The final, spontaneous and unscripted climax of Shlomith’s work, the cathartic mass weeping that had overtaken the crowd, which a few cynical head shakes and a couple of people marching out in open irritation could not repress, began to change shape after surging for some time. One after another people began to collect themselves when they noticed that Shlomith had lifted her head from her knees and raised her eyes. Someone stopped clapping and began to rustle his clothing as a sign he intended to move, and his neighbor did the same, and somewhere else in the auditorium someone else also started to move, and those around her did the same, and then the people next to them, and soon the whole hall was moving. But people did not press for the doors. Instead they formed a line before the artist just as spontaneously as they had burst into tears a moment ago. They wanted to hug her, each in his or her own way to say THANK YOU and to wish her a productive recovery. As they dried the corners of their eyes, one or two wondered to themselves how they would live without her. Who would channel their emotions after Shlomith had retired?
So when Polina said to Shlomith, with Nina, Wlibgis, Maimuna, and Rosa listening, that she couldn’t be alive any more than Wlibgis could be alive, Shlomith became terribly angry. Even though Polina immediately added that by the same token she couldn’t be alive either, any more than Nina, Maimuna, or Rosa were alive, Shlomith began to rage. Polina’s claim was downright offensive. Of course she was alive! She was more alive than she had ever been. She had begun to recover. She knew it because she no longer felt pain. Her thoughts were clearer now than they’d been in many years, and the dead didn’t have thoughts anyway. How do you know? Polina asked. I know, replied Shlomith, because everyone knows that. Has someone come back from the dead to tell you? asked Polina. The dead don’t speak, Shlomith said angrily. The dead have no brain activity. But what if we don’t continue our existence as physical beings? Polina continued. What if that something in us that science can’t measure never dies? But here I am, and you and all of us, just as alive as can be. We can see it with our own eyes! Shlomith shouted. Where the hell is “here”? Polina bellowed, spreading her arms theatrically. We aren’t anywhere! God help us, we aren’t anywhere or anything except this stupid fight and all these empty words!
Polina could have continued to talk for much longer, because she had a dogmatic certainty about her cause. Talking doesn’t stop even when everything else stops. Laughing and quarreling don’t stop, even when the bodily functions stop, one by one, even as the senses fade by degrees. This is death, Polina would have liked to cry. Something larger than the person continues to operate, using the person’s shell, drawing power from the person’s empty gestures; that Something needs this delayed destruction for something. That Something places the helpless creature torn from its life to struggle in a small society, and that society is made up of similarly helpless creatures torn from their lives. Survival depends entirely on good will. Does that exist or doesn’t it? Yes or no?
Polina had stopped arguing. They had to cooperate, they had to forget their dispute. Polina closed her eyes and swallowed what she had just meant to lob into the air: that they were the evidence of the existence of death, that this was the world no one had come to tell the living about, because the ones who have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, who have watched the sepia-toned filmstrip of their lives sped up in reverse in the waiting room of death, never make it this far.
Polina leaned back, farther away from Shlomith’s threatening forefinger. She was just on the verge of understanding something that she would have immediately written down if she had had pen and paper:
– THE HUMAN VOICE —> REACHES BEYOND DEATH
– WE GRADUALLY LOSE THE ABILITY TO TOUCH, WE BEGIN TO DESTROY
– SOCIETY IS ALWAYS IN DANGER!!!
– SEIZE UPON THE LEAST COMMON DENOMINATOR WHEN EVERYTHING BEGINS TO FALL APART
Dear God, they were right at the heart of things now, these women sitting in a ring gaping at each other! If she had known about the existence of this world earlier, back when she was still with her own . . . If she could have seen this in advance . . . If she could have known the right words to use . . .
Polina stopped. This was pointless navel gazing. Her own only would have thought she was even more crazy. One of them in particular, Maruska, her coworker at Zlom, the Moscow Central Agency for the Dramatic Arts, who was always preened down to the last hair, would have been certain to call over her doctor husband at some opening night reception where, after a few drinks, Polina had perhaps built up the courage to share her insight: “Serjoža! Serjoža!” Maruska would have shouted and gesticulated, and Serjoža would have rushed over to them from the furthest corner of the hall. If they were one centimeter larger, his protruding ears would have flapped, and his tail, if he’d had one, would have wagged—a truncheon tail, like a Rottweiler's, that’s what he would have had: a stiff, black wagging tail. “Serjoža, my dear Serjoža, Polina is talking nonsense again. She thinks that we continue existing after death. In little groups! In emptiness! And we gradually lose our senses. But not our ability to communicate, especially
