The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya

Spanish, and he spoke English fluently, with a strong accent. Now he listened to these people’s soft speech, and they seemed very pleasant to him.
    Nina went over to the two bearded men. Seizing the rabbi’s hands in hers, she tossed her shining hair and said to him in Russian: “Thank you for coming. My husband very much wants to talk to you.”
    Leva translated into Hebrew. The rabbi shook his beard and glanced at Father Victor, who was taking off his surplice.“It amazes me how quickly the priest gets here in America,” he said. “A Jew hasn’t even had time to call the rabbi, and he’s already arrived.”
    Father Victor smiled across the room at his colleague from an inimical faith; his benevolence was indiscriminate and unprincipled. When he was younger, he had lived for over a year in Palestine, and he understood Hebrew well enough to give the appropriate response: “I too am one of the guests.”
    Reb Menashe didn’t lift an eyebrow; either he didn’t understand or he didn’t hear.
    Valentina pushed a glass containing a muddy-yellow drink into Father Victor’s hand. He sipped carefully.
    Out of habit, Reb Menashe averted his eyes from the naked limbs, male and female, just as he did in Tzfat when guffawing foreign tourists piled out of their buses on to the stones of his holy town, repository of the lofty spirit of mystics and kabbalists. He surveyed the people in the room. He had turned away from this life twenty years ago and had never regretted it. His wife Geula was now bearing his tenth child, but had never been naked before him so shamefully as these women here.
    “Baruch Ata Adonai …” he began the blessing out of habit, giving thanks to the Almighty for having made him a Jew.
    “Maybe you’d like something to eat first?” Nina suggested.
    Leva raised his hand in a gesture that indicated simultaneously alarm, gratitude and refusal.
    Alik lay in the bedroom with his eyes closed. On the inside of his lids, bright yellow and green threads coiled against a flat black background, making rhythmic, intelligible shapes. But although he had studied the ancient language of carpets,he was unable to grasp the basic elements of this moving pattern.
    “Alik, you have guests.” Nina came in, followed by the rabbi. Lifting his head, she wiped his neck and chest with a wet towel, then pulled the orange sheet off him and waved it over his flat, naked body. Yet again Reb Menashe was startled by this American shamelessness; it was as if they didn’t understand the meaning of the word. Out of habit he turned his mind to the place where it was first uttered. Genesis, Chapter Two: “They were both naked and were not ashamed.” Who were these children? Why had they no shame? They didn’t look sinful, on the contrary they looked innocent. Maybe we had forgotten how to read the Book? Or the Book was written for other people, capable of reading it differently?
    Nina raised Alik’s legs and joined them at the knees, but they flopped back.
    “Leave it, leave it,” he said without opening his eyes, looking at the last spiral of the pattern.
    Nina pushed a pillow under his knees.
    “Thanks, Nina,” he replied, and opened his eyes.
    A tall thin man in black stood before him with a quizzical look, tilting his head to one side so that the brim of his gleaming black hat almost touched his left shoulder. “Do you speak English, don’t you?” he said.
    “I do,” Alik smiled, winking at Nina.
    She went out of the room, followed by Leva.
    The rabbi sat on the stool, which was still warm from the priest’s buttocks. After hesitating a moment he placed his dusty hat on the edge of Alik’s bed, and sat doubled up as though folded in two, his beard falling on to his sharp knees. His huge feet in their worn rubber-soled slip-ons were positioned on the floor with their toes together and heels splayedapart. He was serious, concentrated. His small black skullcap was secured with an invisible hair-clip to his springy