Fjord for Sale

Fjord for Sale


“We are selling luxury coffins at cost price. Retail sales at wholesale prices. You can buy a luxurious coffin for your dear ones that have passed away at unbelievably low prices. You will be amazed by the quality and the cut down prices. We want to sell our stock, so take advantage and buy cheaply.”
We were finishing our meal in the courtyard when Father brought the Sunday issue of “Politis”. “Fjords for sale!” he cried out.
A cursory search showed that the above mentioned newspaper advertisement had been in the classified advertisements section of the newspaper for a few days. It was not a Sunday fruit, and it wasn’t a fjord. It was an ad for coffins that had cunningly entered our house through the newspaper.
We had drunk white Bulgarian wine – a Traminer from the estate Khan Kroum - with our fish. One of the best wines in the universe. When three persons drink a bottle, “they feel fine, behaving with decorum” I think that’s the way they write it on the label. If two persons share the bottle, then “their grasp of the meaning of words starts slipping…”
The latter was printed in tiny letters and required special attention.. Until now no one of us had noticed it.
Father usually noticed such things but at that moment, although he may have seen it, he was silent like a fish…like the one we were relishing together with the white wine, letting things take their course. He liked to take things to their limit…until, by themselves, like oyster on the fire, their side comes outside, the truth comes out. This is not necessarily bad. On the contrary. When he was not serious, 90.2% of his life, as he himself claimed, he wanted to be an entertainer. A mocker to the bone. Pulverising everyone to dust with his sarcasm - most of all himself, if, for a moment, there was no other such candidate. Instead of coffins he read fjord*. As a euphemism, perhaps.
We all sat down again. Then I opened the newspaper once more to make sure that it was indeed a real advertisement.
Father had knocked back a couple of glasses of rakia on the sly before the wine. So he burst out in a sardonic laugh which carried us along. We came to realize that what was written in the advertisement was meant to be taken seriously.
“… for your dear ones who have passed away” he spluttered as soon as he recovered from his laughter. “Whatever does this mean?”
“Or who will pass away” I say.
“Or for those who you would like to pass away…” says mother, laughing meaningfully.
“Perhaps we should dig up some dear ones to take advantage of the offer” said Stephen.
Laughter all around.
…”To show them our true respect, posthumously. We made a mistake using an ordinary coffin then.” Stephen goes on with his English humor..
More laughter.
“A suitable present for old age pensioners”, says mother, since she herself is a pensioner.
“or for those who are about to receive a pension” says Father, who had just taken retirement “and who will receive their lump sum and on top unemployment benefit, for six months…” continued mother with unrestrained jubilation.
“Isn’t this madness?” explained Father to his son-in-law “ I have taken early retirement and on top of this I receive unemployment benefit. Mad! Could it be so that I can afford to buy a luxury coffin? And I just hadn’t realized it?”
“Could they be so sly and we didn’t have a clue?” Mother bursts into laughter and tears run down her cheeks. She is literally drunk as if by an inner compulsion.
Taking turns, we were being stupid, obviously. As if ordered by a director in a theatre.
“Really what does luxury coffin mean. Let’s call them up tomorrow.” says Stephen.
“I imagine they mean the external appearance”, says Father, “unless…”
“No, no it must refer to cushions inside”, splutters mother “velvet cushions”, then more laughter and tears.
“You’ve always liked cushions”, Father teases her.
And it’s true. She’s always liked lying around with cushions on her left and right. Her pretext in the winter was the cold, in the summer the heat. She likes lying about as a kind of reward for all the years she has worked since she was a child.
“…and a mobile phone” says Stephen, to general hilarity.
…“and who would one call? Their God....or perhaps family? I am definitely not going to call you, rest assured..” said Father and suddenly became serious. For a moment we all froze. Then Father broke the silence with his sardonic laughter.
“It’ll have built-in kitchen units,” Stephen again, with his better English. “Our stock offers a variety of choices : sizes, WC, A/C and other accessories... Information : Harrod’s department stores”.
“Enquiries: Charon**” slipped in Father, echoing Stephen’s words, his heart rending laughter spreading to all.
“Let’s say we buy two, where are we going to put them?” again, asks mother laughing.
“Until we need them…” interpolates Father in mock seriousness. “Let’s take one and wait and see. In the end why not keep one in their warehouse until we need it.”
“As long as they do not charge rent…” laughter all around.
“You will be amazed by the quality…”
“It will be, of course, hardwearing” said I, to break a certain awkwardness and to lead us again to the flow of the Traminer wine although it had run out some time ago and I sensed that Father was looking forward bashfully to the opening of the next one.
“And it will be a written off over a hundred years” seconds Stephen the accountant “Right! The maggots will slowly take care of it over a century...” Mother turns to the macabre again. She bursts into laughter though. “Along with the contents”. Father fanned the laughter. “My grandfather refused to be placed in a coffin. He preferred a simple plank.”
“What do you mean?” My interest was aroused. “The poor then could choose. The church had something like a stretcher which was used for the transport of the dead to the grave.”
“Why? Was your grandfather poor?”
“No, not at all. He chose on principle. He was a little claustrophobic too. He wanted, he said, to be in direct contact with the earth because “earth to earth..”. Nor did he like the idea of glass that the insensitive mourners break in the face of the deceased. Pouring oil on top of it without knowing the reason. The ancient Greeks made a libation of oil, honey or even milk – earthy liquids to ease the passage to the underworld, their next abode. And Charon saw them off. What is the point of varnished wood, glass windows and such coarse embellishments? The varnish deters worms from coming close…”
He was speaking with great seriousness, pointing by way of illustration at a bald patch on the lawn. The carpenter had carelessly placed some boards there in order to varnish them and nothing, no grass, grew again. The soil on that spot and all around it had to be replaced before there would be any sign of life again. Do you remember? He was saying all these things with a passion disproportionate to their importance.
“I’d like another glass of wine”.
“No dad, don’t overdo it. In any case there is no more.”
There was no such bottle in the cellar, of the estate Khan Kroum. Of that “cunning” king of the Bulgars whose men Basil the Bulgarian killer had blinded. It is on Basil the Bulgarian Slayer Street that Politis newspaper is housed today, which when you think if it uncovers peoples’ eyes…ha ha!
“Only you have mixed things up a little dad. You are probably talking about Tsar Samuel?”
“When we go to Sofia at Christmas we’ll bring lots of wine.”
Nobody could remember who expressed this wish.
Dad, who always remembered such things, kept sleeping that grey afternoon. The clocks changed after midnight and the hands of our watches were confusing us. At about eight in the evening Mother went to see what was going on. In the semi darkness she gently touched his hand trying not to disturb him. It was cold.
For some time he had it in mind, he’d often tell us, to buy a fjord. When he once visited Norway, perhaps for the purpose, he was disappointed about their unreasonably high prices. Mother, however, defending her own interpretation, believes that he had done this out of mischief. Having found himself there, he went to the local authority and asked how much would a fjord cost if a common mortal were to buy it. Well, the answer was as crazy as the answer he received recently when he asked how much an island of the thirty seven thousand of the Swedish Archipelago would cost. Some of the small islands are indeed inhabited. Only a few square metres. Enough for a small house.
Maybe deep down he wished to be buried on one of these islands. In the company of the waves which sometimes you could not distinguish from the seagulls. Because he always hated the unbearable heat and humidity of the afterlife. To be precise he was afraid of the sweat after death. But there...he could still order rain…Some rain, please, in the Swedish Archipelagoes. This is what happened the last time they were there. “There was an amazing storm that washed our drought clean”, he wrote on a postcard.
“The water of the clouds and the waters of the sea touched passionately”, he would say after his third glass “like the sails of a boat”.
It was always his belief that it made good sense for man to leave in the rain. The rain eased the passage to the underworld, their next home…He was afraid of our drought of the last few years.

* The words for coffin and fiord are phonetically similar and alliterate in Greek.
** Charon in Greek mythology is the boatman who transported the spirits of the dead to Hades, the underworld.