Café Boris – the first genuine obituary

Dmitri was unsurprised to find Café Boris heaving with tourists when he arrived for his morning coffee. On Tuesdays the café was always full, as if there was some promotional deal with the local tourist board. There wasn’t of course, Boris hated the tourists who came to his café in vast numbers, and frequently wrote to the tourist board asking them to remove his café from their list of local eateries.

It was over four years ago that Dmitri had started advertising Boris’ café via the obituary column of the Luhansk Ekspres. During that time over a thousand people had “died peacefully after enjoying their last meal at Café Boris.”

After the initial panic the obituaries had caused, during which time Boris had nearly closed down through lack of custom, Café Boris had become a trendy place to come ‘for your last meal’. Tourists, in particular, loved visiting a café famed for the regular deaths of its customers and the internationally-renowned insults from Boris, which had been quoted as far and wide as the New York Times and the Manchester Evening News.

As Dmitri found a standing space at the counter, Boris was being pestered by a tall, rounded American man to have his photograph taken with the American’s wife. “Just one snap sir,” the American said, “so that we can show our friends we’ve met the famous Boris.”

“What is ‘snapped’, that is broken isn’t it? I don’t want to broken by you, not for your friends, not for nobody. Now this man, this is Dmitri, this is the man that writes the obituaries, this is the journalist, the writer, the creative, this man you should be ‘snapped’ with, he is the genius, I am just the poor café owner who is besieged by unwanted tourists because of the things this man writes.”

Dmitri obliged the Americans and spent five minutes posing with various members of the family. He even signed a copy of that day’s Luhansk Expres, in which Hanna Boika was remembered, having died peacefully in her sleepy after a hearty meal at Café Boris.

When he had finally finished with the Americans, Boris gave Dmitri a coffee and a letter.

“What’s this?” he held up the letter, “It’s addressed to you, ‘Boris’, ‘Care of Café Boris’, this isn’t for me.”

“It is from England,” Boris said, “that means it is from a tourist, which means it is for you. It is you who brings these tourists here, I don’t ask you to, I hate tourists.”

He said this loudly, in English, and was greeted by a round of applause from the English-speaking tourists in the café.

Dmitri read the letter slowly, and carefully, his spoken English was good but he was not used to reading it and this was written in scrawly scribble.  Finally he had translated it into a readable form.

Recognising the significance of the letter he rose from his sea and reported its contents to the whole café.

“I am sorry to announce,” he said, “Café Boris has just had its first genuine death. This is from an English woman, who writes to say that her husband, Eric Ottershaw, died at their hotel just an hour after enjoying a hearty meal at Café Boris.”

“Did he die peacefully in his sleep?” one of the tourists asked, amused and failing to appreciate the seriousness of Dmitri’s announcement.

“It doesn’t say,” Dmitri said dryly. “It goes on to say how glad Eric was to have met the famous Boris before he died and how their visit to the café was the highlight of their holiday. ‘It is far better than anywhere else we visited, even Moscow’.”

This last comment was greeted with a cheer by the crowd in the café, particularly from the few Ukrainians amongst the international mixing pot which was Café Boris.

“I shall of course be submitting Eric Ottershaw’s obituary to the Ekspres tomorrow,” Dmitri continued, “and will send his widow a copy.”

At this point Boris interjected. “Tomorrow shall be Eric Otter’s day of mourning. We shall have a wake here, in the café where he nearly died. It is what his wife would want.”

Dmitri read through the letter again. “She doesn’t say that’s what she wants.”

“Ah, women, you have to guess what they want, they never say in words. But she writes, she tells me of the sad loss, of her love of the café, of course she wants a wake. She would want me to charge, also, of course, 50 Hyrvnias per person to attend.

Dmitri stared at Boris, incredulous at his cheek.

“Charge? 50 Hryvnias to attend a wake?

“It is a western thing, they pay to come to funerals, it is the most fun they have in the west. It is what Eric would have wanted.”

Almost before Boris had finished speaking the tourists in the café had begun tweeting about the event and some English people had started queuing up to buy tickets to celebrate the life of their kinsman.

The wake was the biggest party in the history of Café Boris. The Luhansk Ekspres ran a four page story about the death and urged everyone living or staying in Luhansk to attend the event. Knowing that Boris would do nothing bar collect up 50 Hryvnia notes, Dmitri and some of the other regulars used the advance payments they received from the tourists they sold ‘tickets’ to, to buy food, vodka and brandy. Dmitri, his friends, their wives, stayed up all night cooking, drinking and preparing for the next day.

Over the course of the day thousands of people came to the coffee to raise a toast to the ‘latest victim of Café Boris’. One of the locals filmed the event and a DVD of the wake was sent to the widow in England, together with a copy of the Ekspres and a memorial menu.

What Boris did with the fortune he made from the wake we shall never know, it was certainly invested in neither food, décor or any other form of investment in the café itself, nor did Boris fritter his money away on a day’s leave, let alone any form of entertainment.  

But it was Eric Ottershaw’s widow who was the real beneficiary, crying tears of begriefed joy as she read the letter Dmritri sent her with the enclosures. The Ekspres article remained framed on her wall ‘til the day she died, even though she didn’t speak a word of the language. It was enough to know what an impact her husband’s death had had on a group of strangers on the other side of the world, and to remember the kind, selfless gesture from the lovely Boris, in hosting the all-day wake.