East Into Upper East (49 page)

If it were not for the famous
danse macabre
in Max's last book, I might have forgotten all about that birthday party. I prefer to remember our walk home from it, Lilo's and mine, through empty streets on a cool autumn night. There was the smell of fallen leaves, and layers of clouds shifted and floated across the sky; the moon was dim, so that even when it came sliding out from between these veils, it didn't light up anything. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that it did illumine my grandmother's face when she raised it to try and identify some of the stars for me. She pointed at what she said was the Great Bear—or was it the Plough—I think she wasn't sure, and anyway her eyesight was not good enough to see that far. I don't know why I expected her to look unhappy—after all, we had just left a party with music and champagne and special birthday cake ordered from Netta's bakery; but anyway she didn't, not at all, on the contrary her face appeared as radiant as was possible by the light of that dim moon.