Under the Slab

Strange things come into my field of vision, often in strange surroundings. The Church of St. Mary’s in the old Hanseatic city of Rostock in Germany, for example. I noticed that there were, all around the nave, small chapel-like alcoves. “The elaborate graves and memorials of the more wealthy families of their day”, the altar guild lady explained. The church is paved in stone that looks old and worn, having been trod upon for more than 500 years now. The entire floor of the huge church has been partitioned into small slabs, each bearing names hewn into the stone in an old script. “The graves of the less wealthy”, the altar guild lady observed. “Somebody is buried under each of these slabs”.
I visited Rostock in the month of July yet the floor was ice cold. Not much going on under those slabs, I thought. Five hundred year old memories. Macabre maybe, but nothing to provoke a shudder any more.
Unlike my kitchen floor. Now this did produce a shudder, only a week ago. I am positive: no relatives are buried under that ceramic floor, “less wealthy” or otherwise. There was nevertheless one spot that was warm, cosily warm. “Oh, oh”, my wife said. “There is something going on under this slab!”

A priest would have been of little use in this case, so we called the magician, our plumber. Like Julius Caesar he came, he saw, and he conquered the situation within minutes: we had a hot water leak under the kitchen floor, was his diagnosis. “The pipes must be repaired before water seeps up into the drywall”, the man said. The jack hammer was one option. “No!”, we said. “Not on our expensive Italian tiles”. Another method involves inserting a thinner pipe into the existing leaky pipe. Struck us as a Micky Mouse procedure inviting the jack hammer, should another leak occur under the same slab later. While waiting for a second opinion we anxiously examined the walls. By luck, no seepage had occurred. The last option, and our choice, was a complete re-routing of the pipes over the attic that would certainly give us better access during the next crisis.

We have hot water again and we are grateful. More than that: we now can’t help thinking of the old cathedral with the slabs. We can see them now, in our minds’ eyes, the good citizens of medieval Rostock as they kneel down after each slab burial, praying for mercy, glancing up to heaven in supplication.

We, too, now live in a mild state of paranoia as we furtively glance every so often at the kitchen ceiling above, hoping for the best and keeping our fingers crossed.

(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credits Sankt Marien, Rostock