A starling. She remembered. It was a starling.
Nothing seemed real, only emptiness. She couldn’t wrap her thoughts around anything other than the fact that she lay on a lumpy mattress, and one of the lumps dug into her hip. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. Beyond the mattress, beyond the lump, darkness seemed to close in, and the tears fell, slowly gaining momentum until they ran out the corners of her eyes into her hair.
Weeping was weak. She was being a fool. A self-indulgent fool.
Mae expected her to come for dinner. They were so dear, wanting to keep her busy. But it was time for her to leave. If only she knew where to go or what to do with herself and all the time and money she’d once prized.
Returning home wasn’t an option and might not be for a long time, but she couldn’t stay here among all these bubbly people who’d soon be planning a wedding. Perhaps she’d take a month in Paris. Head over to Greece. Find some tour where she wouldn’t have to think at all. She remembered thinking about culinary school, but that would require too much of a brain that had flipped to numb as its default mode.
As she let herself out the heavy door of the pensione, she noticed a man lounging against the wall on the other side of the street, smoking a cigarette and watching her. She thought she’d moved past being bothered by stares, but something about him seemed out of place. Swarthy, but not unattractively so, he looked as if he had come straight off a steamer, a little difficult in this inland mountain town. She supposed his billed navy-colored cap gave the illusion.
She walked rapidly toward the travel agency, not checking to see if he followed—or if only his eyes did. Inside the agency, a well-coiffed, well-dressed woman greeted her.
“Sì, signorina?”
“I need to buy a ticket to...” She was about to say Paris when she realized she didn’t want to leave Italy without seeing more of it. “To Firenze, I think. I also need a hotel.”
And then perhaps Venezia, Milano, Napoli, but she said nothing else as the agent presented hotel options.
She would become a vagabond American, a woman who caught trains, boarded airplanes, flitted here and there, imagining that around the corner of some building, somewhere in the world, a tall American with dark hair and blue eyes would fall into step beside her.
That sudden thought filled her eyes again. She fiddled in her purse for a credit card so no one would see the tears she blinked back.
Armed with her ticket and reservation information, she headed to a leather shop, where she bought a suitcase she could actually manage on her own. She rolled it to the pensione and then carted her behemoth—filled now with clothes she didn’t plan to need in the next few months—to the office for the nuns to do with as they chose. She told the one on duty she’d be leaving in the morning, paid her bill, and thanked the sister for her kindness.
Perhaps one day she’d feel nostalgia for her days at the convent. Perhaps.
“You’ve been awfully quiet.” Mae handed her a teacup after dinner. “I thought Giorgio would be back by now. It’s too bad.”
“I’m sorry he’s not here. I would have liked to see him again.”
“He always likes to see you, too.”
Rina cleared her throat. “That’s not what I meant.”
The sisters glanced quickly at each other. Acie spoke. “What then?”
“I’m leaving. Taking the train to Firenze. You know, so I can see more of the country.”
Mae stopped the flow of tea she was pouring at the same time Acie’s cup rattled into its saucer. “You’re leaving?” Mae asked on top of Acie’s “Now?”
“We have parties to plan,” Mae said. “A wedding. And the twins have a birthday coming up. We hoped you’d be here.”
“Does it seem hateful of me? I don’t mean it to.” Rina ran her fingers through hair that felt as if it needed a good brushing. Well, all of her could have used a good something or other. “I’m just not the best company right now.”
“Oh, no, Rina, never.”
“I’m not,” she said, glancing at their anxious faces. “You’re dears, and I love you all, but this waiting around is too hard. I can’t take any more of it. I’ll come back later, after I’ve had some time.” She reached out to clasp their hands. “Try to understand, won’t you?”
“We do,” Acie said. “It’s just we want you with us. We’re being selfish, really. You go and have a good time but promise to come back.”
“I will. You know I will.”
“And you’ll send email updates? Regularly?”
“Perhaps postcards?”
The sisters looked at each other.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll try to find an Internet café or two.”
“Or five. We’ll need to keep up with you,” Acie said. “For our peace of mind.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Girlfriends,” Acie said.
She teared again and pulled her friend close. “Besties.”
She insisted on walking back to the convent on her own. It wasn’t far, and she could scoot up the escalator to the Via dei Priori. They needn’t worry. There’d be plenty of people out.
There were. Music and voices came from several bars lining the way. She passed the café where she’d learned about European dancing in another lifetime.
The sailor was back, standing in the lighted doorway of the Bar Torreno and blowing smoke after a long draw on his cigarette. He didn’t speak, but she could feel his gaze, even after she turned her head and hurried past.
She had only a short walk downhill on this side of the old city, but here the alleys were friendly, the only bar a café for old men. She was safe.
There was nothing to fear. Nothing at all.
33
RINA
“Firenze.” She whispered the name off the hotel balcony, out toward the city of Michelangelo’s David. Here was the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi, and the Basilica di Santa Marina Novella, after which this hotel had been named. Perhaps here she’d recover her equilibrium.
She pulled on a favorite sundress, all blues and purples in a swirly pattern, and gave her hair another brushing before she slid into her most comfortable sandals. All she needed was her straw hat and purse, and she was ready. Oh, yes, she would be the determined tourist.
She toured and ate and sipped and tried not to remember the things that hurt. Once, she ordered spaghetti with zucchini flowers. Flowers on noodles. Amazing. And didn’t they look pretty?
But as she twirled her fork to gather a bite, her throat tightened. She’d stepped beyond her culinary comfort zone before and eaten truffles. Finally, she swallowed and managed to smile at the expectant waiter. He refilled her glass with Prosecco.
When had she emptied it?
She’d learned that she hated touring alone. She hadn’t thought so, but she wanted Acie here to laugh with her. Or someone else, some tall and wonderful someone else, but he’d vanished. And so she meandered in a limbo that grew ever more frustrating.
She was stronger than this. She was.
When the image of her uncle’s dear face came to mind, she knew where she had to go. Her second decision felt even more proactive. Amman wasn’t really out of the way, and someone there ought to know something about one American engineer who had lived and worked in that city. If nothing else, she’d satisfy her curiosity about the life he’d led before. Before.
She didn’t let herself think of how odd it would look if she found him comfortably behind a desk at work—and not dead at all. If she had turned into a stalker, and he… and he…
Stop it. She breathed deeply before opening the door to the travel agency. The agent, an expat American, tried to sell her a ticket for points west, north, or south, anywhere, it seemed, except a Middle Eastern country. When she mentioned that her next stop after Amman would be Israel, he turned white. “Are you crazy? You’ve heard of Hamas and bombs? People dying?”
“Just write the ticket, please. And I’ll need two hotels.”
He made the reservations, sighing as if she were a recalcitrant child. As she pocketed the paperwork, she remembered her words to Luze. “I’ll be traveling in Europe for the summer,” she’d written before leaving Perugia. Then, her destination hadn’t been a lie.
She reclined the seat as far as it would go and flipped to the article on Amman in the plane’s travel magazine. Like Rome, said the caption under an unattractive picture of a sprawling city, Amman had originally been built on seven hills, or jebels, expanding over time to more hills nearby. When she’d thought of Jordan at all, she’d pictured sand and rock.
She skimmed through a notation of the city’s name changes. “Amman has grown,” wrote the author, “from a small village to a huge metropolis after the flood of Palestinian refugees landed.” Odd word choice, a flood landing. A title wave maybe?
Grateful her last name didn’t sound Jewish, she smiled at the airport officials and paid for her single-entry visa. The air outside hit her with a heat worse than a breezeless August day back home, and a layer of dust coated everything.
She gave the taxi driver the address of her hotel. Her room was clean and reminiscent of a Holiday Inn anywhere in the United States, but outside its doors was a different and not-altogether hospitable country. Unwilling to venture forth to dine, she bought snacks from a vending machine. Crackers filled one empty space.
After a shower, she fell back on the bed, trying to convince her weary body it wanted sleep. It ignored her.
Morning took a long time coming. She downed one not-very-good caffeine shot and climbed in another taxi. “American Embassy?”
The driver drove straight into the middle of a demonstration, where the crowd waved illegible placards and a map of the United States dripping with red paint. He watched her in his mirror.
She focused on her lap until they arrived just minutes ahead of the crowd. Paying the fare, she hurried toward the gates and away from someone who’d obviously wanted to intimidate her. One embassy guard studied her passport and another checked her and her belongings at the door.
“The hostilities will pass, and the Americans will once again be favorites,” a smiling secretary assured her.
She couldn’t retrieve a smile of her own. She didn’t care whether the Jordanians liked her or not, but she did want to find out about Tony, please.
“I am sorry. We have no knowledge of the present whereabouts of Mr. Anton Rasad,” another woman said after checking her computer. “We have a record of his last address, but… oh, here. I see a notation of his employer, the Scarborough Oil Company.”
“Thank you. Can you give me an address for them?”
The woman jotted down both Tony’s home address and his work one. And wasn’t that lax? Rina might have been anyone, an assassin for all this woman knew.
But she wasn’t going to snub a gift and tucked the note in her purse as a guard ushered her to a side exit, pointing toward a taxi stand on the next street. The crowd had gathered at the front, voices screaming obscenities, but she focused on the dusty street and the sidewalk, every moment expecting someone to see her tall, non-Arabic self and throw a stone or aim a gun. They all carried guns, that crowd of angry people.
But her back remained unpierced, and she found a taxi driver who actually smiled. She handed over the apartment address and asked him to wait while she entered a building that looked as if it had been new thirty years ago. The balconies held the occasional planter, and some had clothes drying on lines. She climbed to the second floor, found the door with the number she needed, and knocked.
While she waited, she studied the chipping paint, the scratch marks on the metal door. The building was cinderblock, a tan color that helped it blend with the surrounding dirt.
She heard shuffling feet, and a plainly dressed, middle-aged woman opened the door. Rina smiled. “I’m looking for Anton Rasad. Does he live here?”
The woman responded in English with a shake of the head as she peered up and down the hall. “No, no. No one lives here like that.”
“Have you ever heard of him? How long have you been here? I mean, in this apartment?”
“We live here a week maybe. Good apartment. My brother gets it for us.”
“Your brother? Maybe he knows Mr. Rasad?”
“No, he knows no one. Sorry, good-bye.”
The door shut in Rina’s face, and the latch turned. “Thank you anyway,” she said to the air as she retreated down the stairs.
A week, the woman had said. And she hadn’t wanted more questions. Someone knew something—the brother at the very least, but he wasn’t saying.
She fared no better with the Scarborough Oil Company. “Tony? Oh, he won’t be back for what, maybe two weeks? Yes, that is it. Because from Italy, you see, he must go to the Bahrain office to meet with our president. Then, he will return here.”
“Do you know if he is in Bahrain now?”
The secretary smiled out of darkly lined eyes and waved expertly manicured hands. “No, this I do know. I spoke with that office this morning.” Her shrug was eloquent and brought with it a pout. “We are so jealous of Tony. The months away on leave, the trip to Europe. You have a particular reason to ask?”
“When” —she didn’t say if— “he returns, will you get him to contact me?” She dug in her purse, scribbled her email address on a piece of paper, and handed it to the secretary.
“Certainly, when he arrives, he will contact you, yes?” The other woman laughed, coming around the desk to walk her toward the door, giving her a peek at the high heels and knee-length skirt. This, in Amman? A number of questions formed that Rina wished she could ask this very Westernized woman, questions she’d never been able to ask Tony, but she only spoke a thank-you as she slipped out the door.
He’d said the company had sent him to Italy. They said he’d taken a leave of absence.
Had she made him up, created him, a figment of her imagination? He’d lied. He’d disappeared.
She asked to be taken next to the police station. The policeman with whom she spoke assured her in English that they had no unclaimed bodies nor any knowledge of a Mr. Anton Rasad. Yes, he’d contact her if anything came up. “Leave your address, please.” She turned at the door and saw him toss her information in a drawer.
Again, the questions piled. If Tony had never returned to Jordan, if his body floated someplace in the Mediterranean or had been lost in the hills of Umbria—or even in one of those Arabian deserts—who had sent the torn photos?
Sand, dirt, and unwelcoming folk meant it was time to kick off the dust of this place. She longed to see Israel and her uncle.
A memory slipped into place of Uncle Adam reaching out his large hands to pull her onto his lap, breathing peppermint stories of God’s miracles as if they were real. She’d forgotten the red and white peppermints doled out of Uncle Adam’s bottomless pocket—for no good reason, just because—before her father’s eye found sticky at the corner of her mouth or the telltale bulge in her cheek. The peppermints had become a secret for walks outside or when she was alone at bedtime. Then, of course, it wasn’t the same.
34
RINA
The King’s Hotel was located within walking distance of both the Old City and the Institute of Archaeological Research, last known hiding place of Uncle Adam. American hotel-modern in glass and concrete, the interior boasted plastic copies of Mies Van der Rohe chairs, abundant potted greenery, and paint-by-numbers abstracts. She’d hoped for something with a few arches in the lobby, Persian rugs, something to remind her that she was in an ancient city with some of the richest history in the world. Her room was more of the same, with a view out toward the old city, but the relief of washing her gritty hair in a clean, modern bathroom mitigated the disappointment of plastic grass wallpaper.
She was too excited to eat, so she smoothed on a touch of lipstick and headed back downstairs. A tall, thin man with bushy orange hair and thick glasses grinned up at her.
“Good afternoon,” she said,
smiling back. “What is the best way to the Institute for Archaeological Research? I thought I saw it as I arrived, but I’m a little turned around now.”
“I will be pleased to show you, Miss Roberts.”
“You know my name?” She checked his nametag: Meir.
“We have not any other Americans here at this moment. And you are an exceptionally pretty one.” His heightened color made her want to reach up, way up, to pat his cheek. The sweet man must have been at least six and a half feet tall.
“Thank you,” she said. “You speak excellent English.”
The red remained. “I have stayed several summers with cousins on Long Island in New York. I will not ask if you know them, because America is a very large country.”
“And Israel is so small that you know everyone?”
“No, of course not. But on the kibbutz, there we did know each other, and my uncle in the old city knows all on his small street.” He pulled out a map and began marking it. “Here we are, and here is the Institute.”
She took it eagerly. “My uncle works there. I can’t wait to see him.” This was probably more than Meir needed or wanted to know, but she was too excited to care.
“May your time in our city be enjoyable.”
Grinning, she pushed open the door, stepped out onto the sidewalk, and turned in the direction Meir had indicated. This was the city of her mother’s people, and soon Adam’s arms would wrap her in one of his bear hugs.
The receptionist at the Institute pointed to an open door at the end of the hall where a small woman of undeterminable age perched in front of a computer. She looked vintage l950s, with brown hair tied in a knot at the back of her head and glasses that hung from a tricolored cord around her neck. She said something unintelligible.
Rina looked at the gold-on-black embossed nameplate. Below the Hebrew letters were English ones. Anita Barden. “Please, do you speak English? I’m Rina Lynne Roberts and am looking for my uncle, Dr. Adam Levinson.”
Two From Isaac's House Page 23