by Moshe Sakal
Menashe smiled. He knew that Aunt Gracia was going to tell him about Grandpa Salim, who really did arrive one day and fall in love. At first he fell in love with Aunt Gracia herself, but she explained that it could never happen. She didn’t have time for a lover, she only wanted to sing. She told him about her sister, and when his curiosity was aroused, she told him Mona was blind. He was a little taken aback, but when they met it was “love at first sight,” Aunt Gracia said with a giggle. How exactly did Mona see her beloved if she was blind? And how could she fall in love with him “at first sight”? Menashe could only imagine. He wanted to keep thinking about his grandparents, whose story fed his dreams for many long nights, because he knew that on the night they met, a seed was planted that would one day, years later, lead to his own emergence into the world. But that was after his grandfather teetered like a domino and fell, followed two years later by Grandma Mona, whose eyes closed forever and she never saw another thing — neither with her real eyes nor in her mind’s eye. But before that happened, long before, Aunt Gracia repaid Mona for all her wonderful stories about faraway places, because Gracia herself traveled all the way to the sultan’s palace in Istanbul and brought back the blue diamond.
As Menashe’s thoughts spiraled on, he pricked up his little nose and the smell of the sea came in through the window. Although he was only seven, Menashe could already distinguish one smell from another, and he thought about how not long ago the sun had stayed in the sky until evening, and the winds at night had died down, and the rain had stopped. Father had started coming home when it was still light, and Mother complained of the heat, and Aunt Gracia lay sprawled on the couch in her little apartment, surrounded by jewelry and clothes from Damascus, with the crystal lamp in the middle of the ceiling and the crystal dishes on the table, and the gifts she had received in those cafés in Damascus.
Summer was here.
Aunt Gracia lay on the couch wearing only a thin robe. Menashe looked at her and remembered the legend his teacher, Ms. Sylvia, had told the class one day when they went on a tour of Jaffa.
They walked around the ancient town and stopped at Napoleon’s cannons. The teacher told them about the great emperor who had set off to conquer Europe and the Middle East, and her eyes were ablaze. She talked excitedly about the cannons, which had pounded and pounded at the walls of the fortified city until they broke through. Then Ms. Sylvia led the children to the bottom of the hill, where, standing on the shore, she pointed to a rock out at sea and said, “Here before you is Andromeda’s Rock.”
And this is the legend she told them:
“Once upon a time in Jaffa, there was a beautiful princess named Andromeda. Andromeda’s mother, Queen Cassiopeia, boasted of her daughter but also envied her. She went around telling everyone about Princess Andromeda, claiming she was the most beautiful woman in the world, more beautiful than even the nymphs in the sea. The nymphs heard this and asked Poseidon, King of the Sea, to avenge their insult. Poseidon loved Andromeda, but he loved the nymphs more. So he sent a terrifying monster to destroy the city. Andromeda’s father, King Cepheus, could not sleep. He was worried about his city and felt guilty because he knew that all this was happening because of the queen’s pride and his daughter’s beauty. He waved his hands and cried out, ‘Cursed is the day when Cassiopeia birthed the beautiful Andromeda!’ He went to see an oracle, who was a clever man who knew everything. The oracle told him he had to sacrifice Andromeda to Medusa, a terrifying sea monster with writhing snakes instead of hair, which would bite anyone who came near. The most terrible thing about Medusa was her eyes. Anyone she looked at immediately turned to stone. But there was no choice: They snatched poor Andromeda, chained her to the rock you see here, and she waited for the Medusa to come and devour her. But then a miracle happened. Right here in the sky above us, the hero Perseus flew past. He did not have wings, but he had flying sandals. He held a shield and a large sword, and he chopped off Medusa’s head, freed Andromeda, and flew away with her to a desert island, where they lived happily ever after.”
That was Ms. Sylvia’s story.
Aunt Gracia was worn out by the heat and lay on the couch like Andromeda passed out on the rock. Menashe looked at her with trepidation. She looked like half princess and half monster. He could see her bosom through her dress, and she had barely any makeup on. Her brown hair was adorned with thin golden ribbons, and her skin glistened gold with perspiration. Her thighs were stacked on each other, and she was massaging musk ointment on her thighs, calves, and feet. She couldn’t reach her toes, so she asked Menashe to do those.
“My boy!” she called.
“At your service, my aunt!” replied Sultan Menashe.
He got down on his knees, almost bowing at Aunt Gracia’s feet. The scent of musk pierced his nostrils and made him dizzy. His little fingers invaded the gaps between Gracia’s toes, all of them at once, and precisely at that second her head lolled back and one soft sigh escaped her lips. Her eyes were closed. He considered reaching out his little tongue to tickle her between the toes. Her hand would be covering her eyes because the sun was hanging over the sea, and the air would be tinged with purple and orange, and it would be difficult to breathe, but in between his aunt’s peals of laughter Menashe would identify a different sound, a sound he had heard once before when he came to visit.
The apartment door was unlocked that day, and he walked in. There was no one in the living room. Menashe went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He thought Aunt Gracia must have gone to the market. But then he heard laughter coming from her bedroom, and a few words in Arabic, spoken in an unfamiliar male voice and in Gracia’s. But it was not her usual voice — it sounded as though she were speaking very quickly and then very slowly. Then there was silence.
Menashe drank his water and looked out the window. He could see a road behind a row of squat houses. The road curved back and forth going south — away from al-Sham, where his entire family had come from. He was the only one born here on this land. On the other side of the street was the sea. It looked as though someone had covered the water with yellow marbles, and behind all the marbles the sun looked out at Tel Aviv and Jaffa with its one eye. Jaffa was piled up in a heap — or at least that was how it looked to Menashe. He knew that in Jaffa there was a square with a clock tower, and the signature of Sultan Abdul Hamid II inside the ticking clock, and a market, and another market, and friends of his father, Rafael, some of whom still lived there. People sat in cafés drinking the anise tea they called yansoon, smoking hookahs, playing backgammon. And he knew that time passed much more slowly there.
These were Menashe’s thoughts, and he forgot that the door to Aunt Gracia’s room was shut and that only moments before he had heard her voice coming from there. Suddenly he heard a shout. To his left, the glimmering yellow marbles on the sea twittered, and Menashe thought he could hear the muezzin calling from the mosque in Jaffa. Jaffa was far away, yet still he imagined he could hear the clock in the tower ticking faster and faster. Or perhaps it was his heart. The door opened. From the corner of his eye, Menashe saw a tall, broad-shouldered man with a black mustache standing in the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of large white underwear.
“There’s a boy here,” the man said in Arabic.
Menashe looked at him and felt his face turn red. He looked down at the floor, not before glimpsing the strange man’s huge chest, his skin glistening with sweat, and his large purple nipples that protruded as if someone had pinched them and tried to pull them out. Menashe saw one more thing: a mark of some sort on the hollow of the man’s neck. Only after he walked past Menashe, very close, did Menashe realize what it was: teeth marks. Something in the way the bite was imprinted on the skin reminded Menashe of the unfamiliar sound he had heard in Aunt Gracia’s laughter when the door was shut.
“What boy?” Aunt Gracia’s voice rang out from the room. She moved the man aside with her bare arm, revealing her body behind him. The man walked to the bathroom, and a fe
w seconds later they could clearly hear a stream hitting the water. The man whistled a happy tune, and Aunt Gracia, who had been out of breath just moments ago, stood there quietly. Her hair was pulled back as usual, with all the pins hiding in it. She wore a robe that Menashe recognized — a red robe with yellow dots, which was a little too small for her but she liked it because it reminded her of those distant days in al-Sham.
Aunt Gracia stood facing Menashe without saying anything, but then she opened her arms and said, “Come to me, my sultan.” Menashe hurried over to be enfolded in her embrace. Aunt Gracia’s body had a sharp smell, which he inhaled through his nostrils. At first a warm sensation enveloped him, but after a few seconds he felt dizzy and almost fell over. Aunt Gracia put her hands under his armpits and led him to the couch. But he did not want to sit down. He stood there, cradled in her body. The man with the mustache came back and stood in the kitchen. He drank several glasses of water, one after the other.
“Sami, come and meet my sultan,” Aunt Gracia said in Arabic.
The man she called Sami put his empty glass down on the wooden kitchen table. “How many sultans do you know?” He grinned. “I thought there was only one.”
“This is the Crown Sultan. Sultan Menashe the First.”
Sami walked over slowly. He bowed his head at the boy, reached out a large hand, and pinched Menashe’s cheek. Then, with the very same hand, he patted Gracia’s cheek lovingly. His shirt was on the couch and he started dressing. The sweat on his skin had dried almost completely. Gracia wanted to help button his shirt, but he gently brushed her away. He surveyed her and Menashe and said, in Hebrew, “You look alike.”
“Are you leaving?” Gracia asked in Arabic.
“You have a visitor,” Sami replied in Hebrew. “And not just anyone — a sultan!”
“The sultan came without informing me,” said Aunt Gracia, insisting on using her language. Menashe could not tell whether she was angry or joking. Maybe both. “He forgot to send his eunuchs with a note, and so I could not welcome him as one welcomes a real sultan.”
“Well, now you can host him properly.” Sami stood behind Aunt Gracia, lifted her hair, and kissed the back of her neck.
“You’ll come tomorrow?” she asked.
He did not answer, and she closed her eyes and sighed. Then he patted Menashe’s cheek twice, put on his shoes, and left.
Aunt Gracia kissed Menashe’s forehead. “Sit on the couch and rest, sweetheart. You look tired. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She walked away, and Menashe lay down with his eyes closed and listened to the shower water. For a moment the window was flooded with orange light, as if all the yellow marbles had exploded above the sea. He opened his eyes a crack and looked out, but he couldn’t see anything. He must have dozed off, because he suddenly felt Aunt Gracia’s hand on his shoulder.
She was wearing a different robe now, and her skin exuded the scent of musk. Menashe waited for her to lie down on the couch and ask him to rub her feet, but she did not say anything and did not lie down. She went into the kitchen to make lemonade. She brought Menashe a glass and then turned away and leaned on the windowsill, looking far out, at the sky that was now a dark purple.
2
“What’s wrong, Menashe?” asked Aunt Gracia, rousing Menashe from his thoughts. “Menashe, what’s wrong?” she repeated.
“Nothing.”
“You look sad.”
“I’m fine,” he tried to say, but he felt a sting in his eyes.
“How are Mom and Dad?”
“Fine.”
“And Salim?”
“Shlomo? He always wants to go to the beach, but after school Dad takes him to the shop to help out.”
“And little Mona?”
“She’s always shouting.”
“What’s the matter, my sultan?” Aunt Gracia asked again after a pause. “Are you angry because I didn’t tell you I had a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“But look, I’m not angry at you for coming to see me without telling me. I’m glad you came and met Sami. Isn’t he nice?”
Menashe didn’t answer.
“He’s a good man, Menashe, a really good man. And he loves me.”
The boy’s eyes were hazy with thoughts. He was preoccupied with other matters. “I don’t want Rosh Hashanah to come,” he said.
“But why not? I thought you liked that holiday!”
Menashe knew that shortly before Rosh Hashanah his mother would take him to the tailor to get a new suit made. There would be white drapes hung on the windows at home, and white bedspreads and white tablecloths. When they sat down for the festive meal, Father would dip a piece of bread in sugar, take a bite, and pass it around to each of the guests. There would be a plate on the table for the ritual blessings, and on the plate would be a sheep’s head, beet leaves, pomegranate, lubia, dates, and green pumpkin jam boiled in sugar.
They would not nap during the day on the holiday. Father and Salim would be at synagogue, where they would read all one hundred and fifty verses in the Book of Psalms twice, because that makes three hundred, which in gematria has the numerical value of the letters k-p-r, the Hebrew root for “atonement.”
“I don’t like Rosh Hashanah,” Menashe declared.
“But why?”
* * *
Shortly before Rosh Hashanah the year before, while Adela was preparing the home with white tablecloths, white bedspreads, and white drapes on the windows, Rafael came into Shlomo and Menashe’s room one evening and said, “Come with me, boys.” The three left the house and went out to the street. Shlomo and Menashe walked behind Rafael without a word, heading south on Dizengoff Street.
Rafael stopped outside the building where Adela’s parents lived. The door on the top floor was half open. Sounds of conversation came from the apartment, but the living room was empty. Outside one of the rooms in the small apartment was a large crowd. Rafael headed over there, followed by his two sons.
Rafael pushed his way into the room, and Shlomo paved his own path, stood next to his father, and put one hand on his shoulder. Menashe stayed in the doorway. He found himself surrounded by grown men, most of whom he knew — they were the relatives he always saw at synagogue and at festivities held in the event hall in Ha’Tikva neighborhood. There was a smell in the room that he had trouble identifying, and he also noted peculiar sounds, some of which were castigations and some a sort of foot stomping, as well as a panicked, animal hum, furniture shifting, muffled curses, and a desperate attempt to instill order. There was a momentary silence that was swallowed up in the crowd’s rustle.
Menashe pushed his way into the room. He did not see his grandfather standing in the middle, wearing his white robe, his black hair neatly parted and smoothed down, his mouth open and teeth visible, his large fingers clutching a glistening knife. Menashe did not see the sheep that lay there flailing.
An hour earlier, the sheep had been hurried onto the steps so that it could prance up to the top floor, which it did — with neither revulsion nor joy, but simply by necessity, only to be pushed into this room and stood in the center, then to lie with its limbs spread out and pant from the heat and the suffocation, then to fight with all its strength — which it knew instinctively was its last remaining strength — and then surrender desperately and submissively to the knife that had severed the heads of so many creatures in both Damascus and Tel Aviv.
The sheep fell silent and the commotion escalated. At that moment, Menashe managed to make his way through the crowd and cling to his father’s trousers. He watched his grandfather, who lowered his gaze until his eyes met his little grandson’s, and he smiled at the boy. Menashe looked down, not before catching sight of the patches of boiling blood pooling on his grandfather’s white cloak.
Then there was a crowd gathered around Menashe. Father and Shlomo shook his shoulders and asked, “Are you all right?! Are you all right?!” But he was not all right. His eyes stung and his mouth was parched and he hunche
d over and tried to stop himself but he could not, and then he vomited.
When he recovered, he was in the living room. His grandmother sat beside him holding out a cup of tea and a biscuit. He buried his head in her lap and remembered the sheep in the next room and was overcome by nausea again. Men kept coming in and out of the room. Now he understood why his mother did not go to her parents’ apartment: Adela came from a family of shochets, which was precisely why she had not eaten meat from a very young age. Adela was at home now. Aunt Gracia had not come either, and Menashe was in the care of his grandmother.
For many days afterward, throughout the High Holy Days, Menashe lay in bed curled up with his knees against his stomach, his fingers spread over his knees. His stomach ached. His forehead touched the cool wall, and he remembered those moments when the sheep had swelled up, the way the wool had gradually pulled away from the skin as though any minute the creature would explode and its innards would spill out onto the men crowded into the room, or perhaps a miracle would occur and its body would lift up off the floor, take flight, and float out the window like a balloon.
In the months that followed, Menashe spoke often about what had happened in his grandparents’ apartment. Rafael listened silently and promised not to take him there again. But then Menashe’s memory made twists and turns and played tricks on him, and the next time he spoke with his father about the events, Rafael looked at him in astonishment and said, “But that was on Passover eve, not Rosh Hashanah eve!” And Menashe retreated into his silence.
His father told him the ancient legend of the Valley of Diamonds: “Once, in a faraway land near the Black Sea, there was a valley with a large cave full of wonderful diamonds. All the people in the world knew of this cave, and they all wanted to reach it, but there was a problem: Anyone who tried to enter was immediately attacked by the terrifying vultures who guarded the cave’s entrance. One day a king commanded his servants, ‘Go to the valley and bring me back the diamonds, otherwise I shall behead you!’ The frightened servants went to consult a wise man, and the wise man told them, ‘Take some fine sheep, slaughter them, and toss the pieces of sheep flesh into the cave.’ And that is what the servants did: They killed some fine sheep, cut them up into pieces, and when they got to the cave in the Valley of Diamonds, they threw the meat in. The vultures smelled the meat and quickly went inside and ate the sheep flesh, which had diamonds stuck to it. Then the royal servants completed their mission as the wise man had advised: They went to the vultures’ nests and found pieces of diamond in between the eggs. They brought the diamonds to their king, and the great king rewarded them handsomely, and they lived happily ever after.”