The Funeral Party

FIVE

Irina told people she had backed every horse, including the Jewish one. The Jewish one was large, black-bearded Leva Gottlieb, who had pushed Russian Irina into Judaism. Not bits and pieces of Judaism either but virtually the full programme, with Sabbath candles, the ritual bath and the headgear, which happened to suit her very well. She was a Jew for two years; Maika was sent to a religious girls’ school, of which she still had fond memories, and Irina studied Hebrew. She was an able student, and it came easily to her. She went to synagogue and enjoyed family life. Then one morning she woke up and realized she was bored stiff. She packed a few things and went off with her daughter, leaving Leva a note consisting of two words: “I’ve gone.”

He tracked her down to some old friends of hers, and when he asked her why she had broken up the family, she replied only: “Boredom, Leva, boredom.”

It was her last extravagant act, maybe her last act of emotional defiance: she never allowed herself to do anything like it again.

She moved to California. How she lived in these years was a mystery to her New York friends. Some suspected she had had a stash, others that she might be living off a lover, no one could work it out. By day she wore her English silk and linen suits, and at night she stuck on her feathers and sequins and performed her acrobatic act at a special club frequented by rich idiots. The circus school was a proper profession, not just some PhD. Thanks to this profession, at night she would twirl her legs, and by day she would toil away at law school. In those years she learned to get up every morning at six-thirty, take a three-minute shower instead of her usual forty-minute bath, and not to pick up the phone until the machine had told her who it was. She eventually finished her studies and graduated, and got a job as assistant to one of the partners at a reputable Los Angeles law practice.

She had little contact with emigré circles in Los Angeles and she spoke American with a slightly English accent, on which she still had some work to do; it was rather chic in fact, but people who understand these things know that it is easier to lose one’s Russian accent altogether than to replace an English with an American one. She also expediently changed her uncomplicated Russian surname when applying for her American papers.

She still had a few connections from her show career, and she brought several new clients to the practice. God knows what kind of clients they were, but her boss valued them. Before long he allowed her to handle a few small cases on her own, and she started winning them for him. For a young American her career would be considered pretty good; for a forty-year-old former circus acrobat from Russia it was brilliant.

For Leva too the divorce turned out to be for the best. He married a nice Jewish girl from Mogilev, who didn’t have the experience of the circus behind her, or any other kind of experience either. Large, plump and wide-hipped, she bore him five children in seven years, which fully reconciled him to the loss of Irina.

His sensible wife would say to her friends: “You know our men fancy shiksas, but not after they find themselves a proper Jewish wife!”

This was the limit of her wisdom, but Leva wouldn’t have disagreed with it.

Irina found him without difficulty in the telephone directory. When she asked him to meet her urgently he was greatly taken aback, and in the two hours it took her to reach him in the Bronx he anxiously awaited some major unpleasantness, or at least inconvenience, from her.

His office was rather shabby. The business he did there had been hatched by Irina, whose practical mind and easygoing attitude to money had served him well during their brief marriage. It was she who at the start of it had persuaded him to invest all his money, his laboriously accumulated five thousand dollars, in a high-risk kosher cosmetics business. This had proved to be brilliantly profitable. Irina was still in the throes of her short-lived love affair with Judaism then, a gentle, reformed Judaism to be sure, but one which respected the dramatic connection between milk and meat, especially meat which had oinked when alive.

Leva’s cosmetics were just starting to find their market when Irina, plastered in non-kosher all-American cosmetics, walked out on him. As he embarked on this new phase of his life he quickly changed orientation and betrayed reformism for orthodoxy. There was a political reason he had to stop producing the crude paints which had defiled the noble faces of Jewish women, and sold this part of his business to his cousin, reserving for himself the production of kosher soaps and shampoos. He also learned to make kosher aspirin and other drugs, and he had plenty of customers, who evidently didn’t regard the idea as a complete swindle.

Leva met Irina at the door to his office. Both were greatly changed, but these changes weren’t so much to do with the passing of time as with the new directions their lives had taken. Leva had filled out, his jowls were fleshier and his back broader, which made him appear shorter; his face had lost the pink and white hue of the young King David, and he had acquired a sallow complexion. Irina, who during their marriage used to go around in knitted jerseys with holes on the shoulder and long Indian skirts which swept the floor, dazzled him now with her impeccable, fashion-plate looks, the sculpted elegance of her brows and nose, her firm chin and soft lips.

“A pearl, a real pearl,” he thought, and said it out loud.

Irina laughed, her old light laugh. “I’m glad you like me, Leva, you don’t look bad either, you’re a serious, important-looking man now!”

“I’ve five children, Irina, five.” He pulled a small photograph album from his desk. “So how’s Maika?”

“She’s fine, she’s a big girl already.” Irina examined the album and nodded, then put it back on the desk. “The thing is, an old friend, a Jew, someone I used to know in Moscow, is very ill. He’s dying. He wants to talk to a rabbi. Could you arrange it?”

“Is that all?” Leva felt hugely relieved. He had imagined she might make some financial claim to those five thousand dollars from the time they were married. He was a good man but he was burdened by family worries, and he hated unexpected expenses. “I can get you ten if you need it.”

Immediately he had said it he felt embarrassed, but Irina didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “It’s urgent, he’s terribly ill,” she said.

Leva promised to call her that evening.

He did indeed call that evening, and told her that he would be bringing round a well-known rabbi from Israel who was delivering a course of erudite lectures at New York University; he agreed to bring him to the sick man as soon as the Sabbath was over.

It was uncharacteristic of Irina, who never forgot anything, to forget that the Jewish Sabbath ended on Saturday evening and she told Nina the rabbi would be coming on Sunday morning.

The priest, Father Victor, promised to visit on Saturday after early vespers. Nina attached great importance to the fact that the priest was coming first.