The Funeral Party Read Online Free PDF

it’s impossible to describe … ”
    Nina knew something about the darkness, having made three suicide attempts herself, one in her early youth, the second when Alik left Russia, and the third in America after her baby was stillborn.
    “We must do it quick.” She poured the remains of the orange juice into her glass. “Bring me more juice will you, Irina? We’re all right for vodka, Slavik bought some yesterday. Just get your Gottlieb over here with the rabbi.”
    Irina picked up her handbag and put her hand into the metal cruet on top of the fridge where the bills were kept, but it was empty: someone had already paid them.

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 emotionaldefiance: 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 aforty-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