The Base of Mount Říp

            Jiří worked as an undertaker for pets. He had grown into the job after his father convinced some communist official that there’d be business in burying beloved animals; that official happened to have an ailing pug as well as a nose for capitalism where it could be had in 1980s Czechoslovakia. They couldn’t do this too close to Prague and its manner of cremating the dead. Instead, they laid claim to a northern patch at the base of Mount Říp, where hikers would come with their dogs, eyeball this stumble-on cemetery, and muse.

            Some thirty years later, Jiří was digging grave #13578. While plots ranged from salamander-sized to circus horse, this one was for a Persian cat. Its hearse and little coffin would arrive in an hour, and Jiří still hadn’t finished the headstone inscription. Everything came to a halt, however, when a fetching woman with a three-legged golden retriever approached from the parking area. She introduced herself as Elizabeth, her dog as Ernie, apologized for her shaky Czech, then burst into tears.

            “No, no—is okay,” Jiří read the situation, knowing it was not okay. “My English just so-so, but...”

            She recovered herself and spoke between the languages. She’d just been at the vet, where Ernie was declared untreatable at this stage of cancer, which had already cost him a leg. She couldn’t bear the thought of a lethal injection— would rather have Ernie die in her arms, a pietà of sorts. And then, if possible, buried here.

            “Of course. And then?”

            Elizabeth was taken aback by the question. “And..then, well—I’ll probably go back to Bristol. Sedm let tady stačilo.”

            “Seven years? Not so long.”

            “Not with Ernie here. But forever when he’s gone.”

            She came back a few days later, alone. Ernie was too weak to venture out, she told Jiří, and so his time was nigh. But she still wasn’t sure what to do. They walked reflectively around the grounds, pointing out passing details, including the shapes of the clouds that day. None looked like Ernie, but a cluster floating away from Říp vaguely resembled the British Isles. Serendipitously, they found themselves in the far, upper corner of the cemetery, barren yet of graves. Elizabeth leaned into Jiří. “Can it be here?”

            “Samozřejmě,” he nodded.

            “Maybe he should be nearer to the rest.”

            “As you like.” Jiří blushed at his use of the familiar ’you’, then added, “Ernie makes thirteen thousand, five hundred seventy-nine. Special number for Czechs. Maybe make you stay.”

            Elizabeth lightly punched his arm. “Why is that number so special?”

            “Karel made his bridge then. The year, then ninth July, starting five thirty-one in the morning.”

            “Well, we’re past that peak of summer.”

            “Nevadí. Kind of timeless here.”

            They walked without talking for a while. Elizabeth picked up a stick the size of a shovel handle and poked the ground. Jiří gave her space, but she called him back to ask if this would be suitable. He knelt and brushed the scrub, pulled up a stone jutting out. He looked up to Elizabeth and nodded: the place was ideal. She used the stick, then, to start digging, despite not having a spade. She bid Jiří with her eyes to help her out, not relinquishing the stick but opening up her topmost arm so he could weave his left to grasp below. The depth they made was symbolic, but enough to cultivate a heavenly bed for Ernie, likely in the coming days.

            There were phone calls, each to each, generally updating Ernie. Jiří drove down to Prague to purchase planks of pine for an old-fashioned coffin. Elizabeth understood the selections at site were more ecologically consonant for modern burials, but wanted something that hooked her to heritage. As a girl, she remembered her father constructing a pine box for their old clumber spaniel, and Jiří took note of details, even the carve of a cross that no one had ever asked for in 13,578 burials at Říp. Elizabeth invited Jiří over for dinner, apologizing for the open boxes in various stages of her packing to leave. “It would be fallout from Brexit, anyway. So don’t blame Ernie for this.”

            On the contrary, Jiří showed no blame at all as he sat next to Ernie, stroking the back of his neck. The dog was beyond begging for morsels as they ate ravioli. He didn’t mind the drop of red wine Jiří offered in his palm. “Oslava,” he whispered, “for life well-lived.”

            It was dusk, two days later, when Elizabeth drove into the parking area and opened the trunk. Jiří came running out of the glorified shed he called home. “I would have come down,” he reproached, then gave her a hug she extended a half-minute more. He carried the blanket that covered the corpse and laid it tenderly into the finished coffin. The two of them picked up the ends and trekked to the grave, precisely dug the day before. Jiří brought rope to sling under the box in two places, so that he on one side and Elizabeth on the other could lower it down. They said sacred words, then shoveled the soil over.

            Elizabeth, at the car, pulled out her wallet, which Jiří pushed back into her purse. Instead, he announced he had something for her. He ran back to the shed and returned with a puppy he thrust into her protesting arms. She cried at the fresh smell of the creature, licking her face. Clutching it closer with her left hand, she swept her right to slap Jiří square in the cheek. “How could you!?” She trembled an attempt to redress the injury, trading her hand for the puppy’s paw, dabbing it to soothe the hurt man. Their heart rates were racing for different reasons; after a minute, all became calm. “What kind is it, anyway? His fur is kinda…”

            “Rhodesian ridgeback.”

            “Proč tohle?... Why this?”

            Jiří looked up the slope of Říp. “Soft bristles.” He fingertipped the pup’s spine. “Like Bristol.”

Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2018)