A Separation(30)

Can you go with them now?

I looked at Kostas blankly, I had lost the thread of what he was saying. Where? I said stupidly. He said, To the police station, to identify the body, they need someone to identify the body. Of course, I said, I just need to get my things, there is a phone call I need to make. I needed to tell Isabella—the moment they said the words confirming Christopher’s death it was already too late, by that point she should have already known. Isabella was the person who should be here, Isabella the one to claim the body of her son, I was only—a former spouse, I realized belatedly, or near enough.

One of the officers cleared his throat impatiently, as if to say that they had waited long enough, there were limits to their sympathy and discretion. I said again that I only needed to go back to my room to gather a few things, one quick phone call and then I was free to go with them and they nodded. I intended to call Isabella from my room but as I stood by the side of the bed, I hesitated, the men were waiting downstairs, it was hardly the work of a minute or two. I didn’t know what I would say, I couldn’t imagine the words—Isabella, I have some very bad news, Isabella, something terrible has happened.

It would have been easier if I had been crying, I thought, hysterical. Isabella would have told me to calm down, to get hold of myself, she would have put herself in the false position of being in control, when she was not, when neither of us was, any longer, in control of anything. I waited a moment longer and then I did not call her, I said to myself that I would leave her a few last hours, during which her world remained coherent, still rational, both an act of kindness and an act of cruelty, she would have wanted to know at once, we all would have.

When I returned to the lobby, one of the men had disappeared and Kostas stood beside the remaining police officer. Kostas told me as we departed that the police would arrange for a car to take me back to the hotel. Or perhaps one of the officers would drive me, but in any case I should not hesitate to contact him if I needed anything. He gave me a card with his mobile phone number written on it. Then he said that he assumed I would no longer be leaving that day, and offered to call the airline to cancel my ticket, he assured me that there would be no difficulty, a death in the family.

I thanked him and hurried after the officer, who was already leaving. As we exited the hotel I saw that the car was waiting, the other officer was behind the wheel and the engine was running. We got inside. The first officer insisted that I sit in the front passenger seat while he sat in the back of the car, alone, like a junior partner. Perhaps he worried that if I sat in the back while the two officers sat in front it would look too much like they had arrested me and I was being brought in for questioning, already as we drove through the interior people were stopping to watch, peering into the windows of the car as if I were a criminal.

But as I sat in the front of the car, the officer beside me driving in silence, the officer in the back staring at the headrest before him or occasionally staring out the window, it was not guilt that I felt. Nor did I yet feel grief. I felt only a sense of incredulity, that this had befallen us, something I could never have imagined, something that was at once entirely possible (it had happened, so it must be) and yet still experienced as impossible, the impossible thing that had somehow came to pass, some stammer in the divine speech.

At the same time, one part of my mind was preoccupied with the practicalities, of which there were bound to be many, and of which I knew I was not the correct executor. I would need to tell someone—although not these officers, within the domain of the law I was still his wife and there was something shameful about airing the confused state of our marriage to these strangers, in this moment—that I was in a false position, not exactly an impostor but nonetheless operating under false pretenses. In short, I would need to tell Isabella. About the separation, the true state of affairs between her son and me. And then it would fall to her, the funeral arrangements, the transportation of the body, whatever else needed to be arranged.

The police car pulled into the station, a single-story concrete building, there were dogs outside but they were chained, intimidating animals, it was easy to imagine them lunging and snapping at the end of their leashes. As the car slowed, I saw the officers turn to look at me. I averted my gaze, I felt myself to be playing the part of the grieving widow—a sensation that, had I genuinely been a grieving widow, I never would have felt, there was a small but definite wedge pushing between the person I was and the person I was purporting to be.

One of the officers ran to open the car door for me. I stepped out, the sky was overcast again and I wondered if it would rain. The officers motioned for me to follow them into the station, a building so small that I wondered where they could be keeping the body, whether there was enough room for a morgue. I followed the officers inside, in their extreme politesse they were behaving as if I were an oversized ship being steered into a narrow port, waving their hands like air traffic controllers. They wore a general expression of anxiety and would be relieved when I was no longer their responsibility, when I was finally taken off their hands.

Inside, the station was near empty, there were a couple posters on the wall—I couldn’t decipher their message, they were written in Greek and the images themselves were opaque. The overhead lights blinked irregularly. I was hurried through the waiting area, there were two rows of plastic chairs with seats that had warped over time, all empty, although it couldn’t be that the area was without incident, the fires alone must have generated so many cases (missing persons, unidentified bodies, grieving parties). I was shown into a small office, a man stood up to greet me, although there was not very much in the way of an introduction, he merely rose to his feet and indicated that I should sit down.