by J. S. Margot
“I’d rather not.”
“So will he move to Belgium, then? Will you live in Antwerp?”
“Non.”
“In Israel?”
“Non. En Suisse.”
“But you just said you’d rather not live in Switzerland. So why are you seriously considering him as a suitor?”
“He suits me. And maybe I would suit him.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I find him nice and mignon.”
“What do you find nice and sweet about him?”
“Everything.”
“What do you mean by ‘everything’? Does he look cute?”
“I don’t know when a man looks cute.”
“Yes you do. Do you remember Alex? That boy who lived quite near you. Sometimes we’d bump into him when we were walking Monsieur. You thought he was nice. Cute. Exciting. Sweet. Mischievous. And you said he came from a good family. If you compared Alex to your suitor, who would you choose?”
“I don’t know Alex.”
“I’m talking about intuition. Which of the two interests you more? To whom are you intuitively most attracted?”
“Intuition isn’t something we do.”
“For heaven’s sake, Elzira! This whole conversation is meshugga—and I just can’t understand how you could opt for a matchmaker!”
The Yiddish word made her laugh, and in the end I laughed too. There was no point resisting Elzira and her tradition. Not like this, anyway. Our cultures saw love differently. Her choice of an introduced marriage—“Never say arranged, because it isn’t, I can choose from the candidates who are introduced to me, and nobody is forcing me to do anything”—wasn’t a whim, but the result of pure will, in accordance with her tradition. The mind ranked higher than the heart. First intellect, then feeling; the latter would follow automatically.
“I can’t wait to get married,” she said. “I want to be a mother. And have a big family.”
“What about your studies?”
“That’s not something I think about so much.”
As we talked it dawned on us both that Daddy and Mummy Schneider were behind my visit to Israel. It wasn’t Elzira who’d pressed for me to come to Israel. It was her parents, who felt their daughter should have a talk with me. When she’d ordered them to find a husband for her, they’d urged her to take her time. Daddy Schneider: “You still have plenty of time, Elzira, you don’t yet have any obligations. Why don’t you study a few more years? These days young women can even wait until they’re twenty-five before they get married, if they’re studying.” But if Elzira wanted, she didn’t even have to keep on studying. She could just come back and live with them. The family would have to face up to possible gossip and backbiting, of course. “Anyway, nothing to worry about. A young woman’s market value is determined more by her dowry than her age!” That was how Daddy Schneider, pragmatic as ever, jokingly summed it up.
The Schneiders considered it high time that Elzira had a woman-to-woman talk with someone “completely different”. They knew their daughter would tell me her marriage plans. They knew I’d respond. And they knew I had some influence over their daughter.
*
Under the striped awning of a fragrant coffee house terrace on Mahane Yehuda I spoke to Elzira as a young, adult woman about to take the most important step in her life. And she responded to me in kind. Like someone who knew what she wanted, like a young person with newly acquired pride.
By now, I’d already spent three days in Jerusalem. Each day I’d tried to work out the layout of the historic city centre. Each day I’d got lost, even in the neighbourhood where I was staying.
Even with a city map in my hand, even with the main religious sites marked in orange, I couldn’t conquer the four chambers of the city’s circular heart—the Catholic, Jewish, Islamic and Armenian quarters—without having to retrace my steps. Whenever I felt sure of my route it turned out I was going in the wrong direction. Whenever I thought I was headed towards one religion, I’d end up in the middle of the other.
This lack of spatial awareness came back to me during my conversation with Elzira. She never seemed to stray, or even to doubt the route she wanted to take. I don’t mean she wasn’t afraid of what she might encounter—because she was. But she seemed to possess all the orientation points she needed so as not to go around endlessly in circles.
And her choice wasn’t just purely personal. That too, she tried to make clear to me, explaining—without the least pretentiousness—that she wanted to play a part in a greater story. She was now realizing, she said, that Judaism required her to live as good a life as possible, that her religion and her history demanded the highest possible moral standards of her, that she wanted to shoulder her responsibility within the greater whole. She tried to explain to me that, out of respect for Him, she wanted to live according to the principles of her ancestors; she wanted to follow paths that all those before her had followed, for generations, often at their peril.
“You’re not going to take religion too far?” I asked nervously.
“I’ll have to find my own form of Judaism,” she said, sounding much too grown-up to my mind.
She didn’t look at me as she said it. Presumably because she felt I couldn’t understand the divine task that she was assigning herself. Which was true.
“He’s called Daniel,” she whispered in my ear.
Ten
I don’t have them any more. I never made copies, or kept drafts. But Mr and Mrs Schneider possess most of the letters I wrote to Elzira during her time in Israel.
When I found out that those letters, personally addressed to Elzira, were at her parents’ house in Antwerp, I was shocked. It turned out they’d read most of our correspondence, a possibility that had never entered my head when I put thoughts to paper. Had I known, I’m not sure I’d have written to her any more, certainly not spoken to her so freely.
Why her parents had read along with us—albeit a couple of years later—I don’t know. Was it curiosity? An urge to control? Because Elzira wanted to prove something with those letters? Or did the Schneiders, within their family and community, simply have a different take on privacy than what I was used to?
Of all those letters, one is particularly dear to them. It’s an epistle whose contents surprise me. If Elzira or her parents hadn’t had me reread my words, I’d never have believed I’d written them. In my own life I showed remarkably little talent when it came to relationships. Yet in writing I displayed such wisdom on the subject that, looking back, I can’t help but wonder if I missed my vocation as a matchmaker!
The letter was a reply to one from Elzira, appealing for advice on potential bridegrooms. Two men were interested in her, and she in them, and she didn’t know which to choose. One was a British Jew of Syrian-Egyptian origin, the other a man of Dutch ancestry who’d been born in New York and lived and worked there. Daniel, the man from Switzerland, was no longer in the picture. No idea why: “these things happen”. The two new candidates had been thoroughly screened by Mr and Mrs Schneider. Elzira had met the man with Middle Eastern roots through her brothers. The other had been proposed by the matchmaker. The fact she wasn’t trying to find suitable candidates through the rabbi of her Antwerp synagogue was because of the “provisions” her future spouse had to meet. One of those provisions—conditions, really—was her preference for someone who wasn’t from Antwerp.
“Why shouldn’t he be from Antwerp?” I’d asked.
“Can you still remember how I learnt to ride a bike? How I could only cycle over the cobblestones for short stretches at first, and often fell, because I was scared? Until one day I wasn’t scared any more, and cycled home in one go? I want to be Jewish like I cycled. At top speed. Sans peur. Fearlessly. I can’t do that in Belgium. But in the US or in England maybe I could. They, other
Jews, say that everything there is easier. Especially in America, where everyone eats bagels and cheesecake, so Jewish cuisine is daily fare. We’re on the menu. We help to shape that country’s character and flavour.”
My letter was a response to her announcement that she’d now twice met the man from New York, first in the lobby of a hotel near Bryant Park, then at a restaurant in Riverdale, the kosher part of the Bronx. She wrote that it was très rare that a girl went to a boy, that by tradition it should be the other way round. “But I was with Mummy and Daddy and a bunch of cousins in the Borscht Belt, just north of New York City, so we all thought it would be convenient to meet there.”
Isaac had landed her with a huge problem: he met all her wishes, and she his. Their personality tests had confirmed the hunch that they were made for each other. Which frightened her.
“How can I be sure of him?” She wrote. “How can I know he’s the man I should marry?”
“You can never be sure of anyone,” I wrote to her. “You can’t even be sure of yourself.”
Then I grew very serious.
I wrote that I knew her to be someone with a strong mind. I sketched how I’d seen her grow from a withdrawn girl to a confident woman, who wouldn’t let anyone divert her from her path. I stressed her unique character, her honesty, her persistence, her determination to be her own person. I expanded on the strength of her intuition, illustrating it with concrete facts and memories. Her talent for empathy, much greater than that of her siblings.
I told her I’d never be able to understand the traditional Orthodox Jewish approach to affairs of the heart; that, in my view, an element of chance and romance was vital to love. But that if she felt she absolutely had to find her partner the Jewish way, she should play that game as well as possible.
Then I went into agony aunt mode: I advised her to draw up lists and to discuss them in a businesslike way with her intended. Isaac should do the same. If they were to assess their potential compatibility they needed to scrutinize every little thing.
I drew up a list of questions. What do I like? What don’t I like? What makes me happy? What doesn’t make me happy? Who are my friends? Why are they my friends? What do I expect from family? From in-laws? Do I want a job? How much time should that job take up? What values are important to me? What values are alien to me? How would I want our children to be brought up? How many children do I want? How important is a son? What if we only have girls and no boy—how many daughters am I prepared to have? What makes me laugh? In what language will we bring up our children?
To this day Mr and Mrs Schneider maintain that, when considering their future together, Elzira and Isaac took that letter as their compass, and that it was pivotal to their elder daughter’s happiness. Personally, I’d rather not consider the scary possibility that I played any role at all in her choice of partner. When I wrote that letter I was probably just winging it. Very likely with a pile of women’s magazines at my elbow: Feeling, Elle, Marie-Claire, heaven knows what. I think there’s a very real possibility I was drunk when I dispensed good advice so liberally.
Eleven
Their next meeting was to take place in Antwerp, the city of Elzira’s birth.
She called me: “What’s the nicest public place in the city?”
“What do you mean by public place? Most beautiful monument?”
“No, a restaurant or a cafe that’s very beautiful.”
“In Antwerp? Outside the Jewish neighbourhood?”
“Yes. For me and Isaac.”
“But surely you can’t eat out if you’re not in the Jewish neighbourhood? The places I know aren’t kosher.”
“Can you recommend a place that tourists go to where I can invite Isaac for a soda? It’s important that I make a good impression.”
“You could go to De Pelgrom. It’s a historic cellar in a street near the cathedral. Lots of tourists go there, but the locals like it too. It’s the sort of place you show people who are visiting Antwerp for the first time.”
“A cellar, did you say?”
“Yes, of a mediaeval building. They’ve got a big selection of Belgian beers. Americans like that. And you can eat there. Typical Belgian fare.”
“I can’t meet a man in a cellar. It must be a transparent place.”
“Transparent?”
“The outside world must be able to see us. A man and a woman who are not married may not sit opposite each other in a space that is not open.”
“There’ll be other people in the cellar.”
“A cellar doesn’t sound good. Can’t you think of another place? With lots of windows? Where the outside world can look in?”
I listed a few other possibilities. None fitted the bill. “Let me have a think. I’ll call you back.”
The next day I recommended Zuiderterras. Perfect for her needs and close to the sights. The restaurant stood at the end of a floating esplanade on the river Scheldt, level with Suikerrui, so it was really central. The two of them could—let’s play all the aces at once—stroll across Groenplaats via the statue of Rubens to the impressive cathedral, then from there to the Brabo fountain and the magnificent town hall to the black-and-white minimalism of Zuiderterras.
“So if I go to that terrace on the Scheldt, he’ll get a good impression of Antwerp?”
“He’ll fall in love with Antwerp,” I assured her. “The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in the Low Countries, tell him that. And there are paintings by Rubens inside, some real gems.”
“We’re not going to go into a church.”
“Not to pray, Elzira. To look at the artworks.”
“We don’t do that either. Only if we have to. For work or something.”
“Well in that case go to the town hall. It’s a palace—the staircase alone is worth it.”
Isaac had never been in Antwerp or Belgium. He knew Amsterdam a little, though. Elzira: “And his family knows Abigail’s mother’s family—it’s an amazingly small world, isn’t it?”
“Have you got a photo of Isaac?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Send it to me! I’m curious. Fax it. Or email it to me: I’ll give you my address.”
The fax machine was on its way out. The Internet had been born. To get online, you had to call a modem. Often the connection was broken halfway through and you had to start all over again. The hooking-up process always began with a shrill, scratchy ringtone.
“I can’t send it just now. Perhaps later.”
I’d expected Elzira to look me up during Isaac’s visit to Antwerp. To briefly introduce him to me. She didn’t. But to my surprise I did receive a postcard with a view of the cathedral. “Thank you, a thousand times,” it said in her scrawly writing, “I didn’t know the old city was so beautiful. Dommage that I hadn’t been before. And the Zuiderterras: sublime!! Bisous from Elzira. And Isaac greets you too.”
Twelve
And then in the middle of the night I got a phone call. It was Elzira. In a terrible panic. In floods of tears. In New York.
“Calm down, Elzira, calm down.”
“It’s terrible.” She sobbed uncontrollably.
“Take a few deep breaths, poppet. I’m not going anywhere. We can talk all night. There’s no rush.” She was so far away: the term of endearment was an attempt to pull her closer.
I had no idea why she was so distraught. But I did know that she didn’t get upset easily. Also that if she was distressed, she was more likely to rely on her own courage and determination than share disappointments or dramas with others. And now she was ringing me up in tears because something terrible had happened in New York? I feared the worst.
“Are you on your own?” I asked, when I heard her breathing slow down somewhat.
“Yes. I’m staying with friends of Mummy’s and Daddy’s. I’m in Broo
klyn. It’s terrible. I don’t know what to do.”
I was overcome with dread. She hadn’t been assaulted, had she? Whose idea had it been, anyway, to send her to New York? In Antwerp she wasn’t even allowed to go to the city centre by herself or anywhere else outside the Jewish neighbourhood. But now, after a brief sojourn in Israel, that overprotected child could suddenly take on the world? Just because Jews lived all over the globe? How old was she? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? I’d never been to New York. I knew the iconic buildings, bridges and yellow taxis only from movies. A crime-ridden city, to judge by what I’d seen.
“Where are your parents?”
“I went too far,” she sobbed. “I was on the water and he was there too.”
“What are you talking about, Elzira?” I asked. She wasn’t making any sense. Had she taken some kind of drug? Why was she ringing me of all people? And in the middle of the night? The only other people who’d ever done that were Nima’s parents.
“It was a present from him,” she said.
“What? From whom?”
“From Isaac.”
“Oh, so you’re with Isaac?” I said. I immediately felt less worried.
“Did I wake you up?”
“It’s five in the morning here.”
“I just got back. I couldn’t ring anyone else. I did something my parents and brothers would never approve of. I couldn’t think of anyone else I could tell this to.” She blew her nose loudly, next to the receiver.
She’s been to bed with him, I realized. She’s lost her virtue and needs to share that with me.
It took a while before Elzira could knit disjointed facts into a reasonably consistent story. In short it amounted to this: Isaac was the man of her dreams and she was the woman of his dreams—this neither of them doubted for a moment, they intended to get engaged. He had passed all the tests of his future parents-in-law, including cross-questioning about the Torah. She had likewise satisfied his parents’ requirements. The two looked forward to forming a happy family together—in fact they couldn’t wait!
