The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  At the time, my mother knew nothing of such things, although I’m sure my grandfather must have known. All she knew was that instead of the roast lamb her father had promised her, there was pale bread soaked in rancid olive oil, and watery lentil soup. And for her bed, she had rags covering a hard, cold floor. And each day, the house took in more people, until even her small, thin body could no longer find room to stretch out.

  They were the fortunate ones, her father would tell her each time she complained, pointing to the streets, alleyways, gardens, and mountaintops where miserable masses swarmed over one another like panicked ants.

  My mother listened with a child’s peevish unreasonableness, her father’s words bringing her no comfort. All she knew was that her hair was matted and that her scalp and body itched beyond endurance. She scratched endlessly until once, examining her nails, she saw tiny creatures crawling over her hands. When she showed her father, his face blanched and he hurried her outside. But instead of washing her hair in perfume and combing it until it shone like copper, he shaved her scalp and threw the hair into a fire, over which he boiled her clothes in a large, stinking pot.

  For a long time, my mother remembered, she hated him, refusing to speak to him at all. And each day, her father was called away for longer and longer hours. Only as an adult, a wife and mother, did my mother begin to fully understand how brave her father had been, how selfless, to spend his days and most of his nights dropping little boats of hope into that raging ocean of human misery. Or how close he, and all of them, had come to tragedy.

  Instead of being a good, dutiful daughter, filled with the virtues of patience and forbearance, my mother became a little hellish estrie, waiting to pounce upon her father whenever she saw him. Filled with childish fury and consumed by jealousy, my mother played evil tricks on the poor woman who cared for her and her sister, pouring beet juice into her boiling pot of linens and feigning fainting fits to alarm her.

  The woman responded by using the switch on my mother as often as she dared. “Poor woman!” my mother recalled. She was not unkind, but she had three children of her own who sat with pale, bloated faces crying with hunger, and no husband. My mother never did learn what had happened to him, but one day, wanting particularly to vex her, she told the woman’s children, “Your father is a filthy apostate who has stayed behind in Spain to kiss the cross!”

  She often thought that her childish barbed arrow had not strayed far from the mark. For instead of going for the switch, the woman simply flung her apron over her head and wailed. My mother always said this sight filled her with remorse. She waited anxiously for her father’s return, hoping to corner him with a much improved picture of events before the woman could tell him the unpainted truth.

  But when her father finally did appear, he seemed frantic, almost distraught. He quickly gathered them, their goat, and their other belongings together and loaded them into a small wagon pulled by a tired, ancient mule. A few lashes set the animal trotting at a pace which, for the aged beast, must have seemed like a jousting tournament.

  Plague had broken out in the city. Before the year was out, thousands of refugees and their reluctant hosts would be swept away by that appalling and terrible sickness that even my skilled grandfather could do nothing to stem.

  My mother must have been curious; she must have asked him questions, but somehow the only image that remained with her of that midnight flight was the wonderful silence of the long road once they were well out of Lisbon and its miserable crowds. My mother remembered, too, how she rested her head on her father’s arm, her whole body one with the gentle rhythm of the mule’s slow trot.

  They traveled many days. And often, it was so intensely hot that my mother thought her limbs would melt and her blood turn to steam. They ate food from a basket my grandfather had brought with them—warm meat and stale bread and warm wine. Sometimes, if my aunt screamed too long, her father stopped the wagon and found a stream to bathe her. In the evenings, the cold mountain air turned their sweat to ice. Sometimes, her father would build a small fire and they would sit around the bright, warm glow. Often, my mother saw him read from his prayer books, the careworn lines on his handsome face relaxing for a moment, replaced with a calm and serenity that soothed her worries. She stopped asking him where they were going, content to have him to herself. And perhaps, too, she had despaired of explanations, and wisely distrusted promises. Like the Israelites, she was content to follow the Cloud of Glory and the Pillar of Fire wherever it took them for at least forty years. After the sojourn in Lisbon, the idea was not so terrible.

  When my mother lost count of sunrises and sunsets and burning days and bitter-cold nights, and was almost reconciled to the idea of being a wanderer, her father abruptly drew in the reins and said, “We’re home, child.”

  My mother remembered looking around but, in the pitch-blackness, could see nothing. She remembered the dull sound of her sister’s crying, and her own drowsy complaints, and being impressed—even shocked—by the contrast of her father’s cheerful whistle. He seemed overjoyed.

  She heard him open a door, and felt herself cradled in his arms until she was lain on a bed of fresh straw and covered with soft down. And then something happened that in all her long life she never forgot, nor considered less remarkable, despite the passing of time: She felt her dead mother’s hand caress her shorn head and heard her voice croon prayers as she tucked my mother in.

  My mother decided that she herself must be dead. She closed her eyes, wondering why she had not thought to die sooner since it was so pleasant.

  In the morning, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  She was in a proper bedroom, with an estrado, and beds and chests and draperies. She went to the window and threw open the latch. She found herself high off the ground in a grand house surrounded by green fields and fragrant trees. There was a beautiful silence broken only by the joyous sounds of small, free creatures that live and roam the sky and earth as G-d wills them. The crowds were gone. The terrible noise, the stench, the milling unwashed, diseased, hungry people. The horror of Lisbon was gone, and my mother was, she must be, she thought, in Paradise.

  And then, as if G-d had read her thoughts, the door opened and her dead mother walked in—beautifully alive. She ran to her and pressed herself against her, hugging her with small childish arms. “Madre, Madre,” she wept, all the scalding sorrow within her boiling over and disappearing. Only a few times in her life, my mother recalled, had she ever felt such happiness.

  But the woman pulled back from her, crouching, lifting up my mother’s chin in her soft palm. Her eyes, milky with tears, stared at my mother in sorrow. It was then that my mother realized that it was not her dead mother at all, but someone who looked remarkably like her. At first she pulled back, heartbroken and betrayed. But the woman gathered my mother in her arms and held her fast. “The moon has died and the clouds have buried her, and all the other clouds weep for her,” she whispered, rocking her.

  Her name was Constanza, and she was my mother’s aunt, Rachel’s younger sister.

  Grandfather Isaac had bought the house while he was still in Spain, somehow transferring the money through intermediaries, which was almost impossible to do. No one was allowed to take money or valuables out of Spain. My grandmother had written her sister’s family to join her, but Aunt Constanza’s husband had, at the last moment, been forced to care for his widowed older sister and her five children. He’d insisted that Constanza take their children and go on ahead, promising to join her later. She had arrived at the house a few days before my mother and grandfather.

  My mother had never met her cousins, as they lived far away in the Extremadura. The boy, Joseph, was my mother’s age, but seemed older because of his great size and tendency toward corpulence. But there was nothing of the bully about him, my mother recalled mournfully, her eyes filling with tears. The opposite. Perhaps because he felt he was taking his father’s place, he was fiercely protective of his mother and younger sister, E
lvira, who was just a baby at that time. Unlike my aunt Malca, family legend has it that Elvira was a sweet, contented child with great rosy cheeks and eyes the color of cornflowers.

  Constanza tried her best. But she, like my grandmother, had always had many servants to help her and was unfamiliar with running a household. She burned the bread and left the linens boiling too long, so that the material tore to shreds. My grandfather never said a word, but one day he arrived with two local village women, Alphonsa and Maria.

  From then on, my mother recalled, there were clean clothes and bed linens that smelled like sunshine. There were warm loaves of bread and pies cooling in the breeze that flew through the kitchen’s great windows. And each night, a wild, warming fire burned in the clean grate of the fireplace.

  Constanza spent her time nursing Elvira and Malca, who—even my mother admitted—nestled in womanly arms, began to take on some of her cousin’s charming peacefulness. After all the upheavals of their lives, the family began to feel a certain calm.

  My grandfather announced that it was time to resume the civilized lives they had left in Spain. To Aunt Constanza’s wonder and to Alphonsa’s and Maria’s great horror, my grandfather insisted everyone start bathing once a week. It was felt that one should not expose more than a single part of the flesh at a time for ablutions, and many felt not to bathe at all was even more healthful. Constanza asked my grandfather many questions about this until she allowed her own children to shed all their garments and plunge into the wooden tub. But the two good servant women asked nothing, simply crossing themselves and waiting, no doubt, for the family to shrivel up and die.

  My mother’s hair began to grow back, and Constanza combed it out in the sun, which was shining brighter and more benevolently each day. They would take long hikes in the hills, feasting on bunches of ripening grapes and filling their aprons with firm olives whose first pressing gave them the most delicious oils. My mother remembered lying back in the grass with her father and Aunt Constanza and her sister and cousins, smelling the sweetness of wild violets and jasmine, wishing for nothing more perfect.

  My mother always spoke of Constanza with tears in her eyes. “Ours is not to question the justice of the Holy One,” she would say. “Why the righteous must suffer the agonies that the wicked never know.”

  I never knew my great-aunt, but through my mother she has become part of my life. Her gentle kindness, the love she poured over my mother and her sister, trying to make up for their terrible loss—all of this has somehow seeped into my being, as if the act were done to me as well.

  I can see my mother holding her hand and walking through the silky, warm grass, beginning to believe that it was possible the terrible hole in her heart was going to heave together and close somehow after all.

  The days passed with gentleness. My grandfather started seeing patients again, who came to the house at all times of the day and night. Often, he took the wagon and was gone a day or two, always bringing back toys or sweetmeats for all the children.

  Before my mother knew it, the hot summer days of humming bees and childish laughter drew to a close, and the New Year and the Day of Judgment were upon them. My grandfather sent word to his fellow countrymen that he would hold services in his home, revealing the joyous news that he had brought with him a sacred Torah scroll.

  Renova sovre nozotros anyada buena i dulse del prensipio i asta el kavo del anyo—Grandfather blessed guests and family. “Send us again a fruitful year, sweet from beginning to end.” They feasted on dates, pomegranates, pumpkin pies, and leek patties. The head of a fish graced the table, so that they should be the head and not the tail, and move forward toward the future forcefully.

  My mother always remembered that particular New Year’s and Judgment Day—the communal chanting of the prayers, the dazzling white and black of the prayer shawls, the piercing sound of the ram’s horn calling the wayward Hebrews back to the fold. Most of all, she remembered the way my grandfather hugged the scroll to his chest and kissed it, his eyes full of pain, but joy, too. She knew that her mother’s death was on his mind, as well as those friends and relatives left behind who, having chosen expedient baptisms, were now vulnerable to the savage, tireless Reverend Inquisitors, something we as Jews had no reason to fear.

  My mother recalled the sweetness of her father’s voice as it rose with the soaring Hebrew melodies of Spanish Jews, and the sense of pride that never left her, despite the inconceivable events that were soon to transform their quiet lives beyond their wildest nightmares.

  4

  The doorbell rang, followed by a polite interval of silence. It was the interval that caused Suzanne to lift her head off the strong, male arm in which it lay pillowed.

  It couldn’t be a friend. Her friends either knocked and whistled until she answered, or, failing both, leaned against the buzzer. Only the landlord buzzed once and waited politely. But he never came by unless she’d forgotten to pay the rent. As far as she remembered (although on these particular types of things she was never absolutely sure), she’d paid the rent. So who could it be?

  “Don’t get up, gorgeous!” her companion groaned.

  She looked down at the man in her bed, pulling the covers over her breasts, making some quick calculations. He wasn’t exactly a stranger—no, not exactly. She’d met him through a man she’d met at a Greenpeace meeting who’d invited her to a party in the Hamptons, where Julius (the man in her bed), and a number of other men, had taken her phone number. All of them had called her. But Julius had had the nicest voice and he’d invited her to a party at William Schrader’s—the famous naturalist—back from two years in the Ivory Coast studying the influence of global warming on viviparous toads. So she’d accepted him and turned the others down.

  This was their second date. And decent enough, although he wasn’t actually someone she’d care to introduce to anyone she knew. Not quite yet, she thought reasonably, mentally apologizing to him, even as her mind racked up the deadly minuses: His saliva had an odd flavor and he tended to rush things and lay back waiting for compliments.

  In addition, he’d made the fatal mistake of insisting on spending the night. She could tell he’d done it out of a desire to please her. And most women would be pleased, she admitted to herself. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of them. In the morning, she wanted her own space, time to look disheveled in her rattiest, most comfortable bathrobe; time to put on the TV and radio full blast, to spread the morning paper out on the floor and drink cocoa and suck the white centers from Oreo cookies. She didn’t want to be cheerful and make breakfast or be nice to anyone. Most of all, if she felt like crying, she didn’t want anyone trying to comfort her.

  She gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder.

  “Julius, don’t you have a job to go to?”

  “I thought I’d take the day off and spend it with you.”

  Uh-oh, she thought.

  The doorbell rang again.

  She threw her long legs off the bed, pulling a robe around her, pushing her curly, copper-colored hair off her forehead.

  She really was a stupendously beautiful woman, the man in her bed congratulated himself, unaware that this was the end and not the beginning. Really stunning in a big, Cindy Crawfordish, voluptuous sort of way. He lifted his head to get a better view, propping his chin on his palm, almost as delighted with her as he was with himself.

  She walked, lithe and noiseless as a cat, to the armed fortress that was her front door. Beneath all those crossbars, bolts, locks, and chains, she knew there was a peephole. But with all the scratches and accumulated dirt, you couldn’t really see anything through it anyway, even if you made the effort to unearth it. Besides, if she couldn’t recognize the voice, there was no way she was opening the door.

  There had been a time, she recalled, when—fresh out of her ivy-covered dorm in Boston—she’d never even asked who it was, happy to open the door and speak to anyone: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, March of Dimes volunteers, salesmen, neighbor
s, strangers…It had taken only one bad experience to end all that.

  “I’m going to look through the peephole, and if I don’t open the door it means I don’t want you, so just go away, got that?” she said, having found this statement very effective for most callers, and well worth the minor unpleasantness it sometimes caused.

  She held her hand against the door, as if willing it to stay shut. The banging became more insistent.

  “Who is it?”

  “Suzanne, don’t you recognize me? It’s your grandmother.”

  She leaned her back up against the door, surveying the wreckage that was her living room, and beyond to where her naked new companion lay waiting for her imminent return. Her shoulders sagged.

  “Well, well, perfect timing,” she whispered to no one in particular, opening the bolts, deadlocks, chains, and assorted iron bars.

  Neither woman moved.

  What was called for here? Suzanne considered, the taste bitter in her mouth (her fault? her recent partner’s?). Polite cheek-brushing? Outstretched arms? Full kisses, sighs of familial warmth and exhilaration?

  “Please, Suzanne, I’m too old to play games. Are you going to invite me in, or encourage me to leave? Either way, I really want to know soon.”

  Suzanne opened the door wide, feeling an unreasonable sense of defeat as she watched the old woman invade her home. A few months ago, I would have slammed it in your face, she thought.

  Catherine’s steps were hesitant and contemplative, full of painful awareness of the transformation that had taken place since Renaldo’s departure. All the posters were gone, those beautiful Impressionist prints from the Musée d’Orsay; the Bronzinos from the Uffizi; and the Italian Renaissance prints from Venice. Suzanne had brought them all home after her senior year at the Sorbonne, the way she’d brought back Renaldo.