The Caryatids

There was a bustle at the graveside. Somehow, amazingly, George had assembled his sisters into a public group.

Since they violently loathed one another, Vera, Sonja, Radmila, and Biserka had all been determined to stand out during the funeral. Rather than wear proper dark mourning clothes-as everyone else was doing-they had each, independently, decided to mark themselves out as free spirits by dressing entirely in white. So the sisters were all in white, identical, grim and chilly and marbled, pale as statues.

Making the most of this misstep, George had hastily borrowed a white jacket from an Acquis cadre. He'd ripped off the jacket's political tags, pips, and braiding. So George was also in white.

Gathered there at the monster's graveside, two by two with George standing at their head, the women were intensely romantic and pretty. Five siblings holding up the autumn sky.

"This is George's finest hour!" said Montalban, his dark eyes wide. "Look what he's achieved! I could never do that! Never! He's got them publicly holding hands! Like when they were kids!"

Inke knew fear. "This is not going to work."

"Of course it will work! He's finally got them burying their primal trauma here! Even though they're a broken set, they're violently off-kilter…they're letting go of their past! Everybody's watching! The whole world adores them."

Inke knew that the women could not bear up. Flawed from birth, scorched by murder, their hearts were broken: they had failed comprehensively. They were strong and resolute and intelligent women, but they could not possibly support the roles that fate had forced upon them. They were broken statues for a broken world.

"They ca

"Well, I'm not claiming that this is a perfect solution for them-peace never lasts forever in the Balkans-but come on, Inke, they're not stupid ! Look, he's giving them the ceremonial shovels!"

It was a local tradition to distribute short-handled shovels at a graveside, for the convenience of mourners casting dirt.

George was the first to pitch in with his fancy shovel-without another word or gesture, he began heaving damp clods straight into the open grave. He looked thrilled, overjoyed. George meant to finally conceal a lifelong embarrassment. He might have filled that grave all by himself.

George was so gleeful and eager about his work that the women, as if helpless, fell into line.

Soon they were all throwing dirt into the Earth, earnestly, tirelessly.

When each saw that the others were sparing no effort, they really set to. Their arms and legs in ominous unison, the clones labored like identical machines.

Inke stared at the unca

Vera was the best at the labor. As an engineer, Vera understood dirt and digging. Vera had a pinched, virginal quality-Vera was a fanatic, the kind of woman who had never understood what it meant to be a woman. Vera was efficient and entirely humorless, a robot.

Radmila made it all look so effortless. She handled her shovel like a stage prop. Radmila was the world's most elegant gravedigger. It was as if every woman in the world should aspire to spend her evenings filling graves.

Sonja had filled many graves already. Sonja was the one who best understood what she was doing. It was a moral burden to see Sonja at her deadly work. It made one sweat.

"Biserka isn't doing much," Inke said.

"We call her 'Erika' now," said Montalban. "She broke her ribs. She's still in a lot of pain."

"Your Biserka is up to no good. Biserka has never been any good. She would never hold up her own part of anything."

"I like to think of my Erika as a troubled girl from a severely disadvantaged background," said Montalban. "But, what the heck, yeah, of course you're right, Inke: Biserka is evil."

"Why her, John? The other one is the mother of your child."

"Well, I love them all so very dearly, but…they're so fierce and dedicated and selfless and good! They frankly tire me! Biserka considers herself a cauldron of criminal genius, but since she's so completely self-absorbed, and so devoid of any interest and empathy for others-motivated entirely by her resentment and always on the make-well, Biserka's certainly the easiest to manage. There's something abject about Biserka. I don't have to negotiate that relationship all the time. Biserka is the one that I fully understand. And she needs me the most. Left alone in a room, Biserka would sting herself to death like a scorpion. She will always need her rescuer. She'll always need a white knight to save her, she'll always be in trouble, and she will always depend on me. That's why I love her the best."

"To love an evil woman means that you are evil."

Montalban shrugged. "I like to think of myself as a deeply fallible man who is healthily in touch with his dark side."

Biserka cast a shovelful of dirt over Radmila's beautiful shoes. Radmila resolutely ignored her.

"Hey, I think I'm getting a blister!" Biserka whined, straightening and sucking at her fingers. "Why don't we stop all this hard work and let the servants do it?"

"Get out of the way," said Vera.

Biserka stabbed her shovel into a loose mound of dirt and departed the grave in a huff.

"You shouldn't have said that to her," said George mildly.

"Oh, so she has a hard life?" snarled Vera. "I've been digging up this island for ten years! Do you smell that fresh air from the hills? I built that fresh air."

"You thought that was work?" Sonja demanded, incredulous. "Your ten-year vacation on a tropical island? I fought and I suffered! The air was black! The air killed people!"

Radmila was silky. "I hope you don't expect us to praise you for worming your way into the bowels of a totalitarian regime."

"Listen to you, " shouted Vera. "You're famous and rich! Even your daughter is famous and rich."

"Vera, is it my fault that you missed out on life by dressing up like a skeleton?"

"At least I'm not like her, " shouted Vera, "a soldier's whore who lifts her skirt for any man with a gun!"

Sonja scowled. "Like a Hollywood actress is the pillar of chastity? I don't think our dirty skirts are any of your dirty business, Vera."

"They're going to kill each other now," Inke told Montalban. "Those spades can be turned into weapons."

"Any technology is a weapon. Go and stop them now, Inke."

"What, me? I'm a nobody."

"That's what I treasure about you. You're a normal human being, and you've even got normal kids. Go and stop them, Inke. You must. We've got only a few seconds left. Go intervene, make them more normal. Hurry."

"You do it."

"I can't. Don't argue with me. Do it, go." Montalban squeezed her shoulder, gave her a little push.

Inke somehow tottered into the midst of the sisterhood. They'd stopped heaving dirt into the grave and were hefting their shovels to batter and slash.

Everyone in the crowd was silently watching the tableau. Even George was staring at her intervention. Yet George seemed unsurprised to see her jumping into the quarrel. He was even daring to hope for the best.