The Tragedy
“They sat in silence for a few seconds, each caught up in thought. It had begun to become a habit for them to need this brief moment to return to reality.
“I think that’s enough for today.” Ezekiel’s voice showed how tired he was.
“You’re right, and I . . . Well, I think I’m abusing your kindness.”
“Don’t worry, I think that this conversation is good for both of us.”
“Good for us? I wouldn’t have put it that way . . .”
“Think about it, and you’ll see that I’m right. How about taking a stroll with me tomorrow through the Old City?”
“If you want . . .”
“When are you leaving? I suppose your organization won’t let you stay for much longer.”
“They are careful with time and money, but also they don’t stop us from doing the work that needs to be done.”
“So you still have some time.”
Marian shrugged. Ever since arriving in Jerusalem, she had felt that time was slipping through her fingers, but that was not a problem, at least not at the moment.
“Why do you want us to walk through Jerusalem?”
“Because you will better understand what I have to tell you if we’re at the place where it happened. Is ten o’clock alright for you, by the door to the Holy Sepulchre?”
She agreed, a little confused, but ready to allow herself to be carried along by a situation that already seemed out of her control.
“I’ll be there.”
When she got back to the hotel, she called Brussels. Michel, the executive director of the Refugees organization, did not seem to be in a good mood.
“Hallelujah, she’s alive!” he said, in an acidic tone of voice.
“Of course I’m alive, why are you being so silly?” she replied, mentally putting herself on her guard.
“We haven’t heard from you for three days, do you think you’re on holiday?”
“Come off it, Michel, don’t be like that, I’m busy. Things are not easy here. I can’t make an exhaustive report if I don’t speak to people.”
“You’ve been in Israel for a week already; do you really need more time? You can travel across the whole country in a day.”
“It’s not that easy . . . Well, the first part was. The Palestinians were willing to collaborate, but the Israelis don’t like us that much, they were mistrustful.”
“Right. So?”
“So, as well as the official interviews with ministers and members of parliament, I think I need to speak to Israelis at street level, which is what I’ve been doing.”
“If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were having a little romantic adventure, but who knows? . . . It’s the sort of thing that happens when you go on a ‘field trip.’”
“Speak for yourself,” she replied in annoyance.
“Well, when are you coming back?”
“I don’t know, in three or four days . . .”
“Will that be enough?” he asked sarcastically.
“Maybe. I’ll call you.”
“Two days, no more. Or you get used to working in a different way and I don’t send you anywhere. You were in Rwanda for two months, in Sudan for one, in . . .”
“Please!”
“Marian, it’s a job, nothing more. Do the best that you can without getting involved, you’re not there to sort out the conflict all by yourself. I want your report on my table on Monday morning, first thing.” Marian had no time to reply because Michel hung up.
There were several groups of tourists trying to enter the Holy Sepulchre. The guide for an American group asked them to stay together. A priest was taking a very large group of Spaniards around. Several women who seemed very shy, whom Marian imagined were nuns, seemed to be in ecstasy as they waited their turn to enter the church.
She waited impatiently for Ezekiel to arrive. She had gotten up early and had spent a good while walking through the Old City. She had managed to climb up early onto the Dome of the Rock. Then she had watched the Jews coming and going near the Wailing Wall.
As she walked over to the Holy Sepulchre she entertained herself by looking at the colorful clashing stalls where the tourist trinkets were laid out.
Ezekiel arrived at ten on the dot. She was surprised when she felt him at her side.
“I didn’t see you coming.”
“I know. You were very pensive, worried almost.”
“I was just watching people,” she replied.
He didn’t push the matter, and instead put his hand on her arm, inviting her to walk with him.
“Let’s walk round the city before we come back here. I imagine you know the interior of the Holy Sepulchre.”
“Yes, and I’m still surprised at the devotion of the people who come here for the first time.”
“May I ask if you believe in God?”
Marian looked at him in annoyance. Why would he ask that question? How dare he intrude on her private beliefs?
“Don’t answer, there’s no need,” Ezekiel said, noticing how uncomfortable she seemed.
“And what about you? What do you believe in?” she asked, almost defiantly.
“I want to believe. I need to believe. But I don’t know if I believe.”
His reply impressed Marian. She felt as he did, and this was something that worried her.
“Why did you want us to meet here?” she asked, to bring this thread of the conversation to an end.
“Because, as I said yesterday, I think you will better understand what I have to say to you if we walk through some of the places where they took place.”
Ezekiel walked slowly, so Marian adjusted her pace to the old man’s and prepared to listen.
“Imagine yourself in 1920,” he said.
“Alright.”
Samuel spent many hours in the laboratory with Netanel. Both of them enjoyed making medicines and testing the effects of some of the formulas they designed. But even so they did not neglect their obligations on the farm. Kassia controlled Hope Orchard with a firm hand and reminded all who lived there of their obligations to the community, which consisted of working the soil, helping with domestic tasks, and not spending a single penny without having decided that it was for a necessary expense.
Netanel, who had silently incorporated himself into the routine at Hope Orchard, seemed livelier now and shared his memories with Ruth and Kassia, those two women who had lost their husbands.
Marinna and Igor seemed to live harmoniously, although Samuel and the rest of the group could not help noticing that they seemed much more like two comrades than two lovers. After so many unpleasant events, a certain calm seemed to have returned to their lives, especially since Louis had returned from his Egyptian exile. He had come back without warning, and they were all happy that he was with them once again.
Louis did not give them very detailed explanations about how he had spent his time in Cairo. None of his friends insisted that he should say more than he felt comfortable sharing. They were used to there being elements of his life that he did not share with anyone, not even with them.
“I would be happy if things carried on as they are forever,” Samuel confessed to Netanel.
The old pharmacist always listened to him kindly and attentively.
“You should find yourself a wife,” he suggested.
“A wife? I’m not at the marrying age anymore. Also, who would want to come and live here? Hope Orchard is not a home, it’s more like a collective farm.”
“Some of the women here are communists, some are socialists, and the ones that are neither have never stopped working and making sacrifices. Hope Orchard is a good place to live,” Netanel said as he looked at Miriam’s son Daniel out of the corner of his eye.
Netanel was too old and too sharp not to have noticed that Samuel and Miriam took every opportunity to be with each other, but neither took any further action, for fear of being rebuffed. Also, Daniel had to be considered, and Miriam would not for the world run the risk that he would be annoyed at her for not keeping herself eternally in mourning for her husband. Netanel thought that the kid could use a father, and that Samuel was the only one he would accept, but he didn’t dare say anything.
“I’m too old to get married.”
“Wouldn’t you like to have children?”
“I don’t know, life has not even given me the opportunity to think about it, although . . . Yes, I’m sure I would have liked to have had children.”
“You still have time.”
“Come, come . . . Let’s talk about serious things. I’m worried, I’m going to talk to Mohammed this afternoon. We have to stop these clashes between Arabs and Jews. We are not enemies, why should we be?” Samuel’s question was directed more to himself than to Netanel.
“Well, some of the Arabs never accepted the Balfour Declaration, they see it as a threat,” the pharmacist replied.
“But Prince Faisal and Dr. Weizmann seem to have reached an agreement. Faisal doesn’t seem to mind that the Jews would get some land, and now that he has been declared king of Syria . . . ,” Samuel insisted.
“Faisal is not the problem, the problem is the British and the French. I think that the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau will not let Faisal reign, he wants Syria and Lebanon for the French, and if the British allow him, then he’ll take Palestine as well.” Netanel did not seem to have any illusions about the motives that these two winners of the Great War might have.
“They have to respect the agreements they made with Sharif Husayn and his sons Faisal and Abdullah,” Samuel protested.
“They should respect them, but I don’t suppose you’ll be so naïve as to think that they will. Neither Britain nor France is interested in a greater Arab nation. Do you think that they have fought against the Ottoman Empire to make way for another empire? They’ll divide the land between themselves, and the Arabs and the Jews will pay the consequences.”
“We cannot fight among ourselves,” Samuel insisted.
“Well, just as there are Jewish nationalists, so there are Arab nationalists who think that this is their land and that we are a danger to them, and that is why they are pressuring the British not to allow any more European Jews to immigrate to Palestine.”
“And their pressure is having its effect. Also, the military governor, Sir Ronald Storrs, is not exactly fond of Jews.”
“They say that he is particularly set against Jabotinsky,” Netanel added.
“Well, I can understand how he feels, I don’t like Vladimir Jabotinsky either. He’s an extremist,” Samuel replied.
“He’s a man who knows what he wants. People listen to him. He’s a leader, even if I’m not very convinced by him either.”
“But now the important thing is to stop these clashes from happening. What took place at Tel Hai cannot be allowed to happen again. I really don’t think it’s a good idea for him and his friends to go around in uniform, parading themselves.” Samuel’s voice was worried.
“Well, they fought alongside the British, they are part of the Jewish Legion. They played their part in the Allied victory as well. Don’t forget that it was a group of bandits that attacked the Tel Hai farm, even though people say that it was a confrontation between Jewish and Arab farmers, and that unfortunately there were victims,” Netanel reminded him.
“This is all because of tension in Galilee that’s been there since the Balfour Declaration. Syria and Lebanon are very close, and the Palestinian Arabs don’t like what the French are doing,” Samuel replied.
“Which leads some of our own, Vladimir Jabotinsky among them, to insist that we need to prepare to defend ourselves with our own forces,” Netanel replied.
“In any event, I don’t like Jabotinsky. I don’t trust people like him who seem too much like the European fascists.”
The two men fell silent as the door opened. Miriam interrupted the conversation and Marinna, caught up in making out accounts, smiled at her affectionately.
“Did Daniel forget his lunch again? I’ve told you not to worry, he’s always welcome at our table. My mother doesn’t make distinctions, and she insists that you don’t need to send any food for him.”
“Kassia is very generous, but there are a lot of you for me to add another mouth to feed. At least let him share with you what I made for his lunch.”
“And what about Judith?” Marinna asked.
“She’s alright, but there’s no way to make her rest; she’s always been like that, however, she likes working and being with Yossi.”
“You work hard as well,” Marinna said.
“Well, I help as much as I can, the least I can do is help my sister and my brother-in-law after all they have done for me, all the generosity they have shown. Also, they are overwhelmed, because more and more people come to their house. Abraham never refused to help anyone who knocked at his door, neither rich nor poor, and Yossi is the same as his father. Of course, given the current situation in Jerusalem, there are more and more people who come looking for medical help in the knowledge that no one will ask them to pay for it.”
“Your sister says you can treat fractures with the best of them.”
“Yossi showed me, and he says I’m good at it.”
Samuel interrupted the conversation to ask Miriam to stay for lunch.
“No, I can’t stay, I only came to bring my son’s lunch, but I have to go back. There are at least thirty people waiting for Yossi to see them, and he and Judith don’t have a moment to rest,” Miriam said, to excuse herself.
“Well, in that case I’ll walk with you for a bit, I don’t have much of an appetite today,” Samuel said as he looked for his jacket.
They walked along for a while talking about unimportant matters.
“It smells like spring,” Miriam said.
“That’s natural, it is April.”
“Will you come to celebrate the Sabbath with us? Yossi wants to see Louis.”
“Ah, Louis! He comes and goes without giving any explanations, but we are all happy to have him back with us again.”
“Do you think that the clashes with the Arabs will get worse? What happened in Tel Hai was terrible,” Miriam whispered.
“Well, let’s not exaggerate,” Samuel said, to calm her down, “it’s not the first time that a farm has been attacked by bandits. Louis says that the Arabs have nothing against the Jews, that it was a way of protesting against the French influence in northern Galilee. Also, some Christian villages have been attacked as well.”
“Shall we celebrate Passover together? There’s only a few days to go . . . Yasmin has said that Mikhail will come from Tel Aviv.”
Samuel was hurt to find out from Miriam that Mikhail intended to spend Passover in Jerusalem. He understood that he was in love with Yasmin, and she with him, and that they wrote to each other all the time, but would it really hurt him to write once in a while?
“I’d like to celebrate Passover with you, but it depends on Ruth and Kassia.”
“Our Passover this year is at the same time as Christian Easter and the Arabs’ Nabi Musa,” Miriam reminded him.
“Nabi Musa is almost a Jewish festival, it honors the memory of Moses.”
“Does Dina celebrate it?”
“Dina is an extraordinary woman who lives to make other people happy. She’ll do whatever is necessary to please Mohammed and her daughter-in-law Salma, Aya, and little Rami. The baby has made her smile again. A few days ago she said that being a grandmother was the best thing in the world.”
“Rami is a beautiful little boy,” Miriam agreed.
“Yes he is, and more importantly he’s very clever and joyful.”
They said goodbye at the entrance to the Old City. Samuel noted to himself that he liked spending time with Miriam more and more every day, and he wondered if she felt the same way about him.
On April 4, 1920, Jerusalem was having a party. Arabs, Jews, and Christians met in the streets of the Old City, packed in until there was no room for anyone else.
Louis had woken up worried. He had spent a few days at Hope Orchard, and although he tried not to upset his friends, he had no option this time other than to share his anxieties with Samuel.
“I don’t know why Governor Storrs has given the Husseini a permit to parade through the city.”
“Well, the Husseini are an important family, and the mayor is a Husseini, so I don’t know why you are worrying.”
“Because it’s clear that there are now more and more clashes between the Arabs and the Jews, and Governor Storrs should be trying to make sure that there aren’t any incidents. Also, in the past the procession has always gone round the city, never straight through. I know that Dr. Weizmann has spoken to the governor . . .”
“Sir Ronald Storrs doesn’t like anyone to tell him what to do, much less Chaim Weizmann, the man in charge of the Zionist Commission,” Samuel admitted.
“Storrs should be trying to prevent any possible conflict after what happened in Tel Hai . . . You know that that was a tragedy that cost several lives.”
“Yes, I know, but nothing like that could happen in Jerusalem. Calm down, Louis.”
“I’m going to meet with a few friends; we’ll keep an eye on the situation.”
“The best way to make sure that nothing happens is for us not to get nervous, and not respond to any provocations. The Arabs are not our enemies,” Samuel said.
“You know, I’m not so sure that that’s the case. Have you read some of their pamphlets? They call us ‘dogs’ . . .”
“We mustn’t let ourselves be influenced by nationalist groups that see us as a danger. We have to know how to be in this place that is ours.”
A little while after Louis left, Kassia and Ruth came to tell Samuel that they were going to the Old City as well.
“We won’t be long, you know that Dina wanted to celebrate Nabi Musa with us. Aya told Marinna that her mother has been cooking since yesterday. I’m so happy that we can all gather together round a table,” Kassia said.
Samuel was happy as well. They could not all be together very often. Although Mohammed and Salma seemed happy, as did Igor and Marinna, there was always a tension in the air when they met, which transmitted itself to the rest of them. After the deaths of Ahmed and Zaida, Dina had done all she could to maintain normality, and not for anything in the world would he have rejected her invitation. Her grandchildren Rami, Aya’s son, and Wädi, the son of Salma and Mohammed, had been a balm to her wounds. Salma had just given birth to Wädi, he was little more than a month old, and Mohammed was filled with pride and joy. It had been a relief for Salma as well, finally to give birth to this child who was a living link between herself and Mohammed. She had no complaint to make of her husband, but she sometimes saw his gaze lose itself in contemplation of Marinna’s face.
Netanel had offered to accompany Ruth and Kassia on their trip to the Old City. Marinna and Igor had also left early to participate in the celebrations in Jerusalem. Samuel had insisted that they celebrate this day as a holiday, so they used that bright morning to visit some friends, including the Yonah family. Yossi and Judith had insisted on celebrating Passover at their house, but had resigned themselves to Dina being the hostess of the double celebration of Nabi Musa and Passover.
Samuel was left alone in the house, savoring that unexpected solitude. Life in the commune prevented there being any moment of privacy, for all that they were respectful to one another. Samuel sat down in an old rocking chair that Ariel had made for him and read a book, enjoying the silence.
It was not until late in the morning that Samuel found out about the tragedy. Daniel, Miriam’s son, came running to Hope Orchard and, with tears in his eyes, insisted that Samuel come with him.
“My mother says you should come . . . It’s horrible, horrible, they’re killing us!”
Trying to get Daniel to explain to him what was happening, Samuel ran after him, but he could not get the young man to give him a coherent explanation.
“The brother of the Mufti Husseini, it was him,” Daniel said, with his voice breaking.
“But what has Haj Amin al-Husseini done?” Samuel wanted to know. He was finding it difficult to keep up with Daniel, and was starting to feel pains in his chest.
They ran into a crowd before they got to the Old City, and Daniel stepped back in fear, hearing a group of Arabs crying, “Death to the Jews!” Samuel heard that shout and it was as if a knife had been plunged into his gut. They tried to pause for a moment in a doorway, but Samuel had scarcely caught his breath before they carried on running until Samuel could no longer keep up with Daniel. People ran past him, shouting. He felt dizzy and confused and only reacted when he saw some young men with sticks beginning to beat two elderly men who were heading for the Jewish Quarter. Samuel stood between the gang and the old men, telling the youngsters to drop their sticks, but one of them hit him and shouted, “Palestine is ours!” They hit Daniel as well, and the young man fell down in a pool of blood. That was the last thing Daniel saw before a boot to the head knocked him unconscious.
The young men must have been satisfied, because they left them in the middle of the street. It took a while for Samuel to regain consciousness; Daniel sat next to him, trying to make him wake up, crying uncontrollably.
He managed with great difficulty to get back on his feet, and to carry on fleeing the madness that had taken control of the city. They heard shots, and they saw groups of Arabs armed with pistols, facing off with other armed men.
“Those are Jews,” Daniel said.
Samuel said nothing because he had seen a pile of the injured near where they were standing, and he headed over to it.
“Where are the British?” he asked, more to himself than to Daniel, as he knew that the young man would not have an answer.
They ran into another group of Arabs preparing to break into Jewish houses, and they heard the screams of terror from their inhabitants. They were beaten again, and a man with a saber came at Daniel and cut at his thigh. Samuel tried to help him but did not get there in time. First he heard a sharp noise and then he felt a pain that spread through his shoulder. The two of them fell to the ground together and once again were beaten and insulted. Samuel felt that his life was slipping away, and fainted. They had shot him.
When he came to, he was on the floor in a house he didn’t recognize. He tried to look for Daniel because he couldn’t say anything. An elderly woman placed a washcloth over his head and told him to stay still.
“Don’t move, you’re safe here.”
But he tried to sit up, hampered as he was by the pain that spread all over his torso, from his shoulder to his chest.
“Some of us made a good showing, but it was a massacre . . . ,” the woman said.
A man, also old, came up and gave him a glass of water.
“Drink, it will do you good. The boy’s leg doesn’t look good, but we can’t go out now to look for a doctor. You can still hear the fighting. You were lucky they didn’t kill you, they were angry they couldn’t break our door down. Some of our neighbors haven’t been so lucky, their houses have been assaulted and they have been seriously injured. These savages beat women and children. You were lucky, as I said, they thought you were dead and left you in the street. We saw what happened through our shutters and as soon as the coast was clear we dragged you in here.”
They weren’t the only ones. Samuel saw two men and three women who were laid out on mattresses on the floor. Their rescuers did all they could to help them.
There was not a spot on his body that did not ache, but making a great effort he lifted his head off the ground. The owner of the house tried to help him.
“Slowly, slowly . . . You’re not going anywhere. At least you’re safe here. My father was an ironmonger and for fun he made an iron frame for our door.”
“What happened?” he managed to murmur.
“I don’t know, all I can say is that when we managed to leave the house we saw dozens of Arabs running through the streets calling ‘Death to the Jews’ and shouting that we were ‘dogs.’ We got scared and decided to flee the crowd, I don’t want to frighten you with what we saw . . .”
“But what caused all this?” he asked again, trying to find an answer that the man could not give him.
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
And even if he had told Samuel everything, Samuel would not have heard him, as once again he lost consciousness.
Seemingly interminable hours went by until calm was restored. The owner of the house spent a good long time looking out of his window before he dared go and search out help. It was not long before he came back, and when he did so he seemed stunned. He described what he had seen without talking to anyone in particular.
“There are hundreds of wounded people everywhere, Arabs, Jews, and Christians. They say it was the fault of one of the Husseini, the mayor’s brother. The British couldn’t do anything. They raped the daughter of a good friend of mine, just round the corner . . .” The man burst into tears, overwhelmed by what had happened.
With the help of the owner of the house, Daniel made it over to the corner where Samuel was stretched out. His leg hurt. The saber blow almost reached to the bone. Samuel seemed to be collapsed in a state of lethargy, so neither of the two was able to console the other, but they stayed with each other until the man came to ask them whom he should tell that they were here. Daniel asked him to look for his mother and his Uncle Yossi.
“My uncle is a doctor and lives two blocks away, near here,” he said to the man.
“But you’re Yossi Yonah’s cousin! How come I didn’t realize! Abraham Yonah and I were friends and I know his son Yossi well. And I know you, too, you are Miriam’s son. Miriam is Judith’s sister and Judith is married to Yossi.”
“That’s right.”
The man said that his name was Barak and his wife was named Deborah, and both of them were going to do all they could to help the people they had given shelter to.
When Daniel saw Yossi, he burst into tears.
“And my mother? Where’s my mother?” he asked in anguish.
“It’s alright, don’t worry. I came alone because I didn’t want her to run any risks. Barak will help me get you to my house, I’ll be able to look after you there,” he said as he examined them quickly.
“Don’t lie to me, is my mother alright?” Daniel insisted.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, I don’t know how,” Yossi replied.
They had to improvise a stretcher for Daniel. He couldn’t walk. As for Samuel, he had lost a lot of blood and was barely conscious, he had a fever and Yossi was worried about his condition.
“I’d prefer not to move him from here. Do you have a bed you can put him in?” he asked Barak.
They did this, and then Yossi gave him a tranquilizer that sent him into a deep sleep. Then he removed the bullet that had lodged in his shoulder, near the clavicle.
The battle was over and the city was slowly trying to return to normal. But on that April day in 1920, a wedge had been driven between the Arabs and the Jews.
For two days and nights Samuel fought for his life. Yossi came to see him whenever he had a moment, and despaired that his friend was not getting better. Yossi’s house was filling up with injured people as well, and they were not able to help them all properly, even with Miriam’s aid. On the afternoon of the third day, Samuel finally opened his eyes and saw Yossi and Miriam standing at his bedside. They both seemed worried, and their faces showed signs of tiredness and pain.
“What happened?” he said, making an effort to speak, articulating the words that did not want to flow out of his mouth.
“You’re alive, that’s enough,” Yossi said bitterly.
“What happened?” he insisted, desperately.
“Calm down, you need to rest.” Mikhail’s voice surprised him.
“You . . . you . . . you’re here . . .” And he felt relieved that Mikhail was safe.
“I came on the morning of Passover first thing in the morning. Yasmin said that Dina had organized a meal to celebrate Nabi Musa, and that we were all invited. I thought I would surprise you, although Yasmin said you probably knew I was intending to come for Passover,” Mikhail explained.
“’You mustn’t tire him, there will be a time for explanations later,” Yossi interrupted.
“I want to know what happened . . .” Samuel was begging now.
“You mustn’t worry,” Yossi insisted.
“But he is worried, and he won’t stop being worried until we explain what has happened.” Louis had stepped out of the shadows.
“Louis . . . ,” Samuel said, pleased to see his friend.
“Haj Amin al-Husseini unleashed hell. He stood in front of the crowd with a portrait of Faisal. The crowd started to shout: ‘Palestine is our land!’ They went mad . . . They started to attack the Jewish Quarter and whomever they found in their path,” Louis explained.
“Let’s not simplify matters,” Mikhail interrupted him. “It’s clear that Haj Amin al-Husseini wanted to provoke what happened. If not, how come there were so many men with sticks and pistols and knives? It was all prepared in advance, and the incompetent governor, Sir Ronald Storrs, couldn’t control the situation.”
“And how could he do that if he only had a hundred policemen? He had to take refuge in his General Staff building,” Miriam replied.
“He should have paid attention to Dr. Weizmann when he said that it wasn’t a good idea to allow the procession to go through the Old City. As if that weren’t enough, the British were only interested in protecting the Christians at the Holy Sepulchre, but an inferno took place there as well. A confrontation between Syrian Christians and Copts . . . Don’t ask me why. The only thing we know is that Jabotinsky decided to take charge of the situation, and he went out with some of his friends to stop the Arabs and protect the Jewish Quarter. A big mistake on his part, because the only thing he managed to do was make the situation worse. There was shooting, and people died. Five Jews were killed, and four Arabs, and hundreds of wounded. We got the worst of it, the majority of the wounded were Jews,” Louis explained.
“Now Storrs is looking for culprits and has arrested some of the troublemakers. Amin al-Husseini is no longer in Jerusalem, he has escaped, but Jabotinsky is in prison,” Yossi added.
“The worst part is that some of Storrs’s men say that it’s all the fault of the Bolsheviks,” Mikhail said angrily.
Samuel shut his eyes, trying to digest all this information. He felt dizzy, tired, with no real desire to live.
“What about Kassia, and Ruth? They were . . . they were in the city with Netanel,” he managed to ask.
“Ruth is in a very bad state, she was stabbed. So was Netanel, who was trying to protect them. Kassia is alright, she has a broken arm and lots of bruises,” Yossi replied.
“Marinna . . . Marinna is wounded and Igor had a close brush with death,” Mikhail added.
“They trampled my sister when she tried to help some old men who were looking for shelter. They threw her on the floor and kicked her in the head, then they beat her, and . . .” Miriam could not contain her tears.
Samuel tried to concentrate on Miriam’s words. It was hard for him to understand what she was saying. He had understood that Ruth and Kassia were wounded, but was that right? And Marinna, what had they said about Marinna?
He saw Yossi’s tense face and Miriam drying her tears with the back of her hand.
“Judith . . . what happened?”
“She has lost her sight, and we don’t know if she’ll get it back,” Yossi said, sad as much as angry.
Samuel closed his eyes again. He didn’t want to hear any more. He preferred to sink into a sleep that would prevent him from feeling.
“He needs to rest,” Yossi said, seeing the grimace of pain that had formed on his friend’s lips. A pain that was not physical, but had to do with the depths of the soul. The same pain that burned through him as well.
To his deep regret, Samuel began to stay awake for longer periods. He would have liked to enjoy the shadows of unconsciousness for a longer time, but Yossi wanted him to live, and Miriam helped him in his work of rejuvenation.
Samuel was consoled to feel her warm hand on his forehead. She smiled at him sadly and brought him food, hoping that he would recover soon.
In fact, Miriam did not need to add to the work that Barak and Deborah were doing, as they also did all they could for Samuel. They had welcomed him into their house, and they treated him as if he were a member of their family.
Deborah told him that they had a son in Galilee, who had moved there out of the love he had for a Russian socialist. A strong and brave woman, she said of her daughter-in-law, but she had broken their heart by taking away their only son to turn him into a farm worker, sharing the hard earth and the unpredictable weather with other dreamers such as her.
Samuel did not know how long he remained at Barak and Deborah’s house; he was grateful for all that they were doing for him, but he longed to be back at Hope Orchard. He wanted to see with his own eyes the damage that the Nabi Musa riots had caused.
He begged Yossi to take him back there, but his friend resisted.
“You are still very weak, wait for a while. There may still be some more disturbances, I read in the newspaper that at the San Remo Conference the great powers have decided to cede Palestine to the British. Prime Minister Lloyd George has accepted the mandate.”
“Is that bad?” Samuel asked, tiredly.
Yossi did not know how to answer, he really didn’t know the answer.
One afternoon Deborah came into the room looking worried. She went up to Samuel’s bed and said softly:
“An Arab wants to see you, he says he’s your friend. There’s a woman with him.”
“Let him in,” he said, without thinking who it might be.
Deborah was surprised that his face lit up when he saw the young Arab who, with a decisive but timid pace, crossed over the threshold into the room while the woman waited behind, unsure if she should come in.
“Mohammed! Dina!”—and this was the moment that Samuel let loose all those tears that he had kept bottled up for so many days.
Mohammed came close to him and put his hand lightly on Samuel’s arm. He didn’t cry, but his eyes sparkled with the effort of holding back his tears. Dina was not so controlled and cried inconsolably.
“We didn’t come to see you earlier, because Jerusalem is not a safe place for anyone. I didn’t dare come into the Jewish Quarter, but you know my mother, she said she would come today and if I didn’t go with her then she would go alone. I . . . I didn’t know if you wanted to see us . . .”
Samuel held Dina’s hand between his own. The hand of a strong woman, who knew what work was, but who also knew the gift of friendship.
“Dina . . . Thank you, I feel better just seeing you again,” Samuel said with a smile.
“Didn’t I tell you? And you thought that what had happened would damage our friendship! Impossible! You don’t know Samuel like I do.” Dina’s words were filled with pride, pride that she had not misjudged this man who lay there, badly injured, and who had known the respect and confidence of her husband Ahmed.
“I’m sorry for what happened, it should not have happened.” Mohammed didn’t know how to explain to his friend what had taken place on Nabi Musa.
“We have suffered as well, my brother Hassan was shot and he nearly died. He is still convalescing, as is my nephew Jaled. The only use that such suffering has had was to wake my sister-in-law Layla from the grief in which she had been sunk ever since the loss of her firstborn son, and bring her back now to taking control of the household affairs. What choice did she have! Her son and her husband are both immobilized. Hassan has lost part of his right leg. He will limp for the rest of his life,” Dina said with consternation.
“You mustn’t worry about Hope Orchard. My mother, Aya, and Salma have not stopped looking after Kassia and Marinna. Igor is in a bad way, as is Ruth. Poor Netanel is recovering slowly, but he still cannot move. Anastasia comes by every day and Jeremiah does what he can to look after your olives and your fruit trees, as do I,” Mohammed explained.
“Aya, Salma, and I do the work of five people, we go from my brother’s house to your house, but we manage alright,” Dina continued.
Samuel, who had not prayed since he was a child, murmured a prayer to the Almighty, to thank him that, in the midst of the storm, all the ties that bound the little Hope Orchard community had not broken or frayed.
“Yossi says that you can go home tomorrow. Jeremiah wants to come and pick you up, and I’ll come with him. It’s time for you to come home,” Mohammed said.
That was the first night he slept well. Dina and Mohammed had brought him back to peace with himself.
The next day he felt that time was passing with a strange slowness. He wanted to get back to Hope Orchard and had asked Barak to help him get dressed so that he would be ready. Miriam had come to see him in the middle of the morning.
“Daniel’s leg is better and he’ll go back to Hope Orchard tomorrow,” she announced.
“He shouldn’t travel, the wound might get infected.”
“My brother-in-law Yossi says that he will let him travel soon.”
“And Judith?”
Miriam’s eyes filled with pain. Judith had not regained her sight and could hardly speak. Her sister had not recovered from the shock of that terrible violence. She couldn’t see, she didn’t speak, she barely moved.
Yasmin looked after her mother night and day, because Yossi could not escape from the injured and sick people who came every morning to his office. At first the Arabs had not come, because they were afraid they would not be received. But Yossi was the son of Abraham, as well as being a citizen of Jerusalem. This was his city, and these were his neighbors, and religion had never been a barrier between them in the past, so he could not hate them, for all that he regretted the fate of Judith and of his friends.
Miriam worked alongside her brother-in-law day and night. She had become a good nurse, almost as good as Judith had been. Work helped her because while she was looking after other people’s pain, she forgot about her own. She thanked God that her son had escaped from this slaughter, but she could not find peace when she saw Judith’s vacant eyes, or the efforts that Yasmin made to look after her mother. Yasmin had decided not to go with Mikhail back to Tel Aviv, and so she had locked away with the rest of her dreams the desire to marry this impetuous man who could make such sad sounds on the violin.
Hope Orchard smelled of sadness, if sadness has a smell. At least that is what Samuel felt when, with the help of Jeremiah and Mohammed, he crossed the threshold of his house. Kassia, her arm in a sling, hugged him in tears, and Aya spontaneously joined them. Dina was busy preparing the food. Samuel insisted that they help him walk to where Ruth’s bed was. She lay still, her face covered in cuts, although the worst injury came from a knife-thrust that had pierced the upper part of her right lung. Yossi could not explain how Ruth was still alive.
Marinna had lost the child she was expecting. Kassia told him that Marinna had been pregnant, which Samuel had not known. Marinna was like a daughter to him, and he felt sad to see her face covered in bruises as well as her trampled, bruised leg, but the sharpest pain was on her face, which showed the pain of incomprehension.
Igor, according to what Jeremiah whispered to Samuel, had been more dead than alive. He had gotten between Marinna and the aggressors, although he couldn’t prevent either of them from being beaten. It was difficult to see the noble features that were Igor’s in that bruised face.
Netanel was better than he had expected. One of his legs was broken, and a knife cut that went from his right eye down to his chin had marked him forever.
Anastasia came close, and Samuel looked at her sadly. He could still see in that face the remnants of a love that she had once professed to him.
“You mustn’t worry more than you have to. The house is in order. Dina is taking charge of everything, and Aya and Salma have helped much in spite of the protests of their children. For all that Rami calls Aya to come and be with him, she has not left Ruth and Marinna alone for a moment, and has even helped Kassia, who normally insists that she doesn’t need anyone to help her. My daughter has also come to lend a hand,” Anastasia said.
“I’m fine, and this arm doesn’t stop me from doing anything,” Kassia assured them.
“I won’t let you force yourself, I’ve said that I’m not going to leave you alone until I see that everything’s going alright,” Dina insisted, standing in front of Kassia.
The two women were friends. They were the same age and they had shared this farm for the last two decades. They knew each other far too well.
Samuel understood that without Dina and her family they would not have been able to continue. He was amazed that Aya and Salma were always coming and going to help them with what they needed. Normally it was Aya who came first thing in the morning, while Salma went to Hassan and Layla’s house. Dina had taken control of the two families, and although Samuel could not help but notice that the woman had grown old very quickly, he still saw in her the same energy as before, which compelled her to help everyone as much as they needed.
Aya and Salma both tried to take their children to the neighbors’ house as little as possible. They didn’t want to make Marinna even sadder than she already was, as she still had to recover from the loss of her child.
Their life started to take on a routine shape. Samuel seemed better, as did Netanel. The Moscow pharmacist insisted that he could return to his work even though he had not completely recovered from his wounds. On one of her visits, Miriam also told Samuel that her son Daniel was keen to return to the laboratory.
“As soon as Yossi allows him to come, he will come, even if it’s on crutches.”
Samuel was most worried about Ruth, not just because of the extent of her injuries, but also because the woman seemed to have fallen into a depression from which it seemed almost impossible to remove her. For all that Kassia jollied her along, Ruth seemed to have lost the will to live. She said nothing, she didn’t even say anything about the pain that the knife must have caused, leaving a web of scars on her arm and her face. Her silence, according to Kassia, was the worst thing.
One day, when Dina came to bring them their supper, Samuel asked her to tell Mohammed that he wanted to talk to him.
“I need to understand, Dina, I need Mohammed to explain to me why this tragedy has taken place.”
Dina looked at him apprehensively, but agreed. She herself had not stopped asking her son to explain why this had happened. Like Samuel, she needed to understand.
If it hadn’t been for Cemal Pasha, that bloodthirsty wretch who had taken Ahmed’s life, she might almost have felt nostalgia for the time when they were all governed by the Ottoman sultan, she confessed to Samuel with a blush, and he agreed with her.
The next day, Mohammed came to see him on his way back from the quarry. He seemed tired and worried.
“Are things going well at the quarry?”
“Yes, as they should, but the men are restless. Nabi Musa has left scars on everyone, scars that cannot be seen,” Mohammed replied.
“We would not be men if we felt no pain or anger for what has happened. We have all suffered.”
“Yes, we have been wounded, too.”
“We . . . you . . . Why do we speak like this, Mohammed? Who are ‘you’? Who are ‘we’? Aren’t we the same as we’ve always been? What makes us different?”
“We are Arabs, you are Jews, the others are Christians . . .”
“So? Who cares which God each of them prays to? And what happens if we don’t pray?” Samuel looked Mohammed right in the eye.
“I hear you speak and I think as you do, but then, when I go away, I see that things are different, that men are different.”
“Different? I don’t think that we are different. We have two hands, two feet, a head . . . We all are born from a mother. We all feel fear, love, hatred, ingratitude, jealousy . . . Who says that we are different? No one is better than anyone else.”
“You are wrong, some men are better than others, Samuel. My father was one of them.”
“Yes, you’re right, some men are good.”
“You are good, or so my father told me.” Mohammed’s eyes were sincere.
“Your father illuminated me with his goodness, but I am not like him, although I don’t think I am wicked either. I am a man, Mohammed, a man like any other man. For many years I lived with the stigma of being Jewish. At the university I was different from the rest of my friends. And it was not because I had done anything that they hadn’t done, but simply because the very mention of the fact that I was Jewish was enough to make them see me differently, make me feel different. A single word, ‘Jew,’ and I was made into a different, a special person. Some of my friends said, ‘Don’t worry, I don’t care that you are a Jew,’ but that was condescending in itself. Now you and I are different because you are an Arab and I am a Jew. It’s madness!” Samuel’s lament had a trace of bitterness in it.
Mohammed lowered his head for a moment while he organized his ideas. Once more he was confused.
“We want the same land,” he finally managed to say.
“We share the same land,” Samuel said sincerely.
“It was ours before you came.”
“It belonged to the Turks, who governed here for four hundred years. In spite of them, it is the land of your ancestors and of mine. I don’t feel that it’s mine, just that our roots are here, and that is why I came.”
“And what should we do? Should we allow you to appropriate our lands step by step?” Mohammed looked him straight in the eye.
“To keep your land? We bought this land from the Aban family, don’t you remember? The Jews who have arrived here have bought land from whomever wished to sell it; as far as I know, no one has stolen any land. I don’t like how you’re talking, Mohammed, you’re back once again to ‘you’ and ‘we.’ Can’t we live together? Haven’t we been good neighbors all these years? Your mother has been looking after us for weeks, there hasn’t been a single day when she hasn’t come by with one of her stews. Your sister Aya has not only helped Kassia with the hardest tasks, but she also looks after Marinna. She spends hours with her, sometimes they speak, sometimes they’re silent, but her mere presence makes Marinna feel more comfortable. No, here at Hope Orchard we are not ‘you’ and ‘we,’ we are the same. Tell me where you see the difference.”
“You should have been a poet. When I hear you speak your words convince me and move me, but I have already told you, out there things are not the same, and not even your words, for all their good intentions, are going to change the world.”
“The world will be what we want it to be,” Samuel said.
“I’m sorry, Samuel, I am truly sorry, but things are not going well. There are people who think of the Jews as a danger for the future, for our interests. They are worried that the Jews are still coming to Palestine, but they are worried above all by the promises the British have made. They have promised you a home in a land that does not belong to them. Lots of us curse the statement Balfour made.”
“Help me get up. I want to go out, because now is the jasmine hour. I like the smell of jasmine. Your mother gave Kassia a cutting when we came to Hope Orchard.”
Mohammed helped him get up and noticed how thin Samuel was. They left the house slowly and walked along the fence until they reached a little stone bench. Samuel took out his tobacco pouch and started to roll a couple of cigarettes. They smoked in silence.
They felt comfortable with each other, so they didn’t need to say anything to enjoy the moment when the sun started to sink away, leaving a red glow in the sky.
They were tapping the ash off their cigarettes when they saw Louis approaching. Samuel smiled to see his friend. Louis, in his own way, had taken control of Hope Orchard. Night after night he came back there to sleep and to see that all was in order in the house, where everyone else was recovering from the wounds they had suffered on Nabi Musa.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Louis said to Samuel as a greeting, and hugged Mohammed as he did so.
“It’s always good to breathe the night air,” Samuel said, taking out the tobacco pouch again and offering it to Louis, who accepted with a smile.
“How is Ruth today?” Louis asked worriedly.
“She hasn’t said anything apart from a couple of words to thank Dina for the pistachio cake she made for her.”
“I don’t know why she is so downcast.” There was a slight tone of reproach in Louis’s words.
“We’re talking about what happened,” Samuel said, changing the subject.
“It’s not that hard to understand, the thing is that you have a romantic vision of the world and you refuse to see things as they are in reality,” Louis said, slapping his friend on the back.
“That’s what I was saying to him,” Mohammed said.
“Reality is nothing but a reflection of the actions of men, so reality can change,” Samuel insisted, unwilling to change his position by even an inch.
“The world is changing. I admit that it is because of men that this change is taking place, it cannot be otherwise, but the important thing to note is that sometimes forces are set into motion that cannot be stopped. Now the great powers are carving up the Middle East; they will reach an agreement that they will want to impose on us; some people will accept it, others will not . . . but it will have consequences for us all, for all the Palestinians, the Jewish Palestinians as well as the Arab Palestinians.” Louis was solemn.
“Things are changing; of course, the British now govern in Palestine. They’re expecting the high commissioner to come today,” Mohammed remembered.
“Yes, that’s it, Sir Herbert Samuel has already arrived, and it was a real spectacle. The British have a greatly theatrical sense of power. He was received with a seventeen-cannon salute. As far as I know, he is going to install himself at the Augusta Victoria, and he wants to meet with representatives of all the different communities,” Louis continued explaining.
“He’s a Jew,” Mohammed said, and this word was more than a simple acknowledgement of the high commissioner’s religion.
“Yes, he’s a Jew, but that’s not a sign for good or for ill. Maybe it will be worse for the Palestinian Jews because Sir Herbert will want to show that he is impartial— which may even lead to some injustices against us,” Louis said.
“It’s hot,” Samuel complained, batting away a mosquito that was investigating him, about to find a place for its needle.
“Well, it’s the thirtieth of June, what do you expect? We could carry on talking under cover and then you wouldn’t have to fight with the mosquitoes,” Louis suggested.
“I’m going home, my mother must be complaining about how I’m always late. Maybe my little Wädi is still awake. Salma knows that when I get back from the quarry I like to play with my son for a while.”
Mohammed said goodbye to them all with a certain degree of relief. He was too tired to carry on talking about politics, because that’s what all this was about in the end. And he had not lied about wanting to see Wädi. He wanted to see his son and give him a hug.
Samuel leaned on Louis so he could walk. He still felt weak, even though it had been more than two months since that stray bullet had hit him.
They went into the house and saw Kassia reading. Igor and Marinna were in their room, and Ruth was dozing.
“Dinner’s on the table. Dina brought hummus and I made a salad. I think I’m going to go and rest, there’s a lot to do tomorrow. I took some supper to Netanel and I saw that the laboratory needs a good going-over. I need to clean the floor and polish the windows,” Kassia said.
“Bit by bit, Kassia, we’ve only been working for two weeks,” Samuel replied.
“And that’s enough. This looks more like a hospital than a farm. If you carry on like this, you’ll get mold in the laboratory. We can’t carry on complaining about what happened. We’re alive, and that’s the important thing.”
“You broke an arm and got some bruises, but the rest of us weren’t so lucky,” Samuel protested.
“Just be thankful that the bullet didn’t kill you. Marinna had it worst because she’s lost her son, and poor Judith is now . . . Well, she’s lost a bit of her control, but the rest of you only have your scars. It’s been more than two months, the time for crying is over. You can work more in the laboratory. Netanel is there and he’s older than you. I can’t do everything round here. And as for Igor, he’s gone back to the quarry but even he hasn’t stopped doing his bit around the farm. And while we’re talking . . . Well, this is as good a time as any.”
Kassia took a deep breath and looked straight at Samuel, and then at Louis. She saw that they had gone on the alert, waiting for what she might say.
“We need more hands to work the land or else the harvest’s going to go to waste. I think we need to make our community here larger. Miriam told me that there’s a group of Jews in the city looking for work. We can give them a roof and something to do. Why don’t you go to the city tomorrow and meet them?” In spite of the passing of the years, Kassia was still in control at the farm.
“You want to turn Hope Orchard into a collective farm?” Louis asked.
“Well, it’s pretty much a collective farm already,” Kassia replied.
“But it isn’t one,” Louis replied.
“I don’t know if I could live with strangers,” Samuel protested.
“And what were we when we came here? We could build another house for the newcomers. Igor works in the quarry, Marinna works in the laboratory, and you . . .”
“We all work the land, we’ve never stopped doing it,” Samuel protested.
“You know very well that all the hard work fell on the shoulders of Ariel and Jacob. Also, we are getting old, and we need young people, people with hope, the same hope we had when we came here.” Kassia would not hear anything against her plans.
“You’re right,” Louis said. “We mustn’t be selfish. We will go see Yossi tomorrow so he can introduce us to these people, and then we’ll decide. What do Igor and Marinna think?”
“We’ve taught Marinna ever since she was a child that no one should have more than anyone else; that we have to share what we have, that nothing belongs to us.” Kassia was about to become emotional, remembering her socialist ideas, the ideas she had shared with her husband Jacob. How she missed him! Jacob had taught her everything she knew.
“And Ruth, and Igor? We can’t make a decision without them,” Samuel reminded them.
“Ruth doesn’t care, and as for Igor, he’s a true socialist. Recently he told me that he thinks he and Marinna should perhaps go to work on a collective farm.” From Kassia’s tone of voice, Samuel realized why she was trying to effect these changes at Hope Orchard.
“We don’t have enough space for a collective farm, we could have another family here at the most; and as for the land, it’s not going to become more fruitful simply because there are more people working on it.” In spite of his arguments, Samuel knew that he had lost the battle with Kassia.
Their lives took another turn. Yossi introduced them to the group of Russians who had recently arrived from Paris: two middle-aged men, three women, an elderly couple, and three children.
One of the men, who said his name was Moshe, recounted what they had had to suffer before reaching Palestine. They had fled Russia shortly after the revolution. They had all collaborated in building the new regime, and Moshe himself said that he had been a Bolshevik. But the revolution had not brought inequality to an end, nor had it erased the stigma of being Jewish.
“We were living in Kiev, I worked as a journalist and my wife worked for a printer. Mine was a modest family, with no other luxury than books, but even so some of my comrades said that I had too much, so we had to share our home with people who had even less. We didn’t protest. This was why we had supported the revolution. But it was not enough. The new authorities mistrusted the Jews. They said that most of us were not only bourgeois, but also Zionists, and they attacked other Jews for maintaining their traditions, such as going to the synagogue, and a year ago, in 1919, they decided to ban Zionist organizations. They accused us of supporting imperialism. You see that we, who had put all of our efforts into supporting the revolution, suddenly found ourselves under suspicion. Any display in favor of Judaism or Zionism was considered counterrevolutionary. Eva, my wife, was arrested and held for three days. Someone had denounced her for speaking in Hebrew. A false denunciation, because her knowledge of Hebrew is very slight. A good friend who had the trust of the Moscow soviet managed to get her freed. There are Jews who occupy important positions in the new state. Jews who have stopped being Jews, and whose only religion is the revolution. Eva was saved, but not my parents, and not hers either. We are from Proskurov, and the White Army carried out a massacre there, just as they did in Fastov, Berdichev, Zhitomir . . . and so many other places. So, Jews are suffering pogroms once again. It doesn’t matter if a village is visited by White troops or Reds, in the end we Jews become the victims. If there is a place in Russia where the Jew pays dearly, then it is the Ukraine. That is why we ran away. We spent all we had on bribes, but in the end we were able to reach Odessa.”
Moshe introduced Eva and his three children. The other couple was a teacher and his wife, who had managed to escape with their elderly parents. The third woman, strangely quiet and with a lost expression on her face, had joined them during the journey. The troops of the White Army had destroyed her village and killed her husband and her children. The woman, who said her name was Sofia, had survived, although she did not know how. They had found her sleeping in the open and had decided to bring her with them. What else could they have done to help her?
They had listened to Moshe in silence, moved by the description of so much suffering. No less tragic was the story that other Ukrainians told, although they, unlike Moshe, who wanted to stay near Jerusalem, had decided to join the collective farms. Yossi looked at Samuel and Louis, knowing that neither of them could object to these people joining Hope Orchard.
By the time Samuel and Louis came with the Ukrainians, Kassia had already found them a place to stay, emptying the new storeroom where they kept the tools and the implements for working the soil.
“You’ll have to build a house, but we will help you. We work here without distinguishing between one another, there is no work that the men do that we women don’t do too. Hope Orchard is not a collective farm, although we work according to similar rules. We all decide everything as a community, and we share what we have,” Kassia explained to the new arrivals.
“And the important thing is to get on well with your neighbors,” Marinna added.
“They are Palestinian Arabs, and we have strong ties that bind us. We owe them a great deal.” Samuel’s words sounded like a warning.
Leaving behind Moshe, his wife, and his three children, the rest of the group set out toward the Valley of Jezreel. Thanks to Yossi’s work on their behalf, they had been accepted into a kibbutz, as the Jewish collective farms would soon be called. Kassia felt disappointed. She would have liked them to stay, but she understood the urge that led some men and women to want to be part of a kibbutz, where they could work at bringing their utopian dream of an egalitarian society into the real world.
Samuel noticed that Mohammed seemed upset when he told him that a new family had come to Hope Orchard.
“The lands won’t give so much,” Mohammed said.
“Well, we’ll have to work out what to do somehow. We can’t leave them to the whims of fate. Kassia is right, we are getting old, and we need young people’s energy. Also, you won’t be affected by our increasing the size of our community. Your house and your farm belong to you,” Samuel reminded him, upset at Mohammed’s lack of enthusiasm.
“Yes, you were very generous to us,” the young man replied without much enthusiasm.
Ruth did not seem to be very enthusiastic about the presence of Moshe and Eva either.
“We’re not young anymore. We felt like pioneers years ago, and we were dreamers, but now . . . We were good as we were,” she confessed to Kassia.
“You’re right, but it’s precisely because we are getting old that we need young people to continue the work. Marinna and Igor can’t do everything; Louis comes and goes, and Samuel and Netanel have their laboratory.”
“But that doesn’t mean they stop working the land,” Ruth reminded her.
“Not enough, and we can’t do everything ourselves.”
“Igor and Marinna will have children.”
“I hope so, but until that happens . . .”
It was not long before Marinna announced that she was pregnant, to the joy of the two soon-to-be grandmothers. Igor seemed happier than Marinna.
“At last, a child in Hope Orchard!” Louis exclaimed when he heard the news.
“Well, there are already three children, Moshe and Eva’s family,” Marinna reminded him.
“They’re nearly men already, and anyway, I meant a child of ours, from this family,” Louis said as he hugged her.
“Now that we’re all celebrating Marinna’s pregnancy, I have some more news for you.”
They all fell silent, expectantly waiting for Samuel’s announcement. Kassia looked worried, Ruth curious, Louis disconcerted.
“I’m going to marry Miriam,” he announced with a smile.
For several minutes, everyone spoke at once. Not that they hadn’t suspected the existence of a special relationship that Samuel and Miriam had tried to hide from the rest of them, but everyone had just felt they would never get married. Miriam was a widow and had a son, Daniel, who appeared to be the most precious thing she possessed in the world, and Samuel seemed to have grown accustomed to his status as a bachelor. Also, he had recently turned fifty, and there are few men who undertake the adventure of marriage past that age.
“Will she come to live here?” Kassia wanted to know.
“Yes, I think so. Miriam thinks that Daniel would not like to see me in his house, taking the place his father used to occupy, and so it’s better for the two of them to come here. Well, what do you think?”
They congratulated him sincerely. They loved Samuel and appreciated what Miriam was worth, and they had grown fond of Daniel. It would be good for the kid to have a father.
“We’ll need to make the house bigger,” Kassia said enthusiastically.
“Well, maybe it’s not necessary. Miriam and I will sleep in my room and Daniel can take the one that used to be Igor’s before he married Marinna.”
“And what if you have children? It’s better to make the house bigger,” Kassia insisted.
“Children? What are you saying? I’m not of an age to have children!”
“No, but Miriam could still have children,” Kassia replied.
“She’s not a child,” Samuel reminded her.
“No, but she’s thirty-five, and at that age women can still have children. My mother had me when she was forty,” Ruth replied.
They told the Ziad family the good news. Aya already knew about Marinna’s pregnancy, even though her friend had sought to hide it. She’d guessed when she saw her moving and above all when she saw her put her hand over her stomach, trying to protect the child she carried inside her. Mohammed was surprised at Samuel’s decision. He couldn’t imagine him being married. But he was extremely sincere in his congratulations. Dina promised to cook the wedding cake, the pistachio cake that Samuel liked so much.
“I’m happy to see you married before I die,” Dina said to Samuel.
“Come on, as if it were so terrible to be single! And don’t pretend to be old, we’re the same age,” Samuel replied with a smile.
“It’s not good to be alone,” Dina replied.
“I’m not alone, I’ve got you all, Kassia, Ruth, Marinna, Igor, Mikhail . . .”
“Mikhail? I think we all have everyone apart from that boy. He loves you, yes, but in spite of himself. You know what? I’m glad you’re marrying Miriam, she’s a good woman. I feel so sorry for her sister Judith. Do you think she’ll ever see again?”
“Yossi doesn’t think so.”
“Why did that madness have to happen?” Dina said, remembering Nabi Musa.
“We have to forget it, we all suffered its consequences.”
“Judith can never forget,” Dina said.
Having decided to get married, Samuel still felt a little doubtful. It had been Miriam, in any case, who had asked for his hand.
“We are too old to hide ourselves away like teenagers. We should get married. We are good together and although I’m not the woman you might have dreamed of, we can be happy. I will not deceive you, I will never forget my husband; but he is dead.”
Samuel accepted Miriam’s reasoning. Like her, he, too, was tired of hiding. They were like two adolescents afraid of being caught in the act. She was right, she was not the woman he had dreamed of, Irina was the one who always appeared in his dreams, but he was resigned to the way things were. They would be good together.
Daniel did not seem enthusiastic about the news. He liked Samuel, but he didn’t want to see him in the role of his father, which was why Miriam had decided to come to live at Hope Orchard. That way, Daniel would not have to see Samuel sleeping in what had once been his father’s bed. The only thing she regretted was being away from Judith, who needed her so much; she agreed with Samuel that she would work at Hope Orchard but would go to Yossi and Judith’s house every day to be with her sister and help her brother-in-law.
They got married in a synagogue in the Old City. All of the Ziad family came to the ceremony, and Samuel knew that Mohammed’s friends would throw it back in his face. Even Hassan, Dina’s brother, came, along with his wife Layla and his son Jaled. Mikhail was there, too. In the last few months he had come often to Jerusalem to be with Yasmin, the daughter of Yossi and Judith.
The young couple were sad that what had happened on Nabi Musa meant that they had needed to abandon their plans to leave and start a life together in Tel Aviv, but Yasmin would not have been able to leave her mother to her fate, and neither would Mikhail have asked her to, so they had to manage with seeing each other two or three times a month.
Samuel had been worried that Mikhail would laugh at the idea of his getting married, which is why he delayed telling him about his plans; although his reaction was essentially sad, he congratulated Samuel.
“You should have gotten married a while back, and it’s for the best that you’re marrying Miriam, she’s a good woman.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said with relief.
Mikhail was silent for a few seconds and then looked him straight in the eye.
“When I was a child I dreamed that you would marry Irina and would be with us forever. I thought about me, and only me. I had lost everything: my parents, my country, my fate, I only had you. I felt betrayed when you left; I will never forgive you.”
“I know, you have not forgiven me even now.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, I stopped trusting you when you left. Marie said that when I became a man I would understand you.”
“And do you understand me?” Samuel said, anxious to hear the answer.
“Although I might be able to understand you, I will never forgive you.”
They looked into each other’s eyes and both felt the urge to hug the other, but they were not able to.
“Marie loved you very much,” Samuel said, to break the tension.
“Yes, she was the best person I have ever known, apart from my parents. She was a mixture of grandmother and mother. I will never forget her.”
This conversation gave Samuel some measure of the serenity he needed to marry Miriam.
Living together was much easier than they had imagined. Miriam was a strong-willed woman, but she never lost her temper or even raised her voice. Samuel and the rest of the Hope Orchard inhabitants were surprised that she spoke to her son in Ladino.
Miriam had told Samuel that she had learned Spanish from her grandmother, her father’s mother. Judith and Miriam’s family were Sephardi on their father’s side. On their mother’s side, their family had lived in Hebron since time immemorial.
“My mother’s family was not very wealthy, they only had a house and some land to cultivate and a few domestic animals. My father was born in Jerusalem, as his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had been, although we were originally from Toledo, in Spain. When their ancestors had to leave Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella’s edict of expulsion, they fled to Thessaloniki and made a good living as traders.”
“Why did they leave Thessaloniki?” Samuel asked.
“One part of the family decided that having lost one homeland, they had to recover their old homeland, and came to Jerusalem. They became dealers in oil. My father spoke to my mother in Spanish and my grandmother spoke to us both in Ladino. It’s such a beautiful language! You know, Judith and I keep the key to my forefathers’ house in Toledo as a very precious treasure. We always dream about going there . . . My grandmother said that Toledo was more beautiful than Jerusalem, but she never saw it, she’d heard her mother tell her this, as her mother’s mother had told her mother, and all the way back through the centuries up until today.”
Miriam’s parents had met by chance. A relative of her mother who lived in Jerusalem had fallen sick, and became a patient of Abraham, Yossi’s father. When Miriam’s mother went to Jerusalem with her parents to visit her relative, she met the man who would become her husband and with whom she would have two daughters.
Later, Judith would marry Yossi, Abraham’s son, and Miriam would marry an officer in the sultan’s army. They had been very much in love when they married and were very happy.
One morning, Mohammed came to Hope Orchard. Dina had a high temperature and it was difficult for her to breathe.
Samuel got dressed as soon as he could and woke up Daniel to go looking for Yossi. Igor offered to go with the young man, because it was dangerous to cross the Old City at that time.
Samuel did what he could to bring Dina’s fever down, he knew which medicines to use, and although he suspected what might be the cause of Dina’s illness, he wasn’t a doctor and so he counted the minutes until Yossi’s arrival.
“She has pneumonia,” the doctor said, and asked Samuel to give Dina one of his preparations.
Aya was very pale and trembled, she could not imagine life without her mother, so when Yossi left the room after being with Dina she followed him.
“She’s not going to die, is she?”
“We’ll do everything we can to cure her,” Yossi promised.
Dina was still young, although the loss of her husband Ahmed had added years before their time. She felt tired, and had she been a different kind of person, she might have given in.
A few weeks of anxiety passed. Aya did not leave her mother’s bedside, Salma looked after the house as well as Rami and Wädi. Mohammed counted the hours he spent at the quarry, always anxious to get home as soon as possible. Hassan and Layla came by every day to see the patient. Even Jaled, who was still in Faisal’s army, got permission to come and see his sick aunt. As for Kassia, she did not leave Dina’s bedside, taking turns with Aya so that the younger woman could rest. All the inhabitants of Hope Orchard lived through this illness as if they themselves were suffering from it. They all loved Dina, and owed her a debt of gratitude for holding everything together after the Nabi Musa riots.
When Dina’s recovery was underway and she felt strong enough to get out of bed, Mohammed asked his friends to come and share Friday dinner.
They spoke together and laughed, and the meal would have gone on until dawn had it not been for Dina’s condition.
“Let’s not force things, she’s still convalescing,” Yossi said.
Violence broke out again on May 1, 1921. This time in Jaffa. A May Day procession of Jewish workers was authorized by the British. They should not have done this. The procession was seen as a provocation by the Arabs. How could they have let such chaos be unleashed? That’s what Samuel asked himself, upset by the news that came from Tel Aviv. Groups of Palestinian Arabs had attacked Jews in the old port and had vandalized shops and houses. Many on both sides were killed or wounded.
Louis tried to convince Samuel to be part of the secret army being raised, of which he was already a member. But Samuel refused.
“I have already told you, more than once, that I don’t think the solution lies in a confrontation with the Arabs. Also, I am too old for such shenanigans.”
“You’re young, you’re only fifty,” Louis replied. “Are you scared of fighting?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never fought, but I know I don’t want to have any man’s death on my conscience. Only . . . only once have I ever felt the urge to kill . . . Yes, I would have killed the man who handed my father over to the Okhrana.”
“So, you are capable of killing, but that’s not what we want, all we want is to defend ourselves, we have to be prepared for when things like Nabi Musa happen again, or the attacks at Jaffa. What do you think the British did? People were dead by the time their troops turned up,” Louis replied.
“We have to put an end to this madness. I will tell Mohammed to organize a meeting with Omar Salem. He is well connected with the main Palestinian Arab families. He knows the Husseini, the Dajani, the Jalidi, the Nashashibi. We must be able to do something that isn’t fighting.”
“And who will you be speaking for? You haven’t even joined the Histadrut.”
A few days later, Mohammed told them that Omar Salem was willing to invite them to his house. Samuel accompanied Louis. He needed them to explain why they had allowed the unleashing of such chaos.
“They say that the Arab police were also involved in the attacks. I can’t understand what happened,” he said to his host.
Omar Salem respected Samuel. He knew that Ahmed Ziad had trusted him. Mohammed also spoke well of him.
“What can I say? I know what you know. I’m sorry about these deaths. But did the Jews have to parade through Jaffa? We are worried, more and more Jews are coming to Palestine. They buy up our land, they leave us out of work . . . Our peasants, the fellahin, are starting to be pariahs in their own land.”
“The same excuse again?” Samuel protested. “You’re right that a lot of Jews have decided to come back to this land, but is that a reason for us to shoot one another?”
“The British have not fulfilled their promises. They said that they would support us in the creation of a greater Arab state, they promised as much to Sharif Husayn, they promised it to Faisal, and what has happened? They cheated us,” Omar continued.
“I fought alongside Faisal. We helped the British to defeat the Turks, I fought for the possibility of a fatherland,” Mohammed interrupted angrily.
“And what do British lies have to do with the Jews? Why attack us? Can’t we share this land? Can’t we live together?” Samuel sounded disappointed and tired.
“The Jewish National Fund continues its policy of buying our land, and you have to understand that we cannot accept this. What will we have left if they carry on doing this? The British are playing with us. They allowed Faisal to become king of Syria, but which Syria? They cheated us. Syria should include Lebanon and Palestine, but they drew borders between the territories, dividing the Mashriq. The British and the French have divided the Ottoman Empire between them. We wanted to be independent, but they don’t believe that we are capable of governing ourselves, so they have decided to stay and carry out their policy of ‘divide and rule.’ What was accomplished by the Treaty of Sèvres? Don’t you know? It was a betrayal of the Arabs that was signed there. We were treated as if we had not just overthrown the Turks, but had overthrown ourselves as well,” Omar Salem said angrily.
“Do you want me to tell you that you are right? Well, you are right. They haven’t kept their promises, but what does this have to do with us? Why do the Arabs and the Jews have to fight?”
Omar hesitated before answering, he seemed to be looking for the right words to make Samuel understand what was happening.
Louis also waited in silence for what Omar had to say. Eventually he started to speak.
“I will give you my opinion about why this happened. The Europeans, especially the British and the French, have converted all of North Africa into their colonies: Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco . . . Look back at it all. It should not surprise you that among us, among the Arabs, there should have arisen the desire to be what we were before the Turks dominated us. We share the same God, the same religion, the same language, the same customs, we had a common history, why shouldn’t we be a nation?” Omar looked directly at Samuel.
“And what does this have to do with us?” Samuel insisted obstinately.
“It was a stroke of luck for the British and the French that the sultan decided to side with Germany in the Great War. It was the perfect excuse for them to carry on increasing their domains in Africa and in the Middle East. From the very first moment they agreed to divide the territories of the Ottoman Empire. The problem with the British, which is what brings us here today, is that they have made too many promises in fulfilling their territorial goals, and too many of the promises are contradictory. In the first place, they decided to divide the Ottoman Empire with France. As you well know, this is the agreement that has now been put into practice. Then they agreed with Sharif Husayn that they would support the creation of an independent Arab state. They lied, of course. They weren’t going to do that, since they had already agreed with their French allies that they would divide Greater Syria, Iraq . . . the whole Mashriq—the land that was to belong to the Arabs was divided along nonexistent boundaries. And the third problem is that they have also promised the Jews a home here in Palestine. How could they dare do this when this land is not their own? As you can see, the three promises are impossible to reconcile. In reality, I didn’t even think they would ever try to reconcile them, I always knew they were going to betray us. The Treaty of Sèvres confirms what I have just told you. They have not just conquered the Turks, they think they have also conquered the Arabs.” Omar fell silent, waiting for his guests to react.
Louis replied before Samuel did.
“Well, we’ve reached the situation that we are at today, and now what?”
“Now the French have expelled Faisal from Syria, and don’t even want to hear about his father, Sharif Husayn,” Mohammed replied.
“Yes, they have tricked Faisal, I won’t deny it, but he also didn’t find the support he was looking for among the Syrians, and he is not fulfilling the agreement he made with Dr. Weizmann. Don’t forget that Faisal accepted that the Jews could settle in Palestine,” Louis added.
“That is only a part of the truth. Yes, Faisal showed great generosity in accepting that the Jews could establish themselves in Palestine, he made no objections to your living in the Great Fatherland, where he would be the principal ruler. Faisal left no room for doubt—if everyone fulfilled their promises, then he too would fulfill his; if this were not the case, then he would not feel bound by the agreement he made with Weizmann.” It was Mohammed who spoke, he knew Faisal well and had fought alongside him.
“As for Faisal’s problems in Syria . . . Well, the Syrian patriots spent months creating a common program to present to the commission made up of the Americans King and Crane. We had confidence in the commission, and in Wilson, the president of the United States. What beautiful words they spoke during the Paris conference about the freedom of peoples and their right to self-governance! They deceived us again, they did not take the decisions of the Syrian General Congress into account, and that is why it had to take the step of proclaiming Faisal king of Syria. This proclamation did not contain anything that had not already been won, that had not already been agreed when we fought alongside the British to put an end to the Ottoman Empire. But the British betrayed us again and washed their hands of the whole business, leaving Syria to the French. And they did not even bother to respect Faisal,” Omar finished explaining.
“If we have been able to live together in the past, it must be possible that we can do so in the future.” There was a pleading tone in Samuel’s voice.
“It is difficult to know what the future might bring. I promise you that I am in no way a supporter of violence, although I understand the frustration of my Arab brothers, and above all their fear that the British will allow you to take our land from us. As for the May Day procession of Jews in Jaffa, that was a provocation,” Omar said.
“You’re right,” Samuel said. “The procession should not have taken place.”
“The British are playing both sides. Sometimes they say they support the Balfour Declaration, and sometimes they ingratiate themselves with the Arabs and make our lives impossible and restrict immigration,” Louis added.
“So we do have a common enemy,” Mohammed concluded.
“We need to find a solution,” Samuel insisted, but his was a request with no possible answer.
Igor and Marinna’s son, Ben, was born four months before Dalida, Samuel and Miriam’s daughter. It was a surprise for everyone when, shortly after the wedding, Miriam announced that she was pregnant. No one was more surprised than Samuel, and although he tried to show that he was happy he wasn’t sure that he wanted to be father to a baby.
The marriage was more enjoyable than he had thought, but he felt old to be having children.
Daniel thought of Dalida as an affront, and said as much to his mother.
“It’s ridiculous, having children at your age.”
But Miriam pretended not to notice her son’s disgust and her husband’s lack of enthusiasm. Her daughter filled her with joy.
Meanwhile, a fragile truce seemed to have been put in place since the arrival of the new governor, Sir Herbert Samuel, even though the Palestinian Arabs mistrusted him because he was Jewish. The Palestinian Jews discovered quickly enough that above all he was English, and would not move a millimeter in favor of Jewish interests if they clashed with those of the British Empire.
He had made decisions that were received unenthusiastically by various groups. He had released Jabotinsky from prison, but he had also pardoned Amin al-Husseini, whom the Jews saw as being directly responsible for the tragedy of Nabi Musa. He had also restricted the entry of more Jews into Palestine.
However, this delicate truce allowed everyone to live with a certain degree of calm, although Samuel was worried that Louis was getting more and more involved in the Haganah, the clandestine self-defense organization that was the successor to Hashomer.
“You have to accept that we need to be ready to defend ourselves by our own means, we cannot put our lives in the hands of the British,” Louis insisted.
“What we need to do is trust one another. You talk about being ready to fight, I talk about not having to fight,” Samuel replied.
“We are trying to defend ourselves, not attack anyone. Have you ever heard of the Haganah attacking a single Arab?”
They spoke but never managed to convince each other of anything. Louis respected the Palestinian Arabs, he had good friends among them, but he did not have any illusions about the future. Even so, he tried to strengthen his connections with those who were his friends, and went to Mohammed’s house often. Just as they were for Samuel, the Ziads were like his own family.
Samuel and Louis were relieved when the British installed Faisal as king of Iraq, having crossed their arms and done nothing when the French removed him from Syria. And even though Louis was worried when the British created the emirate of Transjordan later on for Abdullah, Faisal’s brother, Samuel thought that in this way the family of the sharif of Mecca was being rewarded fairly for the help they had given the British.
“Even though they have not gotten the grand nation for which they fought, at least they can each have a kingdom.”
“Don’t you believe that the British have created this kingdom because they want to make up for not keeping their promises . . . It’s good for them to have a kingdom that serves as a wall between Palestine and Syria. The British do nothing unless it is to their benefit,” Louis replied.
Later, Samuel had to admit that Louis had been right about the British. They helped Abdullah to maintain his new kingdom in the face of attacks from the Wahhabi tribes, but they washed their hands of all responsibility when the Saudis attacked Hejaz in 1924 and decided not to give Abdullah the help he had asked for. They abandoned him to his fate, and the sharif, to avoid a bloodbath, abdicated in favor of his son Ali.
Mohammed complained bitterly to Samuel about what had happened.
“They are traitors! They haven’t fulfilled any of their promises, and the last treachery has been to allow the Saudis to attack Hejaz. Now the sharif has been forced into exile in Amman. Ibn Saud is a bandit and his followers are fanatics,” Mohammed said heatedly.
“You are right, the British have promised so much to so many . . . They signed an agreement with Ibn Saud in 1915 accepting his rule over a part of the Arab territories. For his part, Ibn Saud has agreed not to let foreigners into his territories without Britain’s agreement. They say that the soldiers of Ibn Saud are fanatics. They are called the ikhwan, and their interpretation of the Koran is extremely strict,” Louis added.
“The dream of the great Arab nation is finished,” Mohammed said with regret.
“Not everything is lost, they say that the sharif is very active, and he is making deals with all kinds of Arab leaders,” Samuel replied, but without much conviction.
“My friends tell me that Sharif Husayn has quarreled with his son Abdullah. He doesn’t want his father to get involved in the affairs of his kingdom. I don’t know how much longer the two can be together, a kingdom cannot have two kings,” Mohammed said, with slight bitterness.
Samuel could not overcome his sense of worry. He knew of the connection between Mohammed and his family and Sharif Husayn and his sons. They had fought bravely alongside Faisal, and Salah, Mohammed’s cousin, had died fighting for the great Arab nation that the English had promised them. He understood Mohammed’s disappointment.
Ben, Igor and Marinna’s son, had brought a feeling of joy back to Hope Orchard. No one could be indifferent to this child with a face like a cherub’s. Blond, with huge grey-blue eyes, he would be naughty hundreds of times but would always be forgiven by throwing his arms round the neck of whomever it was who was scolding him.
Ben liked to run away to the Ziads’ house. His heroes were Wädi, the son of Mohammed and Salma, and Rami, the son of Aya and Yusuf.
Wädi and Rami took Ben on all their adventures and the younger boy followed them happily.
“At least Dalida is a quiet child,” Kassia complained.
“Well, boys are livelier than girls,” Miriam said apologetically, “and my Daniel was certainly not a quiet child when he was younger either.”
“Yes, but these three are going to do something really naughty one day.”
Kassia was right. One afternoon the three boys disappeared. Rami was six years old, Wädi was four, and Ben was three. Aya thought that the boys were at Hope Orchard, and went to look for them in the evening, but Kassia, frightened, said that she had thought they were with Aya and Salma.
“But I saw them come here, I saw them open the gate,” Aya replied very nervously.
Everyone went out to look for the boys. When Mohammed and Igor came back from the quarry they joined in the search.
They didn’t find them until the next morning. In fact, they were found by a peasant who heard shouts coming from an old irrigation ditch. At first he thought it was a dog that had fallen in, but then he heard voices and went to help them. The three boys were all wounded: Rami had broken a leg, Wädi an arm and a leg, and Ben had a dislocated shoulder and a deep cut on his head.
They were scolded and punished for their adventure. They were forbidden from playing together for several days, but when Ben got better he found ways of sneaking out to the Ziads’ house.
Kassia enjoyed the noise the children made. Ben and Rami and Wädi were indefatigable—and then there were the girls as well. There was Dalida, Samuel and Miriam’s daughter; Noor, Aya’s little girl; and Naima, Mohammed and Salma’s daughter. The three children of Moshe and Eva were there as well, but they were already adolescents, and a little more in control of themselves than the younger Hope Orchard children.
“They are the future,” Kassia would always say, and encouraged Marinna to have more children. But she seemed uncomfortable with her mother’s insistences. She had lost the spontaneity of her childhood, and nobody could fail to notice that she sometimes sank into silences that it took her a long time to return from. She shared her feelings only with Aya.
For his part, Igor accepted the subtle distance that Marinna had put between the two of them. He loved her and he said to himself that simply to have her near him was enough, but that he should not try to pierce the veil of thought that sometimes surrounded her, or try to take her out of one of her silences. He knew that she was faithful to him, and that was enough. She had never deceived him as to her feelings toward him, and he had accepted that. It was difficult at the beginning for him to treat Mohammed like the friend and neighbor that he had to be. But they worked together at the quarry and were always friendly toward one another, and Igor had nothing to blame Mohammed for. Mohammed never crossed any boundary of propriety in his dealings with Marinna, whom he treated with a distant affection. “They still love each other,” Igor said to himself, and asked himself if Salma thought the same as he did. He felt sympathy for Mohammed’s wife. If Marinna was beautiful, then Salma was even more so, and above all she had a pleasant character and was well disposed toward everyone else. Igor found himself surprised to think that maybe he could have been happy with Salma, then scolded himself for thinking about Mohammed’s wife; but he couldn’t fool himself, the woman exercised a strong fascination over him.
“Marinna dreams of Mohammed, Mohammed dreams of Marianna, I dream of Salma, and who does Salma dream of?” he thought to himself, without daring to mention this to anyone, not even his mother.
From time to time he said to himself that none of the four of them was at all brave. “If we were, then Mohammed would run off with Marinna and I would stay here with Salma,” he thought, but then he immediately regretted these thoughts, which tormented him all the more every day and which he explained to himself by saying that they arose from his wife’s indifference toward him.
For his part, Samuel seemed happy to let life carry him along. He loved Miriam although he was not in love with her, and he had begun to feel a strong affection for Dalida, the daughter he had not truly wanted but who, as soon as she could walk, followed him around the house with authentic devotion. Dalida was a pretty little girl, her hair as dark as her mother’s and her eyes the same blue-grey as Samuel’s. Unlike all the boys in the house, Dalida was a calm little girl, she never cried and could spend hours sitting on the floor playing with her rag dolls. The routine was broken one day when Miriam announced that she was pregnant again. This time Samuel did not hide his annoyance.
“I’m too old to have children, I should be a grandfather. Do you know how old I am? I’ll be fifty-four this year.”
“The patriarchs had children far later. I’m not going to apologize for having a child. Accept it and be happy,” Miriam said, holding back her anger.
For the rest of the inhabitants of Hope Orchard, the pregnancy came as a surprise, too. They congratulated her sincerely and pretended not to notice that Samuel was upset. Daniel, Miriam’s oldest child, received the news angrily.
“Mother, you’re almost forty now, aren’t you too old to have children?” he said.
“I will have the children I want to have, and it’s none of your business.”
Miriam seemed to be immune to Samuel’s moods and put on an air of indifference, interested only in the son she was to bring into the world. He was born at the end of 1925, and Miriam decided to call him Ezekiel, in spite of Samuel’s protests.
“He’s your son, yes, but for all the interest you’ve shown in him I don’t see why you should choose his name. He will be called Ezekiel, after my maternal grandfather.”
It was difficult for Samuel to realize that the birth of his son had moved him. He suddenly remembered his own father, how much he had liked him to lift him up and hold him against his chest, making him feel safe.
“Samuel is like all men, having a son makes him feel more of a man,” Kassia said to Miriam.
Nineteen twenty-five marked the opening of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an achievement that filled all the Palestinian Jews with pride, but it was also the year that the Saudis took Mecca, to the despair of Mohammed and his friends, who felt regret that Ali, the sharif’s son, had been forced to flee to save his life.
The Saudis had brought to an end almost one thousand years of Hashemite control over the holy city of Islam.
“Now any chance that the Arabs will have a nation has truly gone for good,” Mohammed said sadly to Samuel and Louis.
“Mohammed is right,” Louis said. “The British have allowed this to happen simply because we are pawns in a game that they are playing entirely for themselves.”
He was right, or at least events proved him right. Samuel could not understand why the British had decided to raise to the highest rank the man who had initiated the Nabi Musa disturbances. Haj Amin al-Husseini had, thanks to the British, been made mufti of Jerusalem.
Mohammed had said that Omar Salem and most of his friends preferred al-Husseini, although he himself inclined toward Raghib al-Nashashibi.
“The Nashashibi are as patriotic as the Husseini, but they at least seem willing to talk to the British and to all the communities here,” Mohammed explained to his friends.
In August 1929, Dalida was seven and Ezekiel was three. The same as every year, Jerusalem in August was hot, burning hot. Has anyone realized that the majority of wars and revolutions start in the summer? The tension between the communities had not dissipated; it was still there, sometimes more intense, sometimes less. Louis didn’t stop protesting against what he considered the cynical attitude of the British, and Samuel, too, albeit reluctantly, had accepted that the Jews could rely on no one but themselves, and could certainly not leave their fate in the hands of the British. But even accepting this did not lead him to become a member of the Haganah. He felt old, and did not think that he could be of any use if the time came to fight. Only once had he wanted to kill someone: Andrei, Dmitri Sokolov’s friend, whom he considered to be his father’s murderer. Andrei’s face came to him in nightmares. He hated him and no one else, he didn’t even hate the men who had beaten him on Nabi Musa. He was convinced that he did not have the strength to hurt any other human being. But he could not stop Louis from convincing Igor to join the Haganah, as did the three sons of Moshe and Eva. Samuel felt anxious for these young men, who had scarcely outgrown their adolescence and who worked the soil with the same enthusiasm as he had, years ago. But Moshe and Eva accepted that their sons should be part of this undercover group, which probably had the British worried.
“Louis is right, we need to be prepared,” Moshe said with conviction.
Samuel had not managed to become friends with Moshe or Eva. He had nothing to blame them for, they worked uncomplainingly, they were always ready to do more. They lived quietly, not imposing themselves on the on the inhabitants of Hope Orchard, although they were always invited by Ruth and Kassia to eat with them on the Sabbath. Samuel was bothered by their excessive nationalism, and got angry when Moshe told him that this was Jewish land, and they had a greater right to it than anyone else.
“I have no more right to be here than Mohammed and his family,” Samuel replied angrily.
“But they have no more right than we do,” Moshe replied.
“They were born here, their ancestors were born here, they are Palestinians,” Samuel answered.
“This is the land of Judah. Our right comes from history and from the Bible,” Eva asserted.
Eva was as much a Zionist as her husband, if not more so, and was as equally clear-sighted about future clashes between Arabs and Jews.
“You’re a romantic, Samuel. Whether you want it or not, one day we will have to fight to the death, it will be them or us,” Moshe warned him.
“What kind of Bolshevik were you back in Russia?” Kassia said reproachfully. “Socialism means believing that all men are equal, without distinctions of race or religion. You have suffered for being Jewish, and now you think you are different from the rest of mankind . . . I don’t understand you.”
“Yes, we are fighting for the most beautiful of all ideas . . . What idea could be better than socialism? All men equal, with the same rights, without anyone being any higher than anyone else, brothers in the sacred cause of equality . . . Do you know how long the dream lasted, Samuel? I’ll tell you—it vanished as soon as it became reality. Anyone who didn’t share the dream was a counterrevolutionary, an enemy of the people who had to be destroyed. The dream is made real only through bloodshed, Samuel, and the worst of it is that I agreed at the beginning, until they decided to throw me out of the dream and then I woke up and realized it had been a nightmare all along.” Moshe’s words were filled with bitterness.
Samuel stood up from the table so as not to continue arguing. He was afraid that he would not be able to contain himself and that he would say aloud what he felt, that he now regretted inviting them to Hope Orchard. If he had ever felt any interest in socialism, it was because of its promise to create a world in which all men were equal, with no boundaries or religion separating them. He had not come to Palestine to fight with anyone, much less the Arabs. Why did they have to fight?
“Because they think that we are foreigners, that we are taking their lands away,” Moshe insisted.
“They’re worried that we’re buying land, that lots of the Arab peasants are now out of work, they are worried about their future; it is our responsibility to make them understand that we can’t take anything away from them, we can only share what there is and live together,” Samuel replied angrily.
Miriam normally denied much importance to these discussions, for all that she, like Samuel, rejected the idea that conflict with the Arabs was inevitable. Her mother was from Hebron, where she still lived, and some of Miriam’s best friends were the Arab girls she had grown up among and had shared her first secrets with. Farmers like her, the daughters of farmers who loved the land as much as she did.
“You shouldn’t pay them any attention, they don’t know Palestine. They’ll learn,” she said to Samuel one day.
“No, I don’t think so, haven’t you ever noticed how cold Moshe is toward Mohammed, and how Eva seems to be uncomfortable that Dina and Aya and Salma come in and out of Hope Orchard without being invited? I have tried all my life not to pay any penalty for being a Jew, and now no one will convince me that we are better than the rest, that we have more rights because a book tells us so, even if that book is the Bible. I came to Palestine out of the love I bear my father, I owe it to him, but I did not come to build a fatherland or take one away from anyone.”
“This is my fatherland, Samuel, I was born here and I don’t think that it’s mine more than anyone else’s. I am no more Palestinian than Mohammed is, but neither is he more than I am. We can live together,” Miriam said.
Samuel couldn’t stop worrying about the sporadic clashes between Arabs and Jews, and the ever-widening gap between the two communities. They were only in agreement over one thing, their opposition to the British, whose decisions upset both communities equally, although there was a kind of truce for a few years when the Arab Commission invited a group of Palestinian delegates to join them.
Meanwhile, Samuel’s children grew up alongside the rest of the children at Hope Orchard, and Miriam made the effort to speak to them in Ladino.
“My grandmother and my father spoke to me in Spanish, I spoke Hebrew with my mother, and spoke to my friends in Arabic. Dalida and Ezekiel can speak three languages without problems.”
“They should concentrate more on English, it will be useful to them in the future,” Samuel said.
“The English should learn our languages,” Miriam replied.
“They’ll never be bothered.”
“That’s why they’ll never know the souls of the peoples they wish to dominate.”
The first days of August 1929 were very hot. Kassia told the children not to make any noise while the adults rested before going back to work. Ben, Marinna’s son, was in Dina’s house playing with Rami and Wädi. Dalida was playing with Naima, and Miriam was teaching Ezekiel how to read, telling him to read quietly so as not to disturb the adults, when suddenly the door burst open and Mikhail appeared, his face red from the heat and his gaze clouded with anguish.
“Where is Samuel?” he asked Miriam abruptly, without even saying hello.
“In the laboratory. We didn’t know you were in Jerusalem . . . What’s happened?”
Mikhail said nothing and left the house without closing the door behind him. Miriam followed him worriedly. Samuel was shocked to see Mikhail’s face.
The young man gave him no time to ask any questions, but simply held out a letter, which Samuel read eagerly.
Dear friend,
I write to tell you that today my dear wife Irina has passed away. Her demise was unexpected, as she seemed to be in good health. The doctors have informed us that the cause was a heart attack. I beg you to be so good as to inform Monsieur Samuel Zucker of this sad news and to ask him to travel to Paris as soon as possible in order to deal with matters related to my wife’s inheritance, as well as the shop she rented from Monsieur Zucker.
Yours faithfully,
PIERRE BEAUVOIR
Samuel and Mikhail looked at each other, then embraced and burst out crying. Miriam looked on in silence without daring to ask what had happened, although she guessed that the letter had to do with their past, and Irina was the key figure in that past, as she had found out when she had seen Samuel looking one day at an old photograph. It was a photograph of Irina. She decided to leave them alone. She knew that they did not need her and that her presence would only disturb them.
When the two of them came into the house later, Samuel came over to her and said that he was going to Paris. He explained what had happened without hiding from her the pain he felt to have lost this woman who had never loved him.
“I will go with you, we’ll all go with you,” she said without thinking.
Samuel did not have the strength to argue with Miriam, nor any interest in doing so. She thought that she should be with him during this moment of pain. Although he did not need her and felt indifferent to her presence, he agreed.
Miriam lost no time and started to prepare their luggage. They would travel with their children, as she would not feel happy leaving them behind in order to undertake such a long journey. Dalida was nearly eight, Ezekiel nearly four, so they could both deal with the journey even if it would be uncomfortable for them. Also, she thought, they would help take their father’s mind off everything.
Preparations for leaving took a few days. While getting ready to depart they were all too aware that the difficult status quo maintained between the two communities was about to collapse once again. The year before, arguments about the Wailing Wall had broken out again in Jerusalem; it was the most sacred point of pilgrimage for the Jews, and since the times of al-Afdal, Saladin’s son, it had been in Arab hands. It was a place that Jews and Muslims both claimed, as for the Muslims it was where Mohammed had tied his winged horse, al-Burak, before ascending to heaven. It was also near the al-Aqsa Mosque.
The British tried to limit Jewish access to the Wall, they even forbade the sounding of the shofar during the Days of Awe.
That summer of 1929, the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, took one further step, attempting to forbid the Jews from praying at the Wailing Wall. On August 15 a group of Jews went to the Wall to assert their right to pray, and some witnesses claimed that they insulted the Muslims and even attacked the Prophet, which provoked a group of Arabs, after attending the al-Aqsa Mosque, to interrupt the Jews in the middle of their prayers.
“I’m worried to be going at this time,” Samuel said to Mohammed.
“What will happen is what has to happen,” Mohammed said, his heart divided.
“I trust you more than I trust anyone else, I trust you as I trusted your father, my good friend Ahmed, so I beg you to look after all the members of Hope Orchard.”
“I give you my word,” Mohammed said and shook his friend’s hand.
On August 23, while Mikhail, Samuel, and Miriam were en route to Marseilles, violence broke out again in the streets of Jerusalem. Not until they reached France did they receive any reliable news about what had happened, thanks to newspapers and the reports that a friend in the Marseilles Jewish community gave them.
“After a speech in which the mufti stirred up the faithful, the crowd went from the Dome of the Rock to the al-Aqsa Mosque and from there they went to the Jewish Quarter, fighting all the way. They went into Ramat Rachel, Beit HaKerem, Bayit VeGan, Sanhedria. The British didn’t intervene, and by the time they eventually did so the tragedy had already taken place. But the worst was yet to come. In the next few days violence broke out in other places, and nearly sixty people were killed in Hebron and Safed.”
“But . . . but why?” Daniel asked with tears in his eyes.
“You will know better than I do. It seems that the Arabs were upset that the Jews were praying at the Wall, apparently a group of Zionists even went recently to the Wall and raised a flag there. This inflamed the Muslims and, as you well know, the mufti is not exactly a man of peace,” the man explained.
“But the Jews and the Arabs have always lived in peace in Hebron, we are good neighbors, we have common friends,” Miriam managed to say.
Miriam’s upper lip began to tremble. She thought about her mother, her old mother, her uncles and aunts . . . Had they survived? It took everything she had to hold back her tears, but she could not stop herself from shaking.
“We’ll try to get in touch with your brother-in-law Yossi and with Louis, and you’ll see, your family will be fine,” Samuel tried to console her, but his words lacked conviction.
“That man deserves to die,” Mikhail said angrily.
“Who?” Samuel asked, alarmed at Mikhail’s hatred.
“The mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. It wasn’t enough for him, the Nabi Musa massacre, he had to provoke another, and now he will continue until someone manages to deal with him.”
“What are you saying? Yes, he’s a damn fanatic, but do you want to end up like him?”
“I’m not a child, Samuel, you missed your chance to teach me what was right and what was wrong a long time ago, and much less do you have the right to tell me how I’m supposed to feel. This man has done us a lot of damage.”
When they reached Paris, Miriam’s fears were confirmed. Her mother and her uncles and aunts had all been killed. Also, her sister Judith had sunk into a silence from which there was no way to rescue her. She had lost her sight on Nabi Musa, and now her family had been killed without their neighbors, whom they had trusted and thought of as good friends, doing anything to stop it. Yossi did not know how to deal with this collapse; even Yasmin, her daughter, could not make her mother respond, however much she begged.
Miriam blamed herself for not being in Palestine to bury her mother or to share her sister Judith’s grief. She asked Samuel to let her go home with the children, but he insisted that she stay.
“You cannot do anything. We will go back when we resolve the business that has brought us to Paris; I promise that we won’t be here for more than a week.”
But he did not keep his word. The family was there for four years.
Monsieur Beauvoir received them circumspectly. He seemed to be affected by Irina’s death.
“She died of a heart attack. I was not with her at the time. Irina liked to stay late at the florist’s. When she closed up she would stay for a while organizing everything and preparing the bouquets that had to be delivered first thing in the morning. She liked her work so much that the time passed without her being aware of it. That day, when I woke up, the maid told me that the mistress had not slept in her bed all night. I was worried and went down at once to the florist’s. I found her on the floor with a bunch of roses in her hand. The doctor told me that it had been a sudden attack and that she had scarcely suffered at all.”
Mikhail tried hard to hide the distaste he felt for Monsieur Beauvoir.
“But there must have been some symptom, something that showed she was not well,” he insisted.
“She worked a lot, but she never complained or felt any pain. I don’t have to justify myself, but I will say that I was always concerned for my wife.”
A fight was brewing between Mikhail and Monsieur Beauvoir, and Samuel interrupted to avert it from breaking out. He didn’t much like this man either, but he was the one Irina had chosen and he had to respect her will. They agreed to meet two days later at the notary’s house. Monsieur Beauvoir said that Irina had left a will, but that he didn’t know what it stipulated.
The house, his house, was as he remembered it. Irina had taken care of it in case one day he or Mikhail should want to return.
“I never would have imagined you to have such a luxurious house,” Miriam said to Samuel.
“Luxurious? No, this house isn’t in the least luxurious, it is a petty-bourgeois home,” Samuel said, surprised at his wife’s comment.
“You don’t think these velvet-upholstered chairs are luxurious? And what about the mahogany tables . . . and these paintings . . . and the mirrors? These curtains are real lace, and these ones are velvet brocade . . . I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Daniel was equally surprised.
“I didn’t know you were rich,” he said bluntly.
“Don’t fool yourselves, this is not a rich person’s house. We may visit some friends, then you’ll see what it means to be rich.”
On the agreed-upon day, Mikhail and Samuel went to the notary’s office. Miriam said that she should not come and that she would stay in the house with her three children. It was hot, and the only thing she wanted to do was to go back to Palestine and mourn her mother’s death alongside her sister Judith. She blamed herself for being in Paris, a city where everything seemed strange to her.
Irina had left all she had to Mikhail. She had left nothing to Monsieur Beauvoir. The notary also gave a letter to Mikhail and another to Samuel: Irina had included them with her will.
Pierre Beauvoir seemed upset with the testamentary provisions made by the woman who, at least nominally, had been his wife. Mikhail felt pleased at this last slight Irina had given her husband.
All the money she had earned now belonged to Mikhail, and it was not a small amount. She had also left him her jewels, her paintings, some Bohemian cut glass and a set of silver cutlery.
Mikhail cried as he read Irina’s letter.
My dear Mikhail,
I know that you could not understand or accept that I should marry Monsieur Beauvoir. You will think that I am selfish, that I only think about myself, and I cannot deny that you are right. I would have loved to have loved Samuel as much as I loved Marie; she thought that it would have been the best for all three of us. But I cannot ask forgiveness for what I do not feel, although Samuel will always be my most loyal friend. I appreciate his goodness, his generosity, and his talent, and I hope that one day you will come as well to appreciate him as he deserves.
All I have is yours, because you are the son I should have liked to have had, and I have always thought of you as such. I do not know when or in what circumstances you will read this letter, but whenever it is, you should know that I have loved you always, with all my heart, and not a single day goes by that I don’t think of you.
Always yours,
IRINA
Miriam and Samuel heard Mikhail’s sobs; Samuel wanted to go to him, but Miriam stopped him.
“Let him get rid of his tears. He needs it. And read your letter, it looks like you’re afraid to,” she said as she left the room.
Dear Samuel,
When you read this letter I will no longer be here, but I do not want to go forever without thanking you for all you have done for me. I owe you so much! I was condemned to be unhappy, and you gave me my life back. I know that you loved me, and you cannot imagine how often I have blamed myself for not being able to love you more than as a friend or as a brother. You will have asked yourself on more than one occasion why I have the attitude toward men that I do. I never even told Marie, and now I regret that I did not, because she would have been able to advise me, and to help cure a wound that has never healed. Do you remember that I worked as a nanny in the house of that rich family, the Novikovs? Count Novikov raped me. Not on one occasion, but whenever he wanted to. I had an abortion. I have never been able to get past either of these things. I hope that now you will understand me. Ever since then I have closed my heart to men and to love. I felt dirty because of what had happened, I felt the need to punish myself, and then my soul dried up forever. Mikhail, you, my family—these are the people I have loved more than anyone else. Look after him, he loves you even if he doesn’t know how to show it.
My dear Samuel, I hope that you will now be able to understand me, and forgive me.
Yours,
IRINA»
He sat in silence with his eyes closed. He felt a pain in his chest and he tried to hold back his tears, but he lost the battle. Samuel and Mikhail spent that night alone. Neither of them felt strong enough to leave their rooms, nor did they want to see anyone else. Miriam had understood their needs without their having to say anything, so she asked the children not to make too much noise, and she made them their supper. Daniel helped her. At this moment she felt closer than ever to her oldest son. Neither of them belonged to a world in which the curtains were real lace and the photograph frames burnished silver. They spoke in low voices trying to comfort each other for their loss. Daniel said he wanted to return to Palestine, and Miriam said that they would go as soon as possible. Once the will had been read there would be nothing to keep them in Paris.
However, Samuel did not think that way.
“We cannot go yet, I need to decide what to do with this house; Marie looked after it, and then Irina, but now . . .”
Miriam bit her lower lip. She wanted to go; Samuel had promised that they would go at once, but now they had been in Paris for two weeks. Daniel felt lost, as did she. They didn’t understand the language, and the city was so large . . . A beautiful city, but inhospitable. They had always thought that Jerusalem was the great capital, but alongside Paris it was nothing more than a large village.
“Stay here, I’ll go with the children. You don’t need to worry about the journey. Daniel is a man now.”
“I don’t want you to go, Miriam, I wouldn’t feel calm.”
“I want to go to Palestine. I need to go to my mother’s grave. You have to understand.”
“One more week, just one more, I promise . . .”
He asked for one more week, and he took her to dinner at the house of Monsieur Chevalier, the pharmacist whose laboratory he had worked in during his last stay in Paris, after Marie’s death.
“He taught me all I know about pharmacy, and he showed me that a chemist can be a good pharmacist as well. I couldn’t disappoint him by refusing his invitation. They want to know you, Miriam, you are my wife and you have to come with me.”
Miriam was surprised that Samuel did not share in her grief. He seemed to be ignorant of the profound grief that she felt at the deaths of her mother and her uncles and aunts, as well as the illness her sister Judith was suffering from. Samuel had shut the door on Palestine and all that he had left there. She wanted to leave, but Samuel’s insistence that she stay made her think that maybe he did love her more than he said he did, even to himself.
“I’ll ask Mikhail to take Daniel and you to do some shopping. The clothes we brought from Palestine do not suffice for Paris.”
“I like my clothes, I know that they are modest compared with what the women wear here, but I am who I am and I don’t want to be anyone else.”
“I love you for who you are, Miriam, which I why I ask you to be patient.”
“The children are going crazy, locked up in the apartment all day, they need fresh air . . .”
“I’ve spoken with the concierge . . . He’s given me the name of a niece of his who can help you with the house and look after the children. Her name is Agnès, and she is willing to start coming tomorrow. He says that she is a very handy young lady.”
“The children don’t understand French . . .”
“They’ll learn . . .”
Mikhail did not understand why Samuel was not mourning for Irina, and he refused to go to the dinner.
Miriam bought a discreet silk dress, but in spite of Samuel’s insistence that she have her hair dressed she decided to do it herself. She mourned her mother in silence, and it would have seemed a betrayal to go even for one minute to the hairdresser.
Monsieur Chevalier had grown older. His wife’s death two years before had robbed him of his will to live. They had never had children and they were everything to each other. The loneliness was unbearable for him, and were it not for the responsibility he felt toward his employees, he would have closed the laboratory.
The guests included David Peretz, the son of Benedict Peretz, the Jewish merchant friend of his grandfather who had helped him so much in the past, first in opening up his path to Palestine, and then in finding him his job with Monsieur Chevalier. Samuel apologized to David for not having attended his father’s funeral. He had received the news during the days after the Nabi Musa massacre.
What he could not imagine was the surprise prepared for him by Monsieur Chevalier and David Peretz. He was introducing Miriam to a group of old friends when he heard a laugh that sounded familiar. He had to turn around.
“Katia!” he exclaimed, without being able to believe what he was seeing.
“Samuel! My God, it’s true, you’re here!”
They hugged, in the face of Miriam’s confusion and the self-satisfied gazes of Monsieur Chevalier and David Peretz.
They could not separate themselves or contain their tears. For Samuel, Katia Goldanski was the best of his past; he saw in her his old mentor Gustav Goldanski, his old friend Konstantin, and the life he had lost in Saint Petersburg.
“You haven’t changed!” Samuel said in Russian as he looked dazedly at her.
“What a liar you are! How could I not change? The years pass for me as they pass for us all,” she replied, without coquetry or artifice.
But Samuel saw her as she had been, that elegant little countess, with her silky blonde hair and her clear, intense blue gaze, her porcelain skin, as beautiful as she had been when she was a child. He found her more beautiful than ever. Maturity suited her. Katia was a few years younger than he was, she must be nearly fifty.
Miriam looked at them without knowing what to do. This woman seemed to be unreal, to have stepped out of a painting. She thought she knew who Katia was. Samuel had spoken to her about Konstantin and Katia, but he had never said that she was a beauty. For a moment she felt the urge to run away. Miriam did not look out of place in Jerusalem, but here, in this salon . . . She felt that the other women were looking at her out of the corners of their eyes and scrutinizing her clothes and her hair, poorly gathered in a chignon at the back of her head.
“And you must be Miriam,” Katia said, catching sight of her and embracing her.
“You’ll have to speak in English,” Samuel warned.
They spent the rest of the evening getting themselves up to date with how their lives had been over the past few years, although they both had bits and pieces of news from the correspondence kept up by Konstantin and Samuel. They switched from English to French and from French to Russian without realizing it. Russian was their mother tongue, the language of their first babbled words, the first language in which they had laughed and cried.
“My brother is in London, he would have liked to come, but he is closing a piece of business. He will be here in a few days. He told me to keep you here however I can, he doesn’t want you to go back to Palestine without seeing him. You don’t know his wife yet, her name’s Vera, they have a son, Gustav. Yes, baptized as Gustav in honor of my grandfather.”
When the evening came to an end, Samuel took Katia back to where she was staying with some friends, insisting that they dine together the next day.
He was so happy to have met Katia again that he didn’t notice how worried Miriam seemed or how upset Daniel was. The young man had spent the whole dinner in silence. He didn’t speak or understand French, so he felt out of place in that environment where they used a different knife and fork for each course, and where the women smelled so intensely of perfume that it drove one dizzy.
“Mother, I want to go back to Palestine,” he begged his mother that evening.
“Samuel needs us here, but when he has his business in order we will go. I’ve promised you that.”
Samuel was nervous, and he asked Miriam to do all she could to make Katia feel at ease.
“She has always been used to the best. I hope that the concierge’s niece is a good cook.”
“The important thing is that you will all be together, the food is the least of it,” Miriam said.
Mikhail barely remembered Katia, but he was happy to speak with someone who belonged to the past, the past they had taken away from him, the past that contained his father. Katia and Samuel talked about how they had played together as children.
“In fact, Konstantin and he threw me out of the playroom, I was never important for them, they looked for me only when they needed to distract our German nurse because they had thought up some naughtiness or other,” Katia explained.
“You said yesterday that you had moved to London, why is that?” Samuel asked.
“Because it was not easy to live in Russia after the revolution. We had committed three unpardonable sins: We were rich, we were nobility, and we were half Jewish.”
“The revolution was to do away with differences among men. Religion was to cease being important . . . ,” Samuel began, but Katia would not let him continue.
“That’s what my brother and you believed, but it was not so. Konstantin hasn’t wanted to worry you by writing in his letters about what we went through . . . We suffered a lot, Samuel, you can’t imagine how much, and my grandmother more than us. Her world suddenly collapsed, for all that Konstantin tried to protect us . . . One morning some members of the Saint Petersburg soviet came to our house. They had been sent by a man, a political commissar, Feliks Surov. They treated us like we were thieves, and gave no room for doubt: Private property had been abolished; this was no longer our house . . . They had reassigned it to twenty families. My grandmother tried to resist . . . Poor woman! Suddenly the house was opened to these people. You should have seen them, Samuel . . . I don’t blame them, no, I don’t blame them . . . but they hated us so! I remember a woman coming face to face with my grandmother and growling, ‘Well, so this is a mansion, this is how the nobles live, surrounded by silk and silver plate . . .’ and then suddenly shoving all the porcelain figures off my grandmother’s desk. They trod on some Fabergé eggs my grandfather had given her; they took the paintings off the walls because they said they needed fuel for the fires that winter . . . My grandmother trembled but maintained her dignity. Some of our servants interceded for us, saying that we had always treated them well, but that made Surov even angrier, and he was the leader of the group. He took pleasure in humiliating us, he called us enemies of the people and said that if it were up to him then we should pay with our lives for the suffering we had caused. Vera, Konstantin’s wife, started to shake. She was pregnant and worried that this man should be so angry. I asked my brother not to stand up to them. We were the losers, and had to deal with this new situation. I don’t want to lie to you, it was not easy, our life became a living hell. Ivan, do you remember Ivan, our stableman? He was a good man and loyal to my family, he gave us shelter in the shed he lived in next to the stables. He helped you leave with Mikhail and Irina, remember? Ivan knew Surov, because he had been his grandchildren’s teacher. The Okhrana had arrested him for revolutionary activities, and it was a miracle that he had survived. Ivan always defended us when Feliks Surov ridiculed us, but Surov turned on him and accused him of being a counterrevolutionary because he questioned Surov’s methods.”
Katia’s eyes grew serious. Mikhail looked at her closely and found it difficult to hide his indignation.
“Are you telling me that the people who made the revolution possible behaved like the worst kind of riffraff?” he asked.
Katia thought for a while, trying to find the words to reply correctly while dissipating Mikhail’s anger.
“I’m not going to defend our last tsar, he doesn’t deserve it. His predecessors didn’t try to find out what the people wanted or needed either, they preferred having serfs to having citizens. They could have been like their British or German cousins, but they were not, they were incapable of understanding that you cannot carry on committing injustices permanently. The people hated the imperial family, they hated the nobles, they hated the bourgeoisie, they hated everyone whom they saw as having everything while they were unable to feed their children.” Katia stared fixedly at Mikhail before continuing. “I know that your father Yuri was a revolutionary, that my brother and Samuel sympathized with socialism, because no one with a heart could fail to be moved at such injustice. I never shared my brother’s opinions about the revolutionaries, but I would have liked my country to change, I would have liked the tsar to have been able to implement reforms, I would have liked there to be a parliament where people could speak freely about the problems they faced . . . We would not have had to improvise, we had the British model to work with.”
“You cannot convince me that the revolutionaries behaved like hangmen,” Mikhail insisted.
“Russia has bled to death with the Civil War, the Red Army against the White Army . . . And yes, on too many occasions the revolutionaries behaved in a brutal fashion. They enforced their revolution at the same level of cruelty that the tsar had enforced his rule.” Katia said these words with no hesitation, even in the face of Mikhail’s furious gaze.
“Are you so naïve as to think that the proud aristocrats, the caste that governed Russia, the tsar and his family, were simply going to bow to the people and agree that they had spent centuries exploiting them? Do you really think he would have shared his power? No, he wouldn’t have. We took what was ours. Men like my father gave their lives to give dignity back to Russia. What life is worth living if a man is a serf?” Mikhail had raised his voice.
“My grandparents taught me to respect my fellow man. My grandfather would never have allowed Konstantin or me to grow up thinking that we were better than anyone else simply for having been born noble. My grandfather always treated his servants with respect and affection,” Katia replied in a peaceful voice.
“Yes, you were condescending aristocrats, but why did you have to have everything while those around you had nothing? You should go to Palestine and see how the Jews are living there. It wouldn’t do you any harm to live on a kibbutz . . . No one owns anything on our farms, everything’s shared, and no decisions are taken without everyone being in agreement. The kitchen and the dining room are communal, the children are all educated by everyone. Do you know where this miracle of equality comes from? The Russian Jews, men who think the same as my father did. It is not easy to live on a kibbutz, only the best can do so, those who really think that all human beings are equal, that no one deserves to have more than anyone else.”
“Yes, equality is a beautiful dream, but tell me, Mikhail, do the Russian socialists in Palestine make everyone else live like them? Do they put people who disagree with them into prison? Do they kill those who resist? Is it obligatory to be a communist? Our revolutionaries have imposed a reign of terror. They say that everything they do is in the name of the people, but they don’t ask the people what they want, how they want to live,” Katia said, unwilling to bend before Mikhail.
Samuel took Katia’s hand and asked her to continue with her story.
“My grandmother died of a heart attack. She couldn’t bear it when Konstantin and Vera lost their daughter. She was born prematurely and was very weak. Vera was ill and didn’t have the milk to feed her, and although Konstantin and I did what we could to find milk, we didn’t always manage. We sold what we had, little by little, to get milk for the child, but even if we had had all the money in the world, there wasn’t always milk available. The baby grew sick and . . . died in Konstantin’s arms. Vera grew worse, she blamed herself for the baby’s death, for having given birth too soon, for not having the milk to feed her. My grandmother’s heart broke. I thank God that she died in her sleep, and the doctor said she had felt nothing. From that moment onwards, Konstantin believed that we had to leave Russia. They had taken all that we owned, the house in Saint Petersburg, the summerhouse in Yalta . . . My grandmother had managed to keep some jewels. She had given them to Ivan the stableman, and he hid them in the stables, along with some paintings that Konstantin had managed to cut out of their frames and roll up carefully to save them. We were also able to save the papers that credited us with money deposited by my grandfather in a couple of banks, one in England and the other in Switzerland. We didn’t know how much it was, and we prayed that it would be enough for us to start a new life. We used some of my grandmother’s jewels as bribes. That’s how we managed to get to Sweden and then to England. It was not an easy journey, you know because you took the same route as we did a few years before. Vera was sick and broken down by the loss of her daughter. We dressed like peasants, trying to hide who we were, but lots of people saw through our disguise. They stopped us in a town near the frontier. A group of revolutionaries thought we were suspicious. Thanks be to God, they didn’t realize we had some jewels with us. We had sewn them into the linings of our coats. Apparently, there were White troops nearby, and there were constant skirmishes. We managed to avoid being sent back to Saint Petersburg because the Whites attacked the village that night and we managed to escape in the confusion . . . If you could have seen us running through the snow to hide in the wood. Konstantin wouldn’t let us rest and insisted that we keep running. Vera fainted, and my husband carried her on his shoulders as if she were a sack, and even so he refused to let us stop and rest. I cried and begged for him to stop, to look after Vera. I was afraid she would die . . . But he didn’t listen to me. He kept moving, always going forwards with a determination that astonished me. Sometimes he tripped and Vera and he fell into the snow, but he struggled to his feet and continued walking. We spent several days in the woods, fearing that the Red Army would find us at any moment . . . God took pity on us because one afternoon we saw some men out hunting—we were going to flee but they turned out to be friendly. We were in Sweden.”
For some time, Miriam and Daniel had not understood what Katia was saying. She had stopped talking in English and had switched to Russian, as if she could explain the pain she had suffered only in her native tongue. They all sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Samuel and Mikhail began once again to talk, both in Russian. Miriam got up and left the salon. She realized that she and Daniel were out of place there, and that they were not part of this past that belonged to the three who remained sitting at the table.
Later on, Samuel told her what Katia had told them, about her escape from Saint Petersburg to London, where they now lived.
Konstantin had been surprised that although there was not a huge amount of money in the English and Swiss accounts, it was still enough for them to live decently.
In Kensington they rented a house that was not very large but it was enough for the three of them. They could even employ servants: a mother and daughter, both very handy, who cleaned and cooked. Katia and Vera told Konstantin that it would not be necessary to hire servants, but he said he didn’t want to see them cleaning the house.
Konstantin took advice from certain old friends and invested his money successfully. They lived off the investments.
“We live simply,” Katia had explained, “but we have enough money not to lack anything important.”
Katia had thought that it would be hard for Vera to adapt to her new life. Her parents were old Russian aristocrats, and she had lived for a good part of her childhood and adolescence in close contact with the court. But Vera never complained and accepted the situation with good cheer. She loved Konstantin and could not grasp the idea of life without him; so she and Katia did what they could to make sure he didn’t worry.
London, Katia told them, was even more cosmopolitan than Saint Petersburg. They integrated rapidly, and were even received at court, thanks to a friend of Vera’s who was married to an English aristocrat.
Katia filled Samuel’s life. He had lunch with her, he took her to the opera, together they went to visit friends, Russian exiles like themselves. Miriam did not always come with them. She felt excluded from this relationship, it was as if she had become a stranger once more to Samuel and he was starting to become one to her as well.
“Konstantin is coming tomorrow. I want you to meet him. You’ll like him. He is a true aristocrat and not one of the ones we’ve met here . . . ,” Samuel said.
Miriam could not help immediately sympathizing with Konstantin. He was more handsome than she had imagined, but he was also so gentlemanly toward her that she felt like a princess.
Konstantin insisted that when Miriam or Daniel were present they only speak English, and he refused to reply when Samuel or Katia, without thinking, started to talk in Russian.
“Where are your manners? Miriam does not understand us, and as we all know English, we will speak only in English,” Konstantin insisted.
Ever since his arrival, Miriam had not minded taking part in their visits, which always ended up at the house of some Russian aristocrat who had fled the Revolution. Konstantin made sure that she did not feel out of place, and treated her as if she were his own sister.
If she had not been in love with Samuel, then she might have fallen in love with Konstantin, although she tried to put this feeling to one side, as she was also kindly disposed toward Vera. But she was a little surprised that a man like Konstantin could have such a fragile-seeming wife, especially one who was not exactly a beauty. Of medium height, with chestnut-brown hair and eyes, and extremely thin, Vera would not have stood out anywhere had it not been for her aristocratic bearing and her silk dresses.
Miriam scolded herself for finding Vera insignificant, as she was always extremely friendly and attentive to her, just as Konstantin was.
Aside from the presence of Konstantin and Vera, Miriam found these evenings boring, all these visits to the houses of Russians who had fled the Bolsheviks and were now trying to make France their new homeland.
Samuel and Konstantin introduced her to princes and dukes with excessively long names, who behaved as though they were still at the court of the tsar even though many of them were forced to live with a modesty they could never have imagined. A large number of these exiles had to work to survive, and only at these evening parties, which they attended as elegantly as they could, did they recover a little of their former brio.
Miriam was surprised at the aversion she saw in the eyes of some of these ruined aristocrats. It was all too clear that they considered her vulgar. When they asked about her life in Palestine, she spoke to them about Hebron, about her farming family, about when she was a child and had looked after the goats with the other girls. She felt proud of her life and wouldn’t have traded it for any other.
“You are prettier than any of these duchesses,” Mikhail assured her, out of the instinctive antipathy he felt for all of Konstantin and Katia’s friends.
In spite of their reticence, they did attend some of these parties to which Samuel was always trying to make them go. It was a relief to Miriam to have Mikhail near her. She liked to hear him making provocative comments. He said that the Bolshevik revolution had been necessary, given the incapacity of the tsar and the nobles to solve the problems faced by the Russian people.
“We were serfs, and now we are citizens, the revolution was worthwhile for that alone,” he said seriously.
The exiles were scandalized without understanding how this young man who had come with the Goldanskis could claim to support the revolution, and they explained to him that if the Russian people had been asking for freedom and justice, then they had not obtained either.
Two months had now gone by since their arrival in Paris, and still Daniel was asking his mother to go back to Palestine. Although he was learning French, Daniel felt there was no sense in remaining in Paris. He missed the laboratory bench, he missed even the scolding that Netanel would give him for not having ordered the implements they used to create the medicines that provided them with a living. Daniel insisted so often that Miriam once again raised with Samuel the idea of their return.
“Konstantin, Vera, and Katia are going to London tomorrow and you have had enough time to put your affairs in order. We should go back. Also, since we came here we have barely had time to be with the children. Have you realized how much Dalida has grown? Our daughter’s clothes are too small, and so are Ezekiel’s. They are very young and need to be at home.”
“They are at home, this is their home as well,” Samuel replied, ill-humoredly.
“This is your house, not theirs.”
“How can you say that? You are my wife, and Dalida and Ezekiel are my children, all that I have belongs to you. The children don’t mind Paris; you might have noticed, Dalida and Ezekiel both chat a little in French already.”
“You gave me your word, Samuel . . .”
“You’re right, and all I can do is ask you once more to have patience. I haven’t told you, but I am going into business with Konstantin.”
Miriam said nothing, hurt and surprised by what she had just heard.
“You know that while I was in Paris I worked in Monsieur Chevalier’s laboratory. He is now an old man and he has no children. He has suggested that I take over the business. He is offering me an excellent price, given that the laboratory is working at its full potential. With Konstantin’s help we could export some of the medicines abroad. Monsieur Chevalier has a couple of patents that are worth their weight in gold . . . What do you think?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Miriam felt her stomach knot.
“Why don’t we stay in Paris? I don’t mean forever, but for a while. You know that we have enough money to live comfortably, and if I invest a little of it in the laboratory . . . I thought that we could send some of the medicine we make here in Monsieur Chevalier’s laboratory to Palestine.”
“You have a laboratory at Hope Orchard.”
“Please, Miriam. It’s a converted shed where we can make half a dozen remedies; we make medicines that are very basic, except when Yossi passes us a master formula. I’m talking about having a real laboratory. I’m not a pharmacist, although I dedicate myself to making medicines. I won’t deny that I am attracted to the idea of going into business like Konstantin. I would like to try . . .”
“My son Daniel would like to go back,” Miriam said, making an effort not to break down.
“Well, he can; Mikhail has told me he’s going, too, they can go together.”
“You forget that he is my son.”
“You’re right. The best thing is for him to stay.”
“Daniel has nothing to do in Paris.”
“You’re wrong there. If I buy Monsieur Chevalier’s laboratory, Daniel can work in it. He’ll learn things that will be very useful for when we go back to Palestine.”
“Are you sure you’ll go back one day?” Miriam asked, fearful of what the answer might be.
“Of course! All I’m asking is that you let me try to start this business. You don’t know how much it would mean to me to share this with Konstantin and Katia . . . I won’t hide from you that it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so at peace with myself. We live so intensely in Palestine that we have no time to think about ourselves. Please, Miriam . . .”
Miriam resigned herself to the inevitable; she knew that for all she insisted, Samuel had no intention of returning to Palestine, at least not at the moment. She was ready to sacrifice herself to this new scheme but was worried about Daniel. Her oldest son was not adapting well to Paris. The city was beautiful and grandiose, so much so that he felt lost. He had no friends and it was an uphill struggle for him to learn French, unlike her two younger children, Ezekiel and Dalida. Mikhail had done all he could to help Daniel, and had often asked him to come to reunions with his old friends from his childhood. Daniel preferred being with Mikhail and his friends to being with Samuel and his friends, but even so, these young Frenchmen seemed very strange to him.
Miriam explained the situation to him without hiding her worries about losing Samuel.
“If we go and leave him here, I don’t know what might happen. Samuel has found his past once again with Konstantin and Katia, and at the moment it’s the most important thing there is for him.”
“You mean that these people are more important to him than me or my brother and sister?”
“Not exactly . . . He loves us, he loves us all, he loves you, he shows he loves you, but now he needs to be with his friends and he doesn’t want to miss the opportunity that Monsieur Chevalier has given him of becoming the owner of a good laboratory. He has said that you could work with him, so you would have the chance to carry on learning. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I understand that you shouldn’t leave Samuel. He is your husband. But you have to understand me and let me go back. I’ll be alright in Palestine. My uncle and aunt, Judith and Yossi, are there, and also my cousin Yasmin. They are our only family now that . . . Well, after grandmother was murdered.”
They sat for a few seconds in silence, Miriam holding back her tears; thinking about her mother’s murder caused a sharp pain in her chest.
“But Yossi can’t look after you, he’s got enough to do as it is with looking after my sister. Judith is very ill and Yasmin works all the time helping her father and looking after her mother. You would be a burden.”
“I didn’t say I was going to live with them, although if I did I would try to be useful. I will go back to Hope Orchard and work alongside Netanel. He will encourage me to finish my schooling and even to go to the university. And you know that Kassia and Ruth treat me like a son.”
“Yes, but . . . I don’t want to be apart from you.” Miriam started to weep.
Mikhail interrupted them, surprised to see Miriam crying.
“What’s happening here?” he asked.
While she explained what had happened, the color rose in Mikhail’s face.
“Samuel will never settle in any one place. He doesn’t have a home. He’s alright now because he’s found Konstantin and Katia again, but in a while he’ll leave them to go back to Palestine, or somewhere else. He doesn’t care about hurting the people he claims to love. He abandoned me when I was a child and thought of him as my only support. Miriam, if you go back to Palestine, he will not follow you. If you love him, the only thing you can do is to stay here in Paris until he decides to go back. As for you, Daniel, come with me if you want. There’s a boat leaving Marseilles in a week. I can buy you a ticket.”
“I’m surprised you want to go back to Palestine. You’re rich . . . You’ve inherited a lot of money and you’re almost French, you were educated here and if you wanted to you could become the best violinist in the world,” Daniel replied.
“Yes, my childhood is here, my first adolescent years are here, my friends are here, and so are my dreams of becoming a great musician. I was happy here with Marie and Irina. But I couldn’t bear it that Irina married Monsieur Beauvoir, and that’s why I left to go to Palestine with Samuel, although I would really have gone anywhere. I never imagined that Palestine would become so important to me. Sometimes I ask myself if it makes sense to lead as deprived a life as we live there. But now I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I’m happy to have met my childhood friends again, to have gotten to know my city once again, and to have enjoyed all the little bourgeois pleasures I grew up with once more, and it will always seem that Paris belongs to me. But here I realized that Yasmin is more important to me. If I could bring her here, live with her in Paris, but it is impossible . . . With her mother in such a state, Yasmin will never leave Palestine. So I will go home, determined to marry her.”
They embraced each other. Mikhail had surprised them, he had always seemed so introverted, even reticent.
“I’m so happy that you will become my nephew,” said Miriam. “And I am sure you will be very happy with Yasmin.”
Later, with Mikhail’s help, Daniel convinced her not to try to go back to Palestine. She had no other option than to accept the situation or to leave Samuel, and that idea hurt her the most.
Months turned into years and it was 1933. They had left Palestine four years ago. Miriam and Samuel had developed a routine that seemed to make him happy. He had bought Monsieur Chevalier’s laboratory, and had teamed up with Konstantin to sell medicine in England and several other European countries, which led them to travel together and rediscover their childhood bonds. Monsieur Chevalier owned the patent to several medicines that had been extremely good earners for him, especially after the Great War.
Samuel traveled to London regularly and tended to stay for rather longer than Miriam would have liked. She knew that when he went there he spent a large amount of time with Katia and on more than one occasion she had caught them looking at each other with a tenderness that upset her greatly.
She realized that they had stopped being a couple and had instead become a quintet, because their lives were now inseparable from those of Konstantin, Vera and Katia.
She wasn’t happy, but Samuel was. Her only consolations were the letters she received from Daniel, in which he told her that he was well, and her two younger children, Dalida and Ezekiel, who had adapted to Parisian life without any problems. Miriam took them to school every morning and in the afternoons it was Agnès, the young maid, who took them to play in the Luxembourg Gardens.
What most drove her to despair was that in spite of her efforts to make Samuel feel comfortable, he barely noticed her. Finally giving in to her hairdresser’s advice, she now wore her hair like the Parisians did, and even dressed like them. Dresses that barely covered her knee, hats, gloves . . . Samuel told her to spend as much as she wanted. But he never noticed when she was wearing a new dress. It was hard for Miriam to realize that their marriage was a farce and that the only thing that tied them together was Dalida and Ezekiel. Samuel loved his children, and it was only when he was with them that anything approaching tenderness appeared on his face. But it would take them two more years to finally decide to put an end to their life in common.
Miriam had never succumbed to the temptation to read Samuel’s private papers, but one morning she found a note on the floor that had fallen out of his pocket. She picked it up and recognized Katia’s rounded handwriting.
My dear, we miss you so much. Three weeks without seeing you seems like an eternity. Vera is preparing everything for Gustav’s birthday. Can you imagine, my nephew is going to be ten! He’s going to boarding school next year, so Vera wants this birthday to be unforgettable, but it won’t be if you are not here.
We’ll expect you.
Ever yours,
KATIA
Miriam didn’t know what to think. She was scared of asking for explanations from Samuel, as she was certain he would point out that this was an entirely innocent letter, with not a single line that could be misinterpreted. But she knew that this was a letter from a woman in love. She was inviting him to Gustav’s birthday celebration, but not extending the invitation to her or her children. Katia had never been affectionate toward Dalida and Ezekiel, as if it were hard for her to acknowledge them as Samuel’s children.
Dalida had inherited Miriam’s dark hair and olive skin. Ezekiel looked more like Samuel, although his hair was chestnut-colored and there were traces of his mother’s Sephardi heritage. Neither of them at all resembled Gustav, Vera and Konstantin’s son, who looked like an angel from a Renaissance painting. He was so blond, his skin so white, his eyes so blue that it was impossible not to look at him. Also, Miriam was pleased that in spite of his youth the child behaved with such correct manners. Dalida and Ezekiel fought with each other, and she had to tell them not to run in the house and to always sit up straight.
She spent the rest of the day without knowing what to do, and waited impatiently for Samuel to return from the laboratory. But she couldn’t find the right time to raise her fears with him, because he was tense and preoccupied.
“I have to go to Berlin in a few weeks’ time, and I don’t like what’s happening in Germany,” he said as a greeting.
“You mean the new chancellor?” she asked.
“Yes, this Hitler hates the Jews.”
“I don’t understand why President Paul von Hindenburg named him chancellor . . . ,” Miriam replied.
“Because he is afraid of the communists. German politicians are worried that their compatriots will see communism as a solution to all their problems. Do you know how many people are out of work? The country is about to collapse. Konstantin insists that we should sell medicines to Germany, but ever since we’ve set up shop there I’ve only had headaches. And I won’t hide from you that these bands of swastika-waving thugs are terrifying . . . Lots of Jews are leaving Germany, others are refusing to go, they feel German like the others, but Hitler doesn’t believe them to be so. You can’t count the humiliations they’ve suffered.”
“Then you shouldn’t go. You are a Jew, let Konstantin go.”
“But he’s a Jew as well.”
“Not as much as we are.”
“What do you mean? His grandmother was Jewish.”
“But his mother wasn’t, so he could be just another Russian. And as far as I know, he never sets foot in a synagogue.”
“Come on, Miriam, I never go to the synagogue either, and you only go every once in a blue moon. What does going to the synagogue have to do with being Jewish?”
“If you’re worried, you shouldn’t go to Berlin. Why do you need more money? You’ve got more than you’ll ever be able to spend.”
They ate with their children. Miriam always sat the children at the table with them; she felt sorry for Gustav because Samuel had told her that he always either ate alone or with his nurse. Vera, sweet Vera, could not stop behaving like the aristocrat she was, and in her understanding it was impossible for a child to sit at the table with his parents. Konstantin did not share his wife’s opinion. But he was out of the house so often that it did not seem right for him to question his wife’s childrearing methods.
She thrust Gustav out of her thoughts so that she could hear her children’s chatter. Dalida was a clever and perceptive child who never stopped asking questions.
Then, once the children were in bed, Miriam took the opportunity to ask about the letter.
“I left a letter on top of your chest of drawers, it must have fallen out of your pocket last night or this morning. It’s from Katia.”
Samuel shifted in his chair but kept looking straight at her.
“Yes, they’ve invited me to Gustav’s birthday party.”
“It’s strange that they haven’t invited me or the children.”
They were silent. Miriam looked straight at him; he wanted to escape from her gaze.
“Well, Katia knows that you don’t like to travel.”
“And how does she know? Perhaps because I’m never invited to be, for example, your companion on one of your interminable journeys to London?”
“What are you trying to say?” Samuel was on edge now.
“I’ve been in Paris for four years now, and I still don’t know why. When I came I was your wife, but now I’m only the woman who looks after your children. You asked me to give you time, and I gave you time. You have your laboratory, and a life that fits you like a glove, and there’s no room for me in it. I’m going to leave, Samuel, I’m going to go back to Palestine. Dalida and Ezekiel will come with me.”
“I don’t understand you! You want to go because you are offended that Katia didn’t invite you personally to Gustav’s birthday party?” Samuel sounded irritated.
“I want to go because I have nothing to do here. I’ve still not seen my mother’s tomb. My son Daniel is over there. My sister is still ill. I was not able to attend my niece’s wedding to Mikhail. Shall I give you more reasons? Yes, I’ll give you the definitive one: You don’t love me, Samuel, you don’t love me. I am a part of your surroundings and nothing more. You don’t love me and you don’t need me. Maybe you did at the beginning, but now I am unnecessary here. I will never fully adapt to life in Paris. I don’t like those parties where so many beautiful women compete among themselves, where the social relations are so hypocritical . . . Everyone criticizes everyone else . . . The men cheat on their wives with their wives’ best friends, and the wives take their revenge by spending their husbands’ money and cheating on him with the first good-for-nothing who comes along . . . And then, all those exiled Russians . . . Who do they think they are! Some of them still behave as if they lived in Saint Petersburg, as if they still had their palaces and their privileges . . . I am a peasant, Samuel. I was born in Hebron and looked after goats as a child. I ran around barefoot in the summer . . . What do I have in common with these women you introduce me to, who all look at me with condescension?”
“Are you finished?” Samuel said, barely able to hide his irritation.
“No, I am not finished. I have something else to say to you. I don’t know if you are in love with Katia, it’s clear she is in love with you. But I see that you are a different person when you are with her. You are friendly, you smile . . . You treat her with so much attention and so much consideration . . . You fit so well with each other . . . I am tired of always feeling like an intruder. I’ll leave the field open to her.”
Miriam got up and left the room. That night she slept in the guest bedroom and locked herself in, refusing to respond to Samuel’s requests that she open the door. The next day, he was standing outside when she let herself out.
“You haven’t gone to the laboratory?” she asked, trying to appear indifferent.
“You think I could do that after what you said to me last night?”
“It is never pleasant to hear the truth.”
Samuel knew that Miriam was right, and his selfishness hurt him, as did the fact that he was incapable of loving her more. Irina was the only woman he had ever loved, although sometimes he asked himself if he had been in love with a dream. He had liked Miriam for her strength, her righteousness, her optimism, and her ability to make everyday life easier, but had he been in love with her? No . . . No, he had not. He knew that Miriam was right: She did not fit in in Paris, and as for Katia, she was in his heart without his realizing it. That skinny little blonde girl who had annoyed him and Konstantin so much when they had been children together had become a woman toward whom it was difficult to remain indifferent, even though she was now mature. He couldn’t help but admit that her delicate manners and her Slavic beauty took him back to the years of his childhood, when he had admired all the beautiful women who came to the Goldanskis’ balls. And although he was sure that he was not in love with Katia, he could not resist the attraction he felt toward her.
“I want us to give it another chance. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I want to try at least,” Samuel said.
Miriam was about to burst into tears, but she said to herself that she would never forgive herself if she did.
“I’ve been thinking that we should go to Spain, to Toledo, so that you can get to know the city that your ancestors fled more than four hundred years ago. Dalida and Ezekiel will like it, they are old enough to understand,” Samuel added.
“Toledo? We’ll go to Toledo?” Miriam’s voice was filled with emotion.
She couldn’t resist the invitation. When she was a little girl her father had told her how her ancestors had been expelled from their house in Toledo. Her father and uncles had told her about the city in such detail that it seemed to her that she knew it like the back of her hand. She kept the key to their former house in the city, a key that had been passed down from father to son over the centuries, along with the old title deeds to the property. Now the key was in Judith’s hands, as she was the older sister.
She would find her roots in Toledo, she would find a part of her essence. She had never dreamed that she would be able to visit the former capital of Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella had forced her family to go into exile. In the Greek city of Thessaloniki, at that time part of the Ottoman Empire, they had found a new home, but they would never forget that their true home was in Sepharad, and that their house, their real house, was in a little alley in Toledo, close to the synagogue, not far from where Samuel Levi, the treasurer to Pedro I of Castile, had had his residence.
When their paternal grandparents had begun to speak of Toledo, she and her sister Judith had listened in ecstasy. Her mother, a Jewish peasant from Hebron, felt proud to have married this man whose ancestors came from the ancient capital of Sepharad.
Miriam’s happiness made Samuel feel a little less miserable. He had improvised the idea of traveling to Toledo, it was the first thing to come to mind when he was thinking of how to keep Miriam. Later he thought it was not such a good idea, as the journey served only to prolong a relationship that was already dying.
They reached San Sebastián in the middle of March. It was cold. Spring had not yet reached the city. The children liked the city but they were only there for a couple of days. Samuel wanted to get to Madrid, where he was to have a meeting with a Catalan businessman who was keen to import some of the medicines his laboratory made.
Manuel Castells was waiting for them at the Estación del Norte. Samuel thanked him for having made the effort to come meet them.
“The Ritz is not very far from here. You couldn’t have chosen a better place to stay. Relax today, there will be time for business tomorrow.”
The Spaniard was already quite old, and well but discreetly dressed. Miriam was surprised by the fluency with which he spoke French.
“There is no escaping it if you want to do business,” he said, flattered. “But I have a confession to make: I am from Catalonia, my family is from Cerdaña, which is a village close to the border with France, and when I was a boy I had a nanny from Perpignan.”
Miriam was surprised to find that she understood so much Spanish. It was familiar to her because her father had been Sephardi and that old version of Castilian was what she had learned from her mother’s lips. Miriam’s father liked to talk to his children in the language of Sepharad, and now Miriam was proud to find that she could understand almost everything that was being said around her.
“I don’t like it as much as Paris,” Dalida said, looking at everything that surrounded them as the car drove along Gran Via.
“How can you say that? You haven’t seen anything yet,” her mother answered.
“You like it because you are Spanish,” Dalida claimed.
Miriam sighed but said nothing. Her daughter was right, she did not think of herself as a stranger in Spain.
When Manuel Castells found out that Samuel’s intention was to visit Toledo, he offered to lend them his car. They accepted gratefully, and four days after arriving in Madrid they set off again, heading toward the destination that Miriam longed so much to see: Toledo, the Imperial City. They booked themselves into a hotel not far from the cathedral, recommended to them by Castells himself.
“It’s bigger than Notre-Dame,” Dalida said when she saw the majestic cathedral that dominated the city.
Samuel had studied the map of the city very carefully and had asked his new business partner for directions to the street where Miriam’s forefathers had lived. He wanted to surprise her and take her there without telling her.
“Let’s have a walk around Toledo,” he suggested to Miriam and his children.
He made them walk for quite a while around the judería, which was what the area of the town was called where the Jews of Toledo used to live. As they walked, the spirit of the city began to impregnate their skin. The children walked together, surprised at these narrow streets whose corners seemed to form a labyrinth. Miriam looked at everything. She was obviously moved and could not stop talking.
“It’s like the Old City,” Dalida said.
“So, it reminds you of Jerusalem . . . It’s not a bad comparison,” Samuel said, who found his daughter’s comments enjoyable.
“If only my father could see me now! He always dreamed of going to Toledo. He knew it so well . . . ,” Miriam interrupted them.
“Were our grandparents ever in Toledo?” Dalida wanted to know.
“No, but they knew all about the city because their parents had told them about it, and their parents’ parents had told them, and so on, all the way back to the fifteenth century, when our ancestors were expelled from Spain.”
“Why were they expelled? Had they been bad?” Ezekiel asked.
“Bad? No, they hadn’t done anything bad. They were expelled because they were Jews.”
“We’re Jews, is that bad?” Ezekiel asked, worriedly.
“No, it’s not bad, but there are some places where they don’t like the Jews,” Samuel interrupted.
“But why?” Ezekiel insisted.
Miriam tried to give an explanation that Ezekiel could grasp, but her son didn’t understand what his mother was saying, so finally he surprised them all by stating:
“Well, all we have to do is stop being Jews, and then everyone will love us and they won’t throw us out of anywhere anymore.”
Samuel hugged Ezekiel. At that moment he saw himself, many, many years ago, arguing with his father about whether he should be a Jew, and get rid of the stigma that made them different.
When they had been walking for a while and the children seemed to be tired, Samuel decided to speed up a little.
Finally they reached the Plaza del Conde, a few yards from where Miriam’s family’s house had been. Samuel took his wife’s hand and led them to an old wooden door, with black nails hammered into it. He saw Miriam trembling and noticed that her face was covered in tears.
“Mama, why are you crying? Do you think they’ll throw us out for being Jews?” Ezekiel asked, worried ever since he had found out the consequences of Judaism.
Miriam stood very still by the door and then put her hand onto the old wood and stroked it. Samuel told his children to take a step back to give his wife a little bit of space to gather her strength.
Dalida and Ezekiel were very quiet, suddenly aware that this was a very special moment for their mother. Then she turned back to them and hugged them.
“Shall we knock?” Samuel asked.
“No! No!” she said, scared by Samuel’s daring.
But he paid no attention and knocked a couple of times with the doorknocker. A few seconds went by, no more than that, and then the door opened. An elderly man looked at them with curiosity, wanting to know who these strangers were. Samuel didn’t think twice, and said that this house had been where his wife’s ancestors had lived, that they had the title deeds to this house, and that they didn’t want anything other than to have a look at the place that their ancestors, one sad day in the past, had been forced to abandon and go seek refuge in exile.
He had spoken very quickly, almost without breathing, and suddenly he realized that he had spoken in French. The man had not understood anything, and Samuel thought the old man would not understand even if he tried again in English. However, he replied in a mixture of French and English.
The man invited them in and asked them to sit down in a large, cold drawing room, with a fire in the big wooden fireplace. He introduced himself: “I am José Gómez.” His tired eyes shone with curiosity.
Samuel did what was expected and introduced Miriam and his children. Dalida held out her hand to the old man, but Ezekiel was shy and hid behind his mother.
“I’ll go and fetch my wife.”
“How could you!” Miriam said to Samuel as soon as they were alone.
“Didn’t you want to see the house? Well, here we are. He’s a very nice man and I don’t think it’s too odd a request for us to want to see the house.”
They fell silent as a woman, who was as old as the man, came into the room. The woman smiled at them and Miriam calmed down.
“My wife, María,” the man said.
“So you are related to the Espinosa family. They were the owners who later left. My forefathers were also Jews but they converted, and although they suffered a lot they were allowed to stay. Of course, some of them ended up on the bonfire for not having convinced the Inquisition that their conversions were sincere enough,” María said.
Miriam was surprised that this woman should speak of something that had happened five centuries ago as if it were an event from the previous day.
“Which one of you is from the Espinosa family?” María asked.
Samuel indicated Miriam.
“So you are the Espinosa . . . My name, María, is the Spanish form of Miriam. Do you want to know how we got this house? I’ll tell you what my grandfather told me, what his grandfather told him. Although the Jews who were expelled always thought about returning, that was not something that entered into the monarch’s plans. All that the Jews had possessed passed into the hands of the nobles. With time, some of the converts managed to get their hands on some of the property that had been owned by their friends and neighbors. My family was a family of translators that was held in high esteem among the court at Toledo. They were wise men whose wisdom benefitted the Castilian kings. I know that my family got hold of this house around about the seventeenth century, and that it has been our family home ever since. It is a house that’s filled with memories, the memories of the Espinosa family and of our own family.”
She stopped and looked at Miriam’s tense face for a while.
“Come with me, we have some of the old family portraits in the cellar; they are covered in dust, but at least you’ll be able to see what your grandfathers’ grandfathers looked like.” The old woman made a gesture for them to follow her.
José Gómez protested.
“Woman, we haven’t been down into the cellar for years, and the stairs are not in good condition. I’m sure the rats have eaten the pictures you’re talking about.”
The woman paid him no attention and insisted that they accompany her. They followed her through the house’s dark passageways until they reached a door where the hands of some artisan had carved flowers and a verse from the Bible. Ezekiel said he was cold, but Dalida pinched him and told him to be quiet. María opened the door, which creaked alarmingly.
The stairs down to the cellar groaned and Samuel worried that they would break. It was clear that no one had been here for a long time. The walls were damp, and the flagstones, as well as being worn, seemed to be eaten away in places.
Miriam was surprised that this woman could move around with such agility, rummaging around near broken chairs, legless tables, and all kinds of abandoned utensils. Finally she seemed to remember where the pictures she had spoken about were kept.
“I think they are here, in this chest. My mother must have locked them away, she didn’t like them, she said they seemed to be scolding us for having taken over the house.”
With Samuel’s help, they opened the chest and took out half a dozen canvases, carefully folded.
“Put them on the table, it’s big and we’ll see them better that way,” the old woman told them.
Samuel and Miriam took the canvases and went upstairs to the drawing room.
“Put them on the table, it’s big and you’ll see them better that way,” the old woman said.
None of the canvases was larger than a meter, and when they were spread out they found six faces that seemed to look directly at them.
“I don’t know who they are, but they are from the Espinosa family; if you want you can take them with you,” the woman said.
Miriam smiled gratefully. She seemed to be living through an unreal dream, thanks to these two old people who had invited them into their house with no suspicions, and who had even given her these canvases that returned to her a past she had not known. She found it a pleasant surprise that the Spaniards understood old Castilian, the language that her ancestors had spoken when they were expelled from Sepharad. Miriam had made sure that Dalida and Ezekiel both learned it, but the two children, although they understood it, rebelled against speaking it.
The couple insisted that they all eat with them.
“We are very old and our life lacks any interesting surprises, so it is quite an adventure for us to have you here,” the man said.
María had left them in the room while she went to the kitchen to see what she could make for these unexpected visitors.
José Gómez claimed to be of old and pure Castilian stock, and he joked with his wife about her Jewish origins. He told them that he was a Jew and that in his youth he had visited Paris, where he had a relative who worked in the Spanish diplomatic corps.
Miriam seemed stunned to hear María telling stories of Sepharad, and Samuel listened to José’s explanation of the final cause of the expulsion.
Dalida and Ezekiel were barely able to hide their impatience. They were bored. They didn’t like this foreign language that their mother sometimes used to speak to them, and Señor Gómez’s French was too rudimentary: He had to stop every third word to think of what to say next.
The next few days they spent discovering Toledo in the company of the Gómez family, who had awarded themselves the role of hosts. The elderly couple even insisted that they leave the hotel and come stay in their house. Miriam would have happily accepted, but Samuel objected.
“Whatever they say, it is not your house, and we would not be comfortable.”
“When I think that my ancestors lived here, that I come from this dry ground, from this city filled with mysteries . . .”
“Mysteries? Where are the mysteries? Come on, Miriam, don’t let your imagination run away with you. The past is past. It’s good for you to enjoy this trip, but you are Palestinian, you have very little to do with the Spaniards.”
“I am Spanish and Palestinian!” she replied angrily.
“Yes, and Turkish and Greek, given that your ancestors took refuge in Thessaloniki when it was Turkish, and now it’s Greek.” Samuel was mocking her.
“You feel Russian, Samuel, why don’t you let me feel moved when I tread this soil?”
“I have never allowed soil or religion to define my identity. I am a man who wants to live in peace, and I don’t mind where.”
But for all his pretenses, Toledo was leaving its mark on Samuel as well.
After a week he said he had to go back to Madrid to sign his agreement with Manuel Castells. Miriam asked him to let her stay in Toledo with the children.
“You won’t need us there, we’ll only be a burden. We’ll wait for you here.”
“Haven’t you had enough of Toledo?”
“And you, Samuel, have you stopped missing Saint Petersburg?” Miriam asked, looking her husband straight in the eye.
He didn’t reply and allowed his wife and children to stay in Toledo. Until Samuel left, Miriam had not realized that she preferred to be there without him.
Dalida and Ezekiel would have liked to have returned to Madrid with their father. They were bored of their mother’s endless talks with the old couple every day, and they were tired of crisscrossing this city that turned in on itself and lifted itself up proudly above the river that flowed at its feet.
Miriam had an unquenchable thirst to know, to find out, to understand, and José Gómez and his wife answered all her questions patiently. María convinced her to come hear Mass sung in the cathedral.
“But I’m Jewish!” Miriam protested.
“And that stops you from participating in a beautiful ceremony that honors the Lord Almighty? What does it matter where we pray and how we pray if we all worship the same God?” María replied.
“Have you never felt the urge to return to the faith of your ancestors, to return to Judaism?” Miriam asked with interest.
“I’ve already told you, my family converted out of self-interest, so that they would not have to leave Toledo, but I suppose that over time they learned to be good Catholics. The past is past; I was born into the Catholic faith and I will die in it. Hearing someone sing a Mass doesn’t commit you to anything. You’ll like the ceremony, it’s a sung Mass today,” she insisted.
José Gómez offered to take Dalida and Ezekiel for a walk. Miriam accepted gratefully, as she knew that her children would not sit still during the service and she didn’t want to have to scold them.
The cathedral overwhelmed her. If it had been impressive on the outside, then the interior left her dumbfounded and the endless ceremonies with all their symbolism fascinated her, so she did not think it inconvenient to carry on going to church with María.
However, all her strolls through the city ended up at the same place, the synagogue, the synagogue they now called Santa María la Blanca. She felt at home there. She closed her eyes and imagined her family in the same spot centuries before. If only they could see her there, to know that an Espinosa had come back to that corner of Sepharad, the old city that had been theirs.
Some nights she cried. She thought of her sister Judith, of how much they would both have enjoyed walking through the streets of Toledo. But they would never do that now. Judith had recovered neither her mental nor her physical health since that fateful Nabi Musa.
She was upset that the judería had been Christianized, but María reminded her that the winners always impose their laws and customs on the losers. “In the past it happened as well,” she said. “Men adored their pagan idols and then substituted them for God.”
When Samuel came back a few days later, Miriam felt desolate. She knew that she could not stay in Toledo, but the mere thought of abandoning the city made her feel strangely ill. She knew she would never return.
She cried when she said goodbye to the Gómez family, and asked them from the bottom of her heart to look after the house that she felt was her own.
“When we die the property will pass on to my son, who is a doctor in Barcelona. And he will sell it. His life is in Barcelona, he is married and has children. He only comes to Toledo every now and then to see us.”
“But anyone could buy it!” Miriam protested.
“We won’t care when we’re dead. And you shouldn’t worry. You have a family and a life elsewhere, you can’t change the past,” José said.
On the journey back to Paris, Miriam seemed to be absent from all that surrounded her. Samuel could not get her to join in any conversations with him, for all that he tried to interest her in the convulsive situation in Germany. She, who always showed herself so interested in what he said, and who often gave him advice, now only looked at him as he spoke, and Samuel knew that Miriam was absent.
They returned to normality in Paris, little by little, or at least that’s what Samuel thought. He returned to the laboratory and renewed his journeys to London to meet with Konstantin. She looked after the children and had a lot of free time to think; she seemed to have returned to that peaceful, bourgeois way of life that Samuel seemed to enjoy so much. But normality included Katia. For all that Samuel had decided to put distance between them, it was impossible. When he was with Katia he recovered his childhood and recovered himself.
Even so, he tried to maintain the difficult balance between the loyalty he owed Miriam and the irresistible attraction he felt for Katia. This impelled him to take Miriam and the children with him on one of his journeys to London. Konstantin insisted so much that they be invited that eventually Samuel said yes.
Konstantin and his wife Vera did all they could to make Miriam feel comfortable. Even Gustav seemed to be happy to see Dalida and Ezekiel.
Vera was the perfect hostess, wanting Miriam to enjoy the London season. She took her shopping, they went to a few museums with the children, they took tea at a friend’s house and exchanged little unimportant confidences. But the presence of Katia was like a dark cloud over Miriam’s head.
Katia, so beautiful, so perfect . . . They went to the opera one evening and Miriam noticed that Samuel seemed bothered by the gazes of appreciation that Katia seemed to provoke. “He’s jealous,” she thought, and realized that Samuel had never been jealous on her behalf. Of course, for all that she made herself up, she would never have the natural distinction that Katia did.
The evening before they went back to Paris, Miriam overheard a conversation between Vera and Katia. Samuel and Konstantin had gone out to meet some clients, and the children were in Gustav’s playroom. Miriam went down to the library to put back a book she had borrowed. She was going to walk in, but she stopped dead when she heard Katia talking about her.
“I feel sorry for Samuel, what bad luck he has with his wife!”
“What do you mean?” Vera said reproachfully. “Miriam is a good woman.”
“I’m not saying that she isn’t, but she is so . . . I don’t know . . . I find her so graceless. She should have learned something about French chic by now. She doesn’t seem to care about clothes, and short hair doesn’t suit her . . . Well, maybe the Palestinians are all like that.”
“I think she’s attractive; at least she’s different, she’s got personality,” Vera replied.
“That’s what my brother says! Come on Vera, don’t parrot Konstantin’s opinions.”
“He likes her a lot,” Vera said, referring to Konstantin.
“My brother likes everyone, he’s a good man; he can find something attractive even in a woman as charmless as Miriam. Don’t you see that she feels uncomfortable in heels? And when she put a scarf on . . . Poor thing! She looked terrible.”
“I’m surprised, Katia, you’re not normally so catty, but you don’t like Miriam, right?”
“I don’t care! I’m just upset that Samuel has hitched his horse to that particular wagon. He deserves a lot more.”
Vera looked at her sister-in-law. She knew that she had loved Samuel ever since she was a girl, and now she should stop running after him, but she didn’t dare say so. She preferred not to have any conflict with Katia that could affect their relationship and make Konstantin unhappy.
“I don’t share your opinion, Katia. Miriam is a woman with many good qualities and Samuel is a lucky man to have married her. And now, shall we call for tea?”
That night Katia deployed all her seductive skills. Samuel looked at her, dazzled. Miriam was hurt by the gazes that Samuel exchanged with Katia, and the way he laughed. She thought that Toledo had been nothing more than a pause, a goodbye present. Katia was right—she was out of place. Her home was in Palestine. She said nothing to Samuel until they were back in Paris. She didn’t even make a show of unpacking her bags.
“I’m going, Samuel, I’m going back to Palestine. You know as well as I do that I have no place here.”
Samuel protested sincerely, asking her not to go, expounding on the advantages of living in Paris for Dalida and Ezekiel, asking her to give them another chance.
“That’s what I’m going to do, give us a chance. Both of us deserve to have a life, Samuel, a life where we can love, laugh, share a full life. Respect me, Samuel, don’t insist on turning me into nothing more than a mere presence, whose only job is to look after your children. I have a right to live. I want to live. That’s why I’m going home.”
Samuel could not convince her, and so he had to give in, feeling overwhelmed and relieved at the same time. He said to himself that the separation would only be temporary, that he would go to Jerusalem, or she would come back to Paris, but he knew he was lying to himself. The only point on which he was entirely inflexible was that he would go with them to Marseilles to make sure that they set off comfortably.
Dalida and Ezekiel waved goodbye to him, leaning on the rail of the passenger deck. His children had cried saying goodbye and he had needed to make an effort to hold back his tears. He sought out Miriam with his eyes but she preferred not to say goodbye, and stood away from the rail. It was at this moment that Samuel realized that Miriam was departing from his life, and would never want to return.