"Now, again, I’ll admit that I am a bad person. But I’m trying to be a better person, see, and I gave an extra $1.05 for the funeral, so what do you want? Besides, I don’t just go to funerals all the time. I’ve been doing other stuff in Kazakhstan, too. Like eating fat and trying to teach Economics and drinking alcohol against my will. And since I’m working in a school, I’m lucky enough to have a little free time in which to discover the many treasures that Central Asia has to offer. So gather round the fire, lil’ chittlins, and listen up while ‘stupid Joe’ waxes eclectic."
A Funeral in Kazakhstan
Further Kazakhstan-ian Travels
by Jeremy Beer
11.12.02
[Excerpt]
The Funeral:
I went. I didn’t know the person that died all that well, but I am a good friend of the man’s daughter (Olga). Apparently he had been some kind of General in the Soviet Army. In the years following Peristroyka he had lost his job for the obvious reasons. This resulted in a bit of a falling out with his family. And no job + no love = much drink. In whispered tones, those present at his funeral told me that he had “a problem with Vodka”. Consider that this man was a General in the Russian Army, and you’ll see that that’s quite an admission. Somehow akin to a squirrel dying from eating too many acorns. Or too much insulation. Or whatever it is squirrels might eat too much of. Anyway, the man was 59 years old, and he died in his sleep. Olga told me that she hated her father, and that she had stopped talking to him years before he died. But he was her father nonetheless, and for some reason I was invited to the poor man’s funeral.
The funeral ceremony took place in this crappy cement apartment building that Olga’s Mother and Father had lived in for more than thirty years. As I walked into this Soviet relic, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the stairs in the stairwell were missing or destroyed. Most of the building’s electrical wiring was fully exposed, drooping exhaustedly from the ceiling like an abandoned spider-web. There was dried vomit on one of the landings. It smelled of wet dirt, cats and mold. On the 5th floor we found the apartment itself, sealed off by two doors (one of them wood, one of them steel). They were both ajar, and as we let ourselves in, we were welcomed by a soft draft of warm body odor. Inside there were little Chinese trinkets here and there, some Russian romance novels on the bookshelf, and a few oil paintings on the wall. Stationed in opposing corners of the largest and only ‘real’ room in the apartment was an old Russian television set and the interned body of Olga’s dead father.
As I stood in the open entrance, b.o and death wafting all about, I unsuccessfully tried to digest the apartment’s morbid decor. All four of the people that I’d come with unhesitatingly took a seat in the chairs lined up around the coffin and I followed, banging my shins on pretty much every chair leg and table corner in the room. As we all settled into our seats, you could hear the soft sound of Olga’s mother sobbing. Further back, deeper down, the ambient sound of children playing outside washed over all of us. Some lazy sunlight crept through the faded curtains, spilling onto the coffin and the painted wooden floor. Olga’s Mother, seated closest to the body, was dressed in a traditional black Russian dress and veil. While she wept, she busily wrapped her dead husband’s head in what looked like a candy bar wrapper. I don’t think it was a candy bar wrapper, but it sure looked like a candy bar wrapper. I usually love candy, but at that moment, I did not love candy as much.
Olga’s father looked cold and blue. He was stationed in his corner, lying stiffly in a Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” type of coffin (all tapered at pentagonal angles). He wore a polyester suit (also Michael Jackson-esque), with dime-store lace and plastic lilacs wrapped all around his body. His arms were crossed on his sagging chest, and in his right hand he clutched some sort of folded paper. As I stared, I wondered how they did that, getting his dead hand to hold a piece of paper like that. I looked closely for wire or glue or something that could possibly make his dead hand grasp that paper so tightly. But I couldn’t see anything. Suddenly I began to feel self conscious and disrespectful for staring. A scolding interior monologue erupted in which I concluded that I was a badperson and that “this” was not funny. I decided that I had to look away from the graspy hand immediately. With a highly inappropriate amount of jerkiness, I turned my head away from the body. Then, trying to cover for my unexplainably sudden head movements, I began looking around the room retardidly. This all only aggravated my sense of disrespect, and soon I was all hot and red and nervous.
Now, somehow frantic, I tried to find something to look at. I settled on the room’s furniture (way to come through in the clutch, ‘mind’). I noticed that on either side of the coffin hung two large flags; one with a hand sown golden cross; the other with a hand sown hammer and sickle. Both flags were made of a patchy red velvet material, which also covered the coffin. The color reminded me of a Sunday school that I had never attended. Olga’s mother lit a candle. Not moving from her seat next to the coffin, she commanded that somebody, anybody, bring her a piece of bread and a glass of water. Olga obeyed, and when she returned, her mother took the bread and water. She gently placed it next to one of the room’s two cracked windows.
Following Olga back to her seat with my eyes, I soon found myself looking at the old man’s face again. His big, gray ears mesmerized me. The absolute stillness of his bushy nose hair was haunting. I decided that, with his brow so deeply furrowed, Olga’s father looked upset. His mouth was making an almost exaggerated clown frown. To me, he had always seemed like a reasonable man. But as he lay there, dead, I decided that he was maybe not so reasonable. No, I decided, I did not like him. Because who could like a man with such a mean, blue face? But how sad, that it was in this frowny manner that Olga’s father would enter into the kingdom of heaven. Or the prairie meadow of the midget cowboys. Or wherever it was he was going.
I watched the dead body, and I waited. I thought perhaps he would stick out his tongue and give us a little “hook ‘em horns”, Gene Simmons style. Then we could all laugh and it would be ok. But, surprisingly, that didn’t happen. Instead it was just stuffy and creepy in that apartment and I was failing miserably at appreciating the gravity of the situation. All I had ever wanted was to pay my respects to the General without angering him. I just knew I couldn’t handle wrestling with his tortured soul as it possessed my blender or television or fuse box or whatever. I’ve seen Poltergeist. I know the deal.
Finally, thank the Lord, Olga’s boyfriend came over and sat next to me, serving me the distraction I had been praying for. I shook his hand, gave him a little man nod, and he nodded back (like a man). He then asked me for some money. It was, he explained, to help offset the cost of the funeral. I felt relieved, because maybe, with this payment, I could buy my way out of the apartment. I gave Olga’s boyfriend what I had been told was the standard funeral amount: $1.53, plus another $1.05 because I’m an American. Olga’s boyfriend appreciated the gesture and nodded his head in gratitude. For a moment, I thought about complimenting him on the black 1985 Metallica “Master of Puppets” concert t-shirt he was wearing (which highlighted the unforgettable track “Leper Mesiah”) but he was gone before I had a chance. As I stood up and gave Olga a hug, tears ran down her face. I left the apartment soon after.
Now, again, I’ll admit that I am a bad person. But I’m trying to be a better person, see, and I gave an extra $1.05 for the funeral, so what do you want? Besides, I don’t just go to funerals all the time. I’ve been doing other stuff in Kazakhstan, too. Like eating fat and trying to teach Economics and drinking alcohol against my will. And since I’m working in a school, I’m lucky enough to have a little free time in which to discover the many treasures that Central Asia has to offer. So gather round the fire, lil’ chittlins, and listen up while ‘stupid Joe’ waxes eclectic.
