by Anne Raeff
also by anne raeff
The Jungle Around Us: Stories
Clara Mondschein's Melancholia: A Novel
winter kept us warm
Copyright © 2018 by Anne Raeff
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Raeff, Anne, 1959– author.
Title: Winter kept us warm : a novel / Anne Raeff.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035929 | ISBN 9781619028173
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3618.A36 W56 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035929
Jacket designed by Andy Allen
Book designed by Olenka Burgess
COUNTERPOINT
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Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of my father, Marc Raeff, who showed me the strength of kindness and reason
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
—t. s. eliot, from The Waste Land
The Arrival
The journey from Rabat was not easy. On the long train ride Isaac stood in the crowded aisle outside the compartments, leaning his head out the window to save himself from the cigarette smoke. After the first stop, about thirty minutes in, a young man forcibly dragged him to a nearby compartment. “Asseyez-vous, monsieur,” the young man screamed, as if he were telling him to go to hell rather than trying to help him. Isaac explained about his asthma. He would die if he inhaled so much smoke in a closed-in compartment. He phrased it that way so his meaning would not be mistaken for politeness, but the young man had ignored him, pulling him into the compartment as he spoke, yelling at the other passengers to move over. Make room for the old man, Isaac imagined he was saying, and he laughed as he fell into the seat they had cleared for him.
As soon as he was seated, Isaac could feel his throat and lungs clamping up. His laughter turned into coughing. The man sitting next to him offered him water, but it was air he needed, so he gathered his strength, pulled himself up, and ran back to the corridor, to his space at the window. He reached for his inhaler, but he didn’t need it. The sea air was enough.
After that, they left him alone.
The train stopped frequently and lingered at each station. He did not allow himself to look at his watch, knowing that would only make the journey seem longer. And then, finally, they were in Meknes. One minute longer, he told himself as he stepped off the train, and he would have slumped to the floor right there in the aisle.
At the station in Meknes, he engaged a taxi. The driver asked him whether he had a reservation. “The Hotel Atlas is always full,” he said.
“There will be room,” Isaac assured him.
“But you do not have a reservation,” the driver insisted.
Why, Isaac thought, had he not simply said that he had a reservation? Why had he never learned to lie even when it made things easier?
The taxi smelled of smoke, though the driver wasn’t smoking. Still, Isaac rolled the window down just in case. This upset the driver, who explained that the air-conditioning was on, despite the fact that it was hotter in the cab than outside, where, Isaac was sure, it was already near one hundred degrees.
“Ah,” Isaac said, making sure there was not even a hint of sarcasm in his tone. The last thing he wanted was an argument with a taxi driver.
His parents had been in a taxi accident in New York shortly after arriving in the United States from France in 1942, where they had been living in exile. His parents and the driver had been arguing, the driver insisting that the West Side Highway was faster, but his parents wanted him to take Amsterdam Avenue. “The lights on Amsterdam are timed,” they explained.
“I know, I know. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?” the taxi driver said, turning around to face Isaac’s parents and losing control, driving into the divider. Somehow none of them had been seriously injured, but after that, Isaac’s parents lost their interest in the outside world. They retreated to the Russian classics and the safety of their dark apartment. Sometimes Isaac caught them speaking Yiddish, which he had never heard them speak before, though as soon as he walked into the room, they reverted quickly to Russian.
After the accident, Isaac’s parents rarely went out, and they never got into a car again or left the city, not even to visit their oldest friends in Connecticut. His parents, who had not allowed themselves to be vanquished by Stalin or Hitler, had, in the end, been defeated by an ornery taxi driver. It was as if their brush with death had given them the license to admit defeat, to accept that their exile was now permanent.
But Isaac had been happy to be in New York, far from the old battles of Europe. Still, he had planned to enlist in the army as soon as his parents were settled. He wanted to be part of the fight against fascism. Though he was not particularly optimistic about the world’s future, or even sure that war was the best solution, now that it was on, he wanted to do something. But then his parents had been so shaken by the accident, so derailed, that he did not feel he could leave them. He knew it was just a matter of time until he was drafted, so he relaxed for the first time since the war began. He got a job at Florsheim’s, fetching shoes from the storeroom for the salesmen, and when he was not working, he explored the city.
His favorite activity was walking from their apartment on 106th Street to Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge. Once, before he gave up on trying to get his parents to embrace their new home, he took them to see the bridge. His father was an engineer, a builder of bridges. Perhaps, Isaac thought, standing in the wind, looking up at the sky, they would be comforted. They went to see the bridge on a Sunday in spring. His mother had thought there was something not quite right about walking on a bridge just for the sake of walking. “It is not a park,” she said.
“No, it is not a park,” Isaac had agreed. “But that is what is so wonderful. Only in America would people take a leisurely Sunday walk on a bridge.”
“And why is that wonderful?” his mother asked.
But Isaac could not explain. His father walked slowly, his hands deep in his pockets. They walked from the Manhattan end to the Brooklyn end, and then they turned around and walked back. Isaac pointed out the elaborate spiderweb mesh of the cables and various buildings of the Manhattan skyline. Then the three of them took the subway back to their dark apartment on 106th Street.
“What did you think?” Isaac asked his father on their way home.
His father had shrugged. “It’s just a bridge,” he said.
But it was not just a bridge, Isaac thought. It was a bridge about which poems had been written, a bridge that made history. Perhaps he had never dreamed of changing the course of history, but he still wanted to be part of it, to see what would happen, to live. He opened the window wide, breathed in the dry, hot air
of Meknes. The driver accelerated and turned on the radio, loud. “C’est merveilleux, cette musique,” Isaac said, but the driver did not respond.
When they arrived at the Hotel Atlas, the driver wanted to go in himself to make sure there was a room available.
“There will be a room,” Isaac said again.
“But you don’t have a reservation.”
“How much do I owe you?” Isaac asked, opening the door as he spoke.
“Calm down, monsieur. There is no rush.”
“I will pay you now or not at all,” Isaac said, getting out of the car with his bag. He walked around to the driver’s side, and the driver rolled the window down halfway.
“Here,” Isaac said, holding out the money.
“As you like,” the driver said, grabbing the money and speeding off.
Isaac approached the hotel. He took several deep puffs from the inhaler and concentrated on breathing, making sure that the air was flowing smoothly to his lungs so that he would not be gasping for breath as he stepped inside. That was not the entrance he had imagined.
She was at the reception desk. “Ulli,” he said, and when he reached the desk, he was out of breath.
“Isaac,” Ulli said. “Come, sit down.” She led him to a sofa in the lobby. His breathing was deep and phlegmy.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “It sounds worse than it is. Asthma.”
“It’s back?”
“Yes, for about twelve years. It happened right after I retired, but the medications are much better now. I hardly notice it, really.”
“It’s good to see you, Isaac,” she said, sitting down beside him and putting her hand on his shoulder, letting it rest there, asserting the gravity of the moment. “Welcome to the Hotel Atlas.”
He smiled, remained very still. Her hand felt as if it were touching his skin directly. He wanted to reach up and take her hand, but that would have been too much. After all, he had just shown up, and she had had no time to prepare for his arrival. Yet she seemed calm. He realized then that he had hoped she would not be. Had he expected her to cry, to embrace him—not just lay her hand on his shoulder as if she were comforting him, though he had not asked her for comfort? But he had not come all this way to be angry. He smiled, and she smiled back.
“The girls?” Ulli asked.
“Simone and Juliet are well,” he said without further elaboration.
“They are well,” Ulli repeated. She took a deep breath and let go of Isaac’s shoulder. “And to what, then, do I owe this honor?” she asked. He could still feel her hand on his shoulder, though he knew she had removed it. Like a phantom limb, he thought.
“It’s been almost forty years. It’s just too long,” Isaac said, turning toward Ulli. “You look the same,” he said, though this was neither true nor what he had wanted to say. She looked like Ulli, but she was old now. Her eyes were still that same husky blue, but they seemed as if they were covered with gauze. He wondered whether that was how the world looked to her now, as if she were seeing it through a fine curtain.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s been too long. Did you fly into Rabat?” she continued.
“Yes, and I took the train.”
“I could have sent a car, you know,” she said.
“But then it would not have been a surprise,” Isaac said. “And anyway, I like trains, especially now that flying is so unpleasant. Even now, two years after nine-eleven, it’s always code red.”
“The first few months after the attacks, people just stopped coming to Morocco. I thought I might have to close the hotel, but I guess people can’t live in fear forever, so now things are finally getting back to normal. Before the attacks, at this time of year I wouldn’t have had a room for you.”
“I’m sorry. I should have called, let you know I was coming. It was presumptuous of me to think there would be a room,” Isaac said.
“Nonsense. We would have figured something out. But you must be tired, exhausted.” She was in hospitality mode now, the hotelier, the keeper of clean rooms and comfortable beds.
“It would be nice to wash up.”
“Let me take you to your room, then. You can shower, rest. Would you prefer a room facing the courtyard or the street?” Ulli said this all in one breath, as if she were afraid he would disappear, walk out, find another hotel before she could finish.
He wanted a room looking out onto the street, facing the morning sun. He wanted to watch people come and go. He wanted the sun to burst in through the window in the morning.
“In the morning the sun is encouraging. By the afternoon we wish we could shoot it out of the sky,” Ulli said.
She showed Isaac to his quarters.
“I could never have imagined a more perfect room,” he said, pulling the curtains aside.
“All the rooms are painted a different color—tangerine, light blue, ochre, watermelon, avocado, terra-cotta,” she explained. “When you open the curtains and the sun floods in, it’s quite impressive.”
“The tile work is magnificent.” He pointed at the rug. “And this is beautiful.”
“It’s a Berber rug. I don’t know why they’re not more appreciated in the rest of the world. Do you know that some of the fancy hotels here have wall-to-wall carpeting in the rooms? Anyone who prefers that to tiles and rugs shouldn’t bother coming to Morocco.”
“I’ve never liked fancy hotels—all those columns and fountains and obsequious staff. This is so much better.”
“Thank you, Isaac,” Ulli said.
“It must be a lot of work, running such an establishment,” Isaac said.
“Yes, but it keeps me active. I have found in my dotage that I am not good at relaxing. Even when I first started the hotel, I pictured myself dozing off in my chair in the afternoon sun, but there is really no time for dozing here. There’s always something to be done: windows to wash, floors to scrub, carrots to peel, figures to add. So I work just as hard as my employees. I know they find me a little odd. In Morocco, the boss doesn’t clean toilets and iron. But I would rather make beds or scrub bathtubs than sip sugary tea and stare out at the street.”
“I would make a good bellhop, you know. I could wear a fez. I always wanted to wear a fez.”
Ulli laughed. “I thought you don’t approve of obsequiousness.”
“Does wearing a fez make one obsequious?” Isaac asked.
Ulli laughed again. “Come to think of it, you wouldn’t look bad in a fez.” She went to the window and pulled it wide open. “Come,” she said. “If you lean way out, you can see a patch of the medieval wall.”
“I see it,” Isaac said. “Remember that time we ate snow from the windowsill?”
“With spoons,” Ulli said.
“That was Leo’s idea,” Isaac said, regretting it immediately. He had not wanted to bring Leo up so soon, before she even had a chance to get used to his presence.
“Yes,” Ulli said, pulling her head back into the room, but he kept his out for a few more moments, letting the hot, dry air fill his lungs.
The Medina
Isaac lingered in his room. He needed to catch his breath, steel himself for the next step. He took his time hanging his clothes in the closet, washing his hands, setting out his toiletries. He wanted to be prepared for their first real conversation. There would be tea waiting for him when he went downstairs. He would try to explain himself, why he had come. He took a shower. In the shower, he thought of climbing out the window, jumping to the street. Fleeing. How absurd. On the plane, he had not allowed himself to think of their meeting.
Ulli had not seemed disappointed to see him.
“Isaac,” she had said. “Isaac,” he said out loud in the shower. He emerged from his room invigorated and confident. “Isaac,” he whispered as he descended the stairs, stepping slowly, as if he were a dignitary, a Latin American general with a sas
h of medals.
“Ah, monsieur.” A middle-aged man with thick, graying hair and bad teeth approached him. “Madame would like you to wait in the dining room,” he said, taking Isaac’s arm and leading him across the lobby to the dining room. After a few moments Ulli appeared, carrying a plateful of oranges. “I thought you would like something fresh,” she said. She sat down, took up a knife, and began to cut carefully; the peel came off in one piece. She separated the sections, arranging them on the plate. “Take some, please.”
Isaac put a section of the orange into his mouth. Only when the orange had burst open did he realize how thirsty he was. He took another piece and another. “Aren’t you going to have any?” he asked.
“They are not good for my stomach,” Ulli said.
“But I cannot possibly eat six oranges myself.”
“Of course you can’t.” Ulli laughed. “But it would not be hospitable to offer only one orange.”
“But six?”
“I will not be offended if you do not eat them all,” Ulli said, smiling. Isaac ended up eating three oranges.
“In some strange way, I don’t think I was surprised to see you,” Ulli said.
“Don’t tell me you have turned into a psychic,” Isaac said.
“You know I have no use for such things,” Ulli said, and they left it at that. They were good at that, at leaving things.
“I thought the air here would do me good. The humidity is hard for me,” he said, knowing how ridiculous this sounded, for his decision to come had nothing to do with something as mundane as the climate. But he had to ease into things, give Ulli a chance to get used to his presence.
“The mountains are nearby, and so is the ancient site of Volubilis,” she said, following his lead. “I have not been on an excursion for a while. Perhaps we could go.”
“I would like that, but don’t feel you have to entertain me.”
“Of course not,” Ulli said, squeezing his hand. Had it really been almost forty years since he’d seen her?