He was sitting in the kitchen and didn’t realize that I was watching him. I was sitting on top of the vegetable cellar. From there you had a perfect view into the summer kitchen through the open window. Uncle Rudolf spun the coin on the table. He watched as it spun gracefully, then the spinning grew sluggish, slower with each turn, like the steps of a chicken bleeding to death. The coin finally collapsed on the wood. Then Rudolf picked it up and spun it again. If the coin was about to veer off the table, Rudolf held his hand under the edge of the table so it would fall into his palm.

I was mesmerized watching the spinning coin, over and over again. I was incredibly excited, on the one hand because I was snooping and snooping is always exciting, and on the other hand because I knew that if he saw me I would be subject to severe nose twisting, or maybe something even worse.

He jerked his head up suddenly, as if he had heard something. He looked at the green door that led to the pantry. As a child I didn’t like the pantry because a lot of spiders lived there and the vegetables always smelled rotten. One time my mother sent me in for some jam, and once inside I could clearly sense that something was standing right behind me, watching. When I turned around, of course there was no one there.

The coin just spun and spun while Uncle Rudolf kept staring at the pantry door as if in a trance. This moment seemed to stretch into infinity, like some childhood summers do. Then the door flew open, as if someone had thrown it open with brute force. Uncle Rudolf trembled in fright. There was nobody standing in the doorway. There was no one in the pantry. The coin just kept spinning until it finally spun off the table and dropped onto the floor.

Incidents like this let people know if they’re to be born from the earth twice.

I climbed down from the roof of the vegetable cellar, my knees shaking, and from then on I did my best to avoid the pantry.

Not long after this incident Uncle Rudolf died. The sun didn’t shine the day he was buried, but no rain fell from the clouds either. We woke at dawn. The entire ceremony was finished before noon. The priest sleepily made a boring speech, and the cheap wooden coffin was swallowed by the hole in the ground. After lunch the adults started the preparations for the wake.