If happiness is knowledge, knowledge of one’s origins, then let my origins begin now. Forget about Zoltan, forget about Esau, forget about this vague hodgepodge of a people called the Jews. Maybe some people live in a world where link to tradition, devotion to a cause, where binding Aristotle to Moses, Reason to Faith, where following a packet of letters and a cave painting, are the road to happiness. My priority is to the living. If that makes me shallow in the eyes of the Carranques, the Santángels, the Sammy L.s, the Maimonideses, if that makes me shallow in your eyes, Benjamin—tough.
I start now, with this woman, with this child. Whether they are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood—I couldn’t care less.
The truth, Benjamin?
I haven’t eaten a kipferln in hours, is that it? I am free at last to make a choice, unguided by butter, sugar, hazelnut, and memory.
The truth, Benjamin?
As your mother, I’ve got to say you missed a good bet with My Lady Journalist.
The truth, Benjamin?
I know Esau better than I know you. Look at the freedom Esau had to build his own ball team from scratch.
I left you once, Benjamin, I can leave you again.
The truth?
The seats are empty, the Minyan has disappeared. The door at the top of the stairway stands open, a faint shaft of light. I look around. Holland without her camera. Isabella without her violin. All our possessions—gone. Only we remain.
The truth?
Can a woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might forget, I never could forget you.
The truth, Benjamin?
Esau said it best—we are all Jews. Our survival is in our motion.
Mama
HOLLAND—¡ADIÓS, COLÓN!
Dear Ben,
I found Conchita near where I’d first met her, standing before the copy of her family landscape, the mural on the back wall of the tiled Ladies’ of the Aeropuerto Cristóbal Colón. She was tying an apron around the waist of the subdued sack of her waitress costume as she pondered the mosaic—far less provocative than in the black dagger of her striker’s uniform. She was, I think, waiting for me.
“¿Qué lindo, no?”
The smouldering ruin on the hill, the seascape, with its three caravels, the backs of faceless women waving handkerchiefs from the dock, the few dull shacks falling into the river, were no more beautiful than the night before. A strong odor of ammonia made the blue of the ocean less dull and the crosses on the sails more garishly red.
What had changed was beneath the tiles. Beneath the tiles were barrels. Beneath the barrels, boys. Beneath the dress of the broad-shouldered, grey-eyed girl onshore, the secrets of navigation. But the ruin? A monastery? A mosque? A synagogue?
“Was it revenge for my desertion?” Conchita and I turned away from the mural. Hanni stood at the sinks, talking to the mirror, talking to us. “What do you think, Holland? Was this enormous puzzle, this guided tour—were they all in on it—Carranque, Santángel, Sammy L., Gershon Mundel and his light-fingered wife? Was this all just the pastime of a jaded travel agent with nothing better to do than torture his mother?”
“His mother?” I said. I took the brush from her hands and tried to put some order into her hair. “What about me? The rest of you were born into this crazy story. But Ben picked me, me to be the mother of his child. Why England, why the BBC? I’m not even Jewish, I’m …”
“A shiksa goddess”—Hanni turned to my unreflected face—“like Esau’s Florida, like his copper-coloured girl. Like Jacob’s Pachamama.”
When did you choose me, Ben? Before I grew? Afterwards? Was the choice made in Berlin, in Surrey, in utero? Or was it merely some grand coincidence of bonfire and Bach?
“Why couldn’t Ben have met us at the airport?” Hanni restored her hairbrush to her bag. “Before the strike?”
I’d asked myself the same question. Why not, Ben? After all you’ve made in commissions, why couldn’t you have plumped for a leisurely five-course meal with three wines, and told us the whole convoluted story in straightforward, genealogical English?
“My dear Señorita.” Conchita finished tying her apron. “A travel agent cannot indulge in direct revelation. He can only guide the client with bits of art—entertainment, trickery, parable, pictures in a cave—into a certain understanding. He must make the client believe that all choices are hers alone, all her experiences one of a kind.”
For all the news of strikes and jet fighters in the Herald Tribune, I could have dreamed away the night on the Naugahyde benches of Colón. I have crossed the waterless rivers of Mariposa, I have danced the bulería with Conchita on the stage of the Cine La Rábida. Yet I remain nothing more than a departing passenger.
I turned back to the mural. Three women.
If our paths cross, Ben, in some distant concert hall or out-of-the-way airport, I will be tempted to ask you a few questions. I reckon you may have a few of your own. For now, the women on shore are pocketing their handkerchiefs. We have a plane to catch.
Holland
ISABELLA—FULL-ARM VIBRATO
Mother, Grandmother:
Let me tell you a story. It is a story I was born knowing. It is a story I have told myself every bedtime as long as I can remember.
When Naomi arrived at the airport, she turned to Ruth to kiss her good-bye. But Ruth refused to leave.
“Do not ask me to go away. You are my White Rabbit. Wherever you go, whichever hole you jump down, whichever door you open, I will follow. And wherever you sleep, if you ever sleep, whether it is in a condo in Miami or an airport bench in Frankfurt, that’s where I will sleep. Where you die, will I die and be buried. For only death will take you away from me. I was not born of your people, but you are my people. And though you were born of your people, you are mine. What we are, we will be together.”
And Naomi nodded and turned to the gate.
But there was another standing by.
And Ruth turned to the girl with the downcast eyes and said, “Will you come with your grandmother and me?”
And the girl said nothing, but kept her hands in the pockets of her jacket, where the fingers of her bow hand folded and unfolded the letter that told her who she was and who she would be. And the girl looked down at the floor and thought of the other floors she knew so well, from hours and years of staring herself into another place, a place outside the sound of Mass and dry women’s voices.
And Ruth reached out her hand until she almost touched the girl’s chin and repeated, “Will you come with your grandmother and me?”
And the girl still said nothing, but squeezed the folded paper in her pocket, and looked down at her feet, and thought of the thousands of mornings she had hoped, in the revery of lacing and knotting, that she would sit at the edge of another bed that very same evening, and feel the gentle tug of her mother’s hands release her feet from the hard-soled shoes and toss them away forever.
And Ruth stood back, and her shoulders dropped, and her chin sank to her breast, and she began to speak so low that the girl could at first hear only the melody of the voice. But gradually the words of the mouth became the words of the paper—
My dear daughter,
This letter is hardly an ark of bulrushes, but it may, as you grow older and desire to know, bring you some small comfort.
You have a mother. A mother who carried you for nine months. A mother who gave birth to you. A mother who left you for reasons that are a mystery to her, like so many other mysteries in her life.
Know this, my daughter—a time will come. It may not be while you are still too young to read this letter, it may not be before you are old enough to hate me for my desertion. But a time will come when I will come for you. And there will be an end to mysteries.
And the girl said nothing, but slowly drew her hand from her pocket with the paper she had folded and unfolded since before she could remember. And she raised her hand up, and her eyes to her hand, and she opened her fist, and the p
aper scattered like fairy dust upon the floor of the terminal, like the notes of a minuet she would never again repeat. And her mother reached out and filled her empty palm with her own.
And as the plane flew smoothly through the afternoon sky, its shadow chased curly-horned sheep and gray-bearded goats up and down over mountains and valleys. And as the plane flew smoothly into the night, the shadow slipped into the sea and swam deep to play with the whales and the porpoises and the sea monsters of fairy tales.
And Ruth’s daughter curled up, with her feet on the lap of Naomi, and her head in the lap of Ruth. And as she closed her eyes, as the murmurings of the stories of the women grew sweet and warm like a full-arm vibrato on the G-string, she reached up with one hand to the generous breast of her mother, her elbow crooked into third position, poised for the first note—perhaps the second movement of the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, perhaps a favorite tune of an Alhambran princess—and fell into the peace of a first sleep, in the happy knowledge that every breath drew her closer to her new world.
About the Author
Following graduation from Yale University in 1977, Jonathan Levi received a Mellon Fellowship to study at Cambridge University, where he co-founded the literary magazine Granta and served as U.S. Editor through 1987. Levi is the author of the novels A Guide for the Perplexed and Septimania, both available from Overlook Duckworth. His short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines including The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, and The Nation. From 1996 to 2001 he served as the Fiction Critic for the Los Angeles Times Book Review. As a producer, Levi has overseen many theatrical projects including Carly Simon’s opera, Romulus Hunt, and a 1997 production of Robert Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. Levi’s own libretti for operas and musicals and plays have been performed in the U.S., Europe, and as far away as Tbilisi, Georgia. Levi has also served as Minister of Arts and Culture for the NYC Board of Education and as the first Director of the Frank Gehry–designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Born in New York City, he currently lives in Rome, Italy.
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