Kantika, page 13
“Ernesto Giménez Caballero, from Madrid.” The man makes a small bow. He is dressed nattily, in a patterned suit and tie, a handkerchief peeking from his pocket. “I cannot express how pleased I am to find you. You’re the rabbi, señor? And the father of this lovely lady?”
Alberto glances at Rebecca, who lingers behind the stranger, with Berto and David clinging to her skirt. Take them inside, he commands sternly with his eyes.
“Bueno,” says the man after the door clicks shut. “Rabbi, I’ve met several of your colleagues in the Balkan communities—Rabbi Alcalai from Belgrade, Rabbi Levy from Sarajevo, and others in North Africa. Wonderful men. I’ve also had the good fortune to meet Sephardic politicians, bankers, philologists, along with people of more humble trades. It’s been an inspiring journey. But”—he smiles broadly—“perhaps the most exciting part of my little exploration is to return home and find a rabbi right here, in Spain!”
Why does Alberto feel he’s being mocked? And that Rebecca is listening through the closed door, holding her father to the truth? (He still feels a stab of shame each time he remembers how he lied to her about his job here.)
“I’m not actually the rabbi, señor. I’m the shammash,” he admits, aiming again for Castilian in his speech, though despite his daily reading of the newspaper, he’s not always sure what’s what.
The man looks puzzled (so he is, as Alberto suspected, no Jew).
“I look after the place,” Alberto explains. “We have a rabbi part-time when we can, but I live here … it’s—”
Mine, he is tempted to say. My apartment, tucked half-underground, my oratory with its dais, tallits and worn siddurs, my meeting room and closet of an office, my garden. Has he not made a peculiar little kingdom here, taking cramped, circumscribed quarters rimmed by dead pigs, crucifixes and strangers and populating them with chickens, hounds, a fig tree, vegetables, healthy greenery and blooms, though most of the seeds and bulbs he brought from home have failed to thrive? Never one for numbers, he has made a valiant effort to keep the budget balanced, appealing to the Joint Distribution Center and a few local donors when—every other day, it seems—the community runs low on funds. He has locked and unlocked the doors with the keys on the brass ring, smoothed ruffled feathers between the Sephardim, who came here first, and the Ashkenazim, who arrive each month in ever greater numbers. He does not scrub the stairs anymore—his back was giving out and Sultana insisted that Josef take over—but he still prepares the oratory for worship, and he still makes a point of greeting every person who files in: Shabbat shalom, shabbat shalom. Sometimes he’ll invite an older refugee to sit beneath the palm tree and have a glass of wine. He’s more tired than he used to be; they’re tired, too. They proceed in patchworks, bits of English mixed with bits of Hebrew and French, the conversation limited, in contrast to the rapid-fire repartee he enjoyed at home. Sometimes they play chess or backgammon (the Russians clobber him). More often they just sit. He is moved by their stories, though they cannot always tell them. Most of the men are only passing through, but Alberto lives here. It’s been almost five years. Every day he hates the place, and each day he improves it, by far the hardest thing he’s ever done.
“I manage the budget and help run the services,” he explains.
“Oh, I’d love to film a Jewish service, with your permission!”
“No cameras in the sanctuary. It’s the rule.”
The hounds, locked in their kennel, hear his stern tone and start to bay. “Be quiet!” Alberto calls to his dogs.
“Of course, señor.” The man’s fingers flutter over his machine. “As you wish.”
“So tell me, why have you come here with your camera?” Alberto asks. The dogs have stopped baying, but their ready alertness fills the air. He hears his wife singing lilting nursery melodies to David and Berto in the kitchen and wishes she’d stop, the songs too lovely and private for this stranger’s ears. “We don’t have many visitors from Madrid, or who aren’t—”
“Judíos.” The man looks down at his hand as if it’s marked with a cross or stigmata. “It’s true, I’m not, but how did you know?”
Alberto lets out a thin laugh. “For one thing, you speak fluent Castilian. Most of us haven’t been here long enough for that.”
“Allow me to disagree, Señor—?”
“Cohen.”
The man nods. “The truth, Señor Cohen, is that with your Judeoespañol, you speak a purer Castilian than I do. It’s the Spanish of Cervantes, after all.”
Alberto rolls his eyes. “It’s a hodgepodge, a patois. Je préfère le Français.”
The man—who can’t be more than thirty and has the tightly wound affect of a scholarship boy intent on making a mark—looks stricken. “That’s because the French took control of your educational system for their own purposes. The children of the Judíos Sefardíes should be taught in their ancestral Spanish. That is one of our proposed goals.”
“Whose goals? Who is ‘we’?” Alberto asks, though he understands more than he lets on. He has seen this sort of thing before, the past yoked in service of the Ottomans or a new republic. Spain, having lost colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific, must be shoring up its presence in the Balkans and North Africa, both regions with Sephardic Jews. “Señor, can you tell me why you’re here? I am”—he lies (his days are long, his tasks relatively few)—“a busy man.”
“But of course.” The man smiles. “I’d like to tell you about my film. Might we sit for a moment, if it’s not too much to ask? It won’t take long.”
Alberto sighs. “Come to my office, but please, leave your camera in the meeting room.”
* * *
THE FILMMAKER HAS RETURNED from a tour of Sarajevo, Bucharest, Istanbul, Tétouan, Salonica—so many exotic places! With support from the Spanish Ministry of State, he has taken on the dual task of offering Sephardic Jews a deeper knowledge of their Iberian heritage and making a little film to educate Spaniards about the national treasure of the half a million Spanish Jews abroad.
“Why?” Alberto asks.
“Of course, that’s the central question, though many people fail to ask it. For the Judíos Sefardíes, Spain is still a patria.”
Alberto shuffles some papers on his desk. “At the risk of offending you, señor, we’ve made our lives elsewhere. Spain is hardly my patria—and I’ve come back here, unlike most of us.”
“‘Back,’ you say. Back! The pull of a homeland is nothing to scoff at.” Giménez Caballero looks around in the dim light of Alberto’s tiny office, really no more than a closet with a single-paned window, narrow desk, two kitchen chairs, books on a plank shelf and the ney flute in its case in the corner, next to a bucket and mop. On a second shelf—this one slightly tilted, poorly attached to the wall—a row of prayer books, Haggadahs and an illustrated Children’s Bible, dog-eared from how many times he read the stories to his children. A locked metal trunk houses the ledger books and records of the community.
After a long pause, Giménez Caballero says, “You seem—I hope you don’t mind my saying so—a highly educated, even sophisticated man.” He taps his temple. “Smart. Were you a … did you also serve as the shimmish of a synagogue in Turkey?”
“Shammash. I did not.”
“What was your line of work?”
“Textiles.”
“Ah, I see. And you came here for…?”
“Opportunities.”
The man scans the cramped space. “Have you found them?”
Alberto snorts. “Beyond my wildest dreams.”
“To leave everything behind must have been painful, Señor Cohen. I’m sorry.”
Alberto hates nothing so much as pity, at the same time that he feels an involuntary softening toward the man across from him, who meets his gaze now and whose tone has turned direct, even tender. Once, Alberto was also a young man full of ideas and restless energy, and tending toward the pompous. Someday, if this jiggly little schoolboy lives long enough and suffers hard enough, he, too, will be a stooped, sour old man. “Let’s get back to your film project,” Alberto says.
The filmmaker nods. “I’d like to include your synagogue, just the exterior could be enough, though I’d be honored to show the inside, with the people, your family, if you’re willing. Your grandsons are charming, and your daughter is a beauty. A brief shot, perhaps, to show the world that there are actual, modern Jews living in Spain. It’s not just ancient history.”
Alberto leans forward in his chair. “So does your government want to invite us back here, then? A mass migration? That could be interesting, especially given that you still haven’t gotten around to revoking the Alhambra Decree that kicked my people out. It’s only been, what, four hundred–some years?”
“It’s long overdue, I agree with you. Be assured, that’s part of my larger goal, but these things can take time.”
Alberto shakes his head. “My family was promised Spanish citizenship, señor, but it’s yet to happen. Even my two grandsons, born right here in Barcelona, are listed on their birth certificates as Turkish Hebrews, which will severely limit their opportunities.”
“I can help with that. As I said, I admire your people.”
“Would you say your film is propaganda?”
“I consider myself an avant-garde artist and editor. Look at the Bible—a work of poetry, but the lessons it holds!”
“Did you happen to notice, señor, that our synagogue has no signs or symbols on the exterior, nothing to reveal its function to the passerby? We are, how should I put it, uncertain about our standing here, in just about every way.”
“People are ignorant. I’d like to help change that.”
“Good luck to you.”
The filmmaker sighs. “Forget about the film—it’s not important. What is your biggest concern, Señor Cohen? About the community here and your family’s place in it, or your future in Spain? What’s your most pressing desire, your number one priority, if you had to say?”
To return to my stone house in Fener and my summer house in Büyükdere, Alberto wants to respond. To tend my old gardens, pick mulberries and figs. To see my mother and pay a visit to my father’s grave. To give my children the lives they were born into, my wife the old age she deserves. To be home.
“I’m not sure,” he says instead.
The filmmaker leans forward. He is asking more questions—how long have you been here, what do your sons do for work? (That Alberto’s daughters also work outside the house feels too shameful to mention.) Then the man starts talking about Maimonides, Alberto’s sweet spot. Have you been to Córdoba yet, Señor Cohen? Did you know that we’re working on erecting a statue to honor the great man? I’d welcome a piece from you on a great Sephardic thinker, señor. A homage, a meditation for the small literary review I founded, La Gaceta Literaria (he pulls a volume from his satchel).
“You flatter me, but I’m no writer,” says Alberto. “A reader, yes, when I have time, and a bit of a musician. Back home, I used to play”—he points to the ney in its case—“and sing a little. But a writer, no.”
“Ah! Wonderful! Might I hear you play?”
How much time passes? Maybe an hour, maybe more. Alberto tells Giménez Caballero about Maftirim music, Hebrew verse set to Turkish melody, and plays a few notes on the ney, though the reed is dry and the sound lamentable; he hasn’t played since Isidoro’s wedding a year ago. They talk about poetry, philosophy. His own children don’t read, not like he does, and among the many emotions he feels crowding the small room is a surprising wish that he could wipe this young man clean of lineage and nationalist fervor and take him on as a conversation partner, a kind of friend. The filmmaker tells him about Ángel Pulido, a Spanish doctor who advocates for the Sephardic cause, and a stray memory returns to Alberto of the Spaniard who questioned him at the party at the Spanish summer embassy in Büyükdere.
“I may have met him once, years ago,” he says. “Did he tell you to come see me?”
“No. I was given this address by the president of Madrid’s small Jewish community, but I’ll tell Ángel we met. He’ll be delighted.”
Alberto hears noise from outside—his grandsons laughing, then one of them wailing, someone arriving, maybe Isidoro with Ida, his Bulgarian wife—but the office door is shut, as is the door to the meeting room beyond it, and he feels cocooned or perhaps trapped; it’s hard to say.
“About my film—” Giménez Caballero leans forward in his chair.
Alberto leans back, still holding his ney. “Señor, we are guests in a strange land.” How archaic he sounds, straight out of the Bible. “I must respect my family’s and the community’s privacy. I’m sorry I cannot be of service. Good luck to you.”
Giménez Caballero stands and retrieves his satchel. “Thank you for your time, Señor Cohen. It’s been a true pleasure.” He opens the door, speaking over his shoulder. “You never did tell me—”
“Ke?”
“Your number one priority, what it would be.”
“My number one priority…”
And then Alberto is soft-tumbling backward through time to a hushed place of poplar trees and pebbles on slabs, of rosemary for remembrance, letters etched in stone and blurred by lichen and the scrub and scour of rain and sun. His father is there, but he is not. The soil is there, but his wife, children and grandchildren are not. God is there, but he is not.
Baruch dayan emet. Blessed is the true judge.
“I suppose,” he says, “there is the matter of our dead.”
* * *
THEY CUT A DEAL. Ernesto Giménez Caballero will go to the office of the City Council’s Delegate Assistant Municipal Director of Beneficence and Cemeteries, where both Theodore Grunebaum and Alberto have sent letters (five, between them) over the past two years but not received the courtesy of a reply. There, he will inquire about the allocation of land for a small, walled Jewish cemetery in Barcelona. Madrid has such a cemetery plot; Sevilla does, too. It’s not a lot to ask of the city, given, well, everything. Alberto will provide Señor with the name of the man at the office—one Señor Ventalló—and tell him the most likely place for such a Hebrew precinct—namely on an empty parcel of land in the southwest portion of the Cementiri de les Corts, where he gathered branches for Rebecca and Luis’s wedding and which has ample room.
Because really, if you want to welcome the Jews “back,” you better put your money where your mouth is, the sad truth being that some disturbing things have happened—a funeral procession stopped by the police because the coffin bore a Magen David, people yelling insults to mourners in the streets, community members buried in civil plots with no markings of their faith, and in elevated niches instead of sunken graves. Not to mention hundreds of years of buildings constructed from the ransacked gravestones of Jews; parks, houses and Catholic cemeteries built on top of Hebrew burial sites (why do you think Montjuïc is called Montjuïc, for example?), and yes, our population may be small, but it is growing, and in the natural order, people pass on (he may be next himself).
“Graves aboveground,” he explains, “are counter to our practice—‘for you are dust and to dust you will return’—but also, señor, in our tradition, no person is higher or lower than another in death.”
“A poetic sentiment.” Giménez Caballero scribbles something in a notebook, then returns it to his jacket pocket. “I’ll look into the question tomorrow or the next day, before I return to Madrid.”
They are out in the meeting room now. Rebecca has appeared with the movie camera, which she must have spotted lying on the table. Smiling, she returns it to its owner, who bows in thanks.
“Are you going to film us, señor?” she asks boldly in Castilian. She has changed into a flowered dress and put on lipstick. A costume jewelry clip—Elsa sells them at the boutique where she works—glimmers in her hair. She bats her eyelashes and unfurls an invisible fan.
“Rebecca,” Alberto admonishes, then turns to the guest. “My daughter fancies herself a movie star.”
Giménez Caballero bows again. Is he blushing? Alberto feels suddenly extraneous, though this man should assume that his daughter, who has two children, is a married woman, unless he has looked closely enough to spot her ringless hand.
“As well she should. I could film a little now and a little later,” the filmmaker says. “My government is not known for its expediency, as I’m sure you’ve figured out. I’m in Barcelona only occasionally, since I make my home in Madrid, so if it would work to get started today—”
“I’ll find the boys—” Rebecca starts, but Alberto cuts her off.
“Nothing today. Bring me a letter of permission from the municipality, señor. Then we can discuss your film.”
* * *
THE PERMISSIONS TAKE OVER TWO MONTHS to work out, so that by the time the filmmaker returns with the letter, it is mid-January, a low season for the garden, which is a disappointment to Alberto, but even worse is how Giménez Caballero does not want to film the family underneath the giant palm tree or by the rhododendron bush. Instead, he arranges them by the plain door leading from kitchen to patio, where there is nothing but a few potted (unflowering) birds of paradise. Is the filmmaker hoping for pathos? Is he looking down on them despite his ornate compliments, hoping to portray them as poor, downtrodden, simple folk in need of rescuing? Rebecca is there with her boys. Elsa is there, and Josef. The filming takes all of three minutes. They stand, they smile, Rebecca nudges David forward. She has washed and combed his hair, and Berto’s, too, though it sticks out in a profuse blond halo—she refuses to cut it—and the boy presents as a wild, unkempt girl.
¡Mira! An actual, living Jewish Spanish family! In Spain, their patria! Sultana declines to be in the film, and though Giménez Caballero tries briefly to convince her, Alberto steps in. “My wife said no. Respect her wishes, please.”
He is already rehearsing what he’ll say to Sinyor Nahum, the part-time rabbi, and Sinyor Grunebaum: “I have managed to obtain a letter from the city. They’re granting us the dignity of a Beit Olam, a permanent cemetery that is ours alone.” He would prefer with every cell in his body to be buried in Hasköy, but he has inquired about the cost and technicalities of transporting remains (in the past, some bigwigs did it—Abraham Camondo arranged to have his body returned from France), and there’s no going back, not at this point, and it’s not just him and his fellow Turkinos who need a proper resting place; there are all the other Jews: Russians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Moroccans, Poles. He must admit it is no small achievement to have procured for his ragtag community a cemetery of its own, a legacy that he, a mere shammash, a shuffling viejiziko, can leave.
