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drink. He inhaled their sweet womanly aroma, and a female
relation from Bakkahella told him that he had always liked
it when women were sick, because they were so compliant.
She tried to smile, said he had always been a blowhard.
No one entered the church. Ever since the measles had
come to hold sway, the church only opened its doors to the
dead. Up to eight coffins at a time stood on trestles in the
choir and down the central aisle. According to established
protocol in cases of disease, the coffins were tarred within,
and the smell of tar and decay filled the church with a
perpetual gloom. The dead were taken from their homes as
soon as possible, and they were either washed or prepared
in some other way before the cart retrieved them. An old
tradition dictated that a corpse’s big toes be bound together
to prevent the dead from walking, but measles had
undermined most traditions. And who knew if the dead
even wanted to walk again. Why would they? In May and
June death in Tórshavn was about as naked as it could get,
and to ghost around when autumn storms were shrouding
the city in a salt sea fog – that was something one could not
bid the living or the dead.
Adelheid dried her tears and smiled. What a bizarre coffin
flotilla it must be, she thought, that met out on eternity’s
waters. The sails were whatever clothes people had been
wearing when they died: nightgowns, pants, shawls, and
tattered shifts.