The next day neither of them said anything. It was as if nothing had taken place. Anastasia behaved as she always did, and Samuel ended up thinking that he had dreamed his possession of that fine-skinned body, white as snow.
Without saying anything, these meetings became a custom. They made love without exchanging words and the next morning neither of them gave any sign of tenderness or complicity.
Samuel was not in love with Anastasia; as he held her in his arms he thought about Irina, and who knows what Anastasia thought about.
And so the months went by, with nothing changing apart from the seasons.
“Samuel, Samuel!” Ahmed cried, running lightly toward the farmstead where Samuel and Ariel were still working even though night was falling.
“What’s happened?” Samuel said, worried to see Ahmed’s face so red.
“A revolution!” Ahmed seemed very changed.
“What are you saying? A revolution? Where?” Ariel put down his hoe and came close to Ahmed.
“In Constantinople. Some officers have rebelled against the sultan. No one knows what’s going to happen . . . Maybe they’ll remember us now . . .”
“I’ll go into the city tomorrow, maybe Abraham has more news. There are important foreigners among his patients. If you don’t get back too late from the quarry, then maybe you could come with me,” Samuel suggested to Ahmed.
But it was not until almost a month later that Abraham had any news about what had happened in Constantinople.
“Apparently, a group of young officers rebelled against the situation that the sultan’s laziness has led the empire into. They don’t know how the rebellion will end, but for the time being the sultan will have to submit to whatever the army says.”
“But what are they asking for?” Ahmed said, surprised that anyone would have dared confront the sultan.
“My informants tell me that they are young Turks who want a parliament like the British Parliament, and reforms throughout the empire,” Abraham explained patiently.
“And how will this affect us?” Ahmed was worried about the changes that might take place.
The old doctor tried to calm him down.
“Who cares for Palestine? There is nothing here, Ahmed, nothing that the powerful might want; they will leave us in peace, we will be able to carry on praying and living as we have always done. There’s no need for you to worry.”
Abraham was right. Nothing was going to change, apart from the normal shocks and turmoil of daily life. It was in 1908 that Samuel received a letter from Irina asking him to come back to Paris at once.
Marie is very ill and the doctor says that she does not have much time left. She hasn’t stopped talking about her father and you, and I think that she would be happy if you could come and she could say goodbye to you. If you could do that you would help her die in peace . . .
Samuel could not stop himself from crying as he read the letter. Marie was his last remaining link to his father, to his grandfather Elijah, to his childhood. She had always been generous to them, she had given them her best without asking for anything in return, and the least he could do would be to go back to see her before she began her journey into eternity.
He told his friends that he was going to France, and insisted they look after Ahmed and his family.
“He has never understood that there is no hierarchy among us, and he will be worried that I am going away.”
“We love Ahmed just as we love Dina and her children, nothing will change if you go away,” Kassia replied.
“I know, maybe you could talk to Dina and calm her down,” Samuel suggested.
“Yes, of course I’ll talk to her. I think of Dina and Zaida as two good friends, I don’t know how I would have managed things without them.”
Anastasia said nothing, but in the days before Samuel left she seemed timid and nervous.
“Will you come back?” she asked one night as she helped him prepare an infusion of medicinal herbs.
“I imagine so,” Samuel replied sincerely.
He had asked himself the same thing on several occasions. He had spent more than eight years in Palestine and his life had shrunk down to farm work alongside some strangers who were now like family to him. But he did not think that these links could stop him from leaving them forever, although if Irina had not asked for him then he would have continued with this life even though certain days seemed entirely empty to him. This journey would help him to rediscover himself, to analyze those years he had spent living near the Jerusalem that his father had desired so much to see.
No, he had not had time to do anything more than survive, fighting to overcome the voraciousness of the land; it was only the concocting of medicines that made him feel good, although when his day’s work was done he was so exhausted that he no longer wanted to do anything but think about the next day’s tasks. He had also become accustomed to the shameful encounters with Anastasia. She never asked anything of him, but he knew that he must make a decision, either to ask for her hand in marriage or else tell her that she was free to marry someone else. He knew that Jeremiah looked at her with sidelong glances, and that he sought her out whenever he visited the farm. He also knew that Jeremiah could love her, something that he felt himself incapable of doing, and he felt himself selfish and small by taking advantage of Anastasia’s silent obstinacy in staying near to him.
“If you don’t come back, I’ll leave,” she said, without a single note of reproach in her voice.
“Where will you go?”
“To Galilee, where my sister Olga and Nikolai are. I’ll be alright there.”
“I’m sorry, Anastasia, I . . .”
She shrugged as she came close to him.
“I would have liked it if you had loved me but you couldn’t. When you look at me you are thinking of a face that’s not mine. I have not been able to vanquish your ghosts, but I don’t want you to become my ghost either. I think you’re not going to return, so I will get ready to leave.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, looking straight at each other, until finally Samuel dared to bring them back to reality.
“There is a man who loves you.”
“Jeremiah,” she said without hesitating.
“So you know . . . He would make a good husband.”
“I know.”
“You could be happy together . . .”
“So you are recommending that I marry Jeremiah . . . Well, I’ll think about it,” Anastasia replied.
“I . . . I don’t have any right to tell you what you have to do, but . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry for what happened, it shouldn’t have happened . . .”
“Don’t regret it, what’s done is done. I came looking for you, you let yourself get carried away . . . Men are like that, you never say no, but I don’t feel betrayed, you’ve never said anything or shown any sign of affection. I cannot blame you for anything.”
That night Anastasia didn’t stay in the laboratory; as soon as she had finished cleaning the utensils that Samuel needed for his medicines, she slipped back to the house.
All night he did not sleep, feeling nostalgia for that strange young woman he would never hold in his arms again.
But more than Anastasia, his main preoccupation was Ahmed. It was not an easy parting.
“You will never come back,” Ahmed said reproachfully.
“Nothing will change even if I’m not here. You need to trust Jacob, and Louis, and Ariel. They feel toward you just as I do. And Kassia thinks of Dina as her best friend. You mustn’t worry.”
But Ahmed could not stop asking himself what would happen in the days after Samuel left.
Jacob and Louis offered to take Samuel to Jaffa, where he would find a ship for France, and chance decreed that he found a ship heading to Marseilles, the port he had left in 1899 in search of the Promised Land.
They were standing on the dock talking when they saw Ahmed approach them.
“What are you doing here?” Samuel asked in surprise.
“Jeremiah gave me permission to come say goodbye, and I . . . I never said this before, but I wanted to thank you for all that you have done for me and for my family . . . If you hadn’t bought the farm, who knows if another saïd would not have thrown us out of our home . . .”
Samuel hugged him, deeply moved. He knew Ahmed well enough to be aware of how much it was costing this proud man to reveal his true sentiments.
“You don’t have to thank me for anything. You are a good friend and it was not just me who decided to share the farm with you; Jacob, Louis, and Ariel agreed, and Kassia as well, of course.”
Ahmed made a gesture as if pushing Samuel’s words away. It was impossible to convince him that his fate was not solely tied up with that young Jew whom he had met more than eight years ago at that same port.
When the ship set sail Samuel wanted to cry, as he suddenly realized how much that difficult and inhospitable land meant to him, that land to which he might never again return.
5
Paris, Paris, Paris
“It was Irina who opened the door to Marie’s house. They looked at each other for a few seconds, each trying to recognize the other before they finally dared collapse into an embrace.
“How you’ve changed!” Irina said as she helped Samuel remove his coat.
“You are the same as you were before I left.”
“Come on, don’t tell fibs! Can’t you see my grey hairs? I’ve gotten old.”
Samuel looked closely at her. It was hard, but he finally distinguished a couple of white hairs among the blonde. She wore her hair pulled back into a severe chignon. But if there was any real difference about her, it was that her eyes showed her to be at peace with herself.
She led him immediately to Marie’s room. The good old woman was propped up on some pillows that Irina adjusted with care.
Marie stroked Samuel’s face and then took hold of one of his hands and held it between her own.
“It’s as if I were looking at your father, you look even more like him than you did when you were younger. Just as kind . . . Come, sit next to me.”
Irina took charge of Samuel’s bags and left the two of them alone, knowing that this was what Marie wanted most of all.
She didn’t come back until late in the afternoon, and this time she brought with her Mikhail, who had just returned from giving a music lesson.
Samuel was moved to see that he had almost become a man. They shook hands without daring to embrace each other.
In spite of Irina’s protests, Marie insisted that they get her up for dinner.
“It can’t hurt me to have a good time with the only people I have left in the world,” Marie argued.
Mikhail carried her in his arms into the dining room. And Samuel was shocked to see her so shrunken and thin. She scarcely had the strength to hold her spoon, but her eyes shone with a joyous fever. She couldn’t stay seated for more than a couple of minutes.
“I’m sorry, Irina was right, I’m better in bed. But I was so happy to leave my room to eat with you all!”
“And we will eat together,” Mikhail said. “We’ll put our food on trays and sit round the bed, it will be the same except that you will be more comfortable.”
“No, no . . . I don’t want to cause you any problems.” But there was a slight begging edge to Marie’s voice that suggested she really did not want to be left alone.
“I have come to Paris to be with you, so either let me have dinner in your room or I’ll go straight back to Palestine,” Samuel threatened her with a smile.
The first few days Samuel spent getting to know the city again, as well as renewing his acquaintance with Irina and Mikhail. His connection to Marie was stronger, and in spite of all the years that had gone by it was enough for him to look at her for each to know what the other was thinking.
Since Samuel’s arrival Marie seemed to improve, and she insisted that on at least some evenings she be carried to the sitting room and put by the fireplace so she could speak with Samuel. He took her by the hand and they remembered the past, but above all they spoke about Mikhail’s future. Marie loved the child very much.
He was now fourteen and all his efforts were concentrated on becoming a musician like his father. Marie and Irina had managed to give him a good education, but he did not hide the extent to which he hated books and preferred his daily violin and piano lessons.
“He will be a great violinist, but he says that he wants to be a conductor, he dreams of conducting the great works of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin. He will tell you himself, I’m sure, but he has composed a couple of pieces himself; Monsieur Bonnet, his teacher, says he has a great deal of talent.”
“Yuri was talented as well,” Samuel said, remembering Mikhail’s father.
At first the boy treated him like a stranger. Yes, he remembered the long journey from Saint Petersburg to Paris, but he had not forgiven Samuel for leaving them. His only family was now these two women who doted over him so much. He had no one else, and neither did he need or want anyone else in his life. He was polite and attentive to Samuel, but he treated him like a guest, not a member of the peculiar family that he had formed with Irina and Marie.
“Give him time, he’s a very introverted boy, he has to be, or else there wouldn’t be room for all the music in his head. You’ve seen how he improvises on the piano, how he imagines notes and notes and then turns them into tunes.”
Samuel took Marie’s hand and begged her not to be worried about anything. He understood Mikhail.
“Are you still in love with Irina?” Marie asked him one afternoon.
He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
“Come now, you can trust me!”
“I know, Marie, I know, but I am just asking myself what it is I feel for Irina. All these years I haven’t stopped thinking about her, her face has hidden the faces of all the other women I’ve met.”
“But . . .”
“But she is so distant, so cold . . . I’m just an old friend. I’ve never seen a glance from her, a gesture that shows that she cares more about me than she ever did.”
“I know she has a secret, although she’s never told me what it is. Something must have happened when she was a young woman to make her set up this icy barrier between herself and any man who comes close to her. Do you remember Monsieur Peretz, the businessman friend of your grandfather’s who helped you prepare for your journey to Palestine?”
“Yes, of course I remember him. His recommendations were very useful to me, and he also introduced me to that Arabic professor who did manage to teach me something, although not very much.”
“Benedict Peretz has two sons, one of whom made an approach to Irina but was rejected. Other young men have tried as well, but she has pushed them all away.”
“And that’s why you think she has a secret . . . ,” Samuel said in jest.
“Don’t laugh at me! I’m sure of it, I’ve asked her. One day she was about to tell me but she didn’t dare. It’s your job to find out.”
“Mine? If she didn’t tell you, then she’ll never tell me.”
“I’m sure you’ll speak to her openly one day and tell her what you feel . . .”
“Don’t play the matchmaker. I came to Paris to be with you, nothing else. Let’s leave things as they are, and if something is going to happen then it will happen.”
“Meanwhile you are consumed by melancholy, that old Russian melancholy. You all can pretend to be happy and enjoy life, but every now and then a cloud covers your senses, and the name of that cloud is melancholy.”
Irina was still working at the florist’s. It made her feel independent, although when Marie fell ill and tried t
o make Irina take over her own clients, she had not wanted to. Sewing was a terrible obligation, and she did not want to devote the rest of her life to putting together clothes, a task for which she had no interest at all, and still less in spending time with those flighty women who came to try on Marie’s fur coats.
Samuel felt a stab of nostalgia when he saw his grandfather’s workshop closed up. The large table on which his grandfather had cut the coats, the chairs where he and his assistants had turned the furs into the coats his father sold. The polished wooden shelf where the scissors, the needles, the thread were all lined up in neat rows . . . Everything was perfectly ordered and clean, but it was clear that no one had been in this part of the house for a long time.
“I suggested to Marie that she rent the workshop,” Irina explained, “but she didn’t want to. She said that she didn’t feel strong enough to see a stranger taking charge of the business. And thanks be to God that she has earned enough not to have to depend on others.”
“And you, Irina, are you happy?” As soon as he asked the question he regretted it. They had never had an intimate conversation that allowed their sentiments free rein.
Irina smiled so happily that it surprised him. She was not usually given to displays of happiness; she wasn’t taciturn, but it was hard to make her laugh.
“Happy? Of course I am! What would have become of me in our dear old Russia? I would have ended up in an Okhrana dungeon simply for having been in contact with Yuri. And as for my hopes . . . Do you think that a girl like me could have had any kind of a future? Yes, I am happy here. I like flowers, I feel happy preparing bouquets, choosing the most beautiful roses, preparing displays for some bride. I feel free, I don’t have to answer to anyone, and I have Marie and Mikhail.”
“And your parents?”
“Dead. It is the only grief I have from these years. You know that they had to leave Saint Petersburg, the Okhrana would not leave them in peace because of me.”
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