. The dead can't do any harm...."She walks straight up to the corpse, closes its eyes, closes its mouth, touches its cheek.

I don't go near the body, but stand in the far corner under a high barred window and watch. Memories fly around the room like bats. They swoop about, obscuring the light, then hang upside down from the ceiling fixture and study me with red, beady eyes. They suck up the oxygen in the room.

My mother circles the body again and again, like a doctor doing rounds. She uncovers a blue-white foot and touches its big toe where the nail has split and doubled. I notice that she has stopped trembling. She runs her fingers across his forehead as if to smooth out its creases and wipe the gash away.

"Maybe now, you'll find some peace, Mishinka,"she says.

The inside of my mouth is coated with the taste of ashes. I press my body hard against the cold tile wall and wait for the bitter substance that floods up and into my throat to subside and disappear. The bats swing back and forth. They stare at me with unblinking eyes and wait.

"Don't you want to touch him? To say good-bye?" my mother asks.

Still pasted to the tile wall I answer, "I can say good-bye from here."

If I reach out to touch any part of my father's body, finger so much as a single thread of the fringe on the prayer shawl that covers his nakedness, I will be undone by the double-edged razor of rage and sorrow lodged inside my chest.

Slowly, I lead my mother from the room. She allows her meager body's weight to collapse against my hip, so that I drag her along beside me.

"You must arrange for a rabbi, a coffin...." she whispers.

"How do you say ‘autopsy' in French?" I ask.
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