The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  She touched her damp, hot forehead. NO! No more recriminations. Just joy. I have found the right teacher now. And it isn’t too late for either of us, she thought hopefully. She couldn’t wait to get them to Serouya and Company, Dealers in Rare Books and Manuscripts. To see their faces. Like Niagara Falls all over again, she thought with a thrill, pulling on her stockings.

  And where would they eat dinner tonight? The River Room of the Savoy, of course. And the same table, too, where she had once sat with her fiancé, the heirloom diamond heavy and bright on her finger. The same seat where she had glimpsed for the first time that handsome, intense stranger with the large dark eyes who had transformed her life forever….

  Crazy in love, she thought, swaying a moment, almost dizzy with rapture.

  15

  (In a suitcase in the attic of a house in Grindlewald, Switzerland, found in the mountains on the German side of the border, November 12, 1942. Owner unknown, presumed dead. Fifteen pages, handwritten, Portuguese. Several pages water-stained and unreadable, bound in two pieces of old leather and tied in rags. As yet undiscovered.)

  …As is it written: “My face is red with weeping and on my eyelids deep darkness.”

  And so, as I have written in those tear-stained pages that have taken up so much of my ink, my dearest mother died the most unexpected and unjust of deaths, leaving me and Brianda in the care of a father, who, nearly insane with grief, forgot me for a while.

  To my misfortune, I was placed in the care of my Aunt Malca, my mother’s younger sister.

  Malca was childless and newly widowed, but not pitied overmuch, the consensus being that her poor husband had found the shortest and easiest route out of a bad bargain. It was whispered that having squandered her wealth during her husband’s lifetime, his death had necessitated the sale of all their property to pay tax and debt collectors. She was now rather destitute, which is why my father—out of respect for my dear mother’s memory—had taken her in. More than once have I pondered how the pure seed of such loving-kindness should have sprouted into such a bitter, poisonous weed!

  Malca was not a soft bosom to cry upon, nor a pair of motherly arms. To Malca, I was a great, spoiled girl, untutored in the ways of the world, whom it was her awesome and distasteful responsibility to mold into a new image.

  I was thirteen, and my sister Brianda eight, when Aunt Malca descended upon us from Evora. Before that, we had seen our aunt only once or twice a year, on holidays, and always her ridiculously gaudy, richly embroidered but tasteless gowns and sour, pinched face had made us giggle and call her “The Golden Lemon” behind her back.

  I can almost see her now descending from the large, black coach my father had sent to fetch her. Her eyes, narrow, suspicious, and full of envy, peered up at the tall, curtained windows of our salon, catching my own. As she looked at me I saw a small, crafty, almost wicked smile flash out from the corners of her mouth. There we stood, locked in combat as I stared down and she up, until finally her gaze shifted to my father and brother, who had come out of the house to greet her. I saw her lower her gaze, transformed into the most fragile, modest, and almost embarrassingly servile of creatures.

  With Brianda and me, however, she showed quite a different character. Very soon she made it clear who would rule.

  Before our sleepy rooster had roused himself for his first triumphant song, Aunt Malca was already tapping at my door. “As it is written, ‘slumber is the first step to failure,’” she called out, exhorting me to dress and begin learning my household duties. Thereafter, she used a different proverb a day to rob me of my sleep. “Love not sleep lest you be beggared”; or “Sleepiness will robe a man in rags.” And when she wanted to be particularly severe (or when I was particularly tired), she would thunder, “Sleep on, then! Is it not written that: ‘The sleep of the wicked is a benefit to them and a boon to the world?’”

  There was nothing, it seems, I could do right. I ate too quickly, and not enough, of foods that would not put the beautiful plumpness on my body she said men found so desirable. I was, she declared, jading my palate with unwholesome foods: garden vegetables meant to feed livestock and cheap fresh fish that was servants’ fare.

  It was not long before she was in the kitchen insisting the cook prepare fried breads with honey frostings, almond-paste cookies, and egg-yolk confections called yemas. In addition, she insisted that with my father’s wealth, it was fitting for us to feast upon all the delicacies of the New World: coffee, cocoa, sweet potatoes, and maize. Of course, Aunt Malca never dared demand such fare for herself directly from Father, who, together with my brother, Miguel, continued to enjoy “merchant class” foods: roast capon, saffron-scented rice, and heavenly bean and lamb stews.

  Since Malca, Brianda, and I often dined together—Father and Miguel supping at the odd hours their medical practice required—Malca bullied our poor cook mercilessly into preparing the delicacies she fancied. When she saw that I would partake of no part of that rich, indigestible fare, she declared I was deliberately fasting, and even hinted that she had heard me whispering incantations over the food pots to ruin their taste.

  She was not far wrong. For I found all her pretensions and demands mocking to the memory of my dear mother, who had exhorted us to live simply and give much to the poor. I would have gone to any length to thwart her. It was only Miguel’s, and then Father’s, intervention that stopped me from becoming a rattling bag of bones.

  She never forgave me.

  Or perhaps she was just one of those people I have encountered so frequently, particularly among women who lack the love of husband and child, who cannot stand to see another happy. She redoubled her efforts to somehow see me miserable.

  My days consisted of endless lectures on house and husband-care: The rooms in a house were best kept dark and wet, with no tables or chairs, well sealed against fleas. And if, despite this, there be evidence of fleas, spread alder leaves and trenches smeared with turpentine and leave a candle burning in the middle so that fleas will stick.

  To catch flies, tie bunches of ferns shredded at the edges across a room; or set out a dish of milk with hare’s gall or crushed onions, which the flies will sip and then expire.

  To keep clothes clean, she maintained, spread them in the sun, and brush with dry twigs. To take out spots, heat urine and soak the spot two days. Then squeeze out. If it wasn’t gone, add more urine and fuller’s earth soaked in lye (or ashes), and clean with a chicken feather soaked in hot water.

  If one’s furs got hard, take a mouthful of wine and spit on them. Then throw them on the floor and let them dry.

  As for the care of a husband, my aunt declared, one should treat him like a good groom treats a valuable horse: unshoe him, give him good feed, and bed him down!

  For hours she would keep me in the kitchen, teaching me her wearisome recipes. The worst, I remember, was her compote. For this dish, I had to shell five hundred new walnuts before their shells hardened, and soak them in well water until they turned black. Then they were boiled and drained and added to pots of honey. This had to settle for three days. On the fourth, we added ginger and cloves, quinces boiled in red wine and strained, powder of hippocras, grains of paradise, galingale, a pound of sugar, and a quart of wine….

  It tasted like G-d’s gall!

  And then she showed me how to make sweet barley soup, a watery horror made with licorice and figs; as well as Flemish broth, a nightmarish confection of water, egg yolks, and white wine.

  All this, instead of letting me attend my lessons!

  Again, I complained bitterly to my father.

  “Try to be gracious, child! Can you not see that I have more important things to do?” he said with impatience.

  Fearing his wrath, I could do nothing.

  One day, however, he unexpectedly (or had he actually repented and come looking for me?) walked into the kitchen, where I was stirring a pot of boiling beet soup, my sleeves rolled up and my face red hot, as smeared and sweaty as a kitchen maid’s.
My aunt was ensconced on a kitchen stool eating sweetmeats.

  Surveying the scene, my father’s face registered a new understanding. “Dear sister,” he addressed my aunt politely but firmly, “the poor tutor complains that Gracia has not been to class for several weeks.”

  “Please forgive me, Don. I am trying to instruct her in the ways of running a household, of which she is scandalously ignorant!”

  My father clicked his heels together and bowed. “Nevertheless, good sister, her absences waste the good teacher’s time, and my good money. Most of all, it wastes her precious mind.”

  I was absolutely thunderstruck. Never had my father expressed such a feeling to me.

  “To give her religious instruction in the sacred Hebrew texts is foolhardy and dangerous,” Malca protested vehemently.

  “It is a risk, true. But ignorance is a greater one, or so my dear wife convinced me. So we must trust in G-d’s benevolence,” he whispered back, equally adamant.

  “As you will it. But a woman who learns to read will never wed a nobleman with a great estate or find any husband!” she declared. “She is already too old!”

  This was too much for my father.

  “Hold your tongue, woman! I have received many offers for Gracia’s hand. I do not warrant she is yet ready to choose among them. Noblemen have a way of disappearing for months on business. I am preparing our Gracia to keep his accounts, fight his lawsuits, ransom him if he is kidnapped, and collect his taxes. In addition to that, if she knows how to read and write and think, she will also be better equipped to oversee the servants, who will bake bread, salt and store meat, spin cloth, and sew clothes, and”—he paused, his mouth tight—“stir soup.”

  My mind could not take it all in. Suitors had come. For me! Again, my mouth went dry. I had not even suspected!

  “I never learned to read!” Malca said haughtily, as if that were all that was needed to substantiate the rightness of her claims.

  “Ah, but I am sure your dear, late husband had you to thank for his prosperity nevertheless.” My father grimaced, turning on his heel and leaving.

  Aunt Malca’s face took on an eerie resemblance to my soup.

  From then on, the war between my aunt and myself took a different course. Instead of torturing me, she began to spoil my sister, Brianda.

  Unlike me, Brianda had no patience for quill and paper. Numbers, she said, gave her a terrible ache at each temple. As for her religious instruction, she declared the Hebrew language unlearnable by anyone who was not sixty years old with a great white beard. She never did try to reconcile this opinion with the fact that I, her sister, had easily mastered the Hebrew aleph-bet, whose sounds and letters were so close to our own. She declared that she would pray in Portuguese, so at least she would know what it was her mouth was saying, and imitate those things she remembered our mother doing. Formal instruction wasn’t necessary if one had piety in one’s heart.

  I knew she slept until ten and never performed her morning devotions, unless attempting to impress our father. I scolded her, but she tossed her head and went to Aunt Malca, who accused me of undermining her authority.

  Day by day, I saw Brianda change before my eyes. Whereas before she had always been satisfied with the fine weave and simple cut of her dresses, she now whined and demanded that new clothes be ordered for her with fine gold embroidery and real pearls. She had always had a slight tendency to fill her plate overmuch and transfer the damage to her stomach, but now she increased her portions twofold, declaring that her cheeks needed plumping and her bosom ampler padding. Her favorite foods became fried breads and yemas. Very soon, new dresses for Brianda were not a choice, but a necessity.

  I could also see my aunt’s influence upon her in other ways, some petty and vainglorious, and others quite dangerous. We were on our knees during mass, saying our psalters, when I heard Brianda whisper gloria patri with the others, instead of keeping silent and thinking, as we always did, “In the name of our Lord, Adonai: Amen!” And then, even more incredibly, I saw her take the Host, chew it, and swallow it instead of leaving it whole in her mouth to take out discreetly once we were alone in our carriages.

  I glared at her, but it was too dangerous to say anything. She gave me a smile of such smug superiority that I felt myself like some great cathedral bell that has been yanked with such force it is nigh to splitting. “Why have you done such things?” I fumed once we were safely on the road, out of earshot of milling eavesdroppers.

  She tossed her head at me like a silly brat and stuck out her tongue. I kicked her hard and heard her squeal like a little stuck pig. “Aunt Malca says it does no harm to believe in two Saviors, and as the Host is His body, then I will have all His glory within me should I swallow it,” she sobbed, rubbing her leg where the red welt spread like a rash.

  I was dumbstruck. “And do you believe, you little fool, that the body of the Lord G-d is in the bread that goes down your throat and is then wasted in the chamber pot!?”

  “Aunt Malca says it is very dangerous to believe otherwise, and that one must be sensible, even if others are fools,” she declared.

  “Does she mean, then, that Mother, Father, Grandfather, and Grandfather—all of our ancestors—were fools?” I screamed at her, pinching the fat, self-indulgent flesh of her white arms, folded so calmly and stupidly over her chest.

  She wept and howled and rubbed her arm and her leg and threatened that she would make me pay. That someday, somehow, I would be sorry for how I’d treated her.

  Truth be told, I was already sorry. As it is said, if you chew iron, you will swallow nails. I should have befriended my sister and turned her into an ally. Instead, I pushed her closer to Aunt Malca, who continued to feed her far more damaging things than yemas.

  But little did I know then how much sorrier I was destined to be. My sister, it seems, had started down a bad path. And a bad path cannot lead to a good place.

  16

  “This can’t be it!”

  “Why ever not, Suzanne?” Catherine replied, puzzled.

  “But, Gran, it’s so…”

  “Dumpy? Dingy?”

  “Well, you’d think they’d look a little more like Sotheby’s….”

  “What, with posh lighting fixtures and mahogany wainscoting, smelling like wax and brass polish?” Catherine chuckled, leading the way slowly up the rickety old stairwell. Halfway up, she paused, her breathing heavy, her hand outstretched in a speechmaker’s gesture of emphasis: “Never be deceived, my dears, by packaging.”

  On the first landing, metal signs indicated a trading company of some kind; and on the second, old cartons overflowed with long tongues of computer printouts, almost blocking their way.

  “Are you sure, Gran?” Francesca shook her head.

  “Yes, of course!” Catherine declared, horribly winded and not at all sure. “Keep going. I’ll catch up.”

  When they reached the last floor, there were wooden doors with milky glass inserts on which the name Serouya was painted in fading black letters.

  “It looks more like some 1950s TV detective agency,” Suzanne grumbled.

  “And what is a rare-book dealer if not a detective, my dear?” Catherine smiled, relieved, a small shiver of excitement crawling up her spine as she slowly caught her breath.

  “A pirate, perhaps?” a deep male voice suddenly answered.

  He’d crept up behind them as silently as a mugger, or a person well exercised in the hushed etiquette of libraries.

  The women turned and stared.

  He wore dark jeans stretched loosely over long, muscular legs, a wide-sleeved Greek fisherman’s shirt, open at the collar, and a weathered brown-leather vest. His shoulders were broad, and his forearms as muscular and tan as a dock worker’s. His hair, a rich, loamy brown, still bore faint traces of a no-nonsense haircut by a barber who had never heard of mousse or hairdryers. His dark beard was severely trimmed, giving him the gentlemanly, yet slightly rakish, appearance of a sea captain.

  Franc
esca stared at him. There was something aggressive, almost offensive, in the way his broad male body had suddenly insinuated itself between them. She looked into his eyes: they were dark, vital, full of inspired humor.

  “Excuse me, but I wasn’t aware you were part of this conversation,” Suzanne said coolly, thinking that he looked like a depiction of Apollo she’d once seen engraved on a Greek coin.

  “Pardon me!” He clicked his heels together with a slight bow. “But I believe that I may be the only one here qualified to make any statement at all on this subject.”

  “Who are you?” Catherine demanded.

  The milky glass doors suddenly opened.

  “Catherine!”

  They saw a girlish blush that startled them creep into their grandmother’s pale face.

  “Alex,” Catherine whispered.

  “My dear.”

  He was an elderly gentleman with impeccably cut silver hair and a dark bespoke suit. They watched in utter astonishment as he bent over Gran’s trembling hand and kissed it with courtly affection.

  “Long time, Catherine…”

  “Yes, so it is….”

  “Do you two know each other?” Suzanne blurted out, glancing from one to the other.

  There was an awkward silence as the two looked at each other meaningfully.

  “Yes, we are very well aquainted,” Alex Serouya murmured, still holding their grandmother’s frail, white hand.

  Catherine looked down, overcome.

  “Grandmother?” Francesca probbed.

  “Don’t they know, Catherine?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head. “There didn’t seem to be any point.”

  “Give us a hint, will you, Gran?” Suzanne urged, dying of curiosity.

  Alex Serouya cleared his throat. “I see that you and my nephew Marius have already met.”

  “So that’s David’s son,” Catherine said, grateful he’d changed the subject. She looked the young man over more forgivingly. “I wouldn’t have suspected it.”