by Alba Arikha
Carlo is right. I am a strong woman. I could go home now. The worst is over. I need to speak to the doctor. The nurse mentioned that he ordered some tests. “He’s not still thinking about brain surgery, is he?” I snapped. “I’m fine, can’t you see?”
She didn’t know, she replied. She was just a nurse. Breakfast was on its way, she added. It was important I eat something.
So I did. Just now. Passable coffee, dreary white bread. I’ve never liked white bread. Henry did. There were many things Henry liked which I didn’t, and vice versa. But we had a good marriage. A stable marriage. He loved me very much. More than I loved him. But it didn’t matter. I pretended to be in love with him because it felt like the right thing to do. And it was an easy thing to do. He made me happy. He didn’t fill my soul like Ezra had done, but he made me happy. He took good care of me. I’m not sure Ezra would have taken good care of me. He was too busy fighting for a cause. A terrible cause. He loved me with all his heart, but he also loved politics just as much. That was his downfall. Still, I’ve always known he was my one true love. I’ve always known it. He was a murderer. I loved a murderer. A murderer who betrayed me and had a child with someone else. Except that he didn’t know about the child, so I had to forgive him on that score. I could have gone to visit his son (I often wondered what he might look like) when Henry and I were in Israel. But that would have meant facing Lotta – and that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her. And the truth is that I wish I had been the one to carry Ezra’s child, not that horrible woman. But life is what it is.
And of course there was that phone call, in the mid-Nineties. How he found my number, I have no idea. Or perhaps he did tell me and I don’t remember. All I know is that one summer morning the phone rang and a man with a thick accent asked to speak to me. It was a vaguely familiar accent, but I couldn’t place it. The man introduced himself as Ezra Bernheim.
“I’m not sure I know you,” I said.
“You knew my father. I’m Ezra Radok’s son,” he replied.
When I heard the name, I froze. I was speechless. I heard him say, “Hello? Are you there?” a few times, and finally I regained my composure and asked him why he was calling me. I must have sounded cold, or disagreeable, because he stammered a bit when he answered. He explained that his mother had told him a lot about me. He also said that he was a writer, just like his father. He had published a few books in Israel, and his last novel was about to come out in England, published under the name “Ezra Bernheim”. Could we meet? he asked. He was going to be in London for a few days. I hesitated. Then I lied and told him I was going to be out of the country. I was sorry. He didn’t ask me where I was going and said that he was sorry too. “I know that you and my father were close. It would have been enlightening to meet you.”
Enlightening. Of course it would have been enlightening for him. What was I thinking? Why had I lied about my being away? I found myself trembling. I muttered a few words, wished him luck and hung up.
Almost immediately I realized, just as I had done with Hannah, that I had made the wrong decision. That I should have met him. And there was still time to atone for my mistake. A few months later his book came out, to mixed reviews. It was a thriller entitled Out There. I had no desire to read it, although I did contemplate writing to his publisher. But I didn’t know how to start the letter.
There were pictures of Ezra Bernheim in the paper, a man with curly hair, sharp cheekbones, melancholic eyes. I saw nothing and everything of Ezra in him.
But I never got in touch.
Throughout the years, I often wondered why I acted as I did. Was I self-destructive? Was I afraid? Was something wrong with me?
I think it is probably more complicated than that. Ultimately, nothing mattered enough. I managed to live life as though it did, but I was, in essence, living a lie. A comfortable one, but a lie nonetheless. The only thing that mattered was Maurice. The truth, the only truth, was that my newborn son had been wrenched away from me. His existence had become another mother’s reality. Not mine.
The only physical reminder I had left of Maurice was his pair of light-blue pyjamas. I kept them with me all those years, hidden among jumpers in my wardrobe. In the early years, I would take them out just to smell him. I would press the fabric to my face and inhale it deeply, desperately trying to retrieve what no longer belonged to me. Eventually, when the smell faded (or perhaps it never faded), I folded the pyjamas neatly and took them out only a few times a year, just to look at them. To caress them.
Henry never knew, never saw. Would he have understood? I’m not sure. But I know that Ezra would have. I always felt that he understood me better than I understood myself. I wish we had met when we were both older and wiser. But such is fate. We spoke of that a lot, Ezra and I. Fate. He often talked of Confucius and his teachings: “The pull of experience is about breaking through the barrier of what we know so that we can change and grow.” Ezra followed the pull blindly. He followed everything blindly. He didn’t understand that some of those barriers were there for a reason. That some things were best left unexplored. He wouldn’t hear of it when I told him so. “You’re such a prude,” he once told me. “A French prude.”
And now the French prude is old. Bent, shrivelled, ill and old. I wonder whether my secret is what caused my demise. I’ve kept the image of my son’s newborn face, his very existence, cloistered inside me for forty-nine years. I have never spoken his name. I have thought it and breathed it, but I couldn’t speak it. My old limbs have wrapped themselves around that newborn face and mummified it. My internal equilibrium can no longer withstand the pressure of silence. I am quietly rotting.
What does Maurice look like today? Mon fils. Why didn’t I ever tell Henry about my son? Why didn’t my son come searching for me? Did his parents not tell him he was adopted? Maurice, can you hear me? What colour are your eyes? Tes yeux. Did you love your adopted mother? Je suis ta mère. Did you ever wonder about me? Someone has to find you. Hannah. Yes. Hannah. Why didn’t I ever contact her again? My head hurts. A voice in the room. “Did you want a little wash, Mrs Dobbs?”
All is still. I must stop writing. Sinking. Mon fils. Viens me trouver. My head hurts, bursts. I must—
Hannah
1
My mother rang me to say that Claire Plendon, formerly known as Claire Betts, had died. She had slowly been going blind, but wouldn’t admit to it. On the previous Monday morning, she had chosen to go shopping on her own and got hit by a car. By Monday afternoon she was dead. The event was reported in the local newspaper. How she lay in the middle of the road, surrounded by the contents of her shopping trolley. A few apples and grapes. A pint of milk. A bag of potatoes. The Daily Mail. “A death that could have been avoided,” my mother said. “She made it to the shop, but didn’t make it back.”
“And Peter?”
“He’s taken it better than we feared. But that’s maybe because the circumstances of his life have changed so much.”
Peter and Cristina were divorced now, had been for years. After a successful exhibition in London, Cristina decided that she no longer wanted to live in the countryside – neither did she want to live with Peter any more. She admitted that she had wanted to leave him for a while. “I’m tired of his politics,” she told my father. “It was fun in the beginning, but now it’s become repetitive. I lost count of what we were supposed to be angry about. Turns out it was pretty much everything. And Israel? Is it really that evil? The owner of my gallery is Jewish, and he’s very nice. Handsome too. He’s got family there in Israel. He couldn’t believe the things that were coming out of my mouth. And to tell you the truth? Neither can I. Oh, and one more thing: I no longer want to be a Labour supporter. I’m voting Tory from now on. I’ve had it with the Left. And I’ve had it with my husband.”
I’m not sure she phrased her disillusion quite so explicitly to Peter. All I know is that he cried when
we next saw him. I had never seen a man cry before, and I found it unsettling. “She’s all I have,” he kept repeating, as my father tried to console him. “Without Cristina I’m nothing, Leon, nothing. What have I done to deserve this? I love her, I’ve always loved her. And the children? What about the children?” He was sobbing, like a child. “I love her,” he repeated. I’ll never stop loving her. I don’t understand Leon, I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” my father said gently. “It’s one of those things in life which are beyond our control. You must not and cannot ever blame yourself for this. You know that, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t know that, Leon. I really don’t.”
Neither did I. I didn’t believe my father. Cristina had had it with her husband, and that was all there was to it. Although I later learnt that there was an ulterior motive to her restlessness: the nice Jewish owner of the gallery had become her boyfriend. By the time Peter found out, he was already undergoing treatment for a depression which was to afflict him on and off for years to come. The children eventually distanced themselves from him too. They were still young, in their early teens, and could not reconcile the image of their once combative and zealous father with the broken, defeated man that he had become.
By then, my parents had separated as well. Everything was changing around me. Life as I knew it was unrecognizable. Peter’s internal battles were left for others to untangle. A Dutch woman took responsibility. Peter fell in love with her, moved to a village outside Rotterdam and gave up politics. “He’s opened a flower shop in Rotterdam,” is what my mother told me. “Instead of distributing pamphlets about racism and Zionism, he sells flowers. Peonies have replaced politics.”
It was an extraordinary concept, one I had trouble reconciling with the Peter of my youth. I remembered the way his eyes used to burn with political fervour. The folder of photographs and articles about the King David Hotel, and how heated he would become when we discussed his father’s death and the struggle of the early days with his mother, in their cramped flat, somewhere near the Kentish coast.
Now that Claire was dead, perhaps that circle had finally closed for Peter. There was no battle left to fight. No memory to honour. The path was cleared for him to begin a new life. A new circle of life.
Just as I had.
*
On our way to the dinner in Kensal Rise, I told Az about Flora Dobbs. Ben added his own recollections from the back seat, and by the time we had arrived at our destination we all agreed that something was amiss: it was unlikely she would have left no note, no personal explanation. Mrs Dobbs may have been eccentric, but she didn’t seem careless. And there was something careless about sending me a box without specific instructions. Was it possible that I hadn’t looked carefully enough?
“As soon as we get home we’ll give it another look,” said Az. “I bet you she left you a letter and it’s sitting at the bottom of the box.”
The dinner was drawn out. I was longing to get home. To look inside that box again. Az was right: there probably was a letter, sitting at the bottom of that box, explaining everything: what Flora had become. Where she had gone to live. What had made her decide to leave me her books.
Ben was the object of much attention on the part of a budding and very pretty actress. His youthful beauty had given way to a manlier one: stronger cheekbones, thicker lips, broader shoulders – a beauty that hurts, a girlfriend had once said of him.
I watched as the actress spoke to him animatedly, with quiet expectation, while he responded politely, unmoved.
California suited Ben, as did his new relationship with Melody. He had mentioned earlier that a Spanish director, a friend of hers, had asked him to audition for a feature film. He was still modelling for the swimwear company and making some money. “It’s not exactly Calvin Klein, but hey, it’s still a few quid, right? And if this audition works out, I can quit.”
He sounded hopeful, determined. Perhaps, I reasoned, my worries about Ben had more to do with my own anxieties than his. Perhaps it was time I put them aside once and for all.
We managed to leave the dinner as soon as pudding was served. “I’m so sorry, but we have to go. I have an early-morning meeting,” Az explained to our hosts, who were too drunk to care. The night was cold. We ran to the car and drove off. Ben was tired, still jet-lagged, he said. Az drove quickly, his hand on the steering wheel. “That girl, the actress, was pretty, wasn’t she, Ben?” he ventured, eyeing him through the rear-view mirror.
“She was all right. Not a patch on Melody though.”
“Yes, Hannah showed me a picture. She’s beautiful. Hope we get to meet her un de ces jours.”
“Sure, yeah that would be nice.”
As soon as we arrived Ben bade us goodnight and went to bed.
Az and I carried the box to the sitting room. We opened it and took the books out one by one. We found more newspaper at the bottom, then something small, a notebook. Black, 5x5, wire-bound.
I didn’t think much of it. I was looking for a letter, not a notebook. But then I opened it. The first page was blank. On the second one there was a dedication – “To Hannah” – and a signature: “Flora Baum”.
“Oh my God,” I gasped.
So that had been her name, then. And this is what she had left me. Not a letter, but a notebook.
“This is it!” I exclaimed. I turned the page and found a folded piece of paper. I opened it quickly: it was a birth certificate. A name was written in red letters:
“Maurice Baum Schumann. Date of birth: 18th May 1956, Hackney Hospital. Signed: Flore Baum, 18th May 1956.”
“God, Az, look at this,” I said, handing it to him. My heart was beating quickly.
“Who was Maurice? Her son? Did she have a son?”
Az put on his glasses and looked at it carefully. “There’s only one way of finding out,” he said, pointing at the notebook.
Its pages were filled with meticulous writing – black ink, single-spaced, tightly fitting between the margins, in cursive French handwriting.
I sat down on the sofa and leafed quickly through it. It looked like a memoir of sorts. Given that the notebook stated that it was ninety-five pages long, I reckoned she had filled approximately seventy. Perhaps she had said all she needed to. Or perhaps she had run out of time.
“Can I see?” Az asked, peering over my shoulder.
I handed it to him, and he looked through it attentively. “Is it a diary?”
“No, I think it’s the story of her life.”
He gave it back to me. Would you read from the first page?” he asked, taking a seat next to me on the sofa.
I opened it and began to read:
“Jean is my first boyfriend. We are nineteen years old, students at the Sorbonne. In our spare time, we ride bicycles along the Seine and discuss literature. We both want to become writers and change the world. ‘I could become the next Proust,’ he tells me.”
My hands were shaking. Az looked at me gently. “Continue,” he said. “I want to hear it all.”
“All of it?”
“Yes. The night is young. Read on. Read it all.”
2
To say that I was moved by the content of that notebook would be an understatement. It floored me. It dumbfounded me. It ripped through me and left me breathless. I didn’t know where or how to begin looking. The truth was there, bare as a bone: Flora had endured unimaginable suffering. She had lost her loved ones, including her child. She had escaped evil in the shape of war, only to run straight back into it in the guise of love. First with Ezra, then blindly with Fletcher, woefully unaware of its murky underside. And there was a son. Another Ezra. The fact that she had chosen not to meet him left me flabbergasted. How? Why? There was so much to take in I didn’t know where to start. But at least she had found Henry. He had been her saviour. She had f
ound her peace with him. Or had she? This notebook, her memoir, was the only witness of her life and death. “I must” she had written before drawing her last breath. What had she wanted to say? The arm of the letter “t” sloped downward, and every time I looked at it, I trembled.
Then of course there had been that fortuitous meeting with Claire Betts, in Palestine. To think that Flora had met Claire. To think that all that time we had lived across the street from the last person, aside from his wife, who had seen James Betts alive – and we had no idea.
For all I knew, she had probably crossed paths with Peter and Cristina when they came to visit. They might have exchanged a glance or a smile before she entered her house and they entered ours. Or perhaps a few words, about the weather. What if Flora had found out? I wondered. Could they have struck up a friendship? Would Flora have still moved away?
I rang Peter in Holland to tell him. He answered the phone and seemed surprised to hear from me. “How are you, Hannah?” as if I were part of a life he had long forgotten.
I didn’t waste any time. I told him everything. “She saw your father, Peter. She was, with your mother, the last one to see him alive. They hugged each other, the two of them. She never forgot Claire, and I’m sure it’s the same for your mother.”
Peter was very quiet. Then he cleared his throat. “Will you show me that notebook when I next come to London? I would really like to see it.”
“I could send you the pages in question,” I offered.
“Yes, please,” he answered. His voice sounded hoarse. I knew that if he wasn’t crying, he was about to. “You see, my mum told me about that lady. She was young, like her. Pretty. She helped my mum when my dad was dying. It’s like you said. She held Claire and told her things. She comforted her. And no, Mum never forgot her either,” he added. “And now she’s dead, so I’ll never be able to tell her that I found the lady with the French accent. That’s what she used to call her. She had forgotten her name. So she called her ‘the lady with the French accent’. She would have liked to know that. That you had found her. The last person besides Mum to see my father alive.”
