The House of Lost Spirits: A Paranormal Novel

by Einat Shimshoni

  After appearing in two small roles in Westerns, Benny received the lead role that revealed his baritone voice to the world and crowned him in the opinion of many as Elvis’ heir and Hollywood’s great promise. Money, fame, publicity, and fans began to flood him, and Benny started splurging extravagantly. Fame was the turning point in his life, but Benny did not know how to exploit it and, with the same speed as he arrived, he also disappeared.

  Four years passed since leaving home for America, until his first trip back to Israel. Benny took pains to ensure that the visit would show off his new wealth and fame as much as possible. After starring on magazine front pages and disc covers, he wanted to return to the old neighborhood as a conquering hero. He wanted to see his teachers from school admitting their mistake regarding his chances of making a success of his life. He wanted to see the affluent inhabitants of the wealthy neighborhood of Haifa humiliated at the sight of his red Cadillac that he had brought with him by special delivery. He also wanted to see the dignitaries of the Histadrut, the representatives of the workers, those arrogant people, who speak highly of the working class, but crush people like his parents and force them to pay their respects to them and beg for their charity. But that was not what happened.

  Soon enough, Benny discovered that during his absence in America, everyone’s initial attitude toward him had changed. Esther Romem had changed her approach from that of a preacher-teacher to someone unambiguously apathetic. People who abandoned Israel no longer existed for them, and those who preferred the fleshpots over the fate of the holy motherland might as well stay there, like the dregs of the Jewish people, who had assimilated and integrated with the Egyptians. Benny’s friends, initially so enthusiastic at his rise to fame, felt, with time, that his dizzying success had made him forget who had supported him in his early years, and, indeed, there was justification for their feelings. Benny did not keep in touch, did not write letters, nor did he invite anyone to visit him. If any of his acquaintances happened to come to Los Angeles and wanted to visit him, he would patronize them with his high-handed behavior and alienate them. No one waited to greet him with bouquets when he visited, none of them were interested in his triumphs. One local journalist came to interview him with great enthusiasm. Still, his flattering write-up was never published because the editor claimed his paper had no interest in encouraging those who had turned their back on the country and abandoned it. These were the ’70’s and no one forgave Benny for making movies while his friends were in the trenches at the Suez Canal, fighting.

  Only his parents, who still regretted their son’s departure, replaced their initial doubts with great pride. His mother kept newspaper cuttings, posters and postcards her son sent from overseas in an old shoebox. Unable to read the words in English, she found satisfaction in the colored pictures of her son, which were no less precious to her than the bundles of dollars he attached to them. “What do we have to do with the likes of them,” was replaced with the satisfying, “We showed them.” But, very soon, they understood that the “them” his mother was referring to was not the “them” of her son. She wanted to prove to the shadows of her past that a new life was possible. Unlike her, Benny had no interest in her shadows. He turned to those who stood in the light, and to his mother’s great sorrow, saw himself as one of them. Her joy at her son’s visit was dampened by the quiet resentment she felt when she realized that it was not an expression of the yearning love of a son, but an opportunity to show off in front of others. When Benny laughed contemptuously in response to his mother’s question as to when he intended to come home for good, she wept again.

  “Come and join me there,” Benny said and meant it with all his heart. “What do you have here? Do you want to wash floors until you can no longer move? There, I can let you live like a queen. And the doctors are better there,” he directed this last remark to his father, whose health had deteriorated in recent years as a direct result of his worsening drinking habits. But his mother refused to listen.

  “I already know what the world is like,” she said. Benny tried to explain that America is not Europe, that it’s a different world there, that the ‘Promised Land,’ doesn’t keep its promises, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He laughed at her fears, he ridiculed her principles, he was insulted by her rejection of his generous offer, and he did not forgive her for making him feel guilty. Guilty for being angry and for changing his name—on the advice of the American talent agent, he had changed it from Benny Foxburg to Ben Fox. This had hurt them, even if they did not say so openly. Although the sound remained similar to his original name, no one made the connection between them, and so it turned out that Ben, a rising Hollywood star in America, was invited on glittering visits to various world capitals, where he was royally received, but was forgotten in his own country, where no one spoke of him. Benny admitted that he, too, preferred to think of Ben Fox as a new smooth, American personality, who had nothing to do with a lost, unmotivated youth from the working-class district in Haifa, who had spent his childhood in the company of silent shadows from the past, but dreamed he had money like the indulged children from the wealthier neighborhood, enjoying the status of the Histadrut Union officials, and a happy, respected mother and a father who didn’t escape to the troubadour songs and the fumes of alcohol.

  When he returned to Los Angeles, he discovered the envelope stuffed with dollar bills that he had given his parents in his baggage. The message was clear.

  He continued calling them, though not each week as he had promised, and also kept sending them letters with newspaper cuttings and wads of banknotes. They stored the letters in the shoebox, but always sent the money back.

  ***

  Given Situation: I am a spirit. I am stuck in one place. I am bored and have nothing to do. I’m probably already buried in my grave.

  Option A: Immerse myself in thoughts about death.

  Advantages of Option A: I am accustomed to it and my ability in the field is well developed.

  Disadvantages of Option A: The present situation has made this option pointless and rather depressing, nor will it put my curiosity to rest with regard to the circumstances of Helen’s death by murder, which seems to be the only subject of interest here.

  Conclusion: Option A is disqualified.

  Option B: Go and ask Leah about the circumstances of Helen’s murder.

  Advantages of Option B: I will discover the story, which will dispel the boredom and calm my curiosity. Because, to tell the truth, when you’re a bored spirit with nothing to do, investigating a murder is not a bad solution.

  Disadvantages of Option B: Since Leah is not keen to talk about it, she may get angry with me, which means losing a pleasant spirit to talk to in an environment where there aren’t too many others.

  Conclusion: I have to consider Option C.

  Just as I am considering Option C, Leah drifts into the living room and sits beside me on the sofa.

  “I heard your conversation with Oved.” She doesn’t look particularly angry, and speaks in a calm, quiet voice. “I really don’t like to talk about it, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt more than the pain of thinking about it.” I don’t know how to respond, so I keep quiet and Leah continues.

  “Helen may not be the most easy-going type, but she is not a bad woman. She suffered much in her life and did not deserve what she got.” Leah looks at me with compassion in her eyes and I feel how hard it is for her speak about that.

  “It doesn’t sound as if there was much love lost between the two of you,” I point out.

  “No,” Leah replies, “we were not particularly close, not even a little. Perhaps that’s why things turned out the way they did.”

  When Leah tells her story, in a quiet, measured voice, it is as if she is trying to tread carefully between the words and not step on them by mistake. Through her words, I hear her stifled tears of loneliness in her narrow metal bed in the kitchen, and feel her shrinking away
from the capricious Madame’s outbursts of anger, tensing up each time her work is being scrutinized by a critical eye, and her cold shivers in the threatening presence of a power-driven master who enjoys ruling the lives of those weaker than him. I can see the fourteen-year-old girl Leah once was and cannot but pity her. She doesn’t look at me as she talks. Her gaze is turned inward, and not really focused on anything.

  “Sophie arrived after the second miscarriage. Helen was unable to hold a pregnancy beyond the first two months. There may have been earlier miscarriages in France, but I don’t have any certain knowledge of them. Helen sank into depression and the tension in the house was unbearable. She wrote home to her parents and they sent Sophie to encourage and support Helen, but it seemed that there was nothing in the world that could do so. You understand,” Leah turns her gaze to me, “there was only one person whose closeness Helen sought, but she was too proud to speak and he was too dense to notice.”

  I am not certain I understand, but I don’t want to interrupt the story, and Leah continues.

  “She spent whole days lying in bed, hardly ate and hardly slept. She was only twenty-four years old, but she was withered like an old woman. Young and beautiful, Sophie was kind and pleasant to everyone, also to me. She was the first visitor to the house who asked my name, and not in order to reprimand me for a spot of dust, or a plate of soup that wasn’t hot enough, but to inquire after my wellbeing. Everyone loved her.”

  “Including Helen’s husband,” I remark.

  From everything I have heard so far, Jacob Disraeli appears to be a very unsympathetic character, like those social bullies at school. They’re the ones who aren’t strong enough to beat-up anyone, nor rich enough to buy what and who they want, nor smart enough to reach what they are chasing after, but have inexhaustible resources of evil that they know how to enlist to grab positions of strength. It’s not clear to me how the epitome of integrity and pleasant politeness could fall in love with a conceited, disgruntled and cruel man. Leah seems to have caught my train of thought.

  “Jacob was a hard man, but he knew how to be enchanting when he wanted to. He was especially talented in making people see certain sides of his personality. I don’t think he really loved Sophie, just as he never loved Helen. Jacob didn’t love people, he used them. But Sophie wad definitely in love with him.”

  “Enough to kill her sister.”

  Leah shook her head. “No, Sophie had no part in it. I don’t think she knew what that flacon contained.”

  Leah lowers her gaze and sighs deeply. It is certainly causing her pain. If I were a little more merciful, I would tell her to stop, that it doesn’t really matter. But I am too curious to know what happened, and Leah, after a short pause, continues in her quiet and even slower voice.

  “At a certain stage, a doctor came from Jaffa. He ordered Esther, the cook, to make sure that her diet would mostly consist of fish and fresh vegetables, and for her to avoid bread and potatoes. He ordered Helen to get out of bed and take walks in the fresh air at least twice a day. He left a large dark bottle and instructed her to add a spoonful of it to Helen’s tea each evening to help her sleep better. The doctor remained at the manor house for ten days, and when he departed, Helen’s condition seemed to have improved. She got out of bed for the first time in many weeks and allowed Sophie to fix her hair before going downstairs. Jacob fussed about her with uncharacteristic affection, though, instead of encouraging her to join everyone for dinner, he pressed her to go back to bed so as not to exhaust herself.” Leah stops talking, as if she is studying the story anew, and gathering important new details from it.

  “That same evening, Sophie came into the kitchen. Esther had already finished her work for the day and had gone home, and I had to carry the tray of food to Helen’s room. She used to eat in bed in those days. Sophie handed me a flacon of golden liquid and asked to add its contents to Helen’s tea. She said that it was the medicine the doctor had left with Jacob and that I was to make sure that Helen drank the whole cup. And that’s what I did. At first, Helen spat out the drink, and screamed that it was bitter and impossible to swallow. I took the cup down to the kitchen and added sugar to improve the taste of the tea. I stood beside her until she finished drinking all of it and left her room. The next morning, when I brought her breakfast to the room, I found her lifeless body.”

  Leah raises her head slowly and looks at me, and for the first time since she entered the living room that day, her gaze is clear and focused.

  “You wanted to know how Helen died. Well, now you know. I killed her.”

  It makes no sense at all, but Leah sits there with two tons of guilt on her shoulders and sees herself as a murderer. It is so unfair.

  “But you had no idea what that flacon contained. You thought it was medicine. It’s not your fault, at all.”

  Leah shakes her head. I realize I’m not the first person to say this to her, but she refuses to accept it.

  “I should have understood that something was not right. The doctor made sure to give all his orders to Esther and me. Jacob would shut himself away in his study the whole time the doctor was treating Helen, and expressed no interest in his instructions. It didn’t make sense that the doctor would leave the medicine in Jacob’s hands without informing us, especially as he only departed when he saw that Helen’s condition was beginning to improve.”

  “But what about Sophie? She should also have suspected something.”

  Leah got up and went toward the large window, a lost young girl in the intangible body of an aging woman,

  “Sophie adored Jacob. She would do anything he told her to do.”

  “You’re just trying to cover up for her because she was nice to you and was the only one in that collection of arrogant and disgusting people who did not regard you as a miserable servant. I am not at all sure that she was as innocent as you say. I think she knew very well that what she was handing you was poison, and instead of giving it to Helen, she made you do the dirty work for her.”

  But Leah, as I said, is not allowing my remarks to crack the wall of guilt around her, and only continues in a quiet, broken voice.

  “I put the poison in the tea. I convinced Helen to drink it. She wanted to put the cup down, but I convinced her to drink it all.”

  “That is simply ridiculous!” I don’t know why I am so angry, but that really sets me off. The injustice of this story, the unfairness of her father sentencing his family to a life of poverty and illness in the name of his reckless dream, a dream that forces a fourteen-year-old girl to leave her home, to work and suffer daily humiliation and, in her innocence and helplessness, be made the tool to carry out such a terrible deed.

  “How can you even think that it is your fault?”

  Leah does not respond. Her gaze wanders far ahead through the partially boarded up window.

  “And, what happened after that?”

  She turns back to me and her speech is somewhat stronger and steadier.

  “The official version was that Helen died of an improperly diagnosed illness, although there were rumors, as there always are on the settlement. She was buried in a special plot at the local cemetery. Two months later, Sophie returned to France. Jacob left soon after her, and never returned. The gossip was that he married Sophie with her father’s blessing. For a period, the house served as a kind of hotel for visitors to the settlement, who would come from time to time. Finally, the house was abandoned, but I was no longer here when that happened.”

  “Where did you go?”

  Now, Leah speaks more lightheartedly.

  “I got married. When I was eighteen. Mordecai, the son of a Sephardi family in Safed, came to work as a laborer in the vineyard. His father disowned him for doing so, which turned him into a penniless worker, and the best possible match for me in my father’s eyes. The only condition I made was that we would make our home somewhere else. So, we moved to Ri
shon LeZion so that Mordecai would be able to continue to be a penniless vineyard worker there too.”

  She says this last sentence with a smile, albeit a tired one. After a brief, though thought-filled silence, she continues, “We had a good life, simple but good. The situation in Rishon LeZion was better. There, the peasants were not dependent on the Baron’s support, and Mordecai worked for them until we saved enough money to buy land. We had four sons and a daughter. I was privileged to see them all grow up.”

  The end of the story is too happy, too uncomplicated, and too fast. Unconvincing.

  “But, in the end, you came back here.”

  The dejection returns to her face, and she turns again to the window, but now, it isn’t the lost fourteen-year-old girl. It was an old, tired woman, who, in addition to the burden of uprooting herself, loneliness, poverty, and a difficult life, also had to carry the weight of her guilt, wherever she turned.

  “They said that this house is cursed, that the troubled spirit of Helen haunts it. I could not abandon her here. Not after what I did to her.”

  “And is that why you came back?”

  Leah’s gaze is fixed to the window, as she views the miserable peasant huts, the withered wheat fields that have not yet turned into luxury villas and shopping centers.

  “It seems I never really left.”

  When I come out of the living room, I again almost bump into Helen. From the way she is standing, I can tell that she has spent the last minutes carefully listening to my conversation with Leah. The moment she sees me, she turns back and raises her chin as if she hasn’t even noticed my presence.