“Don’t worry,” Bonnie reassured him. “I know some folks who do the same.”
On his following visits, which grew longer as their friendship prospered, Bonnie brought along six bottles of beer, and Shamrock supplemented the now traditional cheese platter with a bowl of his own pickled olives from the trees that grew nearby.
While they were enjoying the cheese and the beer and spitting pits over the fence, Bonnie turned to Shamrock and said, “We keep complaining about politics in this country, about the spread of corruption and leaders who only care about themselves. Maybe the time has come for us to do something about it instead of bitching about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Election is coming up in a matter of a few months. Why don’t we join, form a party and run?”
“Us? Start a party?” Shamrock laughed out loud. “Who would vote for us?”
“What have we got to lose? Let’s give it a try.”
Smiling as ever, they said their warm, friendly goodbyes.
A few days later, it was afternoon when Bonnie was treating a poor dog that got run over by a tractor. An urgent call. “Come this evening,” Shamrock requested. “There’s an urgent matter I would like to discuss with you.”
That evening, Bonnie came by without the bottles of beer, excusing himself. “The minimart was already closed…”
“You owe me one,” Shamrock replied and proceeded to the business of the day. “Today, I would like us to discuss not cows but rather something of greater importance. I spent a few nights considering what we’ve said and decided to embrace your idea. Let’s try and get this country back on track.”
By the time their meeting ran its course, it was past midnight. They concluded to form a party and even came up with a name: “The Milky Way Party.”
The next day, Bonnie called on his friend, a professional attorney, and asked him to handle the newly founded party’s registration for the election. Even prior to that, Bonnie and the attorney approached eight of their acquaintances and received their consent to join the new party. “The Milky Way Party” soon became the joke of that election. They were met with contempt and ridicule on all parts of the political spectrum, much to the derision of the media too.
When the election was over, the entire public tuned in to watch the polls. The results were no less than astonishing. The commentators had to eat crow and swallow their hats. The voters themselves were in shock, and the papers tripled their circulation the following day of election. It turned out that the new party succeeded in getting all of its candidates elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. A huge swing in favor of change and something new and different translated into many people casting their votes in favor of the new party. So much so, they had more votes than their actual candidates for Knesset members.
After the official results went public, the political negotiations didn’t take long. The government that ensued included three ministerial posts for The Milky Way Party. Shamrock was appointed Minister of Internal Security and Bonnie, Minister of Science. They were both also appointed to the Knesset’s prestigious and important Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Chapter Six
Estée’s funeral was a very different affair compared with Avram’s, three years earlier. The neighbors said she died of a broken heart. Nevertheless, Bonnie knew it was cancer. The faded black hearse was ordered especially all the way from Haifa. Two employees of the orthodox funeral service were clad in brand new outfits that were clearly bought especially in honor of this particular occasion. They were sitting on either side of the coffin.
An official government car, driven by a chauffeur, followed suit with Bonnie and Michal in the back seat. Although he knew all too well what was about to befall his shirt, Bonnie still had a brand-new white shirt on, along with black trousers and shiny black shoes. Michal herself put on appropriate, reserved attire.
The official hearse pulled up in front of the village synagogue. Four moshav members, in white shirts and khaki pants, took the coffin out and placed it, as instructed by the master of ceremonies, on the wooden platform out front. Bonnie and his sister Michal stood right next to the coffin. Bonnie’s bodyguard, a stern-faced, stocky man in a dark suit, stood at his side. He had an earpiece. The platform had a specially prepared stand with the Israeli flag at half-mast.
“The government secretary will deliver the government’s respects,” announced the master of ceremonies, cordially summoning the official, who soon rose from one of the chairs on the platform and proceeded to the stand. He approached the microphone that had been placed there in advance.
“His excellency Minister Binyamin Pladot, esteemed family members, I am deeply honored to express the government of Israel’s heartfelt condolences for your loss…”
The government secretary kept to the written statement prepared by the government spokesperson’s office. Bonnie took the time to survey the crowd surreptitiously, noticing that only one minister besides himself, out of the government’s twenty-three ministers, took the trouble to turn up: none other than Shamrock, the Internal Security Minister. He was seated at the podium next to the government secretary and the family. Early on, he handed Bonnie a note, apologizing in advance that he could not stay long and would have to be going soon on urgent state business.
Bonnie used the time, and the fact that his eyes were lowered anyway, to look for other familiar faces. Aside from his own close employees in the minister’s office, he could not quite recognize most of the persons who turned up to his mother’s funeral in their shiny cars. ‘Probably government officials,’ he told himself. Shamrock and the government secretary kept glancing at their watches, barely biding their time before taking their leave. ‘I wonder how many members of government would have put on an appearance at the Finance Minister’s funeral,’ he continued his musings.
The moshav members, excited by the official attendance, stood together in a separate bunch. They’ve never seen a government minister in real life before. Vera, tight-lipped and blank-faced, was standing in their midst in her old, all too familiar tunic.
Bonnie did notice two doctors and several staff members from the nearby clinic. He also spotted some school friends of his, who had attended the regional school along with him. Next to them, he saw another group. Michal later told him these were her old friends from school days.
The funeral procession made its way to Estée’s final resting place. There, the crowd dwindled. The honored officials were gone. Bonnie’s secretary at the Science Ministry was standing by his mother’s grave, along with a junior employee who was holding the government wreath, obviously barely containing his eagerness to return to the office back in Jerusalem.
Bonnie recited Kaddish for his mom. He was more adept now. The rabbi, sporting a new hat, delivered the customary prayer. They lowered the coffin next to Avram’s grave and everyone dispersed.
Back home, Bonnie’s secretary told him about the telegrams of condolence he had received at his office and showed him the official obituary notice the government had run. “According to protocol, the government may only publish it in one paper,” she explained. She also passed on the prime minister’s apology and that of the other ministers for not being able to come and pay their respects that week due to their tight schedules.
Bonnie’s secretary asked whether he needed her for anything, and he graciously told her she was free and also excused her from coming to shiva.
***
On the sixth evening of shiva, after the last guest was finally out the door, Michal and Bonnie went into their mother’s bedroom where, in the corner, next to her makeup table, stood an elegant little dresser.
Back when she was still a young girl, Michal used to creep up into her mother’s room whenever she wasn’t around and apply mascara to her eyelashes or use her lipstick. Nevertheless, she knew the dresser was off-limits. “Every woman needs a place
of her own, something that is entirely hers,” her mother had said.
They sat by the dresser, aware that this time, sorting everything out was not going to take long. The top drawer contained their mother’s elementary school yearbook. Both crying and smiling, they leafed through it.
“One great king and tiny Snow White through the looking glass, you’re the prettiest girl in the entire class,” a fifth grader wrote fellow fifth grader Estée, whom he had adored. The following year, one sixth grader was more daring: “Roses do wither, glasses may break, but our love shall forever reign. To thy own country be true, do your parents proud!”
Come seventh grade, this student, Itzik, proved quite the poet: “Limerick for Estée: What shall I write you? / What feat to do? / Favor thee with a fable, a poem or a tale? / So better bear this and hope I won’t fail. / To wish, may the good Lord always watch over you!”
At the bottom of that drawer, they found an envelope with the inscription “personal” in her handwriting. Moved and curious, they opened it, but it was empty. Clearly, someone had already removed its contents. The bottom drawer contained photo albums. Tuning one page after another, they found a photo obviously taken in Haifa on her high school graduation day, featuring their mom with three of her girlfriends. Young Estée had had a long skirt on and blouse with puffy sleeves. She wore a white ribbon around her head. She was so demure: the picture of innocence.
“That was one year before she married Dad,” Michal told Bonnie.
“What a person our mother was. I’m sure Dad was her first guy,” Bonnie added.
“You can go over the last drawer by yourself, Bonnie. I need to go home. Tell we tomorrow if you found anything of interest.”
Alone in his mother’s bedroom, Bonnie sat next to the bag filled with paperwork he and his sister had decided to cast aside. He emptied the last drawer and added its contents to the bag. He took a second to consider what to do with her fifth-grade report card, which noted her mother was poor at Bible and Israel studies. It soon found its way into the bin too. The same fate befell a brochure on stretching and shrinking shoes, and an ancient booklet with discount coupons and similar leftover matter.
When he was done surveying the drawers, Bonnie asked himself whether it would be fair to suggest to Michal that she would have the dresser and he would take Dad’s mahogany desk. But then he noticed something funny about the dresser’s bottom drawer. Though the same size as the others, its volume was much smaller. Upon closer inspection, he realized its bottom was unsteady and soon found the cause: it was partitioned by plywood. He lifted the board and found additional paperwork, including a telegram dated October 22nd, 1979, to the Hypocratio Hospital in Thessaloniki. The faded paper read as follows:
Attn. management, Hypocratio Hospital, Thessaloniki,
Please be so kind as to provide me the details of your patient, admitted on October 17th following a car accident on the road from Sithonia to Thessaloniki. I would like to forward him a personal item he left with me.
Thank you,
Esther Navot
Attached to this old telegram was the hospital’s reply:
Dear madame,
We regret to inform you we are not allowed to provide any personal details of our patients. We can nevertheless neither confirm nor deny we have a patient answering the description you gave.
Yours faithfully,
Hypocratio Hospital
Bonnie saw four more similar telegrams from the same date, addressed to four other hospitals at Thessaloniki, with the same replies attached to each.
Something felt strangely upsetting. He placed all the paperwork from 1979 back in the envelope and shoved it into his shirt pocket.
The last item in the drawer was a long, white, untouched envelope that read as follows in his mother’s handwriting:
To Bonnie – personal
To be opened only after I am dead
Bonnie decided to open the envelope at home.
Once he was home, the envelope resting on his trembling knees, he sat on his old, much loved armchair, the one his grandfather once bought at the flea market in Haifa. He was terrified. He tried to calm himself and somehow slow the pace of his heart, for it was beating so ferociously Bonnie felt he was about to burst. Somehow, he knew opening this envelope was going to change his life.
Bonnie and his mom were close. She had always been there throughout his life. She knew how to pet him in childhood, cope with him when he entered the terrible teens, guide him through adulthood and lend a hand when he had to make tough calls. He and his father were on good terms, but Avram was such an introvert, always keeping to himself and his work, they could not form an attachment akin to the one between mother and son.
“What am I to make of this sealed envelope?” he asked himself, aware how much this shook him to the core. “After all, she never kept any secret from me, so what could it be?”
The fact that the letter was addressed exclusively to him was also troubling. He and Michal, his younger sister, were close. After the necessary “who’s the boss” period in which he took advantage of being the older brother by beating her to submission, they had become firm friends and even allies. They were a family like so many others, with both children treated the same. “What then? Why did she address it to me in private? Why isn’t Michali a part of this too? “
Somehow, the envelope felt heavier than iron. He rested it on his desk and went over to his little bar in the living room to pour himself a drink. “Yes, double scotch, that should do it.” Suddenly, it did give him strength. The events of the funeral and the week-long mourning all vanished from his mind. He even forgot about his anger at his fellow ministers. “What shall I do with the letter, then? What is about it that’s so scary?”
Bonnie was famous for being fearless. His commanders and subordinates alike knew him to be a gifted decisionmaker. But faced with that envelope, white and rectangular and sealed, he was perplexed.
But then, the whiskey lent him the courage he needed, as did the full knowledge he simply had no choice. “Can’t be helped. Now, where did I last leave the letter opener?”
Still, it took forever to tear.
Bonnie produced two yellow pages, which his mother had torn out of some notebook, right before scribbling all over them, filling them with her all too familiar, crammed, handwriting.
***
My dearest Bonnie whom I love so dearly,
Come on, open it up. I can see you from up here, the envelope in your left hand and the letter opened in your right hand. You’re so helpless.
I wanted to tell you that my lifelong agony is over. No more dilemmas. Thirty-seven years I spent thinking what to do, questioning, constantly deliberating, by day and mostly by night.
I never worried about my illness. The pain never bothered me. Quite the contrary, it was my refuge. The pain only served to help me find solace and calm for my torn and tortured soul. The pain allowed me to decide whether to take my terrible secret to my grave or whether to share it. With you.
Is my secret not your secret? I am even allowed to keep it from you. Is it a good thing or is it a sin to tell you that which you deserve to know?
I remember how one night you found me, staring on my hospital bed, my eyes clouded, detached, completely wrapped up in a totally different experience. You looked at me like you’ve never done before and you began to fear something. You did not dread my approaching death but rather something so powerful you could not put it into words.
It’s a good thing that you’ve opened this letter, my love. So good of you to do so, dearest. It was on that very night that I finally decided. It was right before you walked into my room at the hospital. A second earlier, I asked myself what you would have done in my place, and then I saw that frightened look on your face, and I knew that fear is courage. Only he who is afraid of the truth can handle it.
So, I’ve made up my mind. I am writing this letter from the bottom of my heart, confident in the knowledge that you would rather know the truth, even if it is hard as steel and weighs heavier than a rock.
I know not what you might do with the truth. I only know what I would have done, but that I shall not tell you. I probably could have helped you, but I won’t, so as not to influence your decision. Know this: now that I am resolved, I couldn’t be calmer and at peace. I am ready to take my leave of you having shared my secret with you, a secret which is now yours too.
So know this, my love, that the father, who loved you so much and admired you so much, is not your biological father.
This is where my secret ends, and I have nothing else to share with you beyond that.
I love you dearly, from here to the moon,
Mom.
Part Two
Chapter Seven
The great revolution was something Mehdi Mohammadi experienced from afar. Several months prior to the events, he enrolled as a medical student at the University of Thessaloniki. He arrived there a few months before the academic year was due to begin in order to enroll in a Modern Greek course the university provided to its non-Greek students.
The revolution caught him in the middle of his first freshman term. He was extremely concerned for his family back home in Tabriz, northern Iran. Even prior to his leaving Iran for studying overseas, the city’s streets were a flurry of discontent, and the great bazaar was buzzing with resentment. The people were tired of the corruption, dictatorial regime and the harsh economic conditions, but no one expected that millions would converge on the demonstration in Tehran and there would be a great revolution that ousted the Shah and ushered the return of Khomeini.
Mehdi believed Iran was desperate for change and sided with the demonstrators’ demands for integrity, democracy and economic relief. Once Khomeini assumed power, he considered dropping out, returning to Iran and being part of the Islamic revolution. Mehdi had long talks with his father Suleiman and his two brothers, but they all persuaded him that for the time being, it was for the good of the family for him to continue with his med studies. His family set his mind at ease and told him Tabriz was relatively calm compared with the other major cities, and they had found a way to cooperate with the new regime.
Deadly Ties Page 4