The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  It was one thing, in 1987 when he was twenty-four and recently off the boat, overwhelmed with just the effort of getting his bearings in the United States and enlivened by the prospect of launching his campaign of vengeance against Elizabeth. Back then, when he went entire days without really speaking to anyone, ate all his meals alone, and stared at the phone till his eyes watered, he told himself that the isolation was temporary. In the early ’90s, when he still had no friends, he decided to impress people into liking him by making a bigger show of his wealth. He bought a two-bedroom house on Burk Place in Trousdale, joined Sinai Temple, and made the rounds at the Bistro Garden every Friday for lunch and Morton’s every Saturday night.

  He might as well have been the Invisible Man.

  It wasn’t just women who reacted to him as if he had a Do Not Approach sign on his forehead, not just Iranians who looked right through him without blinking. It didn’t matter how generously he tipped the waiter, how warmly he greeted his next-door neighbor. He remained as irrelevant as he had been in childhood.

  He gave up the office in Westwood and rented a much nicer one in Century City, began to insist that Eddy Arax show up to work “like a real employee” every day. He went to every public function in the community, handed out business cards like Halloween candy. He would suggest lunch or dinner to near strangers; joined the Sports Club LA on Sepulveda. Still, he found himself standing alone in movie lines, asking for tables for one at restaurants, being locked out and overlooked. He had blown past thirty and was watching his hairline recede and his waistline expand. So he undertook the two most effective, albeit costly measures available to a man of means who wishes to be liked: give to charity and get married.

  __________________

  He figured Neda was unpopular enough to have to settle for whomever would have her. And that she was dumb enough not to question his decisions for their life together. She came from a family with a great deal of aabehroo but no money, so it would be an even exchange—Raphael’s Son would get the benefit of their good name, and the Raiises would see their daughter live comfortably.

  He found Neda when she was alone and out of the range of her family’s influence. It was January 1996, and she had just driven back from LA to start her second semester at school. In Berkeley she went into Langer’s, the coffee shop where all the students gathered, bought a cup of coffee and a bagel for lunch. The place was nearly empty but she sat in the farthest corner anyway, at a small table next to the wall, away from the window and the traffic of customers. She had been at school for nearly four months without making a single friend. She felt exposed when she was out in public alone, so she made herself busy by balancing her checkbook.

  A man walked toward her. She kept her eyes glued to the table in hopes that he would walk past her.

  “I heard you were going to school here.”

  She sensed danger, didn’t know if she should peer up or pretend she hadn’t heard him, so she kept busy with the checkbook.

  “I was hoping we’d run into each other.”

  For an instant, she thought she knew the voice.

  “Soleyman,” he extended a puffy hand. “R.S. Soleyman.”

  He smiled when she shook his hand—a soft, quiet smile, not threatening or invasive. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a dress shirt with the two top buttons open, a leather jacket that tried very much to be elegant, and he was holding a small man-purse in his left hand.

  “It’s a pleasure.”

  Out of nowhere, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers.

  Neda felt herself turn ice-cold from head to toe. She watched as he pulled a chair from a neighboring table and sat down, turned to the girl behind the counter, and said, “Hot tea,” like he was in a teahouse in Tehran. He must not know he has to order and pay at the counter, Neda thought.

  “I’ve been hoping to meet you,” he said as if was the most natural thing in the world. “You’re prettier than I had heard.”

  She looked down to hide her eyes. Her mind was blank and her heart felt like it was about to pump its last drop of blood and it was all she could do to stop herself from pushing the table back and running away.

  She knew who he was. She recognized the name as soon as he said it, remembered all the talk, at home and outside, about his doings. She was almost sure he was the man who had extorted money from her family to help get Dr. Raiis out of prison alive, after he—Raphael’s Son—had put him there. But these were all stories she had heard about a person she didn’t know and a place—a country and a time—she had no active memory of.

  For a long time, only he spoke. He talked about LA and San Francisco, his drive up there, his travels through California in search of property and land to buy. He was smart enough to be able to hide his lack of education for a time, but then he slipped and said something about Berkeley being a two-year college, like that other one in Santa Monica, and she realized he didn’t know the difference, so when he asked why she had chosen Berkeley over SMC, she shrugged and said she wasn’t sure. She did that to avoid embarrassing him, but he would hate her for it anyway some months later, when she had to explain to him that only a four-year college, as opposed to two-year community colleges, conferred bachelor degrees.

  She didn’t know what time it was when they finally left the café, but it was dark out and she didn’t have a coat, so he took off his jacket and put it around her despite her protestations. The parking meter had run out and she had gotten a ticket even though it was technically a holiday. He took the ticket and said that he’d take care of it, that it was his fault she forgot to feed the meter. He asked where she was headed.

  “My dorm.”

  He studied her face.

  “Let me take you to dinner.”

  She was nineteen years old and thought she was going to be alone forever.

  __________________

  He was staying at the St. Francis hotel in the city. They had dinner in the formal dining room. He ordered wine, got up when she stood to go to the bathroom, told her she looked cute in her “hippie student clothes.” He asked if she wanted to see his room.

  * * *

  Afterward, he asked if she’d like him to leave so she could have privacy and she said yes, she thought that would be best. She was still half dressed and her legs were stained with blood and so was the bedcover, which she dragged into the bathroom and washed by hand in the tub. She washed everything, washed herself, then sat on the soft armchair and held her knees and stared at CNN on the television all night. In the morning, she left at the first light. She couldn’t face him again and didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened.

  She hadn’t given him her phone number but he found it anyway and called three times in one day. She didn’t pick up.

  “I want to see you, my dear,” he said in the first two messages. In the third one, he left his phone number in LA.

  In the evening, a giant flower arrangement was delivered to the dorm lobby. It was so large, Neda couldn’t carry it to her room and wouldn’t have had the space for it anyway, so it stayed in the lobby where everyone who passed through stopped to look at it. She called to thank him; they stayed on the phone for an hour and twenty minutes.

  He called her every night after that, sent her expensive gifts, letters and cards and stuffed animals bearing sweet messages. He never once mentioned the family connection or appeared in the least bit hostile.

  “What do you want more than anything else in the world?” he asked one night, and she said, “I want children who love me.”

  * * *

  The first time she missed her period she told herself that intercourse must have disturbed her cycle. She ignored the headaches and the sleepiness, the increased appetite. The second time she missed her period, she waited two weeks then went to the clinic on campus. She started to sob when the nurse gave her the news. Yes, yes, she wanted to have an abortion. She made an appointment for two days later, went back to her dorm, and crawled into bed. She
knew there was no way she could tell her parents. She thought about calling Nilou or Angela, but didn’t have the heart. She wasn’t close to her roommate and wouldn’t ordinarily have confided in her, but she was terrified and confused so she asked the girl if she’d ever had an abortion.

  “No, because I’m not stupid enough to get pregnant.”

  That night when he called, Neda broke into tears and told him.

  __________________

  There was never a question, for Neda, of them getting married. She didn’t tell him about the pregnancy so much as about the intended abortion, how she hated herself for the violence she felt she was about to commit, how ashamed she was of her own mindlessness.

  The night at the St. Francis, she hadn’t been overcome by lust or passion so much as found herself in a situation she didn’t know how to get out of. She had liked the attention he gave her at Langer’s and over dinner, and she even felt a small thrill when they rode up in the elevator together and he put his hand under her T-shirt and touched her breast. Then it was a matter of civility, of showing gratitude for his advances and feeling she might offend him or make him angry if she asked him to stop.

  He could have been anyone—a total stranger or her family’s best friend—and she still wouldn’t have felt anything but flattered by his phone calls and gifts. As much as she abhorred the thought of ending a pregnancy, it never occurred to her that there was a choice.

  So when he showed up the next morning in the lobby of her dorm with two dozen red roses and a permanent grin across the bottom half of his face, Neda had the sense that something calamitous was about to take place.

  “I got into my car and started driving the minute we hung up,” he said, breathless with enthusiasm. “I’m going to take you out and buy the biggest diamond in any store you choose.”

  She didn’t want a diamond. Or the roses. Or Raphael’s Son’s gallantry. She was going to have the abortion and stay in school, keep away from him and other men, make something of herself the way Angela and Nilou were determined to do.

  * * *

  They argued. He pleaded with her. She cried. They were sitting in his car outside the Amoeba Music store on Telegraph Avenue. A steady stream of young people went in and out the doors. Neda couldn’t hear what they said to each other but she could see they were holding hands, excitedly examining the CD covers they had just bought. All but a handful of them must have been her age or older, yet she found herself envying their youth.

  She wasn’t ready, she told him, to give up the dream of being one of those people. It was her last word, she said. Her decision was made.

  Behind the wheel, Raphael’s Son stared at the dashboard as if entranced by the red and white glow-in-the-dark hands on the dial.

  “Marry me,” he said from a thousand miles away, “or I’ll tell everyone in LA what happened between us and leave you no shred of aabehroo.”

  __________________

  The year 1996 was not a time for pregnant brides, unwed mothers, and divorced wives in the Iranian community. The old societal rules might have been altered or amended to some extent, but they had not been savaged or ignored—yet—by the unrooted and unbelieving. That would come later, in the late 2000s and thereafter. Women would leave their husbands, demand half his money, primary custody, and generous child support. Sons would out themselves to parents, even marry lovers, and expect to be embraced and honored. Daughters would refuse to marry just to avoid becoming old maids; if they wanted children, they went to a sperm bank. Respect would be something that old people owed the young; obedience would mean enslavement. And while a few men and women—mostly women—would celebrate the wanton decadence as “progress,” many others would take refuge from it in religious orthodoxy. Suddenly, Mizrahi Jews who had worshipped a certain way would take on the habits and beliefs of Ashkenazim. Iranian Jewish women would don wigs and stop wearing pants, refuse to eat even at their parents’ house because the food wasn’t kosher enough, insist that their daughter marry right out of high school and start having children. The men would wear black hats and long black coats, grow beards, and even refrain from shaking hands with their grandmothers. None of that, however, was visible on the horizon in 1996.

  * * *

  Neda went home and told her parents she was pregnant and was going to marry the father. Zeeba cried and swore she wouldn’t survive one more disappointment. Dr. Raiis dropped his head and went into their bedroom, to cry alone. Only then did they ask who the father might be.

  Muhammad Jadid al-Islam, the same man who had blackmailed and betrayed Dr. Raiis, bled him dry of money and caused him to endure torture. R.S. Soleyman, who had broken Elizabeth’s heart by telling her how Noor died, later boasted of having led John Vain to water, then kicked him in the balls. Raphael’s Son, who had begged and demanded and tried to steal respectability and was finally going to get a measure of it by leaching off the one good thing—the name—that life had allowed Dr. Raiis to keep.

  __________________

  He told Neda they could skip the traditional commitment party at which the bride’s parents formally promise her to the groom by handing him a bowl of sweets, and that he would even forgo an engagement party because “these are affairs that must be hosted by the bride’s parents, and yours are impecunious; I’d be embarrassed if my guests saw their house, or knew that my wife’s father is a clerk at a grocery store.” But he wasn’t about to let go of the opportunity to announce his victory to the public.

  He rented the main ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel (capacity 1,200; home of the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, Grammys, and the Carousel of Hope ball) for a Thursday night, drew up a list of everyone he knew in Los Angeles, Tehran, and Tel Aviv, and a wrote a script: “Mr. R.S. Soleyman, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Raphael Soleyman, requests the honor of your presence at the celebration of his marriage to Miss Neda Raiis, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Raiis.”

  He handed the script to Eddy Arax along with 1,100 names, and told him to start calling.

  The problem was that half the people on the list didn’t know who Raphael’s Son was, and the other half, who did know him, wouldn’t dream of slumming it at any function he hosted. It didn’t help that Eddy Arax read from the script with all the conviction and exuberance of a pharmacy clerk reciting the scare sheet from a box of experimental pills. Or that, when asked about “the lucky bride,” he answered in all earnestness, “I’d say she’d be luckier to run into a cement truck.” Then there were other questions Eddy had no time or inclination to entertain: Why have a big affair like this on a Thursday night? Why had no one heard about this union earlier? When did the happy couple get engaged? Why the rush to get married? To this last one Eddy said, “Because she may come to her senses and bail.”

  It irritated Eddy that people always chuckled and dismissed his expressions of unqualified hostility toward Raphael’s Son. Surely, they assumed, no employee would dare launch even one such attack on the boss seriously, or be allowed to return to work the day after he had done so. What they didn’t realize was that Raphael’s Son relished seeing Eddy have no choice but to show up to work every day no matter how badly he hated himself and Raphael’s Son for it.

  At the end of his first round of calls, Eddy had confirmed 180 people. About eighty of those were Raphael’s Son’s maternal cousins who, having gotten wind of his ill-gotten riches in Iran, fell over themselves to show support for his jackpot of a marriage. The rest were representatives of the various Jewish charities to which Raphael’s Son had started to contribute, or, Eddy guessed, from the way they responded to him, “losers who can’t do any better.”

  As for Neda, she had her parents and Nilou. She hadn’t even considered inviting Elizabeth or Angela.

  “You’d better get a smaller room,” Eddy advised his boss with relish. “This is gonna be the most expensive party no one showed up to.”

  __________________

  There was a line in a book Angela loved in high school, during those weekends w
hen she secretly prayed that a call would come from someone other than Nilou or Neda, a potential new friend or (this, she hardly dared wish for) a boy who might ask her out. Elizabeth would be engrossed in her work and Nilou would be fielding half a dozen possible dates and there was only Angela and Neda, studying for tests and writing papers and doing their best “I don’t have time for boys, they’re all dorks and geeks” act. As a rule, Angela scoffed at the idea of young women feeling despondent over boys or trapped in their own loneliness. This wasn’t how she saw herself or intended to become; she would have rather died fighting than spend a night crying into her pillow. But every once in a while she couldn’t resist the tug of melancholy, the resonance of the lyrics to Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” or the emotional devastation in the words uttered by the young woman protagonist in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover.

  The day Nilou called to tell her Neda was going to marry Raphael’s Son, Angela thought of that line: “Very early in my life, it was already too late.”

  * * *

  Faced with certain humiliation by the low turnout at the wedding, Raphael’s Son cancelled the festivities and blamed it on the Raiises’ humble social profile. After the day outside the record store when he blackmailed Neda into marrying him, he had dropped all pretense of civility and proceeded to plant his flag on Dr. Raiis’s name and aabehroo without so much as a “May I?” Not for him, the usual formalities of asking the father for permission to marry the girl, inviting the family for Sunday lunches and Shabbat dinners, taking day trips with the future in-laws to Santa Barbara for brunch at the Biltmore.

  He met them for the first time the day he married Neda. It was a Saturday morning in city hall on Cesar Chavez Avenue downtown. Raphael’s Son had come alone; Neda was with her parents and Nilou.

  The Raiises were so ashamed of the union, so worried that Elizabeth would take it as a personal betrayal, they had waited till the last minute to break the news to her. Zeeba cried on the phone.