Balloons! The church was afloat with balloons! Two beaming little girls in ruffly pink dresses capered at the door, handing them out to their mother's grieving relatives and friends.

Too startled to refuse, I took a pink one and carried it into the sanctuary, which was nodding with the balloons of other embarrassed people. But this unusual spectacle was not the only surprise. Another was the open coffin directly below the pulpit.

 

 

There she lay, my cousin Evangeline Braithwaite Smelt, stretched out demurely in the casket with her eyes closed as if she were only napping.

As I shuffled into a front pew and sat down with my balloon, I had a close-up view of the pale face of my deceased cousin. At once I had the creepy feeling that she was listening, ears cocked to catch every whisper and muffled sob.

But then there was another surprise when the organ began wheezing a melody. I couldn't believe my ears. It was Happy Days Are Here Again. Surely the organist was misinformed!

But no indeed. Perhaps I should explain that Evangeline's bereaved husband was a man of a rather eccentric nature. An abstract painter by profession, Arthur Smelt seemed to have decided that the service should be a mortuary jamboree rather than a ceremnoy of mourning.

The box in which his wife lay was a case in point. It was not the usual casket of mahogany or walnut but a simple white-painted box. Arthur had decorated it with polka dots in the style of his stupendous canvases.

And his twin daughters had been brainwashed into thinking of the service as a jolly party. They were bouncing up the aisle tossing rose petals like flower girls at a wedding. Then at last Arthur, wreathed in smiles, mounted the pulpit and called for a hymn.

Obediently, we shambled to our feet, our fingers encumbered by the strings of our balloons, fumbled with our hymn books and began to sing —

 

 

In my opinion this question was debatable, but it was obvious that Arthur pictured his deceased wife frolicking off a cruise ship in some celestial vacation spot, her steamer trunk packed with flowing white garments, a pair of wings, et cetera.

It was time for the eulogy. At this point Arthur was edged aside by the Reverend Virgil Dirge, a solemn cleargyman in a black gown. Mournfully Reverend Dirge praised Evangeline as an angel of saintly piety. "How tragic," intoned the padre, "that this young woman should have been cut down in the flower of her youth."

These remarks introduced a note of honest grieving into Arthur's festive arrangements, but they were interrupted by a disturbance. The heads of the entire congregation swiveled to stare at the large untidy woman who was muddling her way into a rear pew. There was a thump as a prayer book fell to the floor, a clumsy scrabbling as she plumped herself down, and then another thunderclap as she dropped her pocketbook.

I recognized her at once as Mrs. Madeline Dalhousie, a distant relative of Evangeline's on her mother's side. For an instant I had a glimpse of another occupant of Mrs. Dalhausie's pew, but he fell out of sight at once, as though retrieving the fallen objects. Before turning my attention back to the pulpit, I waited for him to reappear, but I saw only Mrs. Dalhausie reaching up as though to grasp at dust motes in a shaft of sunlight.

"Let me assure you," boomed Reverend Dirge, recapturing our attention, "that the early death of this young woman was not an act of self-destruction." Lowering his voice as though sharing an intimate secret, he said, "In a moment of spiritual intimacy she once confessed her scorn for the timid souls who seek to escape the challenges of daily life. She swore that she, Evangeline Braithwaite Smelt, would defy the Grim Reaper with her last breath. SHe would, she said, get a half-Nelson on his neck and wrestle him to the floor."

At this time there were tears and gasps of admiration.

But of course this was not at all the jolly mood that Arthur was trying to create. Plucking a balloon from one of his young daughters, he bounced back into the pulpit, nudged the pastor aside and cried, "Let her go!" Holding his arm aloft, he released the balloon, which was white as the driven snow.

Open-mouthed, we watched it drift up and bob against the ceiling as if trying to nudge its way through the roof and soar straight up to heaven. Naturally it stood for the sublime ascent of Cousin Evangeline's immortal soul.

Of course we got the message. Galvanically we released our own balloons and watched them float softly up to the ceiling. But Arthur had not reckoned with the light fixtures. One of the balloons bobbed against a dangling bulb and exploded with a loud report.

Other explosions followed. Outdoors, Crosby set up a howl, accompanied by yips from the teacup poodle and roars from the Great Dane.

It was bedlam. The noise was loud enough to wake the dead.

Which is precisely what it did. In spite of the racket, I was close enough to the casket to hear a muffled groan. Stupefied, I saw the dead body stir, and then, while strong men gasped and women screamed, Cousing Evangeline reared up in her coffin and gazed wildly around the congregation. Then, glowering fiercely, she pointted a trembling finger and croaked, "J'accuse!"

 

 

"Jaccuse!" It was Emile Zola's thundering call for justice in the Dreyfus affair. Was my poor cousin accusing someone of something? Who? And if so, of what?

At this there was another explosion — a bursting balloon? a gunshot? — and Evangeline flopped back in her casket, stone dead for the second time.

 

* * * *

 

 

Next day, after spending an hour on my study of the dark hidden meanings in the pretty stories of Hans Christian Andersen, I put down my pen and descended with Crosby to the street.

At the bottom of the stairs we were confronted by the detestable Hugo Smudge. "Hey, you," he said hoarsely, "you gotta get ridda dat mutt."

Not deigning to reply, we brushed swiftly past him, Crosby closing his eyes in contempt. Together we set out for Broome Street to ask Miss Newelpost for a list of all the church members who had been present at the funeral of my cousin Evangeline in the Church of the Ineffable.

But with the Little Match Girl forever near the surface of my mind, it’s not surprising that I caught a visionary glimpse of her boarding a street car with her brother, the shoeshine boy.

"Wait!" I cried, but then I became entangled in Crosby’s leash and the streetcar took off, heading uptown with a grinding scream of wheels on iron rails. Disappointed, I hailed a trolley going the other way and tried to board it with my dog.

At once the driver glowered at me and said gruffly, "Dogs ain’t allowed on this here car."

But this time I had a ploy. Fumbling up the step I stared around blankly and extended my nickel vaguely in the direction of his voice.

"Oh, jeepers," he said. "I didn’t know youse was blind. Where you wanna go?"

"Broome Street, if you please, kind sir."

And then when the trolley ground to a stop at that corner, the driver got up from his stool and helped me down the steps in the kindest possible way.

"Blessings on you, good sir," I said, teetering splendidly on the sidewalk, and until the streetcar rattled away in the direction of lower Manhattan, I groped along the sidewalk with outstretched hand while Crosby played the part of guide dog at my side.

In the entry to Miss Newelpost’s building I pressed the button beside her name, and at once she buzzed us in. Giving up all pretense of being blind, I bounded joyfully up the dark stairs with Crosby at my heels.

But – I pause in helpless embarrassment -- how can I tell the story of my encounter with Miss Newelpost? It is almost too sad to relate.

The interview was a failure. Felicity Newelpost was a celebrated copy editor, but her replies to my questions were strangely obstructed by walls of words. In her attempt to respond, all possible synonyms had to be canvassed, one by one.

"Are you asking, querying or inquiring, Mr. Braithwaite," she said severely, "my recollection, that is to say, my memory or reminiscence of the occasion of the funeral, memorial service, or rather, the obsequies of the late Evangeline Smelt? Although in courtesy should I not more properly refer to her as the relict of Arthur Smiley Smelt? Or might we better call her the late lamented who has recently passed on, expired, become lifeless, inanimate and defunct, who has been called home, summoned to a better world, who has joined the choir invisible and gone to glory? Who, at the very moment at which we speak, is pushing up daisies in the cemetery of the Church of the Ineffable in Overshoot, Connecticut? Who is in fact, dead?"

Gasping, I opened my mouth to agree, but Miss Newelpost soldiered on, still dissatisfied with her choice of words. "No, no, perhaps one should speak of it as a sorrowful celebration, a gathering of the bereaved rather than simply a burial service. Certainly it was an occasion for reverent obsequies, or rather," -- Miss Newelpost stared at me with huge unblinking eyes – "tell me, Mr. Braithwaite, was Mrs. Smelt of the Catholic persuasion? In which case wouldn’t you agree that the occasion should be referred to as a burial mass under the dominion of the pope in Rome? Or perhaps," – Miss Newelpost leaned forward and whispered as if revealing a solemn secret -- "you are merely wondering, speculating or theorizing about the nature of mortality on this earth, about the dread significance of our inexorable march to the grave, our shared destiny of tragedy and sorrow? Will not the bastards, Mr. Braithwaite, get us in the end?"

Taken aback, I could only stammer, "Well, actually, Miss Newelpost, the fact is, I mean speaking honestly, the solemn truth, cross my heart and hope to die -- "

At this point Crosby uttered a soft woof of warning, and I came to my senses. "You see, Miss Newelpost, I’m hoping you can give me a list of all the men and women who were present in the congregation on that sad occasion, because I wish to conduct a series of interviews in order to determine the cause of the explosion that occurred just after my cousin Evangeline rose, as it were, from the dead. And incidentally, Miss Newelpost," – in my new role as a private eye, I was carried away – "did you by any chance see who Evangeline was pointing at, before she took her last breath?"

At this the interview changed character and went all to pieces. Miss Newelpost threw a fit. Swelling with rage, she screamed, "WHOM she was pointing at, Mr. Braithwaite, not WHO! Can you not speak ENGLISH, Mr. Braithwaite? Who taught you to MANGLE our glorious language? Was your mother an idiot, Mr. Braithwaite? An imbecile? A complete and utter fool?"

 

 

Well, naturally, at this insult to my sainted mother I was mortally offended. Rising from my chair I said with icy dignity, "I will take my leave now, Miss Newelpost. I bid you goodbye. I will, like, find my own way to the door."

"LIKE?" screamed Miss Newelpost. "LIKE?" She leaped to her feet and shrieked, "The word LIKE, Mr. Braithwaite, is a preposition, followed by" -- she tore at her hair – "an object! It is not -- " she clawed at the buttons of her blouse – "a random and meaningless interruption in the course of an English sentence!"

It was clear that Miss Newelpost was going berserk. I watched in dismay as she fell back in her chair in a shocking state of undress, sobbing, "It pains me to inform you, Mr. Braithwaite, that you have debased our sacred inheritance from the past, our magnificent language with its roots in Middle English, Middle German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and, as some scholars maintain, Hindi and Urdu." Scrabbling at her tennis shoes, she cried, "You are a disgrace, Mr. Braithwaite," and hurled the left shoe at my head, followed by the right.

Wincing, I saw that Crosby was blushing with embarrassment under his orange fur, but now he barked furiously at the half-naked madwoman on the sofa. "Come, Crosby," I said loftily. Striding to the exit, I threw open the door, pushed him out ahead of me, stamped out of Miss Newelpost’s apartment with a proud gesture of farewell, and slammed the door behind us.

Since it turned out to be the door of a coat closet, the scene that followed beggars description.

Of course the upshot of my interview with Felicity Newelpost was a total, out-and-out, unmitigated failure to learn a single scrap, crumb, morsel, particle, jot or tittle of useful information. It was a failure. That is to say, a flop.

 

 

* * * *