Kantika, page 9
And it was not just Sultana that Alberto loved. He loved their children and the world and the One Who Made the World, and understood, as she did, that such love was not just a gift but also a duty because El Dyo was bodiless, in each leaf and drop of water, each heartbeat, each bite of food, and it was a lifelong calling to notice Him and let Him in. When, years ago, she accepted Alberto’s marriage proposal, her mother had warned her that with their age difference, she might wake up one day still young but married to an old man. Sultana had not quite believed it. Alberto, though twenty-two years her senior, had seemed plenty young, scrambling up a hillside to introduce himself to her. He was full of impulses to taste and learn: cafés and books, ideas and music, flowers and their habits. Her body, which he played as if it were an instrument. Sex had embarrassed her, her own pleasure, too, but he’d kept at it until he made her sing. He’d not been cheerful, exactly—there was always a dark philosophical undertow; maybe he saw too much—but always, he had kept a finger on the pulse of life.
Has he turned suddenly old here, the move dragging him not just across space but also time? That’s not it, or not entirely. He is still plenty strong and, despite his iron deficiency, hardly seems anemic—see how he bends and scrubs. His mind is sharp; he reads the Spanish newspapers and keeps the community’s accounts in better order than he did those of the textile factory. No, this is something else: a giving up, a faithlessness, for all his endless tending of the synagogue. A turning inward that leads to selfishness, even distrust. His breath has gone vaguely sour; his eyes, when they’re not lit with outrage, are flat. He has not touched her for months, and the few times she approached him (patting his arm, once, stroking his cheek with an outstretched finger), he jumped as if he had been stung.
When Jews—sailors, refugees, traders, merchants—find their way to the unmarked temple, Sultana prepares coffee, tea and biscochos, and when the men finish with their prayers, she brings the tray and talks to them in gestures and whatever common language they can summon. Where are you going, where have you been? Do you have children? How was the voyage? What is the news of the world? What can I do for you? Please, sit. Eat. She’ll give them the name of Villa Erna, the pension on Carrer del Modolell run by a Jewish family, and Café Cómico, where the Sephardim can learn about jobs, and for the Ashkenazim, the corner café on Còrsega, where they might find Yiddish speakers. Tell them you’ve been to us, she says warmly. Say you’re a friend of a friend. If the visitors are stateless or, like her older sons, fleeing military service and considered deserters, she’ll pass on the address of the Ezra Aid office, which can help them apply for a Permit of Stay or small business loan and let them use its address on their business cards. She’ll tell them about the market where her sons have stalls, and the razor blade factory started by a man from Smyrna, and the zipper import outfit run by a German Jew who settled here some time ago. In Turkey, I was a surgeon, one man said bitterly a few months ago. Wonderful, replied Sultana. You know how to cut and zip! To orient the strangers, she’ll unfold a map of the city with Carrer de Provença 250 marked with a red dot and the words, in her own hand: Estas Aki.
Sometimes the travelers, almost all male, seem surprised that she, the wife, is the one to engage with them, but what choice does she have? “Love the sojourner for you were once sojourners in the land of Egypt.” In truth, she is still a sojourner herself, more or less brand-new here and hardly at home, but no need to share her private troubles with her guests. This is a beautiful city, she tells them. Great Jewish sages used to walk these streets. If a visitor is single and seems like a prospect for Rebecca or Elsa, she might invite him to dinner. Her daughters flirt and prattle, though later they’ll take her to task (he’s a fisherman, Mama, he smells of fish!). Alberto hovers in the background or leaves the table with his meal half-eaten to prowl in the untended garden in the dark.
Yesterday he told her he’d hired a mason to install glass shards in cement on the top of the brick wall along the street.
“Ke?” She’d set down her paring knife on the kitchen table. “You didn’t, Alberto. Why would you do that?”
Her husband did not lift his eyes from the ledger of the community’s accounts. He shrugged. “Things have happened.”
“Such as?”
He wrote something down. “Different things. Graffiti. A pig’s head thrown into the garden.”
She shook her head. “I was there when Sinyor Grunebaum told us those stories. That was years ago. Things are better now. We’ve no reason to think it will happen again.”
“Of course it will, sooner or later. It’s just a question of time.”
“Alberto, don’t say that!” She reached for the bonjuk bead pinned inside her collar and murmured leshos de mi—far from me—though the expression has always struck her as selfish, implying that the misfortune should land on other people somewhere else. “Please.”
“Say it or not, it makes no difference. It’s the truth.”
“The truth,” she said, “is that if you spit at the sky, you hit yourself in the face.”
“Sultana,” said her husband wearily, as if to a dullard child. “Who is spitting? I’ve seen more than you. Read more. Traveled more.”
You’re a cranky old man, she had an urge to say. I go out on the streets and smile at strangers while you stay locked inside these walls. I still look out at the world, and up to God.
But a wife did not address her husband in this way, and anyway, she didn’t have it in her to be cruel. Her husband was still a good man, trying to protect his family, but she wouldn’t allow him to infect her with fear. The neighbors seemed like nice people. They’d brought over cakes; she’d complimented their baking because it was tasty but also because a boka dulse avre puertas de fierro—a sweet mouth opens doors of iron. You had to look for people’s good side, not greet them with a wall of broken glass. Back home, they’d been on friendly terms with all kinds. Alberto had played music with the Muslims, done business with the Christians. Her sons and daughters went to school with bien élevés children of many stripes, and her own charity efforts, while primarily focused on Jewish orphans, were variously directed at people of different creeds.
“No glass on the wall, Alberto,” she had begged. “Please. It will cause more problems than it solves.”
But the mason had already arrived and was using a paddle knife to smear cement on the top of the brick wall on the Carrer de Balmes side, then inserting shards, sculptural, glistening; they might have been festive if they weren’t so ghastly. Sultana returned to her carrots, chopping and chopping, pushing the minced bits into a colorful pile with the edge of her knife. The onions were next; then at least she could cry. What had they come to? In another life, she had loved glass. Alberto, who had a knack for finding treasures as he wandered the city, used to give her gifts of it: a hobnail pale blue perfume set, glass flowers from Bohemia, gold-rimmed fluted Pesach cups, all of it sold off before the move.
“I’m doing it for you,” her husband went on, even as his hand, awkwardly bent—he’d been born left-handed but had been made to switch to right—kept writing in his book. “To keep you and the children safe.”
She banged down the knife. “For me?”
He looked at her sternly. “Yes. That’s what I said.”
“Well, I don’t want it.”
“You need it. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“That”—she looked at her feet—“is a matter of opinion.”
“No,” he said. “I know more than you. I read the papers. I’ve read books about Spain. I’ve talked to many people. I see what’s happening in the world. What do you know?”
“Goodness. Friendly neighbors. No one trying to undermine us. What I see with my own two eyes.”
“Surfaces lie. You’ve told me that yourself. Look underneath.”
Now, having not yet gone near an onion, she was crying. “So why are we even here, Alberto, if it’s such a terrible place? Why did you bring us here? Tell me that.”
“Why?” He spoke very softly. “I failed.”
“Ke?”
“I failed! Should I say it louder?” He got up and went to the open window, poking his head out and putting his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice. “I failed!”
“Stop it, Alberto. Have some dignity. I beg of you.”
The mason turned to look, and Sultana, reddening, waved and watched the puzzled man wave back.
“J’ai échoué,” Alberto repeated, switching into French, and then (how many ways could he hammer it in?) to English. “I failed.”
“Why not take out an ad in the newspaper about it?” she said sharply in their mother tongue. “Shout it from the rooftops! Invite the neighborhood!”
She went to close the windows, far from tears now. An old man? Hardly. It turned out she was married to a child. “Our country failed us, that’s what happened,” she told him. “Why do you think so many Jews left before we did? Thousands have left, more every year. You think we’re alone in this? You’re not so important, that you should put it all on yourself.”
“So I’m a nobody.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You said so yourself,” he told her. “You married a nobody. I’m sorry for you.”
“Basta, Alberto! Where is your head?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked around, and for a moment she thought his mood had turned and he was about to make a joke—is that my head on a platter, is it up on a shelf? But his eyes held no mirth.
“You married a nobody,” he repeated.
“Don’t insult me. Or yourself. You know better, Alberto. No one is a nobody before God.”
“I can’t find Him, Sultana. I can’t—”
A tenderness came over her, but she would not bow to it. “Try,” she said.
“I have.”
“Try harder.”
He looked up, his face twisted and ugly. “I’m an old man. I’m all done trying.”
“For that,” she told her husband, “you should be ashamed.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT (which was just last night, though it feels like days ago), she did not sleep but sat in the garden where the rain had not yet come, the heat oppressive, and no cats visited because they would bloody their paws on the top of the wall, and no one came for her or noticed that she was not inside. She sat and sat, a garden statue, her thoughts gone blank, and woke wet from the rain, her neck in a cramp (so she must have slept a little), and went inside to make breakfast for her family, not out of love or generosity, but because it was her job.
Then this morning, through the slot in the door, a blessing from afar: Corinne and Israel expecting a baby, El Dyo willing, in Cuba. Alberto had only been a few feet away as she’d opened the letter, but she’d read it silently and slid it into her apron pocket, where it had stayed, a hoarded secret, while she got the valise, took it outside and dumped it out. Then back to the bench, where she’d sat in a daze, is sitting still, as the rain slows and stops (the garden gleams).
* * *
“WHERE IS JOSEF, that little bastard!”
Abruptly she is up from the bench and on her feet, ready to protect her son.
“He took my suitcase!” screams Alberto. “He dumped my plants! How dare he do such a thing! Where is that idiot boy? I’ll throttle him! I’ll wring his neck!”
With surprising strength, he lifts and hurls the suitcase across the courtyard. Sultana watches it teeter and settle on the flagstone with a thump.
“Calm yourself,” she says. “And keep your voice down, the neighbors will hear.” She steadies herself on the trunk of the palm tree, dizzy from having stood up too fast. What time is it? Are all the children home? Is Josef? She looks through the windows into the apartment but sees no sign of him.
“Where is he? I’ll find him at the market!” Alberto says. “Where is it? What’s the street called?”
“Leave Josef be. It wasn’t him.”
“Who, then? Marko? Isidoro? One of the girls? Who would do a thing like that? My”—he looks briefly desperate, helpless, then furious again, still in his dressing gown, the sash untied, his pajamas, fine Egyptian cotton, frayed now, hanging loosely on his frame—“plants from home.”
“It wasn’t the children, Alberto. It was me.”
* * *
IT IS EL DYO who leads them; they agree on this later. It is El Dyo who shows Alberto his wife, rain-washed, drained of tears. Unafraid.
“You?” he flings back, and she nods, and he shocks her by coming at her ready to strike (on rare occasions, he will take the switch to the boys, but he has never raised a hand at her or their daughters), but stops suddenly and drops his arm down, and whatever is to happen will now happen. She is that calm, that far away.
She moves forward in silence, not toward her husband but toward the far corner of the garden where she dumped the bulbs, roots and seeds. The garden has always been Alberto’s world, but how hard can it be to untangle the roots, lay the bulbs out in a row on the nearby patio stones, turn toward the garden bed, fill her fists with weeds and tug?
The soil, damp on the surface but dry below, yields easily as she pulls two-fisted, dropping the weeds in a pile by her side. And then he is there beside her, they are on their knees, removing dead growth, making room for the new, and he is correcting her but mildly, as if nothing unusual had just transpired between them—leave that one, it’s not a weed, take these out, here, that’s it—and he’s shuffling off to the shed against the courtyard’s back wall and coming back with a rusty pitchfork, shovel, spade. Some of the bulbs are desiccated and unfit for planting. These he sets to one side. Others are solid to the touch or sprout pale green shoots the color of endives. These he plants. Though the suitcase had seemed full when Sultana emptied it, in truth it’s no more than an overnight bag and held just enough bulbs for a few square feet of jonquils, tulips or hyacinths, along with several envelopes (now soaked) embossed with the name of the textile factory, full of seeds. Alberto lays down newspaper on the low stone wall and spreads seeds out to dry on yesterday’s news, while Sultana deposits the weeds in a spot he points out between the shed and wall.
It is El Dyo who keeps her from saying that a valise, even a ruined one, is good for one thing only, to be filled with clothes (not just her own but also the baby clothes she has been stitching for her future grandchildren), and El Dyo who prevents her from calling out that she’s had enough, she’ll find her way to Corinne in Cuba or to her mother back home, take Josef with her because he’s too young to be left with a father who is ready to throttle him without proof of wrongdoing and promises to tutor him but never does. Adyo.
When finally they stop their work, they are filthy, feral, like someone’s (not hers) untended children of the earth, she in yesterday’s clothes, he still in his pajamas and dressing gown. It is time, then, to return inside, boil water and bathe in the tin tub. Sultana goes first, drawing the curtain she strung up in the kitchen to give the illusion of privacy. She alternates between the kettle and the stoneware pitcher, and if at first the water is too cold, too hot, too cold, eventually she gets it right, and the copper rinsing bowl is the same one she used to bring to the hamam during the hours reserved for the Jewish women, its curved, hammered shape taking her back to the enormous göbek taşı stone where the bath ladies loofahed her skin, her cares dissolving painfully until she was reduced to what? A woman among women, a body’s breath, a nub. On her noche de novia, her mother, aunts and friends surrounded her there, chanting kolay i liviano, easy and light, and wishing her a fruitful marriage, as she later would chant for her own firstborn daughter. And now Corinne has (still Sultana guards the news) a baby in her womb.
She comes out from behind the curtain wrapped in a towel and does not meet her husband’s eyes. The kettle she put on for Alberto’s hot water spits steam through its spout, but he ignores it and steps behind the curtain to bathe in her leftovers, so she takes the kettle off. Terribly sleepy suddenly, she goes into their tiny bedroom, hangs her towel on its hook—in truth just a nail on the door—slips on her nightdress and climbs into bed, where she pulls the covers up and sleeps, or maybe not, because soon Alberto is there, too, real or in a dream, clean enough, still damp, smelling of wet leaves. Without exchanging a word, they arrange themselves to spoon together as they did for so many nights, so many years (but not once in the past few months), except it’s not night but daytime now, everything changed and far away and turned around save for maybe this, a small return: her back to his front, their breath settling into the same smooth rhythm, set by her.
How much time goes by? Has she slept again? Alberto must have latched the inside shutters on the window and shut the bed- room door. It must be past dinnertime but no one has made dinner; there is no smell of food. From her sleep, Sultana feels a mouth on her skin, hands on her hips, and he is back, her husband, kissing her shoulder, sliding his head down, her nightdress up. He has (is she dreaming?) his mouth on her droopy tetas—first one, then the other—flicking, suckling, tasting, drinking her, and she shivers from the crown of her head to the root of her spine, candle wax first resisting, then melting in the flame.
A few minutes later, with her husband inside her, she gives up the news, her mouth at his ear—we got a letter today, Corinne and Israel are having a baby, she was five months along when she wrote it, she didn’t want to tell us until they knew it would stick—and her words have an unintended effect for he goes promptly limp, pulls out, rolls off and turns away. For a moment she is frightened: Is he angry that she waited to tell him? Unhappy with the news? Replaced, the generations barreling on? Then she realizes that Alberto is crying, silent tears running diagonally down his tipped face, and she reaches over his shoulder to wipe his cheeks with her open palm. He turns, then, says lo syento, I’m so sorry, Sultana, I’ll do better, I’ll try harder. All about himself again, as if he hadn’t even heard the news, so she repeats it: Corinne and Israel are expecting a baby in Cuba, did you even hear me? And he says of course I heard, thanks to El Dyo, a baby, why do you think I’m crying? I’ll be a grandfather, I’m an idiot! A baby, God willing. Mashallah! Aye, Sultana, I’m an old, sentimental fool.
