The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  Alex laughed out loud. “His mother’s Italian, from the Benvenida family in Trieste. He’s got all their brilliance and their impulsive charm, as well as those impossible Italian manners. But it’s made him one of the best rare-book hunters in England.”

  “Please, Uncle! In Europe. In the world.” Marius shrugged, a slow, impudent grin spreading across his face.

  It was impossible not to grin back.

  He was the classic heartbreaking male, Francesca decided. The foreign-correspondent or news-photographer type: rootless, coasting on charm, relentlessly in search of wonders. The stability of wife and children, family and friends, would be a chain around his neck, she judged, going into husband-material-assessment mode. All males over eighteen and under sixty were candidates, she finally admitted to herself, embarrassed yet helpless.

  Suddenly, he turned to her with a knowing grin. She looked down, confused, wondering if he was a mind-reader. To her dismay, his smile broadened, white and disarming, his large brown eyes narrowing in amusement and an alert intelligence that was at once flattering in its intensity and almost insulting in its presumption of intimacy.

  Francesca felt suddenly strangely warm, as if some electric current was passing through her, making her skin tingle and her throat dry. To her utter mortification, there, at the center of her body, some uncouth, savage organ, with no manners and little discipline, began throbbing away. She turned away, cupping her hot cheeks in both palms.

  “Ah, yes, one of the best and one of the most foolish in the whole world!” Alex shook his head. “Last winter he took a car across the Carpathian Mountains because of a rumor that hidden in the woods was a small farmhouse attic filled with medieval manuscripts!” He sighed. “It was tantamount to suicide. There were no roads, and if the car engine had broken down, he would have frozen in thirty-five minutes.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Suzanne said, laughing.

  “No, actually, it was the stupidest thing you could possibly imagine,” Marius admitted genially, rubbing his hands together with vigor. “I’d met some Russian emigrés in Belgium in November who told me about it and offered to go with me in the spring. When I told them I planned to go right away, they ran down the steps of their apartment house and after my car halfway to the border, begging me not to do it. But I, of course, knew better. What a fool! I was lucky to get out alive!” He threw back his head and laughed, his face taking on the irresistible gleefulness of a ten-year-old boy showing girls his bottled spider collection.

  “It was most imprudent,” Alex remonstrated severely, “but he also brought back three manuscripts that caused a sensation in scholarly circles all over the world.”

  “Imprudent!” Marius exclaimed. “Why, Uncle, it was bloody suicide, and I was an idiot!”

  “Really, Marius, your language!” Alex frowned. But then he smiled. “Quite so.”

  Francesca smoothed down her hair, watching Suzanne give Marius a sidelong glance of curiosity and admiration that he acknowledged. Her heart sank.

  Suzanne. Always Suzanne.

  “That, of course, wasn’t the worst,” Marius continued, “the worst was that time I’d hidden this manuscript in a tin can in the forests outside Bucharest. The secret police let their dogs loose, thinking it was drugs. My leg looked like Russian borscht.”

  “Ahem!” Alex cleared his throat, laying a restraining hand on Marius’s shoulder. “I’m sure the ladies would prefer to hear about the marvelous find you’ve made for them.”

  “Oh, Alex! I still can’t believe it! After all these years. It’s like a miracle.”

  “Miracle?” Suzanne interjected, still looking Marius over.

  “Grandmother!” Francesca blurted out. “Please tell us….”

  Catherine patted their arms. “I haven’t said anything to my granddaughters about this, either. I wanted to surprise them!”

  “Please, come in, all of you.”

  The three women followed him through the old doors. The sight took their breath away.

  “I’d forgotten,” Catherine marveled, sinking into an easy chair and looking around her. Old books in beautiful leather bindings were arranged in ceiling-high bookcases all around the room. Hundreds, even thousands, of them. She had a sudden, strange desire to experience their actual weight in her hands, to feel the tangible remnants of ideas and work that had outlived the physical existence of their authors.

  Francesca took a deep breath. There was a certain, indefinable scent, she noted. Not just the old calf-leather bindings or the parchment—but something more, something indefinably mysterious, almost mystical. Like incense on an altar. “How old are they?”

  “They range from good first editions of early twentieth-century classics—Conrad’s The Secret Agent, Forster’s A Passage to India, Lawrence’s Women in Love—to medieval Latin and Hebrew manuscripts dating back to 1210.”

  “Actually, Uncle Alex,” Marius interrupted, “we had one scroll that was a Greek translation of the Bible dating from 900 A.D.”

  “Ah, yes. How could I forget? That was a find! Marius got it from an Egyptian trader who’d found it in the genizah in Alexandria…but that’s a different story. We didn’t have it long. Museums all over the world began contacting us as soon as the rumor got out.”

  “Genizah?” Francesca inquired.

  “Hebrew books, which contain the sacred name of G-d, cannot be thrown away when they get torn or old. They must either be buried in a cemetery, or put in a safe resting place, usually the attic of a synagogue. Such a repository is called genizah, and it is a gold mine for rare-book hunters.”

  “It must have been quite valuable,” Francesca mused. “Was there an auction?”

  Alex nodded. “Of sorts. Auctions aren’t always necessary. There are just a small number of rare-book dealers and collectors in the world. We all know one another, and even the rumor that a rare book is hiding somewhere will cause an avalanche of activity. It’s impossibly competitive. Yet, most of the time, we are aware of which collector has been yearning for a particular book or manuscript. It is only fair to offer it to them first.”

  “Unless, of course,” Marius broke in, “it is a really flashy find that even rich businessmen and rock stars would be interested in. Then it becomes like the jewelry of dead duchesses and presidents’ widows: Sotheby’s. Bidding wars. Ladies in black dresses and diamonds. Then, of course, whoever spends the most money gets it,” he added contemptuously.

  “It sounds a little like Indiana Jones. You don’t kill one another over old books, do you?” Suzanne chuckled.

  “Of course, we stay within the law,” Alex hastily assured her with surprising seriousness.

  She looked at him in wonder.

  “What my dear uncle means,” Marius interjected, “is that we try to keep within the law, when the laws are just and the competition feels obligated by them as well.”

  “Marius!” Alex shook his head warningly. “He loves to cultivate this swashbuckling image.”

  “Alex, I really can’t wait another moment!” Catherine burst out, twisting her rings around her white-knuckled fingers.

  “Of course, my dear. Forgive me.”

  He took a stepladder and climbed almost to the top, unlocking a sealed cabinet and taking out a large folder. He clutched it to his chest, carrying it down the way a fireman might carry a newborn from a burning building. Laying it gently on the desk, he untied the strings.

  “Here it is. Fifteen pages of the memoirs of Doña Gracia Mendes.”

  The pages were scrolled up, but surprisingly white, rolling slightly as the gentle breeze from a ceiling fan wafted over them.

  Suzanne stared, thunderstruck. They’d found it! Actually found it. After all these years. It was almost—no, not almost—it was a miracle, like a ghost suddenly taking on flesh.

  It had a certain scent. They were all struck by it, breathing it in slowly. Pungent. Fragrant. It overwhelmed the teak oil wax and London smog, the Giorgio and Chanel No. 5.

  Myrrh? S
uzanne thought, or sandalwood? Ambergris?

  “It’s like an Oriental bazaar,” Catherine said softly, feeling lost in a dream as she stared at the pages. “Only fifteen. I was hoping for so much more,” she whispered. “For all of it…”

  Alex squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. “This is a wonderful, wonderful beginning, Catherine! It means it’s survived. It’s out there.”

  “Or under there,” Marius murmured, looking down at the floor.

  “What?” Suzanne looked at him.

  Francesca watched his eyes very carefully as he raised them to meet her sister’s. Here it comes—she thought dully, her heart already heavy with rejection—that inevitable stare of panting male approval that would begin at Suzanne’s long thick hair and move slowly down her milky complexion, high, firm breasts, narrow waist, and long, long legs….

  “I mean it could be buried. In graveyards. In suitcases under Jewish houses in Saloniki. Under the canals of Venice. Or under the streets of London, for that matter,” he said, his eyes amused and boyishly frank, never roaming from her sister’s face.

  Francesca looked down, almost giddy with relief.

  “So, you think it’s hopeless?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” he admitted. “But I have some ideas about where it would be worthwhile to look.”

  “We were thinking about calling Sotheby’s and Christie’s next.”

  He waved his hand disparagingly. “I wouldn’t bother. They have what people bring them. They don’t have a clue how to track anything down. And frankly, if they find out someone is desperately seeking this particular manuscript, it would give them a good reason to raise their prices.”

  “Indeed,” Alex interjected, nodding. “It’s best to be discreet.”

  “Can I touch it?” Catherine suddenly asked.

  “Of course.” He smiled. “It’s like a newborn. Not as fragile as it looks, despite its age.”

  She held the pages tenderly with the utmost care, tears springing to her eyes. She tried to gain some control, but it was hopeless. It was as if someone she dearly loved and had not seen for decades had suddenly come in through the door and embraced her.

  “Beautiful, beautiful friend,” she whispered, running her fingers along the edge. “Girls, would you like to hold it?”

  “Yes.” Francesca nodded. “Yes, very much.”

  She traced the lines of script, feeling an odd sensation of warmth that made her head swim. Was it the scent or the heat of the room? Or, perhaps, the man? she admitted reluctantly. Or perhaps, perhaps, it was something else, something quite different…

  Years ago. In the synagogue on Yom Kippur. Grandpa Carl’s strong hands beneath her armpits, lifting her up so that she could reach out and touch the sacred Torah scroll. The dark, unfamiliar letters had seemed to dance off the white parchment and flow toward her face. She’d held out both hands, as if trying to catch drops of some magic elixir. Her fingers had tingled and burned.

  “It’s magical, no?” Marius said softly, standing next to her. She nodded, handing it to him. The reverence in his big, muscular hands as he handled it touched and surprised her.

  “What about me?” Suzanne interjected, feeling left out.

  Marius handed it to her.

  Gracia Mendes. Suzanne studied the handwriting, wondering at the clean, handsome script. There was nothing flowery or pretentious about it. In fact, it was something like her own, she thought, startled.

  Chromosomes and DNA. Part of me, like it or not? She handed it back quickly.

  Marius looked her over curiously.

  “Do you wish to take it with you now, Catherine?” Alex asked.

  “No, not to the hotel…. If it’s all right with you, Alex, I’ll arrange to have it shipped home from here. But I will take the translation with us, if the work is done.”

  “Yes, of course. We had copies made.” He handed her three envelopes.

  “Why, I think I’m almost a little afraid! I’ve waited so long.” Catherine smiled, taking them reverently. “Thank you, Alex! Come, girls.”

  “Wait a moment!” Suzanne held up her hand. “Aren’t you going to tell us where you found it?”

  “Ah, we never disclose the secrets of the trade.” Marius grinned. “But maybe I’ll give you a hint next time we meet.” He shook Catherine’s hand warmly. “I’m happy for you. And for the manuscript. It’s very gratifying to be able to return it to its rightful owners, people who will cherish it always.”

  “Yes, always.” Catherine nodded, looking hopefully at Suzanne and then at Francesca, her hands shaking slightly with fear.

  17

  “Gran, who is he? How do you know him?” Francesca burst out as soon as they emerged into the street.

  “More important, did Granpa Carl know about him?” Suzanne added wickedly.

  Catherine looked pained. “Please, girls. Don’t ask me anything now. I promise to tell you everything tonight, over dinner. It’ll be easier then,” she pleaded. “Now, what shall we do with the rest of this lovely day?”

  “Well, we could try to get down to Oxford and the Bodleian Library. That was the next thing on our itinerary, Gran,” Francesca suggested, leafing through her day planner and studying it earnestly.

  “Oh, Oxford is such a long drive. Shall we be very wicked and simply take the rest of the day off? How about a stroll through Hyde Park to feed the ducks? Or…”

  “Actually, Gran,” Suzanne cut in hesitantly, “if we’re going to have a little free time, there’s this Women’s Crisis Center I’d like to visit. You know, to exchange information about services. I’ve already spoken to them on the phone.” An idea suddenly struck her. “How about joining me! It’s really very…”

  Francesca coughed. “I’m going with Gran to take care of the duck-food crisis.”

  “Very funny!”

  “Now, now, girls.” Catherine shook her head tiredly. “Have it your own way. But don’t forget, we are having dinner together this evening.”

  Suzanne fingered her silver bracelet nervously. “That’s another thing, Gran. I’d love to, really. But I’m not sure when I’ll be finished at the center, and the woman I spoke to sort of invited me to meet with some other activists tonight…to, you know…sort of talk about joint projects.”

  Not another family dinner!! Jesus! The whole thing was beginning to feel like the plot of some old Twilight Zone nightmare: guest at family get-together becomes eternal prisoner when the party never ends. “You wouldn’t mind, Gran, if I excused myself just this once, would you?”

  “Yes,” Catherine said stonily, “I would.”

  Suzanne looked at her grandmother’s implacable face and swallowed hard. “Well, then, I suppose I’ll meet you there. Time? Place?” she murmured with a hurtful lack of enthusiasm that cut Catherine to the quick.

  “Seven-thirty. The River Room of the Savoy hotel.”

  “Come, Gran.” Francesca took her grandmother’s arm and tucked it possessively beneath her own, glaring at Suzanne. “Don’t be late, Suzanne,” she warned, shaking her head.

  The Women’s Crisis Center was packed. Amber-skinned Indians in graceful flowing saris, deep brown Africans in colorful flowered prints and regal turbans, tan Pakistanis, and blond Anglo-Saxons sat side by side on the worn benches. Many held small children in their arms. It was way too crowded, and the queues for financial, social, or medical advice seemed endless.

  Yet, there was an atmosphere of womanly camaraderie, the mothers trading toys and offering candies to one another’s unhappy toddlers; pregnant women leaning forward, deep in discussion. Only a few women sat silently apart—the youngest and prettiest—listlessly flipping through old magazines, not really seeing the pages.

  “We’ve got plans to expand into the storefront next door,” explained Regina, the director, her mellifluous Caribbean accent making every sentence end on a note of optimism.

  Suzanne was both excited and appalled at the sheer diversity of problems under one small roof. Child- and wife-ab
use cases; rape and incest victims; malnourished toddlers and unemployed immigrant parents on the verge of desperation; unwed mothers and panicked teenagers seeking a quick, safe way out of recreational pregnancies….

  “How many on staff?” she asked.

  “You mean paid employees?” Regina paused, counting on her fingers. She didn’t need, Suzanne noted, to use both hands. “I’m not really sure. Our funding is so erratic. Foundations and wills and then some government ha’pennies raining down from heaven now and again. We used to pay our doctor, because he was so important to all the women—health issues are connected to everything we do. The stress of poverty is the most unhealthy thing there is. About two years ago, he got married and moved to Birmingham. We were bloody desperate for a while, until the Baron saved us.”

  “The Baron?”

  “Dr. Gabriel. It’s a nickname he hates. He just walked in one day and rolled up his sleeves. After a few months, we actually begged him to take some money, but he just waved us away like were mosquitoes. He’s a godsend. The women adore him, and so do the kids.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Suzanne murmured, imagining some bald, potbellied old dear retired from the National Health Service come to do some good works before showing his time card to St. Peter. Well, better late than never, she sighed.

  “Could I see some of your informational handouts, especially the ones to abused women?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Regina started opening drawers and pulling leaflets out of cubbyholes.

  “Number fifty-six,” the nurse called out, and there was a momentary hum of consternation in the crowded waiting area as the women anxiously pulled out their numbers and compared them.

  Suzanne glanced through the open door to the clinic. She blinked, then looked again, long and hard.

  He was sitting casually on his desk, a tall young man in his late twenties with the clean, bold shine of the golden college boy. His hair was shoulder-length, thick and blond, held back neatly in a ponytail. And in one ear, she saw the unmistakable shine of a small gold earring. Just before the door closed again, she glimpsed that beneath his white doctor’s coat he wore a Spanish vest embroidered in elaborate and beautiful colors.