Magdalena let herself into Barry’s house and took off her shoes. She stepped into the same prints on the carpet she and Neil had made earlier that afternoon, so Barry wouldn’t know she was home if he happened to walk down the hall. She took the razors out of the bag from the drugstore quietly so the plastic wouldn’t rustle, but before she opened the package she went to her room and got out the papers from the inquest, just to be sure. They were still sealed in the envelope the policewoman had given her. Magdalena opened it and looked through them until she found the coroner’s report. Cause of death: Acute cyanide-induced respiratory failure after ingesting the seeds of 30–40 wild Turkish apricots. She’d seen those words exactly when she cut off Lina’s hair. Magdalena folded the papers and put them back in the envelope. She went into the bathroom and shut the door without making a sound. Her father had done it just this way, not leaving a mess. Magdalena got into the bathtub. It was easy. She thought about the nun burying the bird. She did not think she was committing a sin; all she was doing was giving God His secrets back. She wished she had gone to Stonehenge to see the people praying on rocks. She opened the pack of razors and took one out. Something pulled at her mind, something she’d wanted to think about, but when she tried all she saw was Lina, marked from the beginning with the text of her autopsy report. On the white inside of Magdalena’s wrist was the place where two blue veins ran together, and beside that she could see the faint tug of her pulse. She put the blade across all three and pushed. It hurt, but not too much. She laid her hand flat on the side of the tub and got a better grip on the razor. Was it better to do it across the veins or lengthwise along one of them? She didn’t know. She might only have one chance, she’d have to guess. Luck it said at just that spot on her mother’s wrist. Or was it Happiness? Barry laughed at her when she confused those English words. But on Magdalena’s wrist the spot was blank. Up the vein, she decided, and realigned the razor. She took a breath. She remembered the woman in the church telling her—what? A body on a beach. A bird hitting glass. An American boy with her name under his eye. What did it mean, that he had the name of a person he would only see once printed on his skin? It must be a mistake, she thought. She wanted to think more about it but she didn’t have the time. There was something else, it was important. She thought about putting the razor away and waiting—a day or a week, what could it matter? Give herself time to let the thought come. But there was no point, better to do it now. Imagine she was cutting lemons for her shift at the bar: a quick stroke that was easier the harder she pressed. The razor cut into her skin and a drop of blood came out. She felt a little dizzy and took a breath. She pressed harder. A body washed ashore covered in shells. The picture fixed itself in her mind. Perfectly whole, the woman at the church had said. That was important, but she couldn’t remember why. She needed time to remember, but she couldn’t take it. She readjusted her grip on the razor and pressed down harder.
The door to the bathroom flew open. It banged against the towel rack so hard that the knob on the end of the rack broke a little hole in the door. All of a sudden Barry was scooping Magdalena up and dropping her and scooping her again, banging her shins on the faucet and all the time shouting “OH NO OH NO OH NO,” patting up Magdalena’s arms looking for blood there and accidentally slicing his hand on the razor in the process, so in the end it was Magdalena who had to do the bandaging. And as it was all happening, Magdalena remembered Dov’s brother’s voice on the phone, saying that if only Lina’s body had been left whole, she and Dov might have been together in the end.
For the first few weeks after Lina died, Magdalena had stayed out of the flat as much as she could, leaving with the camera in the mornings and not coming back until the light was gone. So she had no idea how long Dov had been waiting for her when she found him sitting on the stoop outside her building. In the light from the streetlamp Magdalena caught her breath. It was as if something of Lina, the curve of an eyebrow or the tilt of her head, had resisted being pulled out of the world so quickly and had settled, for an instant, on Dov. With the yellow shadows falling just so on his forehead and lips, they might have been siblings. But as Magdalena got closer and Dov looked up, the shadows rearranged themselves and the hints of Lina disappeared, leaving behind the face of a tanned, good-looking boy with raw red lids to his eyes. Lina had said that he was just her age, and he looked even younger. For all his advancement in the world of botanical engineering, Dov couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one. He had a paper bag between his feet.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I tried to call.”
Magdalena was surprised how dark his skin was. Except for a shadow who stayed in the hall while Lina packed her things and a silhouette holding Lina’s hand inside the cab the day she watched them through the camera, Magdalena had only seen Dov in a picture Lina had on her phone—a pale face framed by dark hair. Lina had said it herself: His skin was like porcelain. On their first night together his heart beat so fast against her that she felt as if she’d trapped some delicate wild thing. Like a being from a fairy tale, Lina had said. Like the prince conjured from the body of a white arctic hare. But the skin of the person sitting in a heap on Magdalena’s steps was so dark she couldn’t make out a single word that was written there.
Magdalena unlocked the door and Dov followed her up the stairs. He didn’t say anything else until they were in the flat and he was sitting at Magdalena’s kitchen table, crying, hands at his sides, not bothering to wipe the tears away. Magdalena felt suddenly furious at this child, this slack-lipped boy who had been stupid enough to spend some of his family’s fortune on a fine Swedish blender with blades capable of pulverizing even the hard pits of the fruit that had made him so rich, Lina couldn’t help but fall in love with him. He was wearing jeans that fit like they’d been made especially for him. With his angel face just starting to grow into something firmer, he might have walked out of an advertisement for cologne or flavored vodka if it hadn’t been for the soft dark curls at his temples and telltale strings at his sides, like little children wore back home when they dressed up as Jews on the carnival night before Lent began and went house to house, demanding coins and blintzes.
“I brought you her things,” Dov said, pushing the paper bag toward her. Inside were a few crumpled dresses, some stockings, and a nightgown.
“I don’t want them,” Magdalena said.
“Bury them with her,” he said.
“I can’t,” Magdalena said. The funeral home had already delivered Lina’s ashes in a plastic bag; they were sitting in a shoebox on the kitchen counter. “I told your brother,” she said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t known.”
She would have explained to Dov how, when the people from the coroner’s office finally got Ruta on the phone, she hadn’t been able to understand what they were asking and it was left to Magdalena to tell the funeral home to go ahead and cremate what was left of Lina after the autopsy. But she realized Dov’s brother hadn’t told him about the ashes, or Dov hadn’t listened, because before Magdalena could say anything more he put the bag of clothes in her hands and said, “Please. They have her smell.” He dug in his pocket and brought out a toothbrush in a plastic bag. “And this, put it with her body.”
“Why?” Magdalena said. What did she want with Lina’s toothbrush?
“The inside of the mouth, each time you brush your teeth millions of cells come off.”
“What are you talking about?” Magdalena said.
“I need her back,” Dov said. “I need every part of her back.” He was crying again, and it made Magdalena want to scar his smooth face, rake the tan off his skin with her fingernails. Dov kept talking, about a day of judgment and the garden he would make for Lina when they both rose up from the ground at the end of time.
Magdalena did her best not to listen to him. What could have made Lina choose this boy, who now had a thin string of mucus hanging from the end of his nose, over all the others? What did it mean that he had been the one to have his name planted—like a curse—under her heart?
“I think you should go,” Magdalena said, breaking into what Dov was saying. She walked to the door and opened it for him, but he didn’t move.
Dov had been there all along. When, as skinny kids, she and Lina poured an entire bottle of Magdalena’s mother’s bubble bath into the tub and painted bikinis on themselves with the bubbles, he was there, his name curled like a snake under the foam that kept running down Lina’s chest before they could scoop enough up to make a proper bosom. Dov’s name was there when they took off their clothes and jumped into the river on the night of Magdalena’s high school graduation, feeling the icy shock of the water give way to a rush of warmth as every bit of blood they had coursed through their bodies.
“Why are you buying just one ticket to Zurich?” she asked him, remembering what the policewoman had told her.
His family wanted him to take the job. He and Lina had argued, he’d bought the ticket, but he wouldn’t have gone, he said. They couldn’t bear a single day away from each other. What about the fights the neighbors said they had heard? Stupid things, Dov said. Things that didn’t mean anything, now. And that night? Magdalena asked. Why had he gone out and left Lina alone like that? What kind of husband was he to leave her in a house without any food, except for fruits with poisoned seeds?