Festival of Deaths(43)

“This is a mess,” Gregor said under his breath. “Maybe we should ring again. I don’t think they heard us.”

“They heard us,” Tibor told him. “Someone will be down in a minute. It is a mess.”

“Maybe we can come over here next week and clean this vestibule up,” Gregor said. “What could it take? A couple of hours and twenty dollars worth of ammonia?”

“You don’t think we should agitate for the landlord to clean it up himself?”

“I think we should do that, too. I think we should get him for neglect. Are there laws like that?”

“I don’t know,” Tibor said.

“There ought to be.” Gregor pointed at the bright silver bow. “I’m surprised Donna didn’t tell us. She must have been here.”

There was a sound of footsteps coming down stairs on the other side of the door. Gregor and Tibor looked through the fire glass at a young girl in an unfashionably long dress coming toward them. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a pair of braids, and that was unfashionable, too, as was the fact that her face was clean of makeup. Unfashionable or not, Gregor had no trouble discerning what had first attracted Joey Ohanian to Sofie Oumoudian. The girl was lovely.

She came to the door, opened it up, and stood back to let them enter.

“We are very honored to have a visit from two such distinguished men,” she said in an Armenian Gregor could just about understand. “We are afraid we will not be able to offer you the hospitality which you deserve.”

“We need no hospitality,” Tibor replied, in an Armenian just as formal, “except the grace of your company and the company of your aunt.”

“My aunt and I have no grace,” Sofie said, “but if it is the will of God we will please you.” Then she looked from one to the other of them, broke into a wide smile and said in English, “There. We have gotten that over with. Now Aunt Helena can not fault me for being rude. Hello, Father Tibor. How do you do, Mr. Demarkian. Joey Ohanian has told me very much about you.”

“Joey Ohanian had told us a lot about you,” Gregor said.

Sofie blushed. “He is nice, Joey Ohanian. He gives me much help. And I need help. You can tell, my English is not good. You will come upstairs?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Gregor said.

“We will be honored,” Tibor said. “Krekor, please, mind your manners.”

“I never had any.”

“Aunt Helena won’t notice. She’s been running around for a week, like a—I can’t remember—like a—now I have it—yes—like a chicken with its head cut off. Because the priest and the famous man are coming to the apartment together. She even got the tea glasses out.”

“Tea glasses,” Gregor marveled. “I haven’t seen tea glasses since I was a boy.”

“She has beautiful holders for them,” Sofie said, “what do you call them, like the holders they have here for ice-cream soda glasses, but not exactly. I remember. A zarf. My English is very bad. Joey told me about the zarf. In Armenian there is another name for them and in Russian there is another name for them yet. It’s quite confusing. My grandmother’s are made from sterling silver, brought all the way from London before World War One.”

“How did your grandmother manage to keep them?” Tibor asked. “What with the Turks—”

Sofie Oumoudian laughed. It was a beautiful laugh. It sounded like music. Gregor thought that if Joey Ohanian wasn’t in love for good, he was a damn fool.

“There is a story in my family that when the Turks came, my grandmother was so anxious to save the tea glasses, she had my grandmother bury her in the root cellar along with them and after it was over it took the village three days to get her out. My aunt Helena says that any time anything terrible happens to Armenia, it falls square on the heads of the Oumoudians. That’s why we came to America. Aunt Helena said God was telling us to move.”

The second-floor landing was as dirty and neglected as the foyer, but it was a little brighter, because the door to the Oumoudians’ apartment sported a wreath the size of a child’s inflatable swimming doughnut. This Gregor was certain was the work of Donna Moradanyan, because he had seen her making it—and five or six others like it—on her kitchen table less than a month before. Donna had made two kinds. One had cherubs and bells and silver Christmas trees. The other had menorahs and Stars of David. Bennis had taken one of the kind with menorahs on it. The Oumoudians had received a more conventional Christmas one. Gregor had no idea what somebody like Rabbi Goldman would think of a Hanukkah wreath.