Every House Needs a Balcony

by Rina Frank

  The man took her to Park Goel and Sagrada Familia, and they hurried back to his place in time for the sacred two-thirty lunch. Laura opened the door for them, and his mother served them each a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. This time too the meal was absolutely delicious and included a first and second course, a main course, a lettuce salad, cheeses, and a dessert; again, she was first to be served, like an honored guest. She looked at the statuette of the blue lady that had found its way to their dresser and felt herself wanted. His parents wanted to know if she was comfortable in the apartment he had found for her, and she assured them that she was. And again, they had their coffee in the corner of the living room opposite the TV and watched the news, which she didn’t understand; his father dozed on the sofa, and his mother got ready for her afternoon work.

  Afterward they went to Tibidabo, where she ate sugar-sprinkled churros, and at nine o’clock in the evening they went back to his home for dinner. She liked the fact that it was still daylight at that time of night, and that dinner was eaten then, or even at nine thirty, and it only started getting dark at ten. She pointed out that it was fun to be able to enjoy daylight until so late in the evening; in Israel it was already dark at seven, and because of the ultra-Orthodox, the government refused to advance clocks for daylight saving time.

  That evening they were joined at dinner by Ruth and Nahum Lilienblum, who were described to her on the way to the meal as his parents’ best friends and owners of Banca Catalana, the largest bank in Barcelona. Ruth was a very beautiful silver-haired woman, whose trim figure gave her a particularly young appearance. Nahum looked old for his age, slightly stooped, with wise eyes. He looked at his wife in adoration, and although they were sitting in company, it seemed that he spoke only to her and not to the others.

  Nahum told her that she was a pretty woman, and she thanked him for the compliment. He asked her if she spoke Yiddish, and appeared disappointed when she said she did not.

  “How can that be?” he wondered. “Your parents are Ashkenazis, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but I’m a mixed Romanian,” she told Nahum. “My father is of Turkish extraction, and although he was born in Romania, his family continued to speak Ladino, not Yiddish, like my mother’s family.”

  “There’s no such thing as a Jew who doesn’t speak Yiddish,” Nahum insisted.

  “I’m Israeli,” she told him proudly. When they were sitting in the living room, drinking coffee, Nahum told her that as a young man in a concentration camp he survived because of his ability to calculate accurately the number of items in the different piles of property belonging to victims of the gas chambers—a pile of wedding rings, a pile of chains, gold teeth, glasses.

  He told her this offhandedly, as if to say, I’m here now in spite of them, and not merely here, but as the owner of the biggest bank in Barcelona.

  “God created us perfect,” said Nahum, who believed in God despite the Holocaust, looking at his wife and stroking her hand, and she watched him, fascinated. “Look at the female form—how perfect you are, except for one detail.” He turned to her.

  “What detail?” she asked, not understanding.

  “What we are missing is an eye in the tip of our finger, so that we can push a finger under the bed when something falls under it, and we can find it easily.” He demonstrated how an eye located in a person’s fingertip could find any loss, both above and below.

  She started giggling, and Nahum watched her with his wise eyes and said, “You’re misleading, aren’t you?”

  “I’m misleading, why?”

  “Because you’re a woman-child.”

  She fell silent, embarrassed.

  When Nahum and Ruth stood up to leave, they told her that they would surely see her in Haifa, which they visited at least three times a year because all their children had left Barcelona and settled there. They didn’t give her the customary three kisses; they already had learned from their children that Israelis didn’t like kissing every new acquaintance.

  All that week the man toured Barcelona with her, showing her all the city’s beauty spots, and she had to admit that Barcelona was much prettier than her hometown, Haifa. In the afternoon they made sure to turn up, in accordance with family tradition, for lunch at two thirty, with freshly squeezed orange juice, and to dinner at nine. Twice after dinner, they went back to her home early and stayed up chatting with Mercedes and Jorge, but he didn’t stay the night.

  She found it quite difficult to get used to the fact that she was required to show up twice every day at his parents’ home for meals, but the food was always so tasty that she decided she shouldn’t complain. She told him she wanted to learn Spanish, and he enrolled her at the university for a one-month intensive course for foreigners.

  A month later she was already able to chatter whole sentences in Spanish; Mercedes was terribly proud of her and said that she had never encountered anyone who had learned to speak Spanish so quickly.

  She reckoned that she had found Spanish so easy to learn because she knew Romanian from her parents, and the two languages are very similar. More than anything, she loved to talk with Paula, his Italian aunt, who also felt herself a foreigner, having lived in Barcelona for only ten years, and could sympathize with her occasional homesickness. She especially missed her sister.

  His sister arrived with the French boyfriend she had met at the Hebrew University, and together they took their father’s car and set out for a two-week tour, which covered the length and breadth of southern Spain. She was happy to be able to speak Hebrew all day long. His sister was very pleasant and modest, not at all the person she had heard screaming at him in French on the phone. They loved touring with her and watching her excitement at every new town and township they visited; it was, after all, the first time for her in the big wide world, whereas the man, his sister, and her boyfriend had been born there. She was like a small child discovering a wonderful world for the first time, and she infected them all with her enthusiasm.

  The first time she walked into a church, her breath caught. They took photographs beside each and every town square, and she posed alongside every statue they saw of the Virgin Mary or any of the many other Spanish saints; she pulled all kinds of funny faces to amuse her parents when she got home and showed them the pictures, so they could experience with her the wonderful time she had in Spain. In Toledo she was moved to tears at the sight of the old Jewish synagogue, which has remained in all its former glory; she was overcome with emotion and started crying, as if it were a place she had already been to in the past.

  After a fairy-tale two-week trip, they returned to Barcelona, right in time for the Jewish New Year. She and his sister helped Luna a little in the kitchen, and more in laying the table. They were given precise instructions as to how to place the napkins and the best silver cutlery and, of course, the Rosenthal dinner service from the dresser, which was removed from the dresser for traditional holy days.

  It was the most impressive meal she had ever participated in, and the food, naturally, was traditionally Jewish. The chicken soup was served with thin noodles or soup almonds that his mother always bought in Israel, since soup almonds are a purely Israeli invention. The second course was an excellent dish of gefilte fish, prepared by Luna with sharp horseradish that she bought in Perpignan. They used to go to Perpignan every four months to fill up their refrigerator with various French foods, such as fine salamis, mustards, cheeses, and of course, butter. His parents still missed French food, even though they had been living in Barcelona for nigh on thirty years. Thus, three times a year they traveled to Perpignan on the French border, and from there they often skipped over to Andora to pick up some duty-free electrical goods, and sometimes went on to Paris to visit Luna’s brother and his delightful wife.

  On Yom Kippur, they went to synagogue. Because the man fasted, she did too, to keep him company; in the Diaspora it would not have been possible to feel the day of atonement without fasting, since on that day life goes as on any ot
her day of the year, as if we don’t need to atone for our transgressions, and she loved him for it.

  In the synagogue she was introduced to the entire distinguished congregation, and they all took an interest in the new Israeli visitor. Suddenly she noticed a glamorous woman showing more interest in her than were the others. Paula whispered to her that she was the man’s former fiancée. She wanted to approach her and apologize for stealing his heart, but the woman turned her back as soon as she noticed her making a move toward her. And she thought to herself that in any case she would never have known to express her feelings in the sparse Spanish she had at her command. Moreover, she didn’t really regret having stolen his heart. She was overjoyed.

  But when the holy season was over and his sister returned to Israel and she didn’t hear him mentioning anything about sharing his future with her, and she had done her part by learning Spanish and was even able to understand some of the news on TV and at conversation at the family dinner table, she told him that she was returning to Israel to start a new job, since she had run out of money after a stay that had lasted three weeks. He told her that he would be in touch, as if to say, Give me a little more time before I propose marriage to you, if at all.

  She went back to Israel feeling a tad frustrated, and when her parents asked her, “Nu?” she showed them the pictures of her smiling all over Spain. They smiled and asked again, “Nu…,” and she showed them the new glasses he had bought her with the black frames and diamonds at the sides and all the European clothes that suited her so well. Her mother told her she had expected to see a diamond on her finger; she didn’t respond, but found a job right away with a well-known Haifa architect.

  Recycled Clothes

  On Friday afternoon we get dressed in our best and climb all the stairs and slopes from our home up to the Upper Hadar neighborhood. My sister and I skip and jump in anticipation, with joy in our hearts and some anxiety—what clothes are we getting this time? Mom and Dad walk behind us with a heaviness typical of people who are no longer expecting anything.

  Mom had cousins, Sammy and Fima, who had two daughters. They were considered middle class and lived in the Hadar HaCarmel neighborhood. Not only were Sammy and Fima in permanent employment, Fima as a school nurse and Sammy as a senior supervisor with the Port Authority, they also had relatives in far-off America; and it’s a well-known fact that anyone who has relatives in America is one lucky person.

  Nothing was superior to that secret address in America from which you receive parcels of clothes and tins of preserves so the children in Israel will have something to eat in times of austerity. After removing the choice articles for themselves, they allowed us to choose what we wanted. Apart from the food, which they kept for themselves, naturally.

  Fima checks Sefi’s and my ears, nails, and of course, hair in a scrupulous search for lice; not for nothing is she a school nurse. And after we are found to be squeaky clean by her standards, Fima brings out the latest shipment, newly arrived from America. We fall on the pile, and I quickly pull out a brown blouse that looks good quality and tell my sister that I touched it first. My sister retorts that she doesn’t want this particular blouse and pulls out the most beautiful blouse I have ever seen in my life. The blouse, which is made of a shiny deep blue fabric, is a wraparound style that ties at the back and has a stylized loop in a shade of red. And I can’t understand how my sister’s eagle eye always manages to spot the prettiest and fanciest item in the entire pile of used clothes. My sister, who sees that I envy her her blue blouse, pulls out a red vest from the pile that is getting steadily smaller and tells me that if I wear it under the brown blouse that I picked out, with the dark skirt, it’ll look funny. I ask her why I should dress funny, and she tells me that if you wear funny clothes, people think you planned it in order to be funny, and that it’s better to look planned than poor.

  We look at Mom, who is standing in the middle of the room in an ugly beige suit, which hangs on her body and is several sizes too large for her. Fima says that it looks very nice, fits her perfectly. Mom says she’ll take in the suit at the sides, and it’ll be all right, trying to persuade herself and Dad that the suit looks pretty on her. Dad wrinkles his face and says nothing, and Fima says again, “It’s a new shipment from America, arrived just this week.” In all truth, she says, she had wanted the suit for herself, but it’s absolutely huge on her, because Fima is petite and quite slim, even more so than Mom. And I think that in America there is plenty of tasty food to eat and everyone there is well built, and that is why clothes from America don’t fit people in Israel.

  Dad tries on a fairly hideous sweater, and Sammy signals with his hand that it looks “so-so,” and I don’t know why men are always more honest than women and have the courage to say, or signal, the truth when their wife isn’t looking, and Dad takes off the sweater and returns it to the pile.

  Fima tells Dad to take the sweater, at least for work, and Dad says that he doesn’t go to work in a sweater like that, and in his line of business a man has to be dressed respectably.

  Mom says to Dad that to hand out coffee off three-tiered coned trays in downtown Haifa a man doesn’t need to be well dressed, and Dad tells her angrily that no one is going to see him in a thirdhand sweater.

  Sammy asks Dad why he isn’t talking to Niku, his brother-in-law from Hedera, who holds a very senior position in the local labor federation, and Dad doesn’t understand how Niku in Hedera can arrange a job for him in Haifa. Sammy explains that the labor federation has connections all over the country. Mom asks Sammy if he can’t arrange a job for Dad in the port, a job with tenure like she’s always dreamed of, and Sammy says that he can arrange it easily, but only as a dockworker.

  Fima asks Mom if she’s done what they talked about last time on the matter of lice, and Mom says that she did exactly as she was told. Fact, she didn’t find any nits, did she?

  Fima tests Mom’s memory with regard to destroying the lice while they are still in nit stage, and Mom replies expertly, one and a half cups of paraffin, half a cup of vinegar, a little salt and pepper, smeared on the head with a brush, combed into the hair in order to spread the mixture, wrap the head with a towel and wait for two hours. Fima tells Mom that she can laugh as much as she likes. There’s no other way to kill them when they’re small.

  Mom asks Fima if she doesn’t think that the paraffin and vinegar can seep into the brain and cause irreparable brain damage. After all, they are all pinning their hopes on Yosefa growing up to be a lawyer or a doctor. Fima the nurse dismisses Mom’s question with a wave of her hand. We go into the girls’ room to play with their dolls. Not only do they have a room to themselves, but they also have dolls.

  I ask them when their mother is going to call us to supper. I’m starving. Also, she makes the best omelets in the world. My sister says that anything except the mamaliga that we are fed every evening would taste good to us.

  At long last, Fima calls us to come eat, and I pounce first but don’t see any omelet on the plate. I look at Fima as she emerges from the kitchen, carrying a steaming saucepan; maybe now the wonderful omelets will arrive. But Fima says that she always makes us omelets, so this time she’s decided to do something different and surprise us with some hot mamaliga.

  She asks us if we like mamaliga. I don’t reply, looking at my sister, waiting for her to tell Fima that we eat mamaliga every day. I know that Mom and Dad would never in their lives say something like that, but there are things that only children are allowed to say, because it’s not polite to show dissatisfaction when you are getting free food, but Yosefa says only that of course we love mamaliga, except that today we’re not all that hungry.

  At night we leave Sammy and Fima’s home and start the steep climb down Haifa’s streets all the way to 40 Stanton. Mom, Yosefa, and I are carrying bags, and only Dad’s hands are empty. In spite of everything, he never gave in and accepted the hideous sweater.

  Dad grumbles to Mom about the dockworker’s job he was offered by he
r cousin. Just like to see him working on the docks. And Mom replies that she didn’t see anyone in Dad’s family offering him anything better to work at.

  “What’s wrong, don’t I go out cleaning houses?” she says, “Don’t you think that that’s the same as working on the docks? And who am I working for? So you can go out and buy yourself a new sweater to wear to your fancy business. A big genius who wastes his daughters’ money, and let’s just see how far it’ll take them.”

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ll get on fine in life. I’m quite sure of that.” Dad replies, picking us up in his arms, one girl to each arm, and galloping off down the town’s slopes. Dad feels sorry for us because in the end we didn’t get the omelet we had been looking forward to so much, and I am sulking at the fact that only because he had taught us not to hurt people, we didn’t want to offend Fima by saying that we really didn’t want to eat mamaliga.

  That’s it. The big shopping day was over. And with the joyous hearts that preceded such a day, we returned home happy with the thirdhand clothes we had received, and that were later rinsed out in Thursday’s dirty bathwater. And all this was before we knew anything about the hole in the ozone and that everything had to be recycled. In fact, we, who recycled ourselves, our clothes, and even our water, could have become rich only from this.