by Sarah Raz
Out of necessity, Asher had learned to help Alice with her cooking. The work began just ahead of the weekend, with Asher chipping in not only in washing and peeling, but also with cooking and seasoning. Pretty soon Asher the gourmand had become an expert chef. His signature dish was the lakerda, a whole mackerel that had not been cooked, but rather salted and seasoned for a number of days to become a famous Balkan delicacy. And then there were the eggplants. Asher knew how to prepare them in exactly the right way; he would roast and peel them, smash them with a large wooden spoon until they turned into a paste to which he would add eggs and cheese before putting everything into the oven. The “eggplant days”, as they had become known amongst the neighbors, were famous for their enticing aromas among all the residents of their bloc and beyond. It was then that the lady from the floor just above them would knock on their door and declare that she had no longer been able to resist the temptation and that she just had to have a taste. Asher was not thrilled, but Alice had always been keen on maintaining good relations with her female neighbors and she would invite them in to partake of the delicacies that she and Asher had prepared. That was how her aunts had taught her to behave. “Always be nice to the people,” they would say, “so that you can have a door open to their hearts.”
Alice introduced the institution of the sadenka. It involved having all her lady friends over for an entire afternoon, giving them plenty of time to engage in women talk. From the moment that her neighbors found out about Alice’s skills in coffee reading, these encounters had become that much more exciting, filled with anticipation for the great reveal of the meaning behind the coffee grinds. With time, Alice gained her neighbors’ confidence as someone who knew things and who could always be relied upon for good advice. She had always been there for them with small gifts like a hand-knit sweater for a newborn baby or an embroidered tablecloth for Christmas. Alice was an unequalled embroider. She could embroider figures from the Bible and all her Christian acquaintances appreciated her attention to detail and her respect for their traditions.
On the first day of March, it was the custom of Bulgarians to gift each other little figurines crafted from white and red thread that symbolized the coming of the spring. The figurines were given to loved ones along with wishes of joy and good health. It was Alice’s habit to invite her neighbors to sit down and craft the figurines together with her, a habit that brought everyone much happiness. As to Alice’s neighbors, they did not spare her any accolades, to the point that they seemed to have forgotten all about her being the only Jewess on the block.
Alice’s and Asher’s lives at that time were filled with harmony. Alice had become more and more enterprising and it was she who ran her little family. While it was understood that it would always be Asher who would have the last word, it was Alice who had guided him, ever so subtly, to make the decisions and take the actions that she had thought prudent.
Alice felt herself in the eye of a hurricane; everything around her was quiet, but a low flame burned in her heart and she could find no respite. One day, Asher informed her that he was going to stay late at the office because he had to catch up on some work. Mati was already in bed, so Alice had decided to make herself a cup of coffee so that she could stay awake and not seem too tired to Asher when he finally came home. As she was sitting in the corner of the darkened room humming to herself a familiar childhood tune, Alice’s eyelids had become heavy and she was overwhelmed by sleep. In her dream, she saw her mother with her kind, pale face. Wearing a breezy white dress, a wry smile on her face, her mother moved all around the room as if familiar with its every nook and cranny.
“Alice, you know that I am always with you wherever you go. You give me much pleasure in the way that you are leading your life. In the next few months, I can see you conceiving again and bringing to this world another daughter. This girl will be the apple of your eye; she will always remind you of me. With her birth you will no longer need to look up to the moon for inspiration and guidance. My little granddaughter Luna will be your rock for as long as you shall live. Through her, I will be able to rest assured that all is well with you. I am entrusting her to your care; you must never be separated from her. Everywhere you go, you must go together. As long as you have her by your side, you will know that I am also with you.” Alice woke up in a cold sweat. The dream had been so vivid! It reminded her that something beyond the merely physical had been in charge of her life. When Asher came home late that night, he found Alice sleeping the sleep of the righteous, a content smile on her lips.
At the height of the rebuilding period in their lives together, just as both of them were putting in long hours at work, Alice had made it a habit to sit on her favorite bench in the city square and wait for Asher. When she felt dizziness, she needed no medical opinion; she knew. This time, both man and nature had been on her side. The square was empty as if someone had placed it solely at her disposal. The setting could not have been lovelier; mid-July heavy green foliage crowned the treetops, giving her plenty of shade from the afternoon sun. A light breeze played with the flower petals that lined the path which held her bench. Alice felt quite fatigued, but also overtaken with contentment. She kept her seat on the bench, the same place where she had waited for Asher every Tuesday. It was their quality time together; Asher, Alice, and their little daughter. It was the one time they had reserved for themselves alone during the week, a time to relax and recharge their batteries.
Asher was approaching her, trying to downplay his limp. He had a cobbler make him a special shoe, but to no avail; one leg was still shorter than the other. He made his way to her wearing a big smile on his face only to hear Alice, never hiding her surprise, ask him “where is Mati?” Asher sat down next to her, took her in his arms and explained to her that he had left Mati with the neighbors because he had something special planned for them that night. From his coat pocket, he too out a pair of tickets to the opera. “Tonight, and only tonight, we can go see the Balladera, Bitush Davidov and Norma Meshulam. I know how you love listening to this couple and I was able to get us a pair of tickets. And for later, I reserved us a table at a restaurant.” “What are we celebrating today,” asked Alice. “Don’t you remember our first meeting up on Vitosha mountain?” he replied. “Why celebrate our first meeting? Let us celebrate today. We are about to have another baby girl.” Said Alice placing the palm of her hand on her belly. Asher was visibly moved. He placed his face next to hers, looking imploringly into her blue eyes. “Alice, this is hardly the time. I worry about you and I don’t want you to go through again what you had already gone though in Marseille. Now that you are feeling better and our life is finally beginning to get back in track, why take the chance? I love you so much, Alice. Why make such a great change in our lives once again? We already have a beautiful healthy girl. I will find us a good doctor and arrange to put a stop to the pregnancy. Listen to me, Alice, this is the right thing to do.” Alice shook her head from side to side. “Asher, if your wish is to make me happy, if you care about my wishes, I need to carry this pregnancy to term. I want to have another girl whom I can call after my mother. Had I not promised her on her deathbed that I would call one of by daughters by her name? I only want this one girl more. I am confident that I will be fine. I will make every effort to avoid disturbing your routine. I fully believe that I will have no problems this time around because this is something I want so very much.” Asher could not resist her. “Ok, just one more girl and that’s it. And what if it is a boy? Will you still want to try for another girl?” Alice gave him her word that she would never conceive again and they remained seated in each other’s arms, savoring every moment of their happiness. A twilight moon sailed across the sky, followed by Alice’s grateful gaze. Alice felt confident that in it she could see her mother following her every move, staying by her side through every critical junction in her life. She was shaken out of her stupor by Asher; they had to hurry up and catch the show.
The life of t
he small Uziel family continued apace. Alice was surprised how well she had felt. Throughout her pregnancy she needed little rest and could keep up with her work. Asher did more than his share of the house chores and made certain to pamper Alice with her favorite dishes. Mati just turned a very independent six year old. When Alice had to stay late for business, she had spent time with the neighbors who had a girl her age. With each passing day, Mati could not wait to meet her little sister. She sat up evenings, observing Alice as she was knitting clothes and blankets for the new baby. “Mother, how can you be so sure that I will have a little sister and not a little brother?” she asked and Alice replied that that’s just how it was going to be because that was what she had been told once upon a time. Alice often told Mati stories about her grandmother Luna so that could learn her family lore. At the end of March Alice was delivered of little Luna in a local hospital. The birth had been an easy one. Luna had light hair and green eyes and Alice could have sworn that it was exactly how she had seen her in her dreams, looking just like her grandmother. Asher, moved and happy, felt that the time had finally come to renew contacts with Alice’s sister Corinne, with whom they had fallen out of touch and who only got occasional news about their family from Jacques. Alice, who could well recall how hurt she had been by Corinne’s treatment of her, had never asked for Corinne’s help even in her darkest hours. Not because she lacked the means to help, but because that’s how Alice had wanted it. She was thus quite taken aback when she saw her sister arrive at the hospital with her husband and daughter in tow. There were plenty of forced smiles and declarations of good will, but Alice knew that she could never forgive her sister for what she had done to her in her hour of need. Upon her return from the hospital, Alice wrote to Jacques to let him know that she now had a Luna of her own.
Bulgarian Jews were largely apathetic when it came to religion. Many only showed up in Synagogue on the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Alice did not keep the Sabbath because Sunday had been the official weekly day of rest in the country and she could not afford to take two days off every week. Passover had always been a rather special holiday in her parents’ home. She remembered the extensive preparations, the thorough cleanup and the exotic dishes. Now, she desired to renew the tradition and have a Passover just the way her mother used to have it. She recognized the importance of imparting to her daughters the traditions that she had inherited from her mother and made up her mind to celebrate every Jewish holiday just as it had been done in her childhood home.
In every observant Jewish household, Passover was a time of renewal. Alice not only cleaned the house from floor to rafters, but purchased many new dishes and household items for the holiday. Throughout the year, whenever she had purchased new bedding, for example, she stored it in the depths of her closet separately from the other bedding items and linens, just for use over Pesach, the Passover holiday. In this manner she had accumulated towels, linens, bathrobes, pajamas, tablecloths, food service items, and clothing. And if anyone had found her stash and wanted to use it, she would admonish them. “Not till Pesach,” she would say.
Alice adored the color blue and would buy almost anything that sported that color: blue towels, plates with blue trim, tablecloths with a blue print, and, of course, blue house slippers.
Asher and Alice had decided that they would not send their daughters to the Jewish day school, but rather to the public school, so that they could be better integrated into the society at large. They were well aware of the danger of assimilation, but even though Asher had been the son of a famous rabbi, he cared little about religion. Keeping Jewish traditions had always been more important to him.
One day Alice looked at her reflection in the mirror and decided that her complexion had been rather tired and blotchy. She recalled a recipe from her aunts’ house, one that she had occasionally used to the aunts’ good-natured laughter. “You are way too young,” they would say. I guess it’s my time now, Alice thought. She took an egg yolk and placed it in a small bowl. Into it she squeezed the juice of a lemon, added a teaspoon of honey and blended everything together. She wet the skin on her face, coated her moist hands with sugar and began gently exfoliating her skin. Having washed and dried her face, she applied to it the egg yolk paste. “Sugar removes dead skin cells, opens the pores, and cleanses the skin,” her aunts would tell her. The lemony egg mixture shrinks the pores back up again and gives the skin a vibrant appearance. Surely, this cannot hurt, Alice told herself and felt proud that even with her meager means she could yet keep her beauty.
“Mati, Luna, hurry up! It’s late and daddy is already waiting for us,” Alice called. “Today is payday.” The girls had long awaited this special day and they had already been quite ready, pretty dresses and all. Mati sported two thick ginger braids, the combing of which had always resembled a military operation. Her little sister had picked up the art of combing rather quickly and always helped make Mati’s braids. Mati tied a ribbon in Luna’s hair and both girls grimaced at their reflections in the mirror to the sound of Alice’s laughter. The three of them left the apartment and hurried in the direction of Nedelya Square, the same square that Alice had adopted as her preferred meeting place with Asher. The girls ran down the avenue, Alice trying to keep pace. “Hurry up, mom, daddy will get there and won’t find us,” Mati yelled at full gallop, little sister in tow. Alice stopped in place and declared, “Girls, it won’t do for us to meet your father all sweaty and out of breath. We have the whole evening ahead of us. Come back here, give me your hands, and let us walk towards your father together. He will be glad to see three ladies coming over to greet him.” The girls turned heel and rejoined their mother. Alice, whose breath was returning to normal, took out a compact and powdered her shiny nose. They found the bench, the exact same one that saw her as a young bride, breathlessly waiting for her new husband, always full of hope and good cheer. They sat down, the girls swinging their feet in the air, examining every tram, trying to see if it would be the one from which their father would finally emerge. The fifth tram to stop by them saw Asher descend from its steps.
As usual, he took great pains to hide his limp and keep his back straight – he knew that all three women in his life were anxiously following his every step. The girls ran towards him and he opened his arms to them. Alice raised herself slowly, enjoying every moment. How important it had been to have another child, she thought. How pleasant it is to be the matron of a loving family. Asher approached her, with a great big smile on his face. “Alice, today we shall really celebrate. I have received a raise. We will buy the girls new shoes and then go have dinner at a restaurant.”
Asher and Alice treated each good day as if it had been their last. They didn’t have to discuss this; both of them knew that bad days could easily follow good ones. Having experienced much hardship, they tried to enjoy their newfound happiness as much as possible. Alice was well aware of the great change that had overtaken her husband. From a man breaming with confidence, always ready to take on the whole world Asher had transformed into a man who shrunk away from every conflict, a man who avoided arguments and one who chose not to fight to achieve his goals. His newfound weakness was most fully revealed when he needed to stand up for himself and demand better pay or more respectful attitude from coworkers. “Alice,” he would tell her, “I trust no one but you. So many friends have deserted me, disappointed me, so much of my life would have been different had only people been fundamentally decent.” Alice had not yet come to this point of view. She yet knew how to foster good relations with people, how to give and take according to each person’s desires and abilities.
On the 20th of September 1939, prompted by a small incident that occurred in a Jewish-owned toy store on Dondukov Boulevard in Sofia and with the tacit agreement of the Bulgarian government, the ultra-nationalist organization Ratnik initiated a pogrom against Jewish owned businesses on that boulevard and elsewhere in the capital. That was only the beginning. From that poin
t on, despite the many promises given by government ministers to protect the Jewish minority, a brutally anti-Semitic policy had been adopted by the Bulgarian establishment. Delegations of Jewish dignitaries protested to the prime minister and the minister responsible for internal security and received half-hearted condolences, but not before these officials tried to shift the blame to the Jews, hinting that it was they who had for centuries exploited the native population of Bulgaria.
The Prime Minister, Dr. Kyoseivanov, tried to calm the waters. Facing a reelection campaign, he had no interest in civil unrest. Furthermore, he was hoping to gain the majority of the Jewish vote. But to no avail. After the election, on February 15th, 1940, a new government, under the leadership of a historian by the name of Bogdan Filov came into power. Filov appointed as his minister of the interior Petar Gabronsky, one of the leaders of the anti-Semitic organization Ratnik. The two men travelled to Nazi Germany, where they met with Hitler and signed the first agreements between the Third Reich and the Kingdom of Bulgaria, agreements that soon resulted in the complete military and economic dependence of Bulgaria on Nazi Germany.
Asher returned home one evening and Alice saw that his face had been uncharacteristically drawn and pale. She sent the girls to their room and they both sat down at the kitchen table. Asher held in his hand the popular newspaper “The Horn”, tightly wound into a roll. “What happened,” Alice asked. Asher unrolled the newspaper and began to read out loud. “By order of the Chief of Police, all foreign nationals and persons without established residence must immediately depart the borders of Bulgaria. No Jew who is not currently a Bulgarian citizen will be allowed to apply for citizenship. All non-citizen Jews must report to a predetermined place, from which they will be transported to the demilitarized zone between the borders of Turkey and Greece, there to be released to their own devices.” Asher let out a great sigh and grabbed Alice’s hand. “Alice, it was your wit and wisdom alone that saved us from this fate. Imagine what would have happened if we had taken out that foreign passport at the Persian embassy like I had wanted to! What would have become of us had you not stopped me from going through with that idea? Let me read you more. Eight percent of Bulgarian Jews are the citizens of foreign countries such as Spain, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Germany, among them many who had arrived in Bulgaria a long time ago or where born here and inherited the foreign passports from their parents. There is also an advert here that talks about a certain Dr. Konfino who is organizing a ship that would be suitable to take some Bulgarian Jews to Palestine. What utter nonsense on his part. What does he know about ships? He intends to raise three hundred and twenty thousand levs to buy a boat that can hold three hundred passengers. This means that every passenger would have to come up with roughly a thousand levs to secure a passage. Who can afford such sums? It is our great fortune, Alice, that we are not in a desperate situation and that we do not have to leave. But everything points to things being rough around here. Who can tell what awaits us? What do you think, Alice, should we try and get a visa to Eretz Israel?” Alice gave him a big hug, as if trying to draw strength from him and said, “In these matters it is best to get Jacques’ opinion. He is very close to the Jewish leadership circles and knows all their plans. I shall write to him in the morning and we shall see what comes back. In the meantime, take extra care at the office, so they know that they need you.” Asher nodded and added softly, “Today my supervisor called me to his office and confided that he knew that Jews were having a rough time of it right now, but he knows the quality of my work and he is not one to discriminate. For him, as long as an employee does a good job, they should have no problems.” Asher’s words brought some color back to Alice’s cheeks.
