Where to Find Me

by Alba Arikha

  *

  I drifted around Paris for two more years. Through Catherine, I found myself a job as a librarian. It was a good job, and I needed the money.

  But these were lonely years. I will not dwell on them, simply because there isn’t much to say. I lived alone, I rarely went out. The centre of my world had shifted. I was lost, no doubt; but at the same time, I was lucid enough to know that I needed to regain my strength before leaving Paris. I couldn’t arrive in England in my fragile state. I needed to rebuild myself. To remantle myself, if such a word exists. Not build, but remantle: little by little, step by step.

  I spent time reading, writing in English. I read the Concise Oxford Dictionary and practised sounds, cracking consonants like nuts against my palate, letting this new voice settle inside me, become me. I wanted words to glue themselves on my skin. Kilogram. Number. Nuclear. Require. I saw films, the occasional play. Once, I nearly slept with a man, Louis, the director of the library. He had charm and a good sense of humour. He also knew a lot of poetry by heart, especially Gérard de Nerval, whom I particularly liked. I kissed Louis, but he smelled bad. I wondered if he ever washed. I was disgusted by him, and embarrassed by my disgust. I tried to convince him to be my friend instead, but he refused. “I want your body, not your friendship,” he said, and I wasn’t sure whether his words made me feel cheap or special.

  And then one day, in the autumn of 1950, I received a letter. I was still living in that small apartment near the Place des Vosges. I seldom received any post, except for the occasional magazine, because I had cut ties with everyone I had known before the war, and didn’t see many of those I had met afterwards either. So I was surprised when I opened my letterbox and found an envelope bearing my name.

  The stamp was a Hebrew one, and the letter was from Lotta, in Jerusalem. She had found my address through Mordechai. She was aware that I might not be “particularly looking forward” to hearing from her, but she felt compelled to write nonetheless.

  I was curious, so I began to read her letter, and found myself shaking as I did so. Not because it was her, but because it elicited in me an unexpected sense of elation at being reunited with a place I had loved and left behind. Ezra’s face suddenly rose from the pages, and there I was, gazing at his hypnotic blue eyes, listening to his deep, confident voice, feeling the touch of his fingers on my skin – and for a short moment I forgot all about the horror of what he had done, of how he had died. All I could feel was the ineffable happiness I had once experienced at his side.

  I closed my eyes and tried to distinguish the detailed features of his face, but they had become blurry. So I opened my eyes and continued to read.

  Lotta wrote about David Ben-Gurion and the new-found independence of her country, “which you must have heard of” – yes I had, how could I not? – her life in Jerusalem, the people she still saw, “friends of Ezra’s, you must remember them” – “Of course I remember them!” I shouted at the page. She then went on to describe at considerable length what Ezra’s friends were up to, titbits of information I could have done without. Why was she telling me all of this, I wondered?

  And then, as I read on, I understood.

  Ezra, she wrote, had been very important to the two of us (I hated the way she did that, lumping me together with her in the same sentence). Although she had been older than him, eight years older, she had had very strong feelings for him, which she had kept to herself, because she didn’t want to jeopardize our relationship. “Ezra loved you,” Lotta wrote. “He liked me, he enjoyed my company very much, but he didn’t love me as he did you. I knew that. You knew it too. And I respected you both, so I kept my feelings to myself.”

  So she said.

  And yet, two weeks before the King David bombing, they had consummated their relationship. I had been at work that afternoon. It had been the only time, Lotta stressed, and Ezra felt terribly guilty about it. Soon after his arrest, she found out that she was pregnant. But she chose not to tell him.

  The baby was born in 1947, and she named him Ezra Bernheim. “Calling him Radok was out of the question. It was too controversial. So I gave him my maiden name. He’s now three years old and looks just like his father,” Lotta concluded. “Ezra’s flame lives on.”

  I didn’t read the rest of the letter. Her words cut through me with such violent force that I threw myself on the sofa and began to howl, a searing howl which echoed through my every pore. I’m not sure how long I remained on that sofa. It may have been a few minutes or longer. Pain has the ability to blot out time.

  Eventually I staggered to my feet and splashed cold water on my face. I had to collect myself and be strong. I had a duty to be strong. That’s what my mother had once said: “You must be strong, Flore. Your duty is to show her how strong you are.”

  “My duty? But how?”

  “Ignore her. Don’t reply. Walk past her and ignore her. It will make you feel bigger, and will make her feel smaller.”

  That was my mother, sitting with me at the kitchen table, clutching a coffee cup – and here she was again. Her hair was pulled into a bun, and she was smiling. I was ten years old. A girl was being mean to me at school. I had a stomach ache every morning and wanted to stop going to school altogether. I didn’t know how to defend myself, and those had been my mother’s words of advice. I had paid heed. I still did. I applied it to my life. To grief, dressed like a woman. I walked past her every day, but ignored her. I needed to push forward, always forward, no pauses allowed, no backtracking for fear of falling.

  But now I was falling, and I needed my mother to catch me. To comfort me. What should I do now? I wanted to ask her. I wanted her to tell me that everything was going to be all right. That I could still act big even if I felt small. I wanted to be a child. I wanted to rewind my life and start again as a child and pretend the war had never happened.

  But it had happened, and there was no rewinding to be done. I was an adult, and I was alive. My parents were not. Ezra was not. Ezra, who could have been the father of my child and had ended up fathering one with Lotta. But he didn’t know. My only consolation was that he didn’t know.

  There was one thing left for me to do: destroy the evidence that had catapulted me into this unwanted place.

  I lit a match and spat on the letter before throwing it into my small fireplace. I watched as the flame engulfed Lotta’s scalding words. I watched as they shrivelled into soot and died. I listened as my heartbeat slowed, as did my breathing.

  Two days later, I packed my bags, said goodbye to my flat for the last time and booked myself a ticket on the night ferry bound for Dover.

  10

  I have found myself a one-bedroom furnished flat. It has a single bed, a tatty beige carpet and a Formica desk. I have few belongings aside from my books: some clothes and my father’s porcelain dolls, which I had shipped from Paris and have placed on a shelf above the kitchen table. Sometimes, especially at night, I speak to them and brush their hair. I’m aware this is childish, but it provides me with an unexpected comfort, one I cannot seem to give up. I will one day, I imagine.

  The estate agent who showed me the apartment described it as being “on the north side of Hyde Park”. I love uttering those words. They sound evocative and mysterious, like the new woman I have become. Flora Baum, pronounced the Germanic way in English: Bowm. Flora Baum, the woman with the long black hair who now lives on the north side of Hyde Park. I have adapted quickly to my new land. Whatever sense of alienation I felt at the very beginning has turned into the thrill of the new. Everything here is crisp and fresh and crackles under my feet like fallen leaves, and so does my name. I’m finally getting to grips with the language. For all my valiant attempts to master English, I quickly realized, soon after my arrival, that I still had a lot to learn. I had spoken it at the Sorbonne, to myself, and with many of my friends in Palestine. But we were all foreigners there. Here in England it is different. I don�
�t know any foreigners. The people I meet speak quickly, use words I’ve never heard before, and I have trouble keeping up. So I’ve enrolled in a class and have been learning fast. I have to: there is no one here to speak French with, and English is my only means of communication. It has become the language of my present, replacing the mists of my past. When I don’t know a word, I translate it inside my head, and sometimes it doesn’t come out as intended. Faux amis, the French call them. False friends. Words that look identical but differ significantly in meaning. I know because people look at me and smile politely when that happens. If I stay here long enough, which I fully intend to, I will have no false friends. My origins will be lost, and no one will ever know where it is I come from.

  At night, when I cannot sleep, I think of my life. Of fate, and how one single decision can alter an entire destiny. Of the choices my family made. Of what might have happened if my cousin Sarah hadn’t been sick that day.

  If my mother hadn’t taken her to the doctor.

  If she hadn’t walked down the Boulevard de Beaumarchais at the exact time when the French police happened to be walking there as well.

  If she had waited a few more minutes before stepping out.

  If she hadn’t forgotten to sew Sarah’s star on.

  If I would have left for Palestine, had my parents been saved.

  If I would still be living there if I hadn’t met Ezra.

  If I might have had a child with him, had he not chosen the path of vengeance.

  The kitchen in my flat has a pine table and two chairs. There is a small stove and a pantry. I don’t eat much, so it remains mostly empty. The sitting room overlooks the park. I find it magical. I take long walks there. I sit in cafés, read books and listen to music. I recently bought myself a record player, and music seems to fill a void which words cannot. But, most importantly, I have a job, for which I am paid fifteen shillings a week. The uniform is black and the hours are long, but I don’t mind: I sell perfume at Selfridges, scent in coloured-glass bottles. Caron. Christian Dior. But also Guerlain: Vol de Nuit. Après l’Ondée. Shalimar. I spray and smell my mother everywhere.

  On Saturdays, I model at the Slade School of Art. I had thought I would stop being a model, but something about it compels me to return: the smell of turpentine, how painted flesh comes alive with the stroke of a brush, or a pencil. My soul is prudish, but not my body. It speaks for itself, and I like that. I can be still for hours. When I pose, I let my thoughts drift to a faraway place. I sometimes forget where I am. I don’t mind. I sit cross-legged, stand or recline. I am limbs and muscle, spine and skin. I am an anonymous person. No soul-baring, no storytelling. I remain still in silence. I like it, because stillness is like a cousin of death, as if my body has turned to stone, and stone covers where my parents lie.

  I make friends at the school. My first real friends since Paris: artists and writers. One of them is called Vivian, and she is studying printmaking. She has a freckled face and red hair, and always looks clean. She wears dresses made out of parachute silk, seamless stockings and gloves. “Never leave home without gloves,” Vivian says. In contrast, her boyfriend Declan dresses in shabby clothes and doesn’t like to wash his hair. Vivian is entranced by him. Declan is a member of the pop-art movement and is seeking a new, post-war interpretation of art. “The idea of pop art,” he tells us, “is to search for inspiration in the unknown rather than the familiar.” Declan speaks of collages and consumer goods. Of abstract expressionism and realism. Vivian and I follow him and his friends to bars in Soho and Chelsea. We listen to jazz and smoke cigarettes. One of them has fallen in love with me, a painter called Zak. His body is so pale it looks translucent. We make love once. I find out that he is Jewish. He mentions that he arrived in ’38 as a Kindertransport, from Berlin. That his father died, but his mother survived. He asks me about France, about my past. I hesitate, because part of me would like to confide in him, but then I choose not to. If I’m going to have a man in my life, it’s not going to be Zak. I find him difficult to talk to. Aside from an impressive knowledge of painting techniques and an unattractive self-confidence about his artistic abilities – “I’m just as good as Kandinsky” – he doesn’t have much to say. And I do. My English is very good now. “You’ve only been here one year and you speak so well, almost like a native!” I’m told. “Isn’t that unusual for a French person?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I no longer know what a usual French person is. I live here now.”

  I’m often asked about Paris. Why am I here, not there? Why am I not teaching French, for example?

  I tried, but no one hired me, I explain. And I earn enough at Selfridges. Anyhow, I don’t really care what I do, because I’m happy in London. I’ll look for a teaching job again in due course.

  But isn’t everything more beautiful in Paris?

  Not to me, it isn’t. I cannot tell my friends. It might frighten them. And I can still feel the stigma of the Jew. I can still see myself sitting in that last Métro car, like a dangerous breed. So my answers remain as vague as my background. I find that rewriting my personal history is easier than having to explain it. I keep it nestled inside the lining of my skin, safe from outside interference.

  My parents died in a car crash, is what I say.

  “How awful!” is the usual response.

  “Yes, it’s awful,” I say, nearly believing it myself.

  My parents died in a car crash.

  They weren’t stripped naked and taken to the gas chambers and dumped into a pit together with hundreds of rotting corpses.

  My parents died in a car crash, on their way to a Sunday lunch in the country. My mother was wearing her crocheted black dress and her pearl necklace. My father was wearing his light-brown suit and matching loafers.

  They were driving through the countryside and took a wrong turn.

  My parents died in a car crash.

  *

  I dress well, speak well. I surround myself with culture. My parents were shopkeepers. They weren’t cultured. But they wanted the best for me. They would have been proud of me, had they seen me now.

  My friends tell me I should work somewhere other than Selfridges. That I could do better. I could teach, or work in publishing. Perhaps I could. But I don’t.

  The shop promotes me to a managerial position. I take the job. I could do something different, but I take the job. I meet a man at the perfume counter, a physics teacher. He’s looking for something for his mother. Something with a sweet smell, he says. He’s kind and makes me laugh. He invites me for dinner. I accept. Then he asks me over to his house, but I decline. The following day he asks me to marry him. But I cannot marry him. I barely know him, and I don’t love him.

  I’m not sure I will find true love again. My friends worry about me. You must find a man, they say. “Old spinster,” they must be thinking. But I cannot tell them about Ezra, or about Palestine. They wouldn’t understand. And why would they?

  There are many things about me I barely understand myself.

  *

  Vivian says she knows a man, Fletcher Schumann. Her older sister once worked with him. Vivian finds him attractive, and thinks I might too. If she weren’t getting married herself, she would have considered him, she says. She is no longer with Declan. Her parents disapprove of artists, of the fact that their daughter chose to study art in the first place. “They said art was a phase, and that I would see the light, which I suppose I have,” she tells me, with a hint of sadness in her voice. Vivian is now marrying a doctor, whom I find very uncharismatic. But I will never tell her that.

  Fletcher, Vivian explains, is forty years old. He works in a bank and likes to read detective stories. He also loves classical music, and is a descendant of the composer Robert Schumann. She introduces me to him. A man of medium height, strong features, green eyes. He has a chipped front tooth. His thick lower lip looks soft, like a pin cu
shion. He asks me many questions about my life and tells me he finds me very beautiful. “I would like to get to know you,” he tells me.

  Fletcher bewitches me, and I become infatuated with him. A pounding, resounding infatuation. He is the great-great grandson of Robert Schumann. By associating with Fletcher I am associating with one of the most extraordinary composers of the Romantic period. I will be living love, just as I had with Ezra. Pleasure. Beauty. Music. Hope.

  But Ezra was a murderer.

  Fletcher asks me my age. I lie and tell him that I am thirty; thirty-five sounds too old. He is surprised that I haven’t married yet.

  *

  I have lost my head to a married man. Fletcher has a wife and children. Vivian didn’t know that. Two teenage boys. He won’t tell me much about them, and I don’t ask. He visits me in my small flat and takes me to hotels. To expensive restaurants. With Fletcher I eat my first lobster at L’Escargot, on Greek Street, where the tablecloths are decorated with snowflakes and one of the waiters brings us two glasses of champagne “on the house”. He treats Fletcher as if he were a regular customer, which my lover – what a lovely word! – insists he isn’t.

  He tells me about Robert Schumann. His father owns some of his original scores. The piano concerto in A minor, the Kreisleriana and the Fantasy in C major. I can hardly believe it. I have never met anyone who has such relations. Schumann’s music has seeped into his descendant’s blood. It has made him special, he says. His whole family is special. Fletcher grew up in the countryside. His parents own a mansion. They’re rich. His body is rich. His mind is rich. Everything about him sparkles.