Kantika, page 28
Luna blanches and says no, then laughs and says actually sure, go ahead, why not, it’s three months today. Because whether she knows it or not, this is what she wanted from the start, as early as when she said yes, I’ll come to your show, and then sorry, I won’t, and actually, I will; when she pinned the blue hat to her head and applied the lipstick; when she came up with the bouquet, stealing Rebecca’s thunder. To be celebrated (a pity Lisa Minsky left the room), to be seen.
Rebecca guides Luna carefully toward center stage. “Friends,” she says into the microphone. “I ask you for your quiet. I have something to tell you, with my daughter’s permission.”
Jeannette stops playing the piano. Rebecca scans the chairs. She can make out Sam and Gene whispering, heads bent close, and Al doubled over with what looks to be laughter, and Suzanne with her face in her hands, humiliated beyond measure at the scene.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rebecca says with a flourish worthy of Barnum’s. “My daughter has told to me some very big news! God willing, she’ll be a mother in the fall! Please, everybody, clap for her!”
She passes Luna the flowers to free up her hands and start the applause. A few people join in, a weak smattering of sound, as Luna, red-faced, squirming, fixes on her shoes.
“Hello? I can’t hear you!” Rebecca cups her ear. “My beautiful daughter, Mrs. Luna Leshefsky, and her husband, Gene, are expecting a baby! Come fall, mashallah, I’ll be a grandmother!”
* * *
A PAUSE, AND SOMEONE rises from his seat. It is Al, quickly followed from across the room by Sam, who stands tall, clapping and clapping, he who usually stays on the sidelines at the temple and doesn’t serve on committees or play poker with the other men.
“Look up,” Rebecca hisses at Luna. “That’s your papa clapping for you! Look out at him. Be proud.”
Luna lifts her head as Gene stands, too, with some effort, swinging a hand in the air in a kind of royal wave. Jack and Frank get up and start to clap. Suzanne rises now, though with shoulders hunched, and Essie Zimmerman and her husband, followed by the ladies from the Sisterhood. Then Rabbi Schevelowitz, a wet blanket if you ever saw one, and soon the whole audience is standing and clapping as Rebecca retrieves the flowers, takes Luna by the arm—be careful on the stairs!—and prepares to escort her off the stage.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although I wrote Kantika as a novel, I played with the line between fact and fiction and drew on the experiences of some real people, most centrally my maternal grandmother, Rebecca (née Cohen) Baruch Levy (1902–1991). I used real names for several characters, including Rebecca, and made use of historical details, family stories and photographs, even as I changed facts to suit the story, imagined inner lives and invented liberally at every turn.
In 1985, when I was twenty-one, I visited my grandmother Rebecca in central Florida, where she and my grandfather Sam had retired, and recorded her telling stories. The two microcassettes that hold her voice are the seeds that, decades later, grew into this book. More recently, I interviewed my uncle David Baruch (1926–2021) about his childhood in Barcelona and New York and his experiences on the USS Franklin during World War II. From his deathbed, the day before he died on December 10, 2021, David told me over FaceTime that he’d like me to use his real name in my book. My uncle Albert Baruch (1928–2015) did not live to see this novel completed, but I interviewed him in 2013, and this project is the richer for his stories. In her retirement, my aunt Luna Levy Leshefsky Liebowitz (1927–2006) wrote both informally and for a column in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel about the disability community, art, culture, Judaism and her life as a bright, ambitious girl with cerebral palsy in the 1930s and ’40s. Luna died before I began this project, but we connected over writing and much else, and I’m grateful for her many gifts.
My uncle Franklyn Levy shared vivid memories of the past. The photograph at the end of this book, of Rebecca feeding the birds, was taken by my uncle Jack Levy (1935–2011). My great-aunt Elsa’s daughter, Silvia Lissitza Camayor, welcomed me to Barcelona and took me to the site of the former synagogue on Carrer de Provença and to visit my great-grandfather Alberto Cohen’s grave in the Cementiri de les Corts. Hal Behl, son-in-law of Rebecca’s sister Corinne, shared oral histories and Corinne’s sketch of the family’s house in Istanbul. My cousins Rachel Baruch Yackley and Jonathan Baruch shared family documents and photos.
My mother, Suzanne Levy Graver, has been a steadfast companion, guide, reader and inspiration throughout my life and during the writing of this book. In 1995, she took me on my first trip to Turkey, where we were warmly welcomed by my grandfather’s cousin Sait Asseo and his wife, Nanette. In 2014, my mother traveled to Barcelona with me for a research trip. My sister, Ruth Graver, was often my first reader, offering astute insights and encouragement and exploring Astoria with me. My father, Lawrence Graver, died before I began this project, but I drew on his rich library of Jewish American literature and felt him cheering me on. My husband, Jimmy Pingeon, and our daughters, Chloe and Sylvie Graver Pingeon, provided companionship, adventure, feedback, peace and quiet, patience, laughter and boundless love.
Many people opened doors for me on my travels and research forays. In Istanbul, I am grateful to Lorans Tanatar Baruh at SALT Galata archives, as well as to Mirey Derkazez, Izak Eskanazi, Abdulkerim Golkap, Saadet Özen and Suzan Sevgi. Burhan Kaya, Nick Ozick and Esther Messing led the Boston College faculty travel seminar in Turkey, where some of my colleagues traipsed with me to the site of my grandmother’s childhood home and musicologist Ann Lucas led us to a ney workshop. At Istanbul’s Oryom Old Age Home, Rachel Calderon and Estella Mizrahi Estella shared memories with me; Violet Aroyo arranged that visit. Rifat Sonsino, Tony Hananel and my relatives Yosi and Peggy Asseo offered advice before my research trip to Turkey. Aline Gandillon McGowan flew from Paris to Istanbul to tag along on several quests and talk late into the night.
In Barcelona, Lucía Conte Aguilar, Teresa Nandin and Dominique Tomasov Blinder were knowledgeable guides to past and present Jewish Spain. My trip to Cuba and my understanding of the Jewish community there were aided by Maritza Corrales, Armando Montalvo Costa, Yuri Sasson, Judy Schiller, Esther Jequin Savariego and Tim Weed, and by the lively companionship of my daughter Chloe. In Cambria Heights, Queens, Adima and Omar Mohammed welcomed my mother, my daughter Sylvie and me into my mother’s childhood home during Ramadan, shared their own migration stories and sent us off with peppers and basil from their garden because, in Omar’s words, “We’re all from Abraham.”
Several scholars responded generously to my out-of-the-blue queries. Aron Rodrigue, at Stanford University, offered invaluable help with regard to both Judeo-Spanish (otherwise known as Ladino, Spanyol, Muestro Spanyol) and Jewish life in early twentieth-century Istanbul. His impressive scholarship informs this project. Gloria Ascher welcomed me into her Ladino class at Tufts University, where I learned a great deal from her and from Matilda Koén-Sarano’s book Kurso de Djudeo-Espanyol. Bryan Kirschen, at SUNY Binghamton, shared his Ladino expertise. Recordings of Ladino songs by Sarah Aroeste and Janet and Jak Esim brought them alive for me. I have also benefited from the expertise of Martine Berthelot, Dina Danon, Rita Ender, Michal Friedman, Allyson Gonzalez, Lori Harrison-Kahan, Maite Ojeda-Mata, Devi Mays, Isaac Jack Levy and Rosemary Levy Zumwalt. Sarah Abrevaya Stein’s essay about the herb rue, or rudu in Ladino, “The Queen of Herbs: A Plant’s-Eye View of the Sephardic Diaspora,” was a last-minute gift to this book. Thanks also to Sharon Pucker Rivo, Lisa Rivo and Richard Pontius at the National Center for Jewish Film, which granted me permission to reproduce two images from Ernesto Giménez Caballero’s 1929 film, Los judíos de patria española, after I found, to my astonishment, that the film contained (unattributed) images of my family at the synagogue in Barcelona.
This book would never have found its shape without the gifts of intellectual and artistic friendship. Alexandra Chasin, Sharon Jacobs and Gish Jen were vital early readers. Molly Antopol, Suzanne Matson, Tova Mirvis and Bridgette Sheridan read multiple drafts and offered invaluable suggestions and encouragement. Darcy Frey helped me think about excerpts.
Ralph Savarese, with his groundbreaking work in disability studies, provided a nuanced reading of my manuscript. Dr. Earl Carlson’s memoir, Born Like That, recounts his childhood with cerebral palsy and subsequent work as a pioneering doctor who founded a clinic at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. I know from interviewing my grandmother that Luna was treated by a gifted doctor in a wheelchair at a special clinic at Columbia Presbyterian, a detail that, along with the dates lining up, led me to name Luna’s doctor in Kantika after Dr. Carlson. The historical setting of the novel has led me to include language around disability that, while problematic, is nonetheless true to the period. I welcome how that language has changed over time.
Fellowships at Brandeis University’s Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI), Wellesley College’s Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, the Corporation of Yaddo and Marble House Project allowed me to dive deep in congenial settings. Special thanks to the Newhouse Center’s director, Eve Zimmerman, as well as to Lauren Cote and my fellow Newhouse fellows—John Plotz, Keith Vincent and Kelly Mee Rich—and to Shulamit Reinharz, Debby Olins and Lisa Fishbayn Joffe at the HBI. Wide-ranging conversations and Sephardic cooking sessions with Sam Coates-Finke and Genevieve DeLeon at Marble House Project nourished me during the three weeks in June 2021 when I wrote the final chapter of this book. I am grateful to Boston College for research grants and leaves and to my English Department colleagues, especially Lynne Anderson and Laura Tanner, for their inspiration and friendship. Zachary Frank, Connor Pendray, Kristen Laracuenta and Michal Miller were meticulous, hardworking undergraduate research assistants. Christopher Soldt created digital images from old photographs.
My former literary agent, Richard Parks, is retired now, but his friendship remains a gift. Henry Dunow, my current literary agent, has been an astute reader and patient friend to this project. Riva Hocherman, my editor at Metropolitan Books, saw the soul of this story and drew it out with her keen edits. At Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., I am also grateful to Marian Brown, Sonja Flancher, Brian Lax, Morgan Mitchell, Shelly Perron, Lulu Shmieta and Allysa Weinberg, as well as to Karen Horton and Christopher Sergio for the gorgeous cover design.
In a 2013 interview in the Atlantic, Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat talks about how all immigrants are artists. “You begin with nothing,” she says, “but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires—risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence.” My grandmother Rebecca’s life journey was infinitely more challenging than the literary one I took to write this book, but her grit, creativity and perpetual refashionings are stitched into every word.
Grasyas, all.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH GRAVER
Have You Seen Me?
Unravelling
The Honey Thief
Awake
The End of the Point
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZABETH GRAVER’S novel The End of the Point was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches at Boston College.
Visit her online at elizabethgraver.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Constantinople, 1907
Istanbul, 1924
Barcelona, 1925
Barcelona, 1926
Adrianople, 1929
Barcelona, 1929
Barcelona, 1934
Havana, 1934
Astoria, 1934
Astoria, 1937
Cambria Heights, 1942
Cambria Heights, 1944
USS Franklin, 1945
Cambria Heights, 1950
Acknowledgments
Also by Elizabeth Graver
About the Author
Copyright
KANTIKA. Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Graver. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 120 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10271.
www.henryholt.com
Cover design by Karen Horton
Cover photograph © Nataliia Tosun/Shutterstock
All photographs courtesy of the author from her family archives, with the exception of the two photographs here, which are reprinted with permission of the National Center for Jewish Film. here photograph by Jack Levy.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
e-ISBN 9781250869852
First Edition 2023
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Elizabeth Graver, Kantika
