The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  “It was the middle of the war. Pilots were dying every day, every day. And houses all around us were getting bombed, everyone dead in a minute. And he looked so carefree, laughing, a cigarette dangling from his lips.” And suddenly, with no warning, the urge to touch him, to press her fingers into the thick dark hair, to hear his heart pump the good, strong lifeblood through undamaged veins, and the sudden knowledge of her own young blood throbbing and warm and fragile beyond imagining. The idea that she, too, at that moment, was alive and full of passion, and that the next bomb could end that in the blink of an eye…And then, as if he’d read her mind, Carl walking across the room until he was standing in front of her.

  “He came over with my cousin….”

  Polite words, barely heard, and then his sitting opposite, the warmth of his body somehow already part of hers, and knowing, just knowing that this connection was going to be forever.

  For an instant, Suzanne and Francesca had the startling sensation that they were sitting with someone else, someone younger whose body radiated feminine power. The blue eyes, clear and tender, flashed with excitement in the center of her lovely heart-shaped face. For the first time in their lives they sensed the woman in her, the peer, someone a strange man could fall desperately in love with by simply glimpsing her across a crowded room.

  Perhaps then, Suzanne thought, our youth always breathed still within us, contained, not lost? Conduits, she thought, startled. “How did Alex take it?”

  “He was devastated,” Catherine admitted, gripping a spoon with white-knuckled fingers. “But there was nothing I could do. How can I make you understand?” She struggled, overwhelmed by the task. “It was…it’s like…” Her features suddenly relaxed, serene. “It was like hearing something you had always known was true, something that matched exactly all the information stored in your heart. There was no question of disagreeing, of finding reasons to resist.”

  “But Gran, what about the ‘family’?” Suzanne mocked, her face full of theatrical opprobrium and wicked humor.

  Catherine flinched. “It was very painful for them, in the beginning.”

  Harsh and demolishing, the pain. But like childbirth, so necessary and unavoidable that in advance one had to forgive and plan to forget. “But everyone got over it. Carl was Jewish, also from a good Sephardic family.”

  “Oh, now I get it! How convenient for you! I suppose if he hadn’t been, the family would have had a little talk with him and he would have simply vanished! Excuse me. I’m going to powder my nose,” Suzanne said with a bitterness she herself found startling. She grabbed her purse and walked out of the room.

  Catherine watched her, devastated.

  Would she have given him up if he had been from the wrong family, the wrong religion? Or run off with him anyway, abandoning her family forever? There was no point in pretending she knew the answer. Either act required a kind of courage that had never been asked of her.

  She faced the humbling thought that it was neither courage nor virtue that allowed her to now sit before her granddaughters championing all the traditional values. It was simply luck. Or the guiding, providential hand of some memuneh.

  That old word! Resurrected from memories long past of her own grandmother’s artful tales. A word connected to summer evenings and rocking chairs, her head resting on her loving abuela’s broad, soft lap. Everything had a memuneh. Every blade of grass, every tree, every human. A guardian angel who helped arrange your future by guiding you through the present; celestial lawyers who pleaded before the heavenly court when you erred, convincing G-d to give you another chance before assigning your sins their just desserts.

  She looked down at her own white, blue-veined hands. Had she the right or the skill to play her granddaughters’ memuneh?

  Francesca—who had not been able to get beyond the news of her grandmother’s wild, passionate fling—sat there thinking: Did that mean that the unbearable cliché sometimes actually happened? Eyes meeting across a crowded room. Instant love that lasts forever? And how ironic, the memoirs, too…!”

  It seemed unlikely. After all, what could you really know about such a person? Appearances were so untrustworthy. The moment you got into bed with a man, it wasn’t his attractive face or the strong shape of his body that was important, but simply the tenderness of being touched like a cherished thing.

  Case in point: tall, handsome Peter. He had never made her feel cherished, only used. He hadn’t loved her. That was the short of it. Her story as opposed to her grandmother’s, who had had the luxury of sitting with an adoring, diamond-bestowing fiancé while a handsome stranger fell madly in love with her. Who had had two men who loved her, simultaneously.

  I still haven’t found one, she mourned, smiling at the absurdity of her jealousy. Well, if such a thing were going to happen, this certainly was the right setting for it, she admitted, looking across the elegant, crowded spaces of the magical room. She blanched.

  “It’s him!” she exclaimed.

  “Who?” Catherine looked up, not quite sure of her own eyes anymore.

  “The guy with the beard. The manuscript hunter.”

  “Marius?”

  Francesca nodded. He was suddenly looking across at her, smiling—a wide, beautiful smile of great vitality that seemed to blaze across the floor.

  “He’s getting up and he’s bringing someone with him!”

  He took long strides, deliberate yet leisurely, as if every step were bringing him pleasure.

  “Mrs. da Costa, Francesca.” He bowed, looking at both women meaningfully.

  He remembers my name, Francesca thought, embarrassed by how much it meant to her. He looked remarkably different in a suit, even though his shirt was still open-collared and he wore no tie. Like a diplomat from a small, informal country, Francesca thought. Distinguished and somehow more mysterious than ever.

  “May I introduce my friend, Dr. Gabriel Fonseca.”

  Catherine looked up at the young man, examining the ponytail, the earring, and the embroidered Spanish vest. She was not fooled by the lapses in his appearance. He was a British aristocrat, scion of a distinguished Church of England family, one of those champion Cambridge rowers who slide along the Cam with the graceful, steady strength of those born to it. She was sure of it. She bit her lower lip furiously.

  “I’m afraid I can’t ask you to join us. We’ll be leaving shortly,” Catherine said coolly.

  Marius seemed surprised by the rebuff, but his companion looked positively relieved.

  “It is just as well, as we would be tragically unable to accept, having a train to catch and an appointment to keep,” Gabriel Fonseca said, nudging Marius.

  “And where is Miss Suzanne?” Marius asked with determined politeness, ignoring them both, his eyes restlessly searching the room.

  Francesca fingered her rib cage, rubbing away what felt like a physical stab of pain. Suzanne, always Suzanne.

  “Oh, powdering her nose, I think she said,” Catherine replied, her eyes darting around the room with panic, praying they’d leave before she returned. There was just too much mesmerizing male power in this blond Adonis to introduce him to her impetuous granddaughter. “And there’s no telling how long that might take. Please, don’t let us keep you,” she said with a firmness bordering on outright rudeness.

  Francesca stared, bewildered.

  “Then perhaps another time. How long do you plan to remain in London?” Marius inquired stubbornly.

  “Only another week, I’m afraid.”

  “What! I had no idea you were leaving so soon! I have so much still to tell you. Gabriel has the beginnings of one of the finest rare-manuscript collections in London. His father—the Baron of Avernas de Gras—has one of the most valuable eighteenth-century collections of French first editions in England. I’m sure both of them could be quite helpful to you.”

  Avernas de Gras, Catherine mused, as if trying to remember something. She studied the blond stranger more carefully. “And do you share Marius’s
passion for the past?”

  “The first time I went manuscript hunting with Marius, we came across a leather-bound book in the attic of a condemned old building in a Polish village. Something about the smell of the books—so old and full of the scent of so many different hands—hooked me. I can’t even explain why. As for my collection, I’m afraid I owe that to the prudence of forebears who left me with the means to indulge quite a few private passions.”

  “And his good fortune has been my good fortune. He’s a delightful partner, and he often pays the bills,” Marius laughed. “If we had time, we could tell you all about our trip to the jungles of Brazil. But unfortunately…” he glanced at his watch and tapped it, annoyed at the information it gave him. “Can I talk you into extending your stay? I promise it will be worth it. Here, take my card. Call me whenever you can and I’ll arrange something. Please do!” he pleaded. “Uncle is wonderful, but his methods and advice are a bit too…conservative. Let me help you to find the rest of it. If it’s anything like what I’ve already read…”

  “So, you’ve gone through it…” Catherine looked up, her face brightening.

  He nodded. “I think,” he said, bending over Catherine’s hand and kissing it gallantly, “that I am a little in love with your Gracia.”

  Francesca felt her own fingers tingle.

  “Can I hope we will be able to get together soon?” he said, his voice filling the words with significance.

  Both women nodded, watching the young men’s straight, handsome backs as they turned and walked past the etched glass into the lobby.

  Charming, Catherine mused, studying their handsome, masculine movements as they crossed the room.

  Suddenly, she saw Suzanne.

  She was walking back toward the restaurant, her strikingly lovely body making small dips and curves as she navigated her way around the tea tables. Her hair had been brushed out from its chignon and fell like a glowing sunset to her bare shoulders, framing her face. The dark green Chinese silk of her elegant, form-fitting dress caught and deepened the color of her eyes, making them sparkle like jewels against her pale, flawless skin. She looked, Catherine thought, like a queen.

  With a sense of helpless déjà vu, she saw the blond stranger stop and stare for a moment, then take slow, deliberate strides in her direction. Suzanne’s shoulders stiffened in surprise, her limbs assuming an odd stillness, as if she’d just received shocking news. They stood facing each other for what seemed to Catherine like an amazingly long time. And then, without speaking a single word, both of them turned and disappeared.

  An hour later, as the tea cooled in the cups, and the remains of chocolate éclairs dirtied the dessert plates, Suzanne had still not returned.

  Francesca threw down her fork. “Of all the inconsiderate, selfish things! But I guess that’s to be expected. After all, we haven’t been abused and aren’t starving in the street. We’re just her family!” She reached out to her grandmother, patting the wrinkled old hand, dreading looking into her face. “Abuela, don’t be upset! You know Suzanne. She’s always got better things to do!”

  Catherine made an odd noise.

  Francesca looked up in alarm. Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Gran looked absolutely radiant!

  “Avernas de Gras,” Catherine said, shaking her head in laughter. “The grandson of Antonio da Silva! Yes, I would agree. Much better things to do!”

  19

  Manuscript pages. Circa 1600-1660. Purchased by Ruiz Martínez of Librería Antiquario, Barcelona. Provenance unknown. Sold to Serouya and Company, London, for private collection of Mrs. Catherine da Costa.

  Passion.

  I hold my quill in fingers gone stubby and pale with age and write this word, knowing full well that it will shock you, my children. That you will feel ashamed that I, a woman fading into that haggard precursor of death, not only still remember such things, but feel the joy of her remembrances.

  Yet I will say its name. Did not our wise and most G-d-fearing King Solomon write: “When I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him, and would not let him go/Until I had brought him into my mother’s house…Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth/for his love is better than wine?” And did he not write further: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens”?

  Before I knew such a season existed, it was upon me—ravishing all my senses with the mesmerizing heat of summer, the fecund richness of fall, and the dangerous wildness of a winter storm.

  I thought I should surely die.

  It began on a bright, cool autumn day. The smell of old leaves drying in the sun, the moist and fecund earth filled my nostrils as I walked into the forest with my family to secretly celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

  It was in the aftermath of Diego Vaz de Oliverca and Andres Diaz de Viana, the converso priests who slew the despicable apostate Henrique Nuñez as he kneeled in the Church of Valverde dedicating himself to barbarous treachery against his brothers.

  For Nuñez had been brought from the Canary Islands to begin that fearful process of inquiry and torture meant to destroy those among the New Christians who had kept faith with their heritage. His death had ended for the moment the prospect of the Inquisition’s horrors being exported to Portugal. But the incident, and the execution of Oliverca and Viana, had cast its terrifying shadow, making us conversos doubly cautious.

  We’d prepared our sukah in a forest clearing far from prying eyes. It had three sides of wood over which we draped fine rugs and tapestries; and a ceiling of green branches from which we hung pomegranates, apples, grapes, and sweet, baked biscochos. The scent of myrtle twigs, willows, and hyssop filled the air.

  Though I knew that the sukah was meant to be a humble shack, reminding us that, however fine our solid homes, we were wanderers like our forefathers, dependent on G-d’s providing hand, it made me feel like a fairy princess, reigning in her sylvan bower.

  The only irritant to my joy was my appearance. I felt childish in the long-waisted amber gown with the high white-lace collar, because my aunt had refused to let me wear a farthingale, declaring it was not fitting for an unbetrothed girl of thirteen to sway and show her hips. My hair was even worse: Plaited and drawn back beneath my barbette and fillet, it made me look like some pious young novitiate.

  While the women took out the pot hooks, the pipkins, and porringers to prepare our festive meal, I longed to join the men as they gathered to discuss matters of holy ritual or the profane intrigues at court. But I knew my aunt would not allow it. So I leaned listlessly against a tree, trying to think of some way to amuse myself, when a beautiful small doe darted past. I cannot tell you why, but something in her loveliness and her movement beckoned me to follow, and I did, chasing her deep into the forest until at last I was snared by a well-hidden root. I felt a sharp wrench to my ankle, and fell into an ignominious heap upon the damp ground.

  Stunned, I lay there unable to move, realizing with fright how far I had drifted from the others. Thoughts of bears, wolves, snakes, and bands of cutthroat scavengers inflamed my imagination. I closed my eyes and called to G-d and to my memuneh to help me win the heavenly battle against demons of rock and tree, animal and human, now ranged in battle against me! And just when my terror peaked, I heard the sound of hooves beating their way through thick foliage.

  I lay there, frozen with horror, awaiting some terrible outrage to my property or, worse, my person. But when I looked up, two well-dressed strangers looked down upon me from the saddles of their beautifully caparisoned horses. I looked frantically from one to the other, searching their faces for my fate. And the more I searched, the more convinced I became that His blessed hand had reached out to me, for neither seemed inclined to strip me either of my finery or my honor.

  “Are you hurt, child?” one of them asked me kindly. There was a powerful strength of character in his sharp features, which might have frightened me had they not been softened by a refinement that lent them a quiet kind of nobility. He had dark h
air and the swarthy complexion of an Italian prince. His attire was royal-looking, too: a striking black doublet of rich, patterned velvet with a scabbard of beaten gold, embedded with tiny jewels that sparkled like a thousand small stars.

  “Say something, muchachica!” his companion added impatiently. He was blond, with the smooth and ruddy color of a happy child and the gay attire of a young nobleman: a cotehardie with trunk hose and a high, feathered hat.

  “I’m not a muchachica!” I cried childishly, forgetting all about highwaymen and being terrified, remembering only the argument I’d had with Aunt Malca that very morning on the same subject. “I am a young lady from a very good family!”

  I saw a strange transformation come over the face of the dark-haired prince as his companion threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “Forgive us, Doñ. We have been to sea so long we have forgotten how to treat young ladies, particularly gente grande,” the dark one said seriously, but with an infuriating merriness about the eyes he could not hide.

  But as I glared at him, I suddenly realized how ridiculous my haughty words must be in light of my vagabondish appearance. For my dress had been muddied by matted wet leaves and my hair disheveled, escaping its hated confines and streaming wildly down to my waist. I looked like a scullery maid. Or worse.

  “But it is not as it appears,” I protested, stamping my foot in frustration. I let out a sharp moan.

  In one swoop, the dark prince lifted me up and I found my cheek resting against that rich, soft material stretched over his broad shoulders. “Where is your family, señorita?” he asked, without a hint of mockery this time.

  Impulsively, I pointed in the direction from which I had come. I regretted it immediately, realizing the danger of exposing our secret forest rituals to strangers. I demanded to be put down and let go in peace.

  “You are injured, child. I must see you to them safely,” he said, ignoring my frantic entreaties and spurring the horse to a gentle trot. And then he leaned over me and whispered close to my ear, “Never wander, child. Such loveliness is prey in this world. One in possession of it must guard it closely.”