Kantika, page 6
“You did it!” She leans to plant a kiss on his lips. “The boys won’t be conscripted! Mashallah!”
How differently they see things. It is why his marriage never stops being a revelation to him, even after all these years. He has to try so hard, in a mental effort so strenuous it feels athletic, to see the good in life, while for his wife the world is naturally a place of blooming, and it’s the sorrows that surprise her, despite their regular appearance, not the joys.
He nods. “As we suspected, there aren’t a lot of options. We don’t have to stay. It can be a stop along the way to somewhere else. We’ll come back here if we can”—his voice breaks—“figure out how. Things will change again. They always do.”
She looks at him with a level gaze. Is that pity in her eyes? “We’ll see,” she says, “but in the meantime, we’ll make a home there. The children need us to, if they’re to settle in. Anyway, I might prefer Spain to other places, certainly to America. It’s warmer and sunnier—and closer, and we all speak the language.”
“Or a version of it.” He smiles thinly at her. “Though in Barcelona, I think they mostly speak Catalan. A kind of dialect.”
“So we’ll have our own dialect, too. Oh, so much to do! We’ll have to figure out how much we can bring with us.” She sips her wine. “Spain. Who would have thought, but it makes sense. It’s where we’re from.”
“Maybe,” he says almost perversely.
“What do you mean, maybe? Of course it is.”
“We don’t know that precisely. We assume it.”
“Of course we know. I know.”
It is what they’ve been told by their grandparents, who were told by their grandparents, but it’s also true that their region has long been full of Jews from other places, both East and West, and many generations have passed and mixed. There’s an old konseja that the Jews who fled Spain during the Inquisition kept the keys to their houses around their necks and passed them down through the generations. If Alberto views it as a grotesque and illogical tale (why save the keys to a house in a country that slaughtered, expelled you or forced you to convert?) and surely not true, Sultana finds it beautiful.
“Remember when we went to that party at the Spanish embassy?” she asks. The summer residence of the embassy is down the street from the house in Büyükdere. He used to stop there occasionally on his evening walks to chat with the bored sentries stationed under the linden tree outside its pale blue walls. With his kind of Spanish and their kind of Spanish, they got by. One warm June night, a sentry confessed to him under his breath that he was a Marrano, which meant he was a New Christian, which meant he was a Jew (also a swine, since that’s what the word marrano meant). Then the man made the sign of the cross and went back into position, jaw set, eyes scanning the shoreline, as Alberto, dumbfounded, walked away.
A month or so after that encounter, he and Sultana were invited to a party there. It was not uncommon for them to find themselves at gatherings at the summer embassies, where, in a relaxed holiday ambience, you could enjoy yourself, make business connections, grease some wheels. They had dressed up, left the children with the nanny. Arm in arm, they walked down the boulevard, through the soft night air. How regal his wife had looked. Her hair had already turned an early white, as was common in her family, and that night she had reminded him—with her copper eyes and glowing white hair, a white fur stole around her neck—of the elegant Arctic fox on his cigar box label. They danced and drank and strolled along the terraced gardens and on the landing stage by the Bosphorus as a string quartet played and dark water lapped below.
Toward the end of the evening, a Spanish man of some importance—a doctor, maybe, Alberto doesn’t recall his name—had pulled him aside, professed an interest in the Spanish Jews, and asked questions in Castilian interspersed, when Alberto failed to understand, with broken French: What do you eat, what songs do you sing, what is your business, what countries do you export to, do you do business in North Africa?
Alberto, more than a little drunk, had answered as best he could, if with a rising sense of unease. Why all these questions? he’d finally asked. You are elegant and cultured, said the man. A true aristocrat. But why? Alberto had asked, abruptly sober and with a pressing need to urinate. I’m on a bit of a quest, the man had said. The Sephardic race is a richness for my country and for our relations abroad; I hope to make you citizens. Are you Jewish yourself? Alberto had asked. Or a Converso? The man had looked startled. No, no, I’m Spanish, and you—the man took his hand, gripping it too hard—are an Español sin patria.
“They had a flamenco player,” Sultana reminds him now. “And dancers in red lace. Do you remember? One let me try her castanets. I hadn’t done it since I was a girl.”
Sitting together on the bench, he and Sultana turn to details of the move—what to bring, what to try to sell or give away, and can they wait until school vacation for the younger children and when should they break it to them (soon, Sultana says, as in tonight, once they’re all home) and to Sultana’s mother, who is well situated at her brother’s house in Taksim, but the thought of leaving her brings the first tears to his wife’s eyes.
* * *
NOT SURPRISINGLY, it is Rebecca who comes into the garden to find them there. She, of all the children, seems able to catch her father’s thoughts as they enter the atmosphere, and she is not one to let things slide. She has returned from work at the dressmaker’s and is wearing a sort of gypsy getup—a flowered vest and skirt, a shirt with billowy sleeves, a white wrap around her head—that she must have fashioned for herself. It would make a good Purim costume but is a ridiculous outfit for daily use. The dressmaker, though skilled at what she does, is from a different milieu, and hers is not the air he wishes for his daughter to breathe, another reason why they need to go. Still, Rebecca is beautiful and full of life, and it’s hard for him not to be cheered by the sight of her. She plants herself in front of them, kisses her father on the hand and her mother on the cheek.
“Ke haber?” she asks.
Sultana raises a glass. “We’re just enjoying our wine.”
Rebecca reaches to take a sip, then returns the glass to her mother. “Besides that.”
“We’re enjoying the breeze from the water.”
“Fine, Mama. But what are you discussing out here for such a long time? And in low voices? What happened? I know something did. Is everything all right?”
“Of course,” Sultana says. “We’re just going over some plans.”
Alberto glances at his wife.
“What plans?” Rebecca asks.
“Wait until everyone sits down to supper,” Sultana says. “Josef went to do an errand for me, and the other boys are out and about. And Elsa—” She glances over her shoulder. “Have you seen her? Is she still looking after the children down the street?”
“I know what it is, so you might as well say it.”
“Now you’re a mind reader?” says Alberto. “Is that why you’re wearing this”—he waves toward it—“getup? Tell us, then, Mademoiselle Fortune-Teller. What is it?”
“We’re moving,” says Rebecca. “You sold the summer house, and you’ve been selling off our things. I saw how you tried to rearrange the books to hide the gaps. I told Isidoro it was happening, but he didn’t believe me. We’re going”—Alberto can’t tell if she sounds excited or dismayed—“to America. We can live near Lika in New York. Did I tell you she’s taking classes at night to become a nurse? It will take a long time, but I feel sure she can do it.”
“Not America,” he says.
She looks disappointed. “To Cuba, then, with Corinne?”
He shakes his head.
“France?”
Again he shakes his head
“Where, Papa? Just tell me. Why must you torture me?”
“You?” he scoffs. “I’m the one who’s tortured, by these times.”
Sultana makes a tsking sound. He looks toward his roses, which need to be pruned. Might he dig them up, roots and all, bundle them in burlap, and carry them to Spain? His father is buried across the water in Hasköy in the special section reserved for the Cohens, also known as Kohanim, with its scent of wild oregano. Each year on his father’s meldado, the anniversary of his death, Alberto visits to say a prayer and leave a pebble on his grave. He sometimes wishes he could plant some flowers there—the English cemeteries were full of them—but it is the practice of his people to put stone on stone, and each time it moves him, the tiny rock set on the large one as if in protest, however small, against the maggots and the worms. How will he add his pebble from afar? “I don’t know what’s happening to my country,” he says glumly.
“It’s falling apart,” says Rebecca cheerfully. “You say so every day. It does seem like I won’t find a decent husband here, not without a dowry. But why not America, Papa? Lika likes it there.”
“Read the newspaper, Rebecca. America has closed its doors to us.”
“So Corinne will have to stay in Cuba? That was supposed to be temporary. She wants to leave. Where are we going, Papa? Is it Palestine?”
Wearily, he shakes his head.
“Is it—”
“Stop,” Sultana interjects. “Please. Both of you. Alberto, why play this game with her? We decided we’d tell them all at once, and we will.”
“Where, Papa?” Kneeling down on the grass, Rebecca takes her father’s hand, still girlish in her motions, but though the spark in her eyes hasn’t dimmed over the past few years, it has changed in quality; she often seems restive to him, even wild. She tries on costumes, parades and prances, puts on little plays with Elsa and Josef, though she is too old for such amusements. When she walks down the street, heads turn, and he worries she could end up with a Christian or Muslim. She did not like the German School and the fees were high, and while she might have gone on to a bookkeeping or stenography course, she apprenticed herself instead full-time to the dressmaker and is being paid a small sum that she should save for her dowry but spends instead on baubles like the glittery bracelets on her wrist and the cheap heart locket around her neck.
Sultana stands. “I need to start dinner. Come help me, Rebecca.”
“Morocco? England?”
When no one responds, Rebecca too stands and moves away from them. In the dusk, her face looks suddenly hard to her father, drained of its prettiness, her clenched fists small gray balls. “I’ve run out of guesses. It’s my life, too, you know. It’s not a game. I can stay here and keep working for the dressmaker or start my own business. I’m plenty old enough. I’ll just”—her voice turns breezy—“stay.”
“You’re my daughter,” he says. “Where I go, you go.”
“I’m not a child, Papa. I belong to no one but myself.”
Before Alberto can remind Rebecca that in legal terms, a daughter belongs to her father until she marries, Sultana turns to him. “She’s right, Alberto—she has a right to know. Why make her wait? Just tell her. Go ahead.”
He does not want to be the one to utter the words. It is not his choice, this leaving, though it’s at least partially the result of his own actions or inactions. Might a more capable boss have saved the factory? Why is it that his brother, Maurice, is, if not thriving, not drowning and has no plans to leave (though he has no sons to be conscripted)? His daughter and wife stare at him. From deep in his pocket, he hears the ticking of his Swiss watch, another thing he needs to sell. Once he releases the words, they will be so.
“It’s Spain. We’re going to Spain.”
“Spain?” Rebecca laughs, an incongruous sound. “But why? Spain hates the Jews! They kicked us out!”
“That was over four hundred years ago.”
“Still. I’ve heard terrible stories.”
“Of course. From ancient history.”
“No, Papa. More recently. I heard they made rugs from our skin, from the skin”—she lowers her voice—“of Jews.”
Her mother, still listening, grabs her hand. “Who told you that?”
She hesitates. “An old lady I knew. She heard it from someone else.”
“Of course!” Alberto downs the rest of his wine. “That’s why it’s an old wives’ tale. You want true stories? Look what happened to the Armenians, right here. Solid citizens, good people, my business partners—” He chops at his throat with the side of his hand. “Atrocities. Injustices. May God take notice over time. Look at the Greeks. They’ve been emptied out of half the country. Those aren’t stories, those are terrible, true facts. Things aren’t what they used to be. You think we’ll fare any better? It takes nothing at all for them to turn on us.”
Where did it come from, this bashing of his beloved country? Though he speaks the truth, he could go on in the next breath to argue the opposite: We’re not quite the same as those other populations, having never made a move for independence. We cower, stay quiet, kayades. Or we are children of Abraham, all one. And then the other side again, or maybe a third side: We have to leave because we’ve always had to leave, even if he doesn’t remember, not in his heart; he is no Wandering Jew. He looks down the sloped garden at his sukkah’s skeletal roof, which he wants to plait with reeds again, to hang with figs and dates, grapes and olive branches so he can study there and later lie on the straw mat with his young wife in his arms as the birds flock for a feast. “I can’t even go to Ankara for business without permission now,” he says. “We’re running out of possibilities. There’s nothing for us here.”
“Well, we have a new opportunity,” says Sultana. “De la spina nase la roza.” From the thorn is born the rose.
Suddenly Alberto is coughing, a racking, deep hack that appears out of nowhere, bending his torso, taking his breath—a shred of apple skin caught in his throat or God doing him a favor, keeping him from speech. Sultana starts thumping his back, and Rebecca, too, and though he tries to bat them away, he is heaving, making small, choked noises, and then finally is quiet again, his breath returned.
He sits depleted in the half light. “I swallowed wrong,” he says hoarsely.
“Oh, Papa.” Rebecca bends to stroke his beard, and Alberto senses, looking up at her, a terrible reversal. She, the child, and a girl no less, is worried for him, the father. It is a brutal passing, and he wants none of it.
“So. Spain,” Rebecca says, almost brightly. “What will we do there? Which city will we go to? Do you have a job?”
And because there is no rule saying a shammash can’t sing, and because he’s a kohen from the priestly caste and thus honored with the first aliyah and the giver of the threefold blessing, and because dusk has arrived to blur the edges of his city, the faces of his wife and daughter, the story of his life, he says (Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips), “I’ve been offered a position in Barcelona, as the hazan in a synagogue.”
Barcelona, 1925
I
HER FATHER SWEEPS THE STAIRS. He sprinkles water on the sidewalk and takes pumice and fine-grained scouring powder to the marble tile in the entryway, sinking down to his knees in his good gray suit to buff the milky stone. None of them understand it. For God’s sake, Alberto, you have robust sons, you have sturdy daughters who can do such work, and though they’d rather not, they’d prefer it to seeing this each day: their father’s bald dome or the dented top of his fedora, his old man hands laboring with a mix of martyrdom and fury, or maybe penitence or its performance—it’s hard to tell.
When they first arrived at Carrer de Provença 250, Esquina Balmes, a few months earlier and saw him go on the attack against the dust and grime, their mother nudged them toward the brushes, rags and buckets, urging quietly—just go, don’t ask, just help. She has raised her children to make their own beds, tidy their toys and maintain order in their satchels, assigning more substantial tasks—inside for the girls, outside for the boys—after the family could no longer afford paid help. Here, they quickly learn that if they try to assist with anything related to the synagogue, their father will turn on them, unleashing a torrent: Get away, leave me alone, go make something of yourself, or, to Rebecca (perhaps his cruelest comment), go find yourself a husband, you’re not getting any younger! Do you want to be a hunchbacked spinster? For you to scrub floors on your knees, I left it all behind?
It is late March now, the air still fresh, the city’s flowers in fragrant bloom. As Rebecca steps outside and edges past her father, she slips on the damp stairs, and though she catches her balance, she loses her grip on her basket and watches it sail to the ground and spill.
“Aye, my samples!” she cries as she picks her way down. “I hope they’re not ruined.”
Scrib-scrub. The sound, bristles against stone, is maddening. Why won’t he answer, or at least look up? What samples, my daughter? I, too, hope they’re not ruined. Where are you off to? Brave girl, going to seek your fortune, mazal bueno. She has put on a new pair of stockings and a navy dress with inset lace cutouts and a fitted waist that she only finished stitching the night before. The more her circumstances are reduced, the more care she takes with her clothes, carrying an instinctual sense of them as both mask and portal, but she may as well be invisible to her father. So have fun, Papa. Adyo. Silently, she brushes off the fallen items—a lace collar, a man’s dress shirt, a baby’s smocked gown, a velvet pillow cover she embroidered with gold swans—and leaves without another word.
Does her father lift his gaze and watch her walk away? She wouldn’t know; she doesn’t turn to see. As she rounds the corner, she picks up her pace, waving to the lady at the flower cart, smiling at a barefoot baby in a pram. A milkman unloads his silver jugs. The sky is blue, the sun is out. A workman eyes her appreciatively, tips his cap and says good morning in Catalan, and she smiles and returns the greeting. Earlier in the week, she and Elsa bobbed each other’s hair in the latest style; now she feels lighter, free. Back home, even unveiled women had an invisible cloak around them, neither to be looked at nor to look. Here, an open city, open faces. If it scares her a little, it excites her more. Her dress, a play on a coat frock, came out even better than she’d hoped, a mix of a French pattern and her own improvisations, and she feels at once professional and stylish, a modern lady on the avenue. She has studied a map and memorized the turns between here and La Dreta, the adjoining neighborhood where the textile operations are.
