Pyotr’s mother was supposed to read these lines in Pyotr’s ear as he died, so long as he continued to breathe, so long as her son maintained contact with the material world. And when Pyotr had stopped breathing, when his arteries had ceased to throb, he should have been turned to rest on his right side with his right hand at his head with the palm against his cheek. This was the position in which Gautama Buddha died, the position from which Gautama Buddha passed immediately and directly into the final resting place of the soul, parinirvāna·
Now, Pyotr complained to Serjoža, he would be relegated to wade through hallucinations of his memories alone, without a guide. He would always fear losing his way, because the bardo was full of false allurements, which came from his very own consciousness, from his projections, fears, and desires. How would he be able to keep his wandering thoughts in check without his mother guiding him, without his mother reading in his ear:
O child of noble family, death has now arrived, and so you should adopt this attitude: “I have arrived at the time of death, so now, through this death, I will adopt the attitude of the enlightened state of mind, of friendliness and compassion . . .”
Pyotr wept bitterly, because he had not recognized the “basic luminosity of the first bardo”, the pure, immaterial, colorless, unfettered, gleaming, and shimmering brightness, nor the secondary luminosity of the second bardo. For this reason he was forced to walk, so he shouted at Serjoža, toward the terrifying karmic illusions, toward the horrors of the Lords of Death, toward the deceitful colored light and frightening sounds of the false kingdom of the bardo of dharmatā. Right now, as they spoke, he walked there, and he was afraid because no one could help him. No one was there to tell him: This is the natural sound of your own dharmatā, so do not be afraid or bewildered. And no one whispered in his ear: You have no physical body of flesh and blood, so whatever sounds, colors, and rays of light occur, they cannot hurt you and you cannot die. And his mother did not assure him that: It is enough simply to recognize them as your projections. And he would never receive instructions for closing the door to the womb in the bardo of becoming. He would be eternally alone, wandering in the muddy swamp of samsāra, as the living dead, separated from his loved ones, his mother and his sister, who would now have to survive alone under his father’s tyranny.
At this point in the story, Serjoža would have tapped the ash from his cherry cigar and enjoyed his first shot of cognac. He would have looked at Polina carefully, observing the effect of Pyotr’s patient history on her. Then he would have looked at his wife, Maruska, as she purred like a cat, only to nod gently to indicate that now it would be her turn, that now it would be her job to guide Polina back to good sense and away from these follies that would only bring Polina to grief. “Dear Polina,” Maruska would begin to warble, “these are the kinds of stories madmen tell. They’re an amusing distraction, aren’t they! But I’ll tell you now that no matter what you invent, Serjoža will always be able to give you one better. And he doesn’t even have to use his imagination. Being a doctor is enough for him!”
But here Polina was more sensible than many others, for example Shlomith, whose bony finger began to look ridiculous as it wagged. Surely they all understood by now that when you’re dead, you can’t die any more—or kill anyone else. Did Shlomith really want to grab her by the neck (that’s how it looked) and strangle her only to see that she couldn’t be strangled any more? Only to be forced to admit defeat, to admit that their inviolability and immortality offered final proof of the claim she had just made that de facto they were dead? Polina waved in the direction of Shlomith’s finger and gave an irritable hiss.
And in that moment, right on the heels of that hiss, which seemed to echo around the women, apparently only due to the suppressed anger with which Polina ejected it, Nina began to talk about the place. The point of reference, the safe harbor, the fireplace, the campfire—the wig. Peace be to you, Shlomith and Polina! No fighting. We’re all grown women!
Thankfully adults also have permission to play. Especially around a campfire. Shlomith was the one who came up with it, as she watched Nina crouching to fluff the wig and saw her belly protruding like a ball bursting with life from beneath her black maternity shirt, a counterpoint to everything Polina had said, an exclamation point affirming life. Let’s play dead! Shlomith decided to make a game of it: OK. Let’s pretend we aren’t in the land of the living any more. It might be fun, a little like reading a mystery where each of us dies in turn, Polina, Nina, Maimuna, Wlibgis, Shlomith, and Rosa. It might put a little excitement in our . . . this, whatever we want to call this, it’s all the same.
Both Polina and Nina eagerly joined in the game, relieved that the quarrel was past, as did Maimuna when Nina was good enough to promise to translate between French and English. Rosa Imaculada also would have had a tale to tell, perhaps the wildest tale of
