The bright crowd in ragged motley came clattering into the little church, looking about them and whispering in many different languages. Some of them I recognized from the artists’ refuge the day before yesterday; one of them, a large woman ostentatiously kissing people through a mass of attention-seeking black feathers, I was almost certain was the Russian singer I’d met in New York. Marie-Thérèse and Gaston, beside me in the front pew, near the coffin, were rigid with disapproval. But I didn’t mind. Even if no one except me had bothered to send flowers, there was no disrespect intended in their too-loud chatter. The door shut behind us.
Then, just as the priest approached the altar to begin the service, the door opened again. A sombre-looking elderly man of a quite different sort, in shirtsleeves and correct, if worn, cavalry twill trousers, stuck his head in. He didn’t look the type to go out without a jacket. His hair had just been damped and combed over his big head, and he had a neat grey imperial beard and side-whiskers. He was composing himself, but he was still out of breath. He looked as though he must have been running.
He blinked once or twice as his eyes got used to the interior twilight. For a long moment, he looked around. I saw his eyes fix on the waving black feathers above that woman’s splendid shelf of a bosom. I couldn’t help smiling to myself at the horror on his face as he took in the appearance of the crowd.
Then he retreated. The door shut, very quietly, as the first word of prayer began.
I forgot about the unknown worshipper for the next few hours. Marie-Thérèse had set out wine and canapés for the guests back at the apartment, and until the middle of the afternoon the artists were there, talking, mostly incomprehensibly in languages I couldn’t understand, and gesticulating, and drinking, and eating. Hardly anyone bothered to come and tell me the stories about Grandmother that I’d been so hoping to hear. They were too busy knocking back food and drink. I asked everyone I did speak to if, by any chance, their name was Yevgeny, but I just got headshakes in reply. Increasingly disappointed, I resolved that, once we’d got rid of them all, I would go and visit the sister of Grandmother’s dead husband – the one Marie-Thérèse had told me ran an orphanage in the suburbs somewhere. I’d got her name, Maria Sabline, from the art-colony man with the donkey. He couldn’t remember her address, but he told me it would be in the phone book. He’d laughed rather sadly at the thought of her, and added, not very distinctly, ‘It’sh been a long time shince it was an orphanage there. Children grow up; they all grow up …’ before grabbing at some cheese slices being passed around by Gaston and forgetting about me. It had occurred to me that the orphanage woman’s brother – Grandmother’s dead husband – might have been called Yevgeny.
Only the singer – Plevitskaya was her name, I now knew for sure – came waddling over to offer condolences, but even she was soft with brandy before she remembered me. ‘It is good to see you again,’ she slurred, pushing back strands of black feathers that kept slipping down from her enormous hat. Her breath was pure Rémy Martin, but she clearly remembered meeting me before. ‘And here in Paris. But so sad, so sad, that we are at funeral of my dear old friend.’ She was clutching at my shoulders, hugging me to a too-warm, too-padded breast. Some of the artists came up and said something kind but discouraging to her, in Russian, but she shrugged them off in exclamatory English. ‘No! This is grand-daughter of my dear Constance! We are acquainted! Like grandmother, this beautiful young lady came to hear me sing in New York – then came to Paris to find Russians. Grandmother too – dear, dear Constance. Years ago, she hear me in New York – love Russian music so much – followed me to Paris. Same story. One Russian voice, and they are enchanted.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Da ladno,’ one of the young men said tenderly, gently detaching her from me and taking her away to rest on the sofa. ‘I ask forgiveness!’ she said, looking at me in glistening alarm. ‘But I have another question!’ It came out as ‘kvesshon!’ I smiled uncertainly, but I didn’t go and join her on the sofa. She was too drunk, and too unmanageable. I could barely remember why I’d wanted to show her the paper with Grandmother’s writing on, the other day. There’d be someone easier to ask, I now felt sure. I didn’t really believe Grandmother had come to Paris as a result of hearing her sing, any more than I’d come because of that, but I felt sorry for her tears, all the same. The others didn’t. They just winked and grinned at me, as if sharing a joke, and moved on.
Plevitskaya wasn’t the only one who seemed overwhelmed by the plentiful refreshments. The sofas were filling up fast with shouting, weeping people. ‘It’s unbelievable, what they’re getting through,’ I heard Marie-Thérèse mutter as she came rushing out of the kitchen with another tray of food. ‘Gaston says they’re drinking the cellar dry.’
I smiled and spread my hands in resignation, signalling: Oh, let them gorge themselves. They don’t look as though they eat enough, usually. It was my guess Grandmother would have wanted a cheerful send-off.
But after a while – once I’d seen Plevitskaya consult her watch, then totter out in a not completely straight line – I slipped away too and left the rest of them to it and went back to the churchyard. I thought I’d sit by Grandmother’s grave and clear my head, and Gaston could see off the stragglers and clear up.
To my surprise, there was someone else at the graveyard already, under the old yew tree spreading shade next to that morning’s mound of upturned earth, with its flowers. He was sitting with dignity on a stump, straight-backed, not seeming to notice how uncomfortable it must be. And he was gazing into the distance, cradling something square in his arms. His eyes were reddened and his face looked rough, as if he hadn’t slept. But his expression was calm. It was the same elderly man I’d seen in church: the one in crumpled shirtsleeves, with the beard and whiskers. There was something familiar about him, I thought now. Perhaps I’d seen him around here somewhere before or perhaps it was just I could now see that his silvered hair, no longer neatly combed down but blowing all over the place in the breeze, was, rather like mine, prone to rising up irrepressibly in two places at the temples. His, unrestrained by the grips that held mine, had started to look a little comical as it fluttered in the wind. Between the two wiry kinks that had escaped their moorings and were pushing out and up, the softer hair from the middle part of his forehead had blown forward to hang limply over his eyes, which must be why, every now and then, he was unconsciously shaking his head, like a horse flicking its mane about to rid itself of flies. Looking at him made me smile, even as it reminded me, sympathetically, of my own struggles with my disobedient hair.
I stopped at the gate. I couldn’t know if it were Grandmother’s grave that had drawn him there, or if he were just sitting there by chance. He hadn’t stayed in church for her funeral, after all, but I didn’t like to disturb him, all the same. I could sense the depth of sadness in him.
There was so much sadness in this city, I was just beginning to see; so many people hugging secret sorrows to their hearts. There was so much I didn’t yet understand.
I was already walking away by the time I realized there’d been something else about that scene. I’d been expecting to see just my bunch of flowers on the grave. But someone had brought more since I’d left the churchyard. There’d been a whole scatter of loose red and white carnations, just now, blowing over Grandmother’s grave.