You Are My Heart and Other Stories by Jay Neugeboren

Author:Jay Neugeboren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Published: 2011-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Summer Afternoon

Allan Blum and his wife Esther, vacationing in the South of France for the month of December with their friend Sam Gewirtz—in Spéracèdes, Aa village near Grasse, in the Maritime Alps—stood on the road that led from the church to the cemetery, waiting for the funeral cortege. Two helicopters hovered in the air above them. Behind metal barricades, crowds three and four deep lined both sides of the road, and policemen, in pairs and on horseback, were stationed along the route. Church bells had been ringing steadily.

The sky was dark, without sun or the imminence of sun. The temperature was near freezing—the radio had predicted thunderstorms—and on terraces that rose toward Cabris, a village perché a mile or so above Spéracèdes, the undersides of leaves on olive trees appeared in the light breeze to have been brushed with silver.

Late afternoon the day before, on their way back from Nice, where they had had a leisurely lunch and toured the old Russian and Jewish parts of the city, they had been stopped at four separate police check points. They were asked to get out of their car, had their passports and driver’s licenses examined, and had been questioned rigorously: What was their purpose in being in France? Why had they rented a house in Spéracèdes, and how long did they intend to stay there? Were they acquainted with the Algerian woman who was accused of murdering the village doctor’s wife and child, or with other Algerians who lived or worked in Spéracèdes? Did they employ any Algerians to do housekeeping or gardening… ?

Allan and Sam, both in their late sixties, lived near each other on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, had grown up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, and had gone through elementary school, high school, and college together. Five months earlier, Sam had lost his wife Pauline to breast cancer, and when six weeks after this, at the time of the Jewish New Year, Allan suggested Sam join him and Esther for their vacation in France, Sam had agreed at once.

Sam pointed to the far side of the road—to the Hotel Soleillade, where police sharpshooters, in flak jackets, were positioned on the roof and in some of the upper-story windows. “When I lived in Paris for a while, and this was a long, long time ago, before Pauline and I were married,” he said, “I remember looking out my window—I had a second-floor apartment on the Boulevard Raspail—and seeing a funeral come by—a large black hearse, and mourners in top hats, and a brass band playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

The church bells had stopped ringing, and police on motorcycles now cruised by slowly, along with journalists, photographers, and television crews. They were followed by four policemen on horseback, then by a phalanx of several dozen police marching in lock-step. Behind them came two teams of horses, one following the other, each team pulling a coffin—a large coffin first, a smaller one second—each coffin covered with a garland of braided red and white flowers.

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