The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  She vibrated with unconscious pleasure, like a perfectly tuned note. She looked at his dark, handsome face, the beautiful tan flesh of his neck and strong arms.

  If it were Suzanne, and not me, I know what would happen now, she thought, wanting to give in, to move toward the warm promise of his arms, hating the fact that she simply couldn’t do it.

  She pulled open the car door and dashed out into the warm rain, letting it fill her open mouth. She felt a sense of giddiness, a reckless freedom as she flew down the hill to the lake, sheets of rain soaking her to the skin.

  “Francesca!” she heard him call. She ran faster, ducking the heavy branches of trees that swayed around her like dancers in some strangely choreographed dream. Only my part is improvised, she thought. I am the one who writes the program that controls all the actions of this little, defective machine. But, still, I’m in control, she told herself. I know exactly what I’m doing.

  She plunged into the water. It was wonderfully cool and fragrant, with the smell of warm summer nights. She floated on her back, staring at the blurred faces of sleeping stars as the rain tickled her face. Everything seemed to float upward, lifted and borne away, turned ghostly and strange. The lights on the distant shore blinked in astonishment.

  Then suddenly, he was there beside her, his wet chest solid against her own. She felt his arms encircle her waist and touch the small of her back. No, this was not under control, she thought. Not at all…

  “Francesca,” he murmured, his breath warm in her ear, his lips touching her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her chin. Then, finally, her lips.

  “Don’t!” she moaned softly. “You don’t understand. I can’t. I’m not like that. Not like my sister.”

  He lifted her in his arms, nuzzling the soft skin of her chilled shoulder. “Who are you like?”

  “Put me down!”

  “But why?” He was loath to let her go.

  The rain suddenly stopped, and yet he saw the rivulets streaming down her cheeks. He hugged her. She slapped him, hard.

  Stunned, he released her, his hands hanging helplessly at his sides. “Francesca! Why?” his voice echoed in the forest.

  She ran, wet branches cracking beneath her, filling the air with sound. Suddenly, she cried out in pain.

  “Where are you! What’s wrong?”

  He found her in the thicket.

  “It’s my…ankle, I think.”

  He crouched down beside her, probing it gently. “It’s not broken, but it’s swelling up. Here, lie still.” He covered it with cold, wet earth and damp leaves as a poultice.

  “Mud?”

  “An old hiking remedy. It’s been around for ages. The point is to keep it cold.”

  She felt the gentleness in his hands as he touched her bruised skin. She looked up shyly. Everything seemed to glisten.

  “Are you cold?” he whispered, rubbing her arms.

  “A little. Marius?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m insane. I have been ever since I set foot in Spain. It’s as if something’s gotten inside me that I can’t control.”

  “Why do you always have to be in control? Why not just…live? Moment to moment. Why does everything have to fit into your little planner, your little Bible of minutes and hours and days?” Suddenly, a gleam of understanding came into his eyes. His jaw flinched. “Someone—sometime—hurt you, didn’t he, Francesca? Badly.”

  She leaned back silently, studying the darkening skies, the yellow and purple vapors rising across the moon.

  “I want you to know that I’m not that kind of man. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you. I swear.”

  They sat unmoving in the growing shadows, listening to each other’s soft breathing.

  “Marius? Could you carry me back to the car, please?”

  She felt his strong arms lift her off the ground and leaned into his chest. Her cheek tingled against the smooth, damp skin of his shoulder. A sudden, eerily sharp sense of déjà vu made her stir and look around for a presence that seemed to be hovering over her, watching her.

  I stopped struggling, feeling a burning tingle that began in my forehead and streamed through my body. And as I peeked at the dark rim of his eyes, the rich thickness of his manly beard, I felt a clap and a sharp, white-hot wrench to my heart.

  It was the moment where one’s soul enters into another’s and emerges, dazzled.

  The words went through her like alcohol, making her dizzy and warm. She looked into his eyes and suddenly she felt as if she had crossed some secret threshold, emerging into a brand-new world. For a moment, her whole body suddenly gave up its resistance as she allowed herself to lean against him. For the first time in a very long time, she felt absolutely safe.

  27

  Speeding down the Costa del Sol, the great palms waving in the distance, Suzanne saw the Mediterranean as a winking blue eye. She leaned over, her fingers burrowing through Gabriel’s warm hair, caressing the smooth skin of his neck. “What do you say we dump the relatives, Gabriel, and hole up at the beach for about a month?”

  He turned his head slightly, kissing her fingertips. “One day, I promise. Perhaps we’ll spend a summer here, with our children.”

  She sat up straight, hands massaging each other tensely in her lap, the vision of romantic coastline and nude, warm flesh dissolving into the specter of thigh-heavy mothers carrying undiapered, wailing infants. “No way. You’ve got the wrong girl!”

  His voice was deep and serious as he answered, “Isn’t it natural for a man to want children from the woman he loves?”

  A flash of joy went through her and the temptation to sink into the comfortable niche he was building became almost irresistible. And so, quite perversely, she decided on vigorous opposition. “What about overpopulation? What about jeopardizing the survival and quality of life for humanity out of selfishness and ignorance?”

  “I love children,” he said simply. “Don’t you? And isn’t that what we’re both working so hard for, to make a better world for them?”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I just think we have plenty of time to settle down to all that boring domesticity.”

  “Statistics for problem pregnancies go shooting up in older prima-paras,” he said matter-of-factly.

  What could you say to that? she thought sullenly, cornered.

  “You are such an interesting woman, Suzanne! Most women adore it when men start talking babies, families…”

  “That’s because they’re insecure about their ability to hold their men in sexual thralldom forever….” she said, grinning.

  “So, that is where you think your power lies, yes?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Quite the contrary.”

  Her forehead puckered. “Meaning?”

  “It is your fascinating personality.”

  “And if I weighed two hundred pounds?”

  “There’d be more of you to love,” he answered gallantly, his hand fondling her slim arm. “But perhaps I might love you less per square inch.”

  “You!” She put her hand underneath his shirt to pinch him, but the delicious smooth warmth of him made it impossible.

  “Please, Suzanne, I won’t be able to concentrate on the road!”

  She was about to say something suitably clever when she looked up. There it was, that great outcropping of rock extending with a sweeping majesty straight up to heaven.

  “It looks exactly like those ads for the insurance company,” she quipped, covering her confusion. It really was awesome.

  “‘Pillar of Hercules,’ the ancients called it. There’s another one in Morocco, Mount Abyla. They say Hercules split one great mountain in two to let the Mediterranean in. It was the medieval world’s portal to the universe.”

  Seagulls circled high around the green-drenched mountain overlooking the bluest of seas. Just beyond was Morocco, Tangiers, Casablanca, Ceuta…. Suzanne stared at the great boats in the distance. “Refugees from the Inquisition must ha
ve sailed these waters. Perhaps even this ancestor of mine.”

  “Who?”

  “Gracia Mendes, my fabulously wealthy, jewel-bedecked ancestress,” she said lightly, unaccountably embarrassed for some reason at having thought of it.

  “She was much, much more than that!”

  She turned around. “You’ve actually heard of her?”

  “My mother was a great admirer of Cecil Roth. He wrote an entire book about Gracia.”

  “So I’ve heard…”

  “You mean you haven’t read it!?”

  “I’ve been meaning to.” She bit her lower lip. “What did you mean by ‘much, much more’?”

  “She was a heroine, in every sense of the word.”

  Hiding her pleasure, she protested, “What’s heroic about cornering the pepper trade and making a king’s ransom?”

  “The trade wasn’t the point! According to Roth, her company operated a secret underground network that snatched hundreds of people out of the fires of the Inquisition.”

  “How?”

  “Read the book!”

  She tapped her foot listlessly, offended.

  “Darling!” He kissed her fingertips. “It will be good for you to do a little research. It was an unbelievably daring and wonderful system. But the risk was enormous: slow torture, certain death, and the confiscation of everything she owned. She was so brave.”

  She caressed his face, touched by the sincerity of his admiration, wishing she were the object. Smoothing back a thick, honey-colored lock from his brow, she vowed to do a little more reading.

  Cars had come to a halt, inching their way to the border crossing.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Hard to tell. Twenty minutes, two hours! A few years ago, you couldn’t cross this border at all. The Spanish were so incensed at the English for insisting on keeping Gibraltar one of their colonies that they closed it. You’d have to fly or sail in!” Gabriel whispered, as a guard approached them to check their passports.

  But once across the border, the time it took to reach the center of town was unbelievably swift. One moment they seemed to be facing an endless expanse of sparkling sea, the next the bustle of a port city. Celebrating sailors, long-skirted Moroccan women jangling with silver jewelry, young Jewish boys in black skullcaps, and tourists of every description crowded the duty-free shops, which lined the main street in either direction as far as the eye could see.

  “Is this it?” she said, a bit appalled at the transition. “Is that what people do here, shop?”

  “No. Sell. At least, my relatives. Gibraltar’s a duty-free zone. They sell perfumes, leather goods, liquor, electronics. I think among them, my relatives own over a dozen shops. It’s quite profitable.”

  “Which street are their shops on?”

  He waved his hands, grinning. “There are only two streets in Gibraltar.”

  “Tiny as that?”

  He nodded. “Tiny and wonderful. Either the muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer, or the church bells are ringing, or the streets are full of people walking to and from the synagogues! And everyone interacts and gets along.”

  “Sounds just like New York,” she said dryly.

  “Except that the whole of Gibraltar could fit on a few avenue blocks in Manhattan! That’s what makes it so special. Everyone’s on top of everyone else, and yet there is so much tolerance!”

  “No one feels threatened?”

  “On the contrary, they reinforce one another’s values: close-knit families, religious instruction for the children, early marriages among their own kind, prayer, charity, honesty…”

  “You’re right. They’re such close neighbors that they have no choice but to get along.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “Maybe one day everyone will feel that way about the planet!”

  “But isn’t it ironic to find such a place at the tip of Spain, I mean, with its history of intolerance.”

  “Be fair! The Inquisition happened, but for hundreds of years, Jews, Christians, and Moslems all lived side by side in Spain with incredible tolerance. Gibraltar is the clock turned back to the Golden Age.”

  “How long has your family lived here?”

  “Actually, my Great-Aunt Claudina, my grandmother’s sister, married into a Gibraltan family. Her husband’s family has been here for hundreds of years. The first Jews came right after the Expulsion, but a British ban forbade them to settle. So they sailed just beyond, to Morocco and North Africa, trickling back little by little, opening up businesses. The English sort of closed their eyes to it. They’ve been here ever since.”

  “Where are we going to be staying, Gabriel?”

  “With Auntie Claudina, of course.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better for us to go to a hotel?” She panicked, picturing an elderly chaperone checking on their sleeping arrangements. “And how are you going to introduce me?”

  “As my dear friend.” He stroked her cheek, smiling.

  “Really, Gab. I don’t know about this.”

  “Trust me, darling. You’ll love them. And they’ll love you.”

  “Well, here goes.”

  “Where?”

  “To your great-aunt’s of course.”

  “We’re here.”

  She looked around at the teeming main street, then stared at him, stunned. “She lives here?! On top of the shops?”

  “Everyone here does, because they all want to live in walking distance of each other and of the two main synagogues. Orthodox Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath.”

  “But…over the shops?” She looked around, appalled.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, darling.”

  He rang the bell. A uniformed maid opened the door.

  “Buenos tardes, María.”

  “Señor Gabriel! Como esta usted?”

  “Muy bien, gracias. María, Señorita Suzanne.”

  “Mucho gusto!”

  Suzanne stepped over the threshold, amazed.

  It was like the interior of some stunning English mansion, all dark mahogany wainscotting and dusky-rose, damask wallpaper. A gracious staircase curved upward beside a private elevator.

  “Come.” Gabriel smiled, taking her hand and enfolding it in his.

  Upstairs, numerous rooms led off a long hall lit by bright crystal chandeliers. She followed Gabriel into a huge sitting room. It was wondrous, she thought. Like stumbling through a time warp into the private salon of some Victorian queen. In the center, ensconced on an overstuffed and probably enormously costly antique sofa, was a tiny, quite elderly woman dressed entirely in white.

  “Auntie!” Gabriel said reverently, bending his head and kissing her twice on both cheeks.

  The woman clasped him with her gnarled and wrinkled hands, whose fingers were weighted down by many large and heavy rings.

  “My lovely nephew! G-d bless you! And who is it you bring me?”

  “My friend, Suzanne Nasi da Costa Abraham.”

  The old woman’s face lit up, her faded blue eyes studying Suzanne with alert pleasure. “Lovely to meet you, my child,” she said with a broad smile, holding out both hands. Suzanne grasped them, surprised at their unexpected strength and eagerness as she bent to accept the touch of the old cheeks on her young ones. They felt like dry parchment.

  “A Nasi and a da Costa!” Claudina exclaimed with glee. “My dear boy, wherever did you find such a treasure?”

  He was amused! Suzanne noted, annoyed, feeling like some dusty auction find. Of all things to impress people with! Your family! Still, she could not stop the tiny smile that found its way to her lips as she tried to imagine any one among her New York acquaintances desiring her for her lineage.

  So what? she argued with herself, attempting to still that growingly strident voice that had taken to complaining nonstop about her unrepentant happiness. What difference did it make if it was her family’s money, or her body, or her mind that made people smile at her with welcome? The bottom line was that this was Gabri
el’s family and they were happy to see her.

  Yet, she couldn’t completely shake off the unbelievable ignominy of being in love with someone whose family not only approved of her, but whose approval would be reciprocated in spades by her own. The image of Gran and Claudina sinking into the sofa cushions side by side, sighing with contentment, beaming down blessings and cheek-kissing into the next century, was more than she could bear.

  “Maria will show you to your room, my dear,” Claudina told her. “The maids will bring you whatever you need. We dine at eight. Gabriel, the cousins will be coming, and Uncle Serge and Auntie Orvieda and Uncle Joseph and Auntie Esther. I’m afraid we tend to be a bit traditional here, especially Friday nights. I hope you won’t find it too terrible,” she said, smiling at Suzanne.

  Suzanne, suddenly acutely aware of the fraying rips in her faded jeans, smiled back in confusion, wishing she’d brought a few more suitcases.

  Not only weren’t their rooms next to each other, they weren’t even on the same floor! Suzanne groaned, pouring out the contents of her bag onto the bed. But it was one stunning room. The dark, polished wood was full of intricate inlays, finely carved and finished with a luminous richness that spoke of an age when craftsmen lingered over their work with pride. The bedspread and canopy were extravagant creations consisting of yards and yards of sumptuous fabrics in shades of cream and royal blue.

  She glanced toward the heavily curtained windows. There was nothing but the busy street to look out at here, she thought, leaving the curtains drawn. She felt detached from the world and from time, in a magical location where the disappearing ozone layer, the endangered whales, desertification, Ebola, and date rape didn’t exist. A place where blissful and perfect happiness would be allowed to sing its song aloud without being asked to turn down the volume out of respect for those less fortunate.

  She laid down, pulling the featherbed blissfully around her shoulders and dozing off. When she awoke, she wondered not only where she was, but who. She blinked, looking around the room. Fresh towels had appeared on the washstand and a small covered tray on the night table held a Limoges teapot and a silver salver of petit fours. Hanging by the full-length mirror, was her freshly ironed Chinese silk dress.