The Hole in the Coffin. Part 2

People were sure they had seen the worst... Melania did not rise, for her voice had gone out with the wax. But when one of the men brought the oil lamp closer to the coffin, everyone saw something else as well. There was another hole, above the witch's head. The carpenter swore he had not made it. The edges of the wood were pressed inward. As if someone had entered Melania. An old woman stepped back, crossed herself and whispered: "That is not how a soul goes out."

Ostap the sexton went white, as if he himself had been covered with grave earth. "Who said to drill the lid, of all things?" came from the crowd. No one answered. Everyone looked at the carpenter. He crossed himself and swore that it was Ostap who had given him the tool and shown him where to strike. His own thin drill was at home. Clean. Untouched. And the one the coffin had been drilled with was heavy, with cracks in the handle, and with Ostap's small church mark.

Everyone went to Melania's empty house, hoping to understand there what was happening. The house smelled of smoke, wax and wet wood, though no one had lit the stove. On the ceiling, near the roof beam, they found a hole sealed over with wax. Beside it, scratched with a knife: "The soul goes up. The earth takes down. Do not confuse them. In the house you make a path for the soul. In the coffin you make a mouth for the earth." Cold drifted from it.

The oldest woman remembered the true custom. When one who was feared died, a window was opened in the house, or an opening was made in the ceiling. So the soul would have a path upward. But the coffin was never touched. Because the coffin goes into the earth. And the earth is not always silent. "So what have we got - two holes in the coffin. Who put it into our heads to drill the lid before the burial?" someone asked.

Everyone slowly turned to Ostap. He stood by the threshold and looked no one in the eye. He was silent a long time. Then he said: "I only passed on what I heard." On the night before the burial he had been in the church storeroom and heard a voice from under the floor. The voice spoke in Melania's words: "Not in the house. In the lid. It is easier for me that way." But Melania already lay dead, her mouth sealed with wax.

And between those words many other voices could be heard. As if a whole graveyard sounded in one voice. Many years ago Ostap's only daughter had died. He went to Melania, begged her to bring the child back. Melania refused. She said only: "Do not ask for what will not come on its own." Ostap hated her for that. He thought she had not opened the door to the dead for him, but he did not understand: Melania was not the door. She was the bolt.

And now someone from under the earth had whispered to him: "Make us a mouth, and we will give you the voice you grieve for." After his story, the people went back to the coffin to decide how to stop it. And just then a child's voice came from the dug-open grave. Quiet. Familiar to Ostap to the point of pain. "Papa. Ostap. Open." The sexton covered his ears, but the voice was no longer in the earth. It was in his mouth. On his tongue. Between his teeth. Sweet, waxen, warm.

The old woman crossed herself and said: "Lead us to the storeroom. That is where it first spoke to you." Ostap went first. As if he were being led by the voice. In the church storeroom a thin thread of wax ran along the boards. It went straight under the floor. Ostap and the carpenter tore up one board. Beneath it damp earth showed black. An old bone lay there. A few poppy seeds. And a small hole could be seen in the soil.

Such cold blew from it that the oil lamp went out without a breath. The voice from the earth no longer spoke as Melania, nor as the child. It spoke in many voices at once: "You asked for it yourselves. You gave leave yourselves." The people rushed to set the rite right. They wanted to plug the hole in the coffin with an aspen stake. Pour it full of wax. Cover it with poppy seed. Smear it over with clay. But every action only fed the opening. The wax became a tongue.

The poppy became hearing. The clay cracked like lips. Ostap shouted that they must open the old hole in Melania's house. They broke the wax seal on the ceiling. For a moment it went quiet. Then suddenly dry poppy seed came pouring down from it onto the floor. Then everyone understood: it was too late to open the right path. The village had already given its consent to speak through the dead. And only the one who had switched the rite could take it back.

Ostap stood before the dug-open grave. He laid his hand on the coffin lid and said: "It was I who gave the drill. It was I who said to drill. It was I who wanted the dead to speak." His mouth began to fill with wax from within. His lips turned shiny and still. And from the hole someone whispered: "You will become the bolt, Papa."

Ostap did not breathe... The wax vanished from the houses. Melania's voice no longer called debtors under the windows. People decided the consent had been taken back. That the earth had let go. Before the sexton's burial no one asked whether a hole should be drilled. The coffin was made smooth. The lid even. Without the slightest gap. But when they came in the morning to take it away, there was already a hole in the lid. Even. Round. A finger wide.

They plugged it with a stake and poured in wax mixed with salt. The burial was put off for a day, so that the church women could read prayers over Ostap without pause. From then on everyone knew that the hole in the coffin had not been for the soul. It was consent. A consent that cannot always be taken back.