How We Die
For Heaven's Sake
Edmund de Waal got his surname from his Dutch grandfather, and a collection of 264 netsuke from his grandmother's brother, both members of a prominent European Jewish banking family. His bittersweet 2010 book Hare with Amber Eyes blends triumph with trauma as the netsukes, but not all of his relatives, survive Hitler's annexation of Austria.
photo © Hannah Jones
Is she dead yet?
Inside the room, a war widow from another country is dying. Outside, local elderly women maintain a vigil.
These women are not there to comfort the dying woman.
No, they intend to steal her meager possessions, waiting for the moment she dies to make their move. In fact, they will take as much as they can even while the woman is still alive, given the opportunity.
Such behaviour is Greek to me - as well it might be. This is a scene from the classic 1964 film Zorba the Greek , based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis.
Both the book and the movie insist that Greeks are different from, well, from the British.
Syrtaki-dancing Zorba (Anthony Quinn) is big-hearted, exuberant, carefree - qualities which are clearly associated with his being Greek.
His friend Basil (Alan Bates), is timid, introverted, uptight - British traits.
In their different natures, Zorba and Basil are emblems of different countries and cultures. The scene in which the dead woman is stripped of her possessions is horrific. Garbed in black from head to foot, the old women resemble crows on carrion, ravenously picking the carcass clean. Their behaviour is, in its own way, more shocking that the brutal throat-slashing murder that also occurs in the movie.
Differences - more style than substance
In England and Wales, most people would be too polite or frightened to pounce on a helpless dying woman, but here as in Greece and in many places around the globe, when someone dies, cash, jewellery and other valuables often vanish. Where do they go? Typically, one or more relatives and friends and carers have keys to the premises of the deceased. Your guess is as good as mine.
Sometimes, even the will itself vanishes: no will is found, even though the deceased definitely made one. Wills can be genuinely misplaced or lost or accidentally destroyed. But some wills, again, fall into the hands of someone who has more to gain if the deceased person dies intestate - without a will. They know where the will went, and they aren't telling.
In short, we strip corpses here too, albeit not as crudely or blatantly as in Zorba.
On second thought! A few weeks after writing the preceding sentence, I came upon a Zorba-like passage in a Disraeli novel, quoted below.
"There was one last thing I needed to do because I know we couldn't leave these most private rooms - the sitting room, bedroom, dressing room - unguarded as we flew to Paris. It was her world. It needed protecting. Colin [Tebbutt] and I went around shutting the doors and sealing them with thick parcel tape, adding a sticky label, which we then signed denying access to the all and sundry I feared would come marching through within the next twenty-four hours."
Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's butler, securing her rooms in Kensington Palace immediately after her sudden death in 1997. Ironically, he was later charged, and cleared, of selling some of her possessions.
In Zorba the Greek, the widow Hortense (Lila Kedrova) has friends (Zorba and Basil) but no husband or other family members to thoroughly, diligently watch over and protect her. She also apparently had no will. In her circumstances, would one have helped?
If she had a will that gave instructions only for the distribution of her assets, probably not.
A simple or basic will would have been better than no will at all, but wills could, and should, do more than simply pass on assets. Maximise the estate. Reduce inheritance tax. Select executors. Shrewdly oversee or organise insurance, investments, care and funeral arrangements, and other facets of life and financial planning. These are among the main goals of well-drafted wills.
The world will always contain Hortenses who die more or less alone, at the mercy of the neighbourhood crones.
But given a choice, even Zorba's Hortense would have profited from a consultation with a solicitor. Together they could have flagged her vulnerability and devised a plan to protect her and her assets.
The title of this page, How We Die, is borrowed from the 1993 book by Dr Sherwin B Nuland, who describes many ways of dying from a medical doctor's perspective.
" . . . "
"'Quick, all of you! She's gone!' Yelped the dirge-singers, rushing to the bed. They uttered a prolonged cry, rocking backwards and forwards, clenching their fists and beating their breasts. Little by little the monotony of this lugubrious oscillation produced in them a slight state of hypnosis, old griefs of their own invaded their minds like poison, their hearts were opened and the mirologue burst forth."
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (1952). [More than 50 years after his death, the descendants of Kazantzakis (1883-1957) are engaged in a bitter inheritance and copyright dispute pitting his natural relatives against his widow's adopted son, Stavrou. His widow, Eleni, adopted Stavrou when she was in her 70s and he was 55. She died in 2004, aged 100.]
" . . . "
"Lord Monmouth had died suddenly at his Richmond villa, which latterly he never quitted, at a little supper, with no persons near him but those who were amusing. He suddenly found he could not lift his glass to his lips, and being extremely polite, waited a few minutes before he asked Clotilde, who was singing a sparkling drinking-song, to do him that service. When, in accordance with his request, she reached him, it was too late. The ladies shrieked, being frightened: at first they were in despair, but, after reflection, they evinced some intention of plundering the house. Villebecque, who was absent at the moment, arrived in time; and everybody became orderly and broken-hearted."
Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby (1844)
" . . . "
"But I had learned about my mother [writer Anne Roiphe] walking in on her father and his mistress in her country house with a group of college friends, or her aunts stealing her mother’s fur coats and jewelry while her mother lay dying."
Katie Roiphe, "Sharing her Secrets" New York Times, 24 March 2011.
