The Funeral Party Read Online Free Page A

covering his angular shoulder with her hair. He seemed to be asleep. His breathing was shallow and irregular. She listened closely. Without opening his eyes he said, “When will this damned heat end?”
    She jumped up and ran to the corner of the room, whereLibin had arranged Maria Ignatevna’s herbal masterpieces in seven bottles on the floor. Taking the smallest one and removing the cork, she pushed it under Alik’s nose. It smelt of ammonia.
    “Better? Is that better?” she asked urgently.
    “A bit,” he agreed.
    She lay down beside him again, turned his head to face her and whispered in his ear: “Alik, do it for me, please, I beg you.”
    “Do what?” He didn’t understand, or pretended not to.
    “Get baptized, and everything will be all right. And the medicine will work.” She took his weak hand in both of hers and gently kissed his freckled fingers. “And you won’t be afraid.”
    “But I’m not afraid, my darling.”
    “So I can fetch the priest?”
    Alik focused his wandering gaze and said, unexpectedly seriously: “Nina, I have no objection to your Jesus. I quite like him in fact, although his sense of humour isn’t all it could be. The thing is, I’m a clever Jew myself. There’s something silly about these sacraments. It’s theatre, and I don’t like theatre. I prefer the cinema. Leave me alone, Bunny rabbit.”
    Nina clasped her thin fingers together and waved them at him as though praying. “Please, won’t you just talk to him? Let him come, you can talk.”
    “Let who come?” asked Alik.
    “The priest of course. He’s a very, very good man. I’m begging you …” Slowly she licked Alik’s neck and his collarbone, then the nipple stuck to his ribcage, in a familiar inviting gesture they both understood. She was seducing him into baptism, turning it into an erotic game.
    He smiled weakly at her. “Go on then, call your priest. Only on one condition: you must call a rabbi too.”
    Nina was nonplussed. “Are you joking?”
    “Why should I joke? If you want me to take this serious step I’ve the right to a second opinion.” Alik always knew how to derive the maximum pleasure from every situation.
    But Nina was satisfied. “He agreed, he agreed!” she said to herself. “He’ll be baptized.”
    Everything had been arranged in advance with the priest at Nina’s little Orthodox church. An educated man, descended from emigrés who had fled the 1917 revolution, Father Victor had a complicated life-story and a simple faith. He was a sociable, humorous character who liked to drink and was always happy to visit his parishioners.
    Where rabbis were to be found, Nina had no idea. Their circle of Jewish friends had no connections with the religious community, and she would have to devote much effort to finding one if these were Alik’s terms.
    For the next two hours she busied herself with her bottles, putting more compresses on Alik’s feet and rubbing his chest with an acrid-smelling infusion. It was three in the morning when she remembered Irina laughing as she told them she must be the only one of them who knew how to cook gefilte fish, because she had once been married to a proper Jew who kept kosher and the Sabbath and the rest of it.
    She dialled Irina’s number.
    When Irina received Nina’s call in the middle of the night, she froze; it’s over, she thought.
    “Listen, Ira, was your husband a religious Jew?” Nina’s wild voice demanded through the mouthpiece.
    She must be drunk, Irina thought.
    “He certainly was,” she replied.
    “Could you get hold of him for me please? Alik needs a rabbi.”
    No, she’s just mad, Irina decided.
    “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said carefully. “It’s three in the morning, I’m not phoning anyone at this hour!”
    “Please Irina, it’s important,” Nina said in a completely clear voice.
    “I’ll come round tomorrow, okay?” Irina said, hanging up.
    Irina had felt a deep curiosity about Nina. This may have been