Free The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya Page B

suddenly seemed beyond her strength. “The truth is, we got married.”
    The blood rushed to Rachel’s face. Jumping up, she ran out of the room. “David, David! Come quick!” her voice rang through the house.
    David, her husband, tall and thin like Mickey, stood at the top of the stairs in a red shirt and black skullcap, holding a thick fountain-pen in his hand, peering at her with a questioning look but saying nothing.
    They were a fine pair, Mickey’s parents. Each discovered in the other what they lacked in themselves, and they rejoiced at the discovery. Several years ago, having reached the limits of human closeness, they were approaching their sixties and looking forward to a long and happy old age, when they learned totheir horror that their only son had turned away from the laws of his sex and had deviated into such heathen wickedness that Rachel couldn’t even find a name for it.
    “We were happy, too happy,” she muttered through the sleepless nights in the huge marriage bed in which they hadn’t touched each other since their terrible discovery. “Lord, make him a normal person again!”
    The popular psychology books explained to her in clear and simple words that there was nothing unusual about her son, everything was fine, and a humane society must grant him his sacred and inalienable right to his own predilections. But this was no comfort to Rachel’s old-fashioned soul. A Jewish girl, saved from the fire and gas by the nuns, who for almost three years during the occupation had hidden her in their convent, she reached the point of turning to the mother of that God in whom she mustn’t believe, but did believe nonetheless, and praying to her in Polish: “Holy Mother, do this for him, make him …”
    As her husband came down the stairs to her now and saw her happy face, he guessed the happiness that had befallen her.
    But this happiness was fictitious: Valentina was sitting in the living-room struggling to keep her tired eyes open. This was how her life in America began.
    Alik stirred slightly.
    Valentina started up. “What is it, Alik?”
    “Drink.”
    She brought the cup to his lips. He sipped and coughed. She lifted him up and tapped his back; he was as light as thepuppet Anka Kron had given him. “There now, let’s get your tube.”
    He took more water into his mouth and coughed again. This had been happening a lot recently. Valentina moved him again and tapped his back. She gave him the tube, and again he coughed, longer this time, and couldn’t clear his throat. She wet a flannel and put it in his mouth. His lips were dry and slightly cracked.
    “Shall I rub something on your lips?” she asked.
    “On no account, I hate grease. Give me your finger instead.”
    She put her finger between his dry lips and he moved his tongue over it. It was the only touch left to him now; it looked as though this would be the last night they made love. They both thought about it.
    “I shall die an adulterer,” he said quietly.
    Valentina’s life had been exceptionally difficult in those early years. She generally went straight from work to her classes. But one day she had had to go home early after her landlady called asking her to bring the keys because something was wrong with the front door, Valentina didn’t understand exactly what. She gave the landlady her key, but this didn’t work either. Leaving the landlady with the broken lock, she decided to get something to eat at Katz’s, the Jewish delicatessen on the corner, before she went on to her class. The prices at Katz’s were reasonable, and the corned beef and turkey sandwiches were superb. The burly staff, who looked as if they could handle concrete slabs, sliced the fragrant meat artistically withtheir large knives and chatted in their local dialect. The place was rather full, and there was a queue at the counter. The man standing in front of Valentina with his back to her spoke affably to the salesman: “Listen, Misha, ten years I’ve