The Caryatids

There was just enough graceless authenticity left to the corpse to convince the viewer that the undertaker's art concealed an actual dead woman. Or a dead creature anyway, for the war-criminal fugitive had been living for years up in orbit, where human bone and muscle wasted away from the lack of gravity, where the air was canned and the skin never felt healthy sunlight...How many "days" had this waxwork creature seen, with her dead silent-actress eyes, those orbital sunrises, sunsets, as she bounded off the walls of her tin home like a fairy shrimp...

She didn't even have legs!

A shroud covered her lower body. Thin, cream-colored, silky fabric. Enough to veil her abnormalities, but enough to show the ugly truth to those who-somehow-must have known what she was doing to herself, to her body and soul, way up there.

She was sickeningly strange. Yet at least she was truly dead.

A reflective shadow appeared on the glass bubble. It was one of the clones. The clone took a stance at the far side of the coffin. She stared into the bubble, fixated, gloating.

She was dressed in elaborate, lacy white, with a long stiff bodice but a plunging decolletage, like some bulging-eyed bride, drunk at a Catholic wedding and burningly eager to haul the groom to a hotel.

Inke had only met one of the cloned sisters: Sonja, the strongest one. She knew instantly that this one was Biserka. She knew that in her bones.

"I'm Erika Montalban," Biserka told her.

Inke did not entirely trust her own English. "How nice. How do you do?"

"And you're Inke, and those are your kids!"

Lukas and Lena were sitting placidly in their pew, heads together over a silent handheld game. Inke knew instantly that Biserka would cheerfully skin and eat her two children. She would gulp them down the way a cold adder would eat two mice.

"Where's the baby?" Biserka demanded, scanning the church as if it sold babies on racks. "I love babies! I want to have lots of them."

Inke touched her scarf. "You should wear something...on your head. We are in a church."

"What, I have to wear a hood in here, like a Muslim girl or something?"

"No, like a Catholic."

"Do I get to eat those little round bread things?"

"No, you're not in a state of grace."

"I put the holy water all over myself!"

"You're not a Catholic."

"It is always like that!" Biserka screeched, wringing her hands in anguish. "What is with you people? I did everything right, and you're not having any of it? I'm going to find John. John is going to fix this, you wait and see!"

Biserka stormed out of the church.

"You told her the proper things," said the old gentleman. He had stepped from his pew to the coffin, without Inke hearing his tread. He spoke English. "You were kind and polite to her."

"Thank you, sir."

"My name is Dr. Vladko Radic. You do not know me, Mrs. Zweig, but I know a little of you. I am a friend of Vera Mihajlovic."

"I understand. How do you do?"

"I also knew Yelisaveta Mihajlovic. I knew her rather well. Yelisaveta was a great patriot. Of course she committed excesses. God will pardon her that. Those were very excessive times." Radic was drunk. Drunk, and in church.

"If I may ask you a favor," slurred Dr. Radic, "if an old man may ask you one small favor...the dead have to bury the dead, but my dearest domorodac, my dearest Mljecanka, Vera Mihajlovic...A very beautiful, very sincere, very lovable girl...for all the infernal machines that cover this island, it has never been the same without her!"

Radic began sobbing, in an unfeigned, gentlemanly fashion, wiping at his rheumy eyes. "I sit here praying for Vera...praying that she will come here to see this unfortunate woman, and that Vera can return to this place, and that life here can be made right again! Have you seen Vera?"

"No sir, I have not seen her."

"Please tell Vera that all is forgiven if she will come back to the island! Please tell her that...yes, life will be different, life must be different now, but Dr. Radic has not forgotten her, and she has many friends here and she will always have friends."

The poor old man's distress was so deep and immediate and pitiful and contagious that Inke burst into tears. "I know that Vera is here. She must be here."

"She is a very noble, good person."

Overwhelmed, Inke fled to the pew to rejoin her children. Lukas glanced up. "Is that our grandmother dead in that bubble?"

"No."

"Okay!" They returned to their game.

Worshippers were quietly filtering into the church. The liturgy began. It was a small church but an impressive, full-scale performance, which might have suited Zagreb or even Rome. Lectors, musicians, altar boys-the ceremonial staff almost outnumbered the attendees.

Then there were cameras. Not the small cameras everyone carried nowadays. Large, ostentatious, ceremonial cameras with sacred logos.

There was no sign of George at the funeral service, which was entirely typical of him. Yet the young priest-handsome, bearded, deftly in command of the proceedings-was an inspiration.