The Funeral Party Read Online Free Page B

the real reason she agreed to go to Alik’s studio one-and-a-half years ago, to see for herself this miracle in feathers that had got him.
    Since the day he was born, women had always adored Alik. At kindergarten he was his teachers’ pet. Later at school, all the girls would invite him to their birthday parties and would fall in love with him, along with their grandmothers and their grandmothers’ dogs. In his teenage years, when people are driven crazy with impatience for adult life to begin, and good little girls and boys rush into ridiculous adventures, Alik was indispensable: he listened to his friends’ confessions and was able to laugh at them and make them laugh at themselves. But his most rare and precious quality was his confidence that life would begin next Monday and that yesterday could be erased, especially if it hadn’t been totally successful. At the School of Performing Arts, where he was a student, even the inspector of his course, known as Snake Venom, proved susceptibleto his charms. Four times he was expelled, and three times, thanks to her efforts, he was taken back.
    Nina struck Irina at their first meeting as a silly woman, stuck-up and capricious. Before her in the studio she saw a faded beauty seated on a dirty white carpet, doing a giant jigsaw puzzle and asking not to be disturbed. On closer acquaintance she turned out to be merely simple-minded, and psychologically unbalanced too; inertia alternated with hysteria, bouts of joy with melancholy.
    She understood why Alik had married her, but he had obviously had to put up with years of her mind-numbing silliness, pathological laziness and muddle. Irina felt not so much retrospective jealousy as a deep sense of puzzlement. She had never come across Nina’s type before. Her infinite helplessness clearly aroused in others, particularly men, feelings of heightened responsibility. She had another trait too: each of her whims, caprices and weaknesses she took to the limit. For instance, she refused to touch money, so that if Alik went to Washington for a week he would have to fill the fridge with food before he left, knowing that she wouldn’t go to the store and would rather starve than handle filthy banknotes. As well as this Nina never cooked, because she was afraid of fire. In Russia she had been keen on astrology, and had read that as a Libra she was in danger from fire. From then on she never went near the stove, fearful of the cosmic incompatibility of the air and fire elements. Here in Alik’s studio, where the stove was not gas but electric, and the only living flame she ever came into contact with was at the end of a match, her aversion to cooking remained as strong as ever, and Alik learned to be a successful and imaginative cook.
    Apart from money and fire there was something else,something more intangible, an insane, senseless fear of making decisions. The more insignificant the decision, the more Nina anguished over it. Irina once received some free opera tickets from a client who was a singer, and at Maika’s request they invited Alik and Nina along. They arrived to pick them up and witnessed Nina’s indecision as she tried on endless little black dresses and smart shoes, finally flinging herself on the bed, sobbing into the pillow and refusing to go, until Alik, avoiding the eyes of the involuntary onlookers, picked a dress at random and said: “Wear this one Nina, velvet and the opera go together like beer and sausages.”
    Maika evidently enjoyed this spectacle far more than she enjoyed the rather mediocre opera.
    Irina knew perfectly well the value of such antics; her youth had been full of them. But unlike Nina she had the circus school behind her. Tightrope-walking is a very valuable skill for an emigré, and perhaps this explained why she was the most successful of them. The soles of the feet hurt, the heart almost stops, the sweat pours into the eyes, but the muscles stretch to a wide, all-purpose smile, the chin tilts