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I AM RIDING a bicycle through the biggest cemetery in the world; cycling downhill, the past rushing up towards me. The last rays of the setting sun shine through the glass set-into the memorial column, silhouetting row upon row of urns; sky scrolling overhead and the light behind the mullioned panes phosphorescent in its intensity. These urns contain the ashes of victims from German concentration camps and the countries occupied during the Third Reich. The trees race by. I feel as if I am flying. The sky is dramatic. There should be music. I start to pick out the shapes of letters on the inscriptions. Bonfires of burning leaves spice the chilly air. I feel uneasy without my Star of Solomon talisman jingling against my chest. Yet, as the wind polishes my face, I thank God. I am grateful to be alive. I accelerate recklessly, oblivious of the potential hazards: other cyclists appearing from my left and right, rushing out from the side paths and joining the slope down which I am flying. My surroundings render this sense of ‘danger’ quite absurd. It is almost a year since Opal Hush left me. I leave the cemetery by the main gate, steering around enticingly oblique female skaters in spray-on shorts and knee-protectors, hair fluttering like horse-tails. On the way back up the hill towards my flat, a fast car pulls in to the kerb and an elegant young woman at the wheel hoots her horn and beckons to me. I do not recognise her. She is dressed in black and is exceptionally pale; as though her face is thickly powdered. Her eyes are heavy, dim-lidded; like the back windows of a hearse. “Where’s the main entrance to the Ohlsdorf Cemetery?” she asks in a flustered yet exceptionally feminine voice. I explain that she is already there; all she needs do is to turn right. I walk on, turning my head back to her car, eager to see her striking face again. She points agitatedly in the direction of the main cemetery gate with raised eyebrows and a questioning look on her face. I nod. Late for a funeral? As deathly as she is, it could be her own. She is as pale as the girl in the sculpture I discovered on the western edge of the cemetery — indeed, the likeness is quite disturbing. She also reminds me of Opal. *
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