A Separation(29)

The body had been there at least overnight, perhaps longer. Although his wallet had been emptied of its cards and cash, it was not difficult for the police to identify him. Later, we would find that many hundreds of dollars had been removed from his accounts, and that mysterious charges had been made to his credit cards, charges that would later be reversed by fraud protection services, although it seemed beside the point, the man to whose accounts the companies were issuing these credits could not care, he would never open another bank or credit card statement.

He had been mugged and killed, a stupid and anonymous death that could have taken place anywhere—in Manhattan or in London or Rome, there was nothing specific about the nature of his murder, the motivations were both familiar and banal, hardly worthy of notice—and there was something ignominious not only in the fact of his body lying abandoned in a ditch, but in the notion that he had traveled so far, to this foreign landscape and culture, only to confront a death that could have taken place one block from his own apartment in London.

In the first stunned hours after I was informed of his death—when the police arrived at the hotel I was in my room packing to leave, Kostas had already called the driver who had brought me from Athens to Mani and he was due to arrive shortly, of course there was no journey to Athens that day, the driver had likely traveled some distance in order to pick me up from the hotel, a costly inconvenience, but nobody mentioned the matter, this is precisely the kind of thing that people do not bother you about, when there has been a death in the family—my mind remained fixed on this small point, the inappropriateness of his death, its small and even accidental quality.

A friend used to say, in speaking of her ex-boyfriends (and later three ex-husbands, she was an eternal optimist), He’s dead to me, a phrase I did not especially like, it sounded too violent for what is essentially a regular occurrence, the breakdown of a relationship. My friend did not look as if she were capable of thinking such vicious and decisive thoughts, much less feeling them, but she always assured me that there was real sentiment behind the words. Of course, it was only a turn of phrase, but I was always too superstitious to say such a thing, he’s dead to me, it felt like bad karma, although I don’t believe in karma.

And yet, despite my caution, I was the one now living out this macabre phrase, which wasn’t even my own, he’s dead to me. The situation was one you sometimes imagine—in moments of extreme love or hate, in the grip of either fear or fantastical loathing—but which you do not believe to be actually possible. Even when you stand at the altar and declare until death do us part, death remains abstract, something that caps a long and happy life together, two elderly people holding hands, grandchildren and a cottage by the sea. But there were no children or grandchildren in this case, no countryside retreat, there was barely a marriage at all, only something between the two phrases, he’s dead to me and until death do us part.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I left the room and went down to the lobby, Kostas had only said that there had been a terrible accident involving Christopher, at that point I didn’t yet know the full extent of what had occurred. Kostas and the two police officers standing beside him lowered their heads as I approached. A certain respect is accorded to a woman who is about to be informed of her husband’s untimely death, and it dawned on me then that Christopher was dead. Kostas introduced the officers from the local station, unfortunately there had been some very bad news.

Kostas continued, translating for the officers, who spoke without looking at me, apart from the occasional surreptitious glance, perhaps they were sizing me up, they might have been looking for suspects and the first suspect is always the wife or husband, everybody knows that. But as Kostas continued to translate for the men, and I listened, numb, to their words, which I could not comprehend, I decided it wasn’t suspicion but mere awkwardness that was coloring their response, nobody likes to be the bearer of bad news and they had no way of gauging how I might respond, whether or not there would be rage or hysterics or total disbelief, no, I didn’t blame them at all.

I assumed that Kostas had been told at least some of the particulars in advance. Nonetheless, as each piece of information was relayed to him, he gave a little gasp before turning to me with a more subdued expression and telling me that, for example, my husband’s body had been found by the side of the road, that he had been hit on the back of the head, likely with a rock or other blunt instrument, that it looked like a mugging. Perhaps he thought surprise was appropriate, it was a difficult tone to strike, somewhere between sympathetic dismay and bureaucratic vacancy, he was only transmitting the message.

I must have been in a state of shock. I kept nodding, as piece by piece the disaster continued to unfold before me, I asked how long he had been dead and they said they did not know necessarily, that would only come out in the autopsy, but not long, the body was—Kostas stopped, he wore an expression of consternation, as if reluctant to relate what followed—still relatively fresh and undisturbed, apart from the wound at the back of his head, there had not been very much decay. So he had died in the last day, while I was here, at the hotel? The police shook their heads, again, they could not say for certain until they received the coroner’s report but certainly he could not have been there for very long, the area was full of wild animals, the body would not have been as pristine as it was, he looked, they said, almost like he was sleeping.

Apart from the wound at the back of his head. A large patch of blood, the likes of which would never be seen on the head of a sleeping man, it hardly made sense to describe him as such. And yet it might have been as they said—perhaps when the body was found he was lying on his back, the blood concealed, the eyes closed, could his eyes have closed in death, was it possible that when he was found his eyes were not staring out in horror, the unexpected fact of his death, but were indeed closed, his face peaceful? Like a man who had decided to lie down in the road, a man who had fallen asleep on the asphalt.