The letter was written in a trembling hand. Marie left instructions about the inheritance he was to receive and about how her personal belongings were to be divided. Her few jewels, a fine gold chain with a cross, a pair of tiny pearl earrings, and a bracelet—these were all for Irina. Marie also left her the collection of porcelain figurines and the silver picture frames. As for her clothes, she wanted them to be given to the needy. She left Mikhail the paintings that she had bought as her business grew more successful. They were too modern for Samuel’s taste, but Marie had always been surprising, so he had tried to be enthusiastic about them when Marie showed him a pair of pictures that hung on the wall in her room. She seemed to like these young artists whose paintings broke the human body into pieces, as in another painting that Marie had hung in the dining room. She had invested in these paintings with the help of Benedict Peretz, who told her that one day these young bohemians who seemed to scribble all over the canvases they submitted to the Paris Salon would be considered “masters.”
Samuel was surprised to see so many people at Marie’s funeral. There were elegant women who claimed to be affected by the loss of this woman who, as well as making the most marvelous dresses, had also become something of a confidante. They knew that they could trust her, because Marie never repeated a word of what she’d heard in the fitting room.
It took him almost a month to feel strong enough to go to the notary’s office. It was a surprise for Irina and Mikhail to discover that Marie had left a substantial sum of money, the fruits of a lifetime of saving.
Monsieur Farman told them that Monsieur Peretz had advised her how to invest a part of the money, but the rest of it was in the bank waiting to be dispersed.
When they got home, Samuel asked them to gather in the salon.
“I promised Marie that I would look after you . . . Please, Mikhail, listen to me!” he said when he saw the young man’s angry expression.
“Look after us? We don’t need you. What could you do for us that we aren’t able to do for ourselves?”
“I don’t know, but this is what Marie asked me to do. As you know, the house and the workshop are now mine and I want to say that I am happy for you to carry on living here. As for the workshop . . . I have had an idea, I don’t know if you will like it, Irina, but I would be pleased if you would just consider it. I am not going to deal in furs or make coats, and neither are you, especially as you have become an excellent florist. Perhaps we could turn the workshop into a florist’s, so that you could have your own business. Why work for others when you can have your own shop? Think about it, at least.”
But Irina did not need to think about it. She leaped out of her seat to hug Samuel.
“Really, can I really open a florist’s? Good God, it’s more than I could possibly have dreamed of! My own business! Of course, I will pay you rent for the shop, I can do that with the money Marie left me.”
“No, you will not pay me anything. I don’t need money. With what I have received from my grandfather and what Marie has left me, I am almost rich. I think that I can live for the next few years if I moderate my expenditures. As for you, Mikhail, you know what Marie wanted for you. She trusted that you would become the best musician in the world. You must honor her memory and return to Monsieur Bonnet’s lessons. As well as the money that Marie has left you, I will do everything I can to help you become the musician that both Marie and your father would have liked to see you become. You cannot deny your talent.”
“How can you think of anything apart from Marie? You’re making plans for the future as if you didn’t care that she’s not around anymore . . . ,” Mikhail replied angrily.
“Stop being childish! You are fourteen years old, and you should be thinking about the future, just as we all are. Do you think that you love Marie more just because you cry all day and all night, just because you stop practicing the violin, just because you stop eating? It is harder to live than it is to die, so if you are going to do something for Marie, then live, live as she dreamed you would live. Be the man she wanted you to become. I know that you are not comfortable around me, but you will have to get used to it because we are going to live here together, and I don’t like to see you silent and refusing to speak even a couple of words to me. I will not allow you to destroy everything that Marie wanted for you.”
Mikhail left the room with tears in his eyes and Irina stopped Samuel from going after him.
“Leave him, he needs to be alone and think about what you’ve just said. He will end up taking it well, he’s a good kid and he loves you, but he’s just afraid that you will abandon him again.”
“I am not going to go, Irina, I will stay here at least for a while. I also need to think about what I am going to do with my life.”
Samuel thought of how he suddenly had to share a house with Jacob and Kassia and their daughter Marinna, as well as with Ariel and Louis. It could not be more difficult to live with Irina and Mikhail, even if Marie’s absence seemed to have turned them into strangers. But he had promised Marie he would try to begin a new life in Paris, and that he would dare to take the step of asking Irina to marry him. This first part, the new life, was something to which he would dedicate all his strength; the second part made him dizzy. He thought he would need time, but that was, after all, what he had most of.
It didn’t take him long to find a way of earning money so as not to have to live off what he had inherited from Marie and from his grandfather. Via Benedict Peretz’s connections, he started working with Monsieur Chevalier, a famous pharmacist who was also a professor at the Université de Paris. Samuel became his assistant and even gave a few classes at the university, and he was allowed to shut himself away in the laboratory to make drugs that he had not even heard of.
Without realizing it, Samuel let the years run by in that strange life in which he lived with the woman he loved but dared not say a single word to her about his feelings. Irina had turned the workshop into a florist’s and spent her time there, from very early in the morning until late at night, scarcely paying him any attention. For his part, Mikhail was now less a prodigy than someone who was becoming a famous musician.
Samuel wrote often to his friends at Hope Orchard, and didn’t forget about Ahmed and his family. It was Jacob who used to reply to his letters, telling him what was going on in Palestine and asking him when he intended to return. Via Jacob he found out that Anastasia had gone to Galilee with her sister Olga and Nikolai but had come back after a few months and had been taken in once again. But she had not spent much time at Hope Orchard, because one fine day Jeremiah had arrived unexpectedly and, in front of everyone, with a certain degree of embarrassment and clumsiness, had asked her to marry him. Kassia was going to step in and play the role of the big sister in order to reject this supplicant who she knew was not to Anastasia’s taste. But the strange young woman would not allow it, and to everyone’s surprise she accepted Jeremiah’s proposal. They seemed to have grown accustomed to each other, and had had a daughter, who was small, but who Kassia said was beautiful.
6
Palestine, 1912–1914
“Ezekiel fell silent. Marian saw that he was tired. It could be exhausting to remember so much, and this man had made a considerable effort in telling her the story of his grandfather and his father. She was tempted to take pity on him and tell him that she would be back one day, that she would wait until his son was there to talk about the settlements, but Ezekiel wouldn’t let her go.
“It’s lunchtime, do you want anything to eat? We can carry on talking later.”
“Have lunch? Well . . . I don’t know if I should . . . ,” Marian replied.
“I suppose that your NGO wouldn’t think it a matter of high treason for you to have lunch with an old man like me.” Ezekiel’s voice was filled with irony.
“Don’t laugh at me, but we’re not allowed to . . .”
“Fraternize?” he interru
pted her. “Do you know something? So much strictness seems to me absolute nonsense. Will you stop being objective in your work if we eat a little hummus together? Let me ask you, would you reject an invitation from a Palestinian family if they asked you to eat with them when you went to ask them about what was happening here? No, I don’t think you would, so do me a favor and do yourself one as well, and have lunch with me. It won’t be anything special, like I said, just a bit of hummus, a tomato and cucumber salad that I can just throw together, and I think there’s some salt beef left in the fridge. Do you want a beer, or maybe some wine?”
“No, no . . . I . . . Just water, but don’t go to any trouble for me . . . I don’t want to eat anything.”
“In that case we can see each other later, maybe you can come back when my son is here. I need to eat, I’m an old man, and although I don’t eat much, it’s a good idea to recover your strength, and you’ll understand that I’m not going to let you just sit and watch me while I have lunch.”
Ezekiel stood up and held out his hand. Marian had no time to vacillate.
“Alright then, I’ll accept your invitation, but you have to let me help you.”
“Come into the kitchen, we’ll eat there, you can help me by cutting the tomatoes while I lay the table. Ah, and of course, it’s your turn to talk now. I’ll get a little bit of a rest that way. Tell me about Ahmed.”
“Are you really interested in what Ahmed and other Palestinian families could think or feel?”
Marian saw tiredness appear in Ezekiel’s steel-grey eyes.
“Yes, I am interested to hear what they have told you, and how they have told it to you; in the end, when you put your report together, it will be their version that prevails.”
“Please, sit down . . .”
“Careful cutting the tomatoes, the knife is very sharp.”
Ahmed was worried. He would have liked to have shared the cause of his worry with Samuel, but his friend was still in Paris and from his letters it looked like he was going to stay there. It was four years since he had left but he still seemed somehow to be present.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t trust Jacob or Louis, or even Ariel, in spite of his brusque nature, but there were family problems that he wouldn’t even discuss with friends, and he saw Samuel as something a little different.
One summer evening, just like so many others, he saw Mohammed and Marinna sitting in the orchard together when he got home.
The two youngsters were laughing and holding hands and did not seem to care if anyone saw them. He couldn’t understand how Kassia was not more attentive to what her daughter was doing. Just thinking about it made him feel a degree of irritation toward Jacob’s wife; he knew that she was a good woman, but her habits always made him feel uncomfortable. Jacob was a husband who gave her too free a rein, allowed her to go around as if she were a man.
He had spoken about the problem with Dina, but his wife refused to talk to Kassia.
“They must have realized, too, neither Mohammed nor Marinna disguise what they feel for each other. They are in love and they are behaving as if it’s the most natural thing in the world,” Ahmed complained.
“And what should we do about it? You’ll have to find a good wife for Mohammed and then he’ll stop mooning over Marinna.”
“You should speak to Kassia . . .”
“And what could I tell her that she doesn’t already know? No, I don’t want her to think that we have anything against Marinna. She’s a good girl, always kind, always helps around the house, helps with Aya. Our little girl loves her like a sister.”
“So what should we do then?” Ahmed insisted.
“Get Mohammed married off, I’m telling you. With a good wife he’ll forget about Marinna.”
“But if he gets married now he won’t be able to study. All these years we’ve made sacrifices for Mohammed to become a doctor, and if he gets married then he’ll have no option but to work with me in the quarry to maintain his family.”
“In any case, he won’t be a doctor. He likes studying law,” Dina replied.
Ahmed gave a resigned sigh.
“Well, we have to respect his decision, you need to have a vocation to be a doctor, and he does not. It was a stroke of good luck that he was able to study in the British school, it’s normally only the children of rich families that can do so. Praise be to Allah that it was only Abraham who could cure that old diplomat when he was stricken by malaria, and who later opened the door to St. George’s School to our son as a sign of thanks.”
“The Jewish doctor has always been good to us even if he could not save our son.” Dina had not forgotten Ismail’s premature death.
“If Abraham had not spoken favorably of our son, then Mohammed would never have gotten into the English school. I’m not going to marry him off now,” Ahmed argued.
“In that case, talk to him. You are his father and he owes you his obedience. Remind him that when the time comes he will have to marry the woman you choose for him.”
“He knows that already.”
“He knows it but he’s not bearing it in mind.”
The same conversation repeated itself every time Mohammed and Marinna were together. They had tried to separate them by sending Mohammed to study in Constantinople, where he stayed in the house of one of Hassan’s partners. Dina’s brother had maintained strong friendships in the city where he still did a lot of his trade, and where his nephew was now generously looked after. Hassan himself had paid for the boy’s upkeep, for all that Ahmed had refused his offer to begin with, but his wife’s insistence, as well as that of his mother-in-law and of Hassan himself, had eventually led him to give in. But the separation had been useless. When their son came back he barely greeted them, so impatient was he to go find Marinna.
Ahmed saw Marinna’s good qualities just as well as Dina did, but for all that they recognized the young woman’s virtues, she could not marry Mohammed. If Marinna were to convert to Islam . . . But they knew that she would not, and so she could never be their daughter-in-law.
He walked very slowly until he was close to the young couple and they noticed his presence.
“Ah, Father, you’re home!” Mohammed said with a smile.
“It’s past six o’clock,” Ahmed said drily.
“You’re right, the time went past without us realizing. Marinna says she speaks English better now, although I don’t know whether to listen to her, she’s learned it all by herself, after all.”
“With my father’s help,” she corrected him.
“Jacob has a gift for languages. It’s a real stroke of luck . . . ,” Ahmed replied.
“And thanks to her talent Marinna has learned English, and some French, as well as Arabic.”
“Come on, Mohammed, it was you who taught me Arabic, my father taught me some basic ideas but nothing more, and all I know of French comes from Samuel and Louis. My language is Yiddish, but I feel comfortable speaking Hebrew and Arabic now as well. At home we mix everything up, Louis talks to me in French, Ariel in Yiddish or Russian . . . But I like talking in Arabic. It’s such a beautiful language!”
Ahmed lowered his head and Mohammed noticed how uncomfortable he was.
“I’ll go home with you, Father. We’ll go out for a walk later, would you like that?” he said, addressing Marinna.
They were silent until they got home, as they both tried to find the words to broach the topic they knew stood between them.
“Mohammed, my son, you know that you cannot spend your future with Marinna.” Ahmed’s voice was heavy.
“But father, why do you say that? Marinna is . . . is . . . I love her, yes, and I think that she . . .”
“Yes, she loves you, too, you don’t know how to hide it. But you have to study. What use would it have been for us to have made all this effort? Are you really going to throw away the good luck tha
t got you into St. George’s?”
“I will have to get married one day, and . . .”
“Don’t say another word! There is still a way to go before that moment, and when it comes I will find you a suitable wife, don’t worry about that.”
“Father, forgive me, I don’t want to offend you, but I would like to make the choice myself.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, and Mohammed was worried to see obstinacy on his father’s face.
“You will do what you have to do, not what you want to do. I know what’s good for you.”
“You’re saying you will not let me marry Marinna.”
“You cannot marry her, and I feel sorry for you. Marinna is a Jew and we are Muslims. Are you going to ask her to give up her faith? Do you think she will agree to do so? No, she will not, and her parents will not allow her to either.”
“Jacob and Kassia don’t care that much about religion.”
“Of course they care about it. They are Jews; if they were not, do you think they would have come here?”
“They were fleeing the pogroms . . .”
“And you think there are no better places to flee to than here? No, they will not allow Marinna to renounce her religion.”
“One of my friends at St. George’s is a Christian who says that the Sephardi Jews are Yahud awlad Araba, Jews who are the children of Arabs.”
“How ridiculous. Also, Marinna is not a Sephardi Jew.”
“Father, we have taken part in their celebrations, you yourself have been a guest at Purim and have taken me to the festival which they celebrate by the tomb of Simon the Just. They have also celebrated the end of the Ramadan fasts with us. We live together, we share the same ground, and we are not all that different except in how we pray and how we talk to the Almighty.”
“Shut up! How can you talk like that?” Ahmed said, scandalized.
“There has to be a solution! I love Marinna, I cannot be a good husband to anyone who is not her.”
Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead Page 24