She’s really crazy now, Fima frowned, what will she do next? She had already forgotten that she had just sent everyone out.
She placed the bowl carefully on the stool, took three candles out of the cupboard, lit them and melted their bases, then stuck them to the porcelain rim of the bowl. She did all this quickly and effortlessly; it was as though everything she needed was coming out to meet her.
She took the paper icon from the wall and smiled, remembering the strange man who had left it there. He was one of the many homeless emigrés who had stayed with them. Although Nina had been generally indifferent to their guests and barely noticed them, this one she had asked Alik to send away. But Alik had merely said, “Shut up, Nina, we live too well.” He was an odd, mad young man. He didn’t wash and wore what appeared to be chains on his body. He hated America, and the only reason he had come was that he had had a vision that Christ was living there, and he had come to find Him. He chased around Central Park all day looking for Him, then someone helped him to see the light, and he went to California, to a fellow seeker, an American this time—Serafim or Sebastian or something—also mad, apparently, and a monk.
Nina propped the icon against the bowl, gazed at Alik and thought for a moment. Something troubled her—his name. His name was a problem: although people always called him Alik, he had been registered as Abraham in honour of his dead grandfather. Before his parents divorced, they had quarrelled about whose idea it had been to give their child this stupid, provocative name; even some of his closest friends didn’t know his real name, particularly since he had put it down as Alik on his American papers.
Whatever the name, the man destined to bear it hadn’t much longer to live. He gasped convulsively from time to time. Nina rushed to the bookshelf, looking for a church calendar. At random, she pulled out the right volume from behind a jumble of books. For 22 August she read: “Martyrs Fotii and Anikita, Pamphil and Kapiton. Holy Martyr Alexander.” Everything was right again, the name was right; everything was coming out to meet her again. She smiled.
“Alik!” she cried. “Please don’t be angry or offended, I’m going to baptize you.”
She took from her long neck the gold cross that used to belong to her grandmother, a Ters cossack. Maria Ignatevna had told her what to do. Any Christian could do it if someone was dying; just a cross made with water or sand, a gold cross, or even some matches tied in a cross. Now she just had to say a few simple words she had memorized. She crossed herself, dipped the cross in the water and said in a hoarse voice: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost …” She made the sign of the cross in the water, dipped her hand in, scooped up a handful of water and sprinkled it over her husband’s face. “… I baptize thee, Alik, servant of God.”
At the critical moment she didn’t notice that the truly suitable name of Alexander had flown out of her head.
She was unsure what to do next. With the cross in one hand she sat beside him rubbing the baptismal water over his face and chest. One of the candles bent over the rim of the bowl and, in defiance of the laws of physics, fell inside the now holy vessel. It spluttered and went out. Nina laid the cross on his neck. “Alik, Alik!” she called.
He didn’t respond, just gave a throaty snore and fell silent.
“Fima!” she shouted.
Fima walked in.
“Look what I’ve done. I’ve baptized him.”
Fima retained his professionalism. “Well, fine. He certainly can’t get any worse.”
The marvellous feeling of certainty she had had earlier suddenly deserted her. Moving the stool back to the corner, she lay down beside Alik and gabbled something Fima couldn’t understand.
The door opened slightly and Kipling the dog walked in. For the past three days he had lain by the door waiting for his master to return. He laid his head on the bed. I should take him out, Fima thought; it’s time for me to go to work. Gioia had gone off offended. Lyuda too had left in the night. Fima roused the sleeping man in the corner, who turned out to be Shmuel, not Libin, as Fima had supposed, which was just as well, since Shmuel was in no hurry to go anywhere; he had spent his entire ten years in America on welfare. Fima hastily explained to him the emergency procedures and left his telephone number at work. Now he would take Kipling out, who was waiting patiently by the door wagging his tail. After that he must go to work.
SIXTEEN
The day after baptizing Alik, Nina didn’t leave the bedroom. She lay there clasping his legs, not letting people in. “Quiet, quiet, he’s sleeping,” she said when anyone came to the door.
He was in an oblivious state, drawing the occasional wheezing breath. He could hear everything that was going on around him but as though from a great distance, and he wanted to tell people that everything was all right; but the scarf was tied more tightly now, and he couldn’t dislodge it.
At the same time he was assailed by new sensations. He felt light and insubstantial like a cloud, as though he were moving in a black-and-white film, only the black wasn’t black and the white wasn’t white, rather everything consisted of shades of grey because the film was old and grainy. There was nothing unpleasant about it. This movement, which he had longed for all these months, felt blissful, almost drug-induced. Familiar shadows were glimpsed on the edges of a washed-out road. Some resembled wooden silhouettes, others had human form. Once again he saw his old teacher Nikolai Vasilevich, the Galosh, and he noted with satisfaction that the appearance of this man, a mathematician of sober and severe intellect, proved that what was happening was real and released him from a vague unease that this might be a dream, or an hallucination. Nikolai Vasilevich clearly recognized him and made a welcoming gesture, and Alik saw that he was coming towards him.
Nina was jingling her bottles again, but there was something pleasant and musical about the sound. Pouring the dregs of some bitter infusion into her hands she whispered something inaudible, but it didn’t bother him. The Galosh was beside him now, silently smacking his lips as he used to at school; Alik had forgotten this habit of his, and he remembered it now with a feeling of tenderness. It was all terribly convincing: no, it wasn’t a dream, it was really happening.
In the middle of the day a plumber arrived to install the new air-conditioner. An incurious mulatto festooned with gold chains, he was accompanied by an unhealthy-looking young assistant (one of Alik’s friends was paying). Nina let them into the bedroom. They worked quickly without so much as glancing at the dying man, and the heat in the room was replaced by a dusty cool. Soon Valentina arrived. Nina wouldn’t let her into the bedroom, so she sat in the studio beside the tear-stained Gioia.
In a corner Maika lay on the grimy white carpet with a blanket folded under her head, reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in English. She dreamed of reading it in the original. Since yesterday she had regretted that she hadn’t been born a man and couldn’t go to a Tibetan monastery, and had even asked her mother that morning if she could have an operation to make her bust smaller, thus bringing her closer to the beautiful life of a Buddhist monk.
Nina pushed some pillows beneath Alik’s back, raising him in the bed so that he was almost sitting up. She moistened his parched, dark lips and tried to blow a little water through them with a straw, but it leaked out of the corners.
“Alik, Alik!” she called him, touched him, stroked him. She put her lips to his iliac crest and drew her tongue across to his navel, along the line which divides the human body in two. The smell of him was strange, his skin tasted bitter; she had been marinating him in this bitterness for two months now.
She buried her face in the red tendrils of his pubic hair; his hair didn’t change, she thought.
She finally stopped bothering him, and Alik suddenly said very clearly: “Nina, I’m completely better now.”
At eight o’clock in the evening when Fima returned from work, he saw a strange sight: Nina was sitting naked on her black kimono facing Alik, wiping her fine arms with the thick residue from one of
the bottles and saying: “See how it’s helping, it’s such a good herb.”
Dreamily she raised her shining eyes to Fima and said solemnly, “Alik told me he’s better now.”
“He’s dead,” Fima thought. He touched Alik’s hand; it was empty, the drumbeats had gone out of it.
Going out of the bedroom, he poured himself half a glass of cheap vodka from a large bottle with a handle, gulped it down, then walked to the other end of the studio and back again. At this time of day there weren’t many people around, they tended to come later. No one looked at Fima. Valentina and Libin were playing with Alik’s backgammon. Gioia was laying out the Tarot as Nina had taught her, trying to bring some clarity into her already clear and solitary life. Faika was eating fried eggs with mayonnaise on them; she ate everything with mayonnaise. Moscow Lyuda had long since washed all the dishes and was sitting with her son by the television waiting for news from home.
“Alyosha, switch that thing off, Alik’s dead,” Fima said quietly to the young man, so quietly that nobody heard him. “Hey everyone, Alik’s dead,” he repeated, still very quietly.
The lift clanged, and Irina came in.
“Alik’s dead,” he told her, and at last everyone heard.
“Already?” Valentina burst out in anguish, as though Alik had promised her that he would live for ever, and had broken this promise with his untimely death.
“Oh shit!” Maika said, throwing aside her book and running to the lift, almost knocking her mother off her feet as she went.
Irina stood by the door, rubbing her hurt shoulder. Maybe I’ll visit Russia for a week, she thought, I’ll look up the Kazantsevs, Gisya (Gisya was Alik’s older sister). She must be an old woman now, she’s fourteen years older than him. She always loved me.
Gioia dropped her cards and wept.
For some reason everyone started putting on clothes. Valentina dived head-first into a long Indian skirt. Lyuda found her sandals. They all made for the bedroom. Fima stopped them. “Wait, Nina doesn’t know yet, we must tell her.”
“You tell her,” Libin begged. He and Fima hadn’t been talking to each other for three years, and now he didn’t even notice himself asking.
Fima opened the bedroom door; everything was exactly the same. Alik lay with the orange sheet pulled up to his chin, Nina sat on the floor rubbing her narrow feet with their long toes, repeating over and over again: “They’re good herbs, Alik, they have immense power.”
Kipling was there too, resting his forepaws and his sad, wise face on the bed.
How stupid it is to think that dogs are afraid of dead people, Fima thought.
He pulled Nina up, picked her soaked kimono off the floor and threw it over her shoulders. She didn’t resist.
“He’s dead,” Fima said again, and felt as though he had already lived for a long time in this new world in which Alik was no longer around.
Nina looked at him with watchful, transparent eyes, and smiled; her face was tired but cunning. “Alik’s better, you know.”
He led her out of the bedroom. Valentina was already bringing her her drink. She drank and smiled a worldly smile at no one in particular: “Do you know, Alik’s better! He told me himself!”
Gioia made a sound like a laugh and ran into the kitchen with her hand over her mouth. From below, somebody buzzed the intercom. Nina sat in the armchair with a bright, distracted face, pushing the ice around her glass with a cocktail-stick.
This was how Ophelia must have looked. Her defence, like a good boxer’s, was to refuse to know anything. Everything was all right. Alik couldn’t leave her; she had always lived outside reality and he had covered for her madness.
There was method in this madness, Irina thought. She had nothing more to do here; she must leave now, without delay.
She went down in the lift. Maika wasn’t waiting by the door; her daughter had gone.
Dodging through the slow stream of traffic, she went into the café opposite.
“Whiskey?” the shrewd black barman asked, pouring her a glass.
Of course, he’s Alik’s friend, she thought. Pointing to the house opposite she said: “He’s dead.”
The man knew at once who she was talking about. He raised his sculpted hands with their silver rings and bracelets, and wrinkled his Jamaican face. “Oh Lord, why do you take the best from us?” he said.
He splashed himself something from a thick bottle, drank quickly and said to Irina, “Listen girl, how’s Nina? I want to give her some money.”
No one had called Irina “girl” for a very long time. And suddenly she realized it was as if Alik had never emigrated. He had built his Russia around him, a Russia which hadn’t existed for a long time and perhaps never had. He was carefree and irresponsible, people didn’t live like that here, they didn’t live like it anywhere, dammit. How to define this charm, which had captivated even her little girl? He hadn’t done anything special for anyone, yet they would all have gone through fire for him. No, she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand.
She went to the phone-booth at the back of the café, inserted her card and keyed in a long number. At Harris’ home, the machine picked up her call. At his office his old secretary, who reminded Irina of a monkey, told her he was busy. “Put me through,” Irina said, giving her name.
Harris was instantly on the line.
“I’m free this weekend,” she said.
“Ring me from the airport and I’ll meet you.” His voice was cool, but Irina could tell he was happy.
His dry, ruddy face and neat moustache, his mirror-like bald patch, a sofa, a glass and a slice of lemon, eleven minutes of love—you could count them on your watch—and a feeling of total security as she rested her head on his broad, hairy chest. It was all very serious, and must be taken to its logical conclusion …
SEVENTEEN
The past couldn’t be cancelled. Well, why would anyone want to cancel it, anyway.
Irina had done her last performance in Boston, and without going back to the hotel she had gone straight to the airport. There she bought herself a ticket, and two hours later she was in New York. The year was 1975. After paying for her ticket she had forty dollars left, which she had brought from Russia in the pocket of her trousers. It was a good thing she had, because the troupe had not been given any cash; they had been promised some money on their last day for shopping, but Irina couldn’t wait any longer.
As she sat in the plane, she looked at her watch and imagined the scandal that would break next morning. This evening the sweaty managers would rush through the sleazy boarding-house banging on doors and asking people when they had last seen her. There would be curses and anathemas, the head of personnel would get fired for sure. Her retired father would try to wriggle out of it and do deals, but her wise mother would be pleased. I’ll ring her tomorrow, Irina thought; I’ll tell her everything’s worked out brilliantly, there’s no need for her to worry.
In New York she called Pereira, the circus manager, who had promised to help her. He wasn’t in; it turned out that he had left town and forgotten to tell her. The other number she had on her belonged to Ray, a clown she had met three years earlier at a circus festival in Prague. He was at home. She explained to him with some difficulty who she was. Her name clearly meant nothing to him, but he invited her over.
Her first night in New York passed in a dream. Ray lived in a tiny apartment in the Village with his friend, a graceful young man who opened the door to her in a lady’s swimsuit. They proved to be extraordinarily good young men and did everything they could to help her. Later, Ray admitted that he had had no memory of her, and wasn’t even sure if he had been in Prague.
Butane—Irina wasn’t sure if this was the flatmate’s surname, his first name or a nickname—had already lived illegally in America for five years, so her insane step didn’t seem so insane to them. They had no work or money at the time, and no idea how they were going to pay the rent. Next morning they paid it with Irina’s money, then they all
set off to perform for the summer visitors in Central Park. Here too, according to them, Irina brought them luck. For the next few days she contorted her body on a mat, then she sewed five cloth puppets, which she put on her hands, feet and head, and their earnings became entirely satisfactory. Irina slept modestly on three sofa cushions in the room next to Ray’s, trying not to inhibit his sexual freedom. But before long Butane started getting close to her and Ray grew jealous. For a while their triple alliance hung in the balance. Irina still went out to work with them, but she realized she must find another way of living here. They were great boys though, and completely reconciled her to casting off her old skin: it turned out that half of America was made up of people like her.
Then one August day, having finished her solo act by the entrance to the small zoo at Central Park, she suddenly found herself in the arms of Alik, who for the last twenty minutes had been watching the happy play of her double-jointed limbs.
Half an hour later she was sitting with him in his loft, which hadn’t been partitioned into separate rooms then. He had lived for two years in America and was working hard and selling respectably. He was happy and independent, emigration suited him. He looked at this small, fast-moving animal with the impetuous human face, and he realized what had been missing from his life.
Seven years had passed since they parted in Moscow, seven wasted years, and they had to make up for them as quickly as possible in gestures, words and feelings. Twenty-four hours a day weren’t enough for them; everything was as transparent as glass, they didn’t feel the ground under their feet.
One night as they were returning home they had found a large white carpet left outside some rich person’s house. They dragged it up to the apartment and Irina would sit on it in her habitual lotus position holding her English textbook in front of her, studying her grammar, while Alik worked away on his pomegranates. His loft was full of them: pink, crimson and brown, squishy and rotten, or the shrivelled corpses sucked dry of the burning juice.
The Funeral Party Page 10