by Tommy Tenney
Besides, he remembered wryly, the lawsuit was only round one. If they only knew what he had planned next. . . .
Despite the fact that he held his first embassy invitation in years, he had almost decided to stay home and let the other invitees finish the Brie and Cristal on their own. Yet something about the wording of tonight’s card, a slight nuance of tone within its text, had conveyed to him that the invitation was more than routine.
Mister al-Khalid, the pleasure of your company is most earnestly desired . . . .
One didn’t often see “most earnestly desired” in this sort of communication. A curious itch had burrowed into his side and resisted his best efforts at extrication.
Now he was here, like it or not. As he breached the threshold, he breathed in the scent of burnished wood and brewing coffee, handed his coat and gloves to the butler, and peered around him with an even deeper scowl.
“I’m sorry, but you see I was sent this invitation here—I believed there was to be some sort of . . . function. A soirée.”
“Ah yes, Mr. al-Khalid,” the butler replied, pronouncing the last name so precisely that the old man immediately realized there had been a briefing about him, and not long ago, either. “There is to be a gathering tonight, and you are most certainly a guest of honor. Would you please come with me?”
The pair started down a long, carpeted hallway. Looking about him at the familiar walls wainscoted in marble and hand-scrubbed oak, the old man sighed wistfully and allowed his mind to travel back over half a century.
Israel had been a young country in 1952, still desperately fighting off her Arab enemies and threats of being pushed into the sea. The ink was barely dry on the U.N. Partition Resolution which had recreated the tiny nation when the Israeli Embassy in London first opened its doors. The very notion of a State of Israel still seemed so miraculous to the war’s survivors that whole crowds of them had been content to just show up and stare at this physical embodiment of the miracle, their eyes welling up at the sight of an Israeli flag, a living, breathing Star of David in the breeze. And invariably stopping short before a gun-wielding guard, for no Jew of that generation would ever look upon a military uniform again without a reflexive, heart-stopping gasp. That is, until it sank in that these uniforms bore Hebrew markings—and then, as one, they would stand there, transfixed, and choke back sobs of raw, unalloyed emotion.
Now, all these decades later, al-Khalid coughed hard to give himself a chance to regather his composure. Then he blinked repeatedly and took another few halting steps, as his mind replayed more of the precious, luminous memories.
Those days now seemed like a long dawn after a decade of hellish night. And never more so than when he sat in some embassy antechamber on those mornings and looked out a window to watch the newcomers blink in the sunshine. Still just a few steps out of Kensington High Street’s Underground station, they would traverse these cobblestoned, treelined streets, a mere block from Kensington Palace and its luscious gardens, and enter the complex in thick clusters. He closed his eyes briefly and pictured them. How splendid they had been, how blessed. Their gazes always so wide, their voices ever hushed like schoolchildren on holiday, and, thank G-d, those death stares nearly always washed from their eyes, at least for the moment.
Yes, he usually would have scorned the pilgrims from his perch of world-weary jadedness, as he did most awestruck tourists—except he had recently learned of the horrors from which many of them had come. He read the newspapers enough to know that most were fresh from the refugee camps of Central Europe, and before that, the ghettoes and death camps whose photographs were beginning to sear themselves onto the world’s collective conscience.
These are not young people, he remembered telling himself, disregarding their youthful appearances. Their souls are older than time itself.
In those days he had not been one of the wide-eyed wanderers. No, his was a different tale of woe—no less heart-wrenching yet still in progress, its final chapter as yet unwritten. In those days he had been known as a “case,” his identity forever linked with the persistent and volatile problem of his family’s disposition. He had lived through this period under an abiding sense that he was enduring the torments of the bureaucratically damned, waiting like some condemned man in a Kafkaesque succession of embassy offices and antechambers for the next chapter of his life to begin.
And now, being back in that same building revived that emotion a thousandfold.
The old man stopped in midcorridor, glanced to his right through a windowed door, and raised a trembling hand to his mouth. The butler sensed his pause and turned with a puzzled look.
This is the room, al-Khalid told himself with a barely concealed surge of awe. The paint and the furnishings had changed, but some of the most indelible details had not—the peculiar arrangement of those fourteen-foot Renaissance windows, the intricate Restoration carving on the fireplace, the same gaudy, inaccessible chandelier. It was not the grandeur of the room that gave him pause. The rooms in his estates were far more opulent. No, it was the memories. This had been an office then, the domain of one of its most immovable, legalistic attachés, back before the embassy had grown large enough to separate its ceremonial from its administrative suites.
He stepped in, closed his eyes, and breathed in the past with deep draughts. “You are not a Jew,” he heard the British-accented voice roar in his ears once again, as clear and thunderous as if the words had been uttered an hour ago. “You cannot be a Jew, do you understand, my boy? The moment anybody knows, your whole family may die! Their fate rests on your shoulders! Now leave here and don’t come back until we call for you, or it will all be for naught!”
He blinked away twin eyefuls of tears and sent the drops down his cheeks.
“Let’s go, my man,” he said in an age-crackled voice to the butler. “What on earth do you people want with me?”
At that, the butler turned swiftly on his heels, proceeded barely twenty feet farther, and turned the handle of a dark wooden door. Al-Khalid nodded his thanks and stepped into a thoroughly traditional British library, complete with massive granite fireplace and hardwood fire, high-slung wooden beams, and from somewhere, redolent in the air, the tiniest whiff of scotch. In fact, the only signs that this was Israel’s embassy came from a wireframe Star of David over the fireplace and a large Israeli flag hanging from a pole in the corner.
Next he spotted the Israeli ambassador, a patrician dolt resplendent in his Savile Row pinstripe making his way across the intricately woven carpet. The man at least deigns to offer a handshake, al-Khalid noted as he took the proffered clasp with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man. In his mind, a competent ambassador was supposed to bring his native values to the country of his posting, not allow the new culture to transform him. And this man, once a decent Jewish sabra from Hebron, had scarcely set foot in London before promptly hardening into one long, crunchy bite of British upper crust. For his part, the ambassador merely considered al-Khalid a run-of-the-mill, loose-cannon crackpot. These opinions were hardly national secrets. The two men had leaked their mutual distaste to the London press, a rare show of Jewish disunity upon which the Fleet Street press had pounced with relish.
“Mr. al-Khalid, welcome to our embassy. Indeed, it has been too far long.”
“Yes, it has,” he replied with thinly veiled disdain. “Much as I would have expected. My pursuits have not been of the sort designed to win me friends in this place.”
The ambassador wrinkled his nose and directed a small wave at him, as if to say, Ah—what’s a little global controversy between friends . . . ?
“Well, much as I enjoy standing here and mending fences with you, I’m confused,” al-Khalid continued. “I received an invitation to what I thought would be a sort of official function. Yet you and I seem to be the only guests. Did I arrive too early? Too late? Or is this some sort of . . . briefing?” He could not manage to erase the contempt from his voice at the sound of that word. His younger years had been a
fflicted with such inane appointments.
The ambassador let out an accommodating laugh and shook his head.
“No, sir. You have been invited here for a purpose. A most singular evening, I would imagine. Would you care for a seat? Some single malt, or tea perhaps?”
“Thank you, no. As long as we’re taking our time . . .”
He fell into a parlor chair and leaned his head back, as though he had just finished some kind of marathon. The ambassador leaned over to pat his arm familiarly.
“You will know more about this meeting soon enough, my good sir.”
“Does that mean the security was for me?”
“What security?”
“Well, I detected helicopters above my car all the way from Notting Hill Gate, four camouflaged snipers above the front gate, at least another three along the courtyard, laser profiling and metal detection at the door.”
“Yes, you are quite correct, but you are also not being honest with me. It is physically impossible to have detected all of those things from the inside of a limousine.”
Al-Khalid smiled and nodded at the ambassador’s recognition of his little deceit. “I have a little security of my own, sir, as you certainly know. My life requires safety as much as yours. And somebody has assembled an array that far exceeds the normal retinue of this embassy. What exactly is going on?”
“Actually, it has to do with your guest. But after you’re finished with her, you’ll probably want even more security for yourself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps the time has come for you to meet her.”
“Her?”
“Oh, absolutely.” The official raised his chin toward some unseen helper out in the hallway.
There was a small commotion at the door, and al-Khalid swerved around in his chair.
His face underwent a dramatic transformation, shedding its mask of scarcely concealed irritation so rapidly that those watching almost thought they saw the skin on his face physically drop. With all the huffing that accompanies old age, he began his typically prolonged struggle to stand.
With a minimum of fanfare, a petite, elegantly clad woman bearing the unmistakable features of the First Lady of Israel had quietly walked into the room. But the improbability of it . . .
He was standing now, shakily. Gaining his balance, he stood for a long moment, glaring at the newcomer, as though trying to choose between several reasons to be angry or impressed.
“I . . . I don’t understand. This is not only highly inappropriate but cruel. This is an affront. Do you intend for me to stand for this? Ma’am, I make it a policy never to insult people I have never met before, yet I must also say that with all respect for your position, I have no intention to sit here and be politically ambushed by a member of—”
“The Kesselman family, Mr. al-Khalid? Or should I say . . .” Her voice lilted upward and nearly edged into a taunting tone but stopped just short.
“. . . Uncle?”
Chapter Twenty
Al-Khalid snorted and grabbed his cane, eyeing the door. “That’s it. I will not be mocked by anyone—”
“Please.” Her tone was a bit above plaintive. “I mean absolutely no ambush, nor disrespect. I was never told. Please believe me. I was never told anything except that my aunt Rivke perished. I never knew of your existence until last week. I promise you. Would you please stay?”
He stopped in midstride, utterly taken aback by her words. He turned and stared long into her eyes, clearly trying to assess her sincerity. But, of course, there was no reason for her to lie. . . .
He relaxed, lowered his arm, and looked around him, exhaling deeply.
“I apologize for the manner in which this happened,” she continued. “But I had no idea how to initiate contact with you. I believed that inviting you to Jerusalem was out of the question. Even security dictated that I not allow any pause between informing you of my intentions and our initial face-to-face meetings. You see, there are a great many urgent reasons for us to talk. More than you might imagine.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, “but if we talk, then all these functionaries must leave the room. There are private issues at hand.”
Hadassah nodded her agreement and gave the ambassador an apologetic glance.
“My apologies, Mr. Ambassador,” al-Khalid said, barely covering a gloating tone.
The ambassador nodded gravely and turned to leave with the rest.
“However,” said Hadassah, “my bodyguards insist on staying.”
“You mean you came halfway across a continent to locate a lost uncle, and then suspect that he might harm you?”
“No. It’s merely the rules. You may have heard that I was nearly killed recently.”
“Yes. Well, then I’m gone. If you can’t trust me with your personal safety, we have no basis to discuss anything else. Really . . .”
He gathered up his cane once more.
Hadassah faced her lead bodyguard with a direct stare. The Mossad agent shrugged.
“All right,” she said. “No bodyguards.”
He sat down more emphatically than before, as if to punctuate the repetition of it. After all it was his second time to sit in the same chair within a quarter hour.
Hadassah sat in the opposite chair, looked around to a now-vacant room, sighed deeply, and took her first true, appraising look at the man.
“May I call you uncle? For I believe that you are . . .” She stopped to watch him stare at her, his eyes glimmering with tears, his lips moving silently in a vain attempt to form a reply.
“Yes, you may,” he finally managed. “And what do I call you?”
“Hadassah would be wonderful. Just Hadassah.”
“First of all,” she began, “I truly wish to ask for forgiveness. I must tell you that I’m here on a fishing expedition, but a highly important one. It started the night when my father died. He whispered something which led me to an apparent family secret. One from which I was most definitely excluded. And that expedition has led me to you.”
“Then, Hadassah, I must ask for your forgiveness as well. You see,I cannot offer you my condolences upon your father’s death.”
She straightened awkwardly in her seat. “Why is that?”
“It is terrible to lose a father, as I learned myself at an all-too-young age. And I do not wish to insult your grief. However, your father was no friend of mine. No friend at all. I would say, actually, that he ruined my life.”
Hadassah held absolutely still in her seat, genuine surprise engulfing her features. “I’m shocked. I did not know my father had any enemies.”
“I was never his enemy, Hadassah. At least I have not been for a very long time. I wish him no harm. I have made my peace with the past. But as you learn more, perhaps you will understand.”
“I hope so. Understanding is one of my objectives. Let me start at the beginning of this search. The only thing I was ever told of my aunt Rivke was that she perished. For many years, I could have sworn that I was explicitly told she had perished in the Shoah. But now I realize that her actual fate was never explained to me. I merely filled in the blanks. Incorrectly, as it turns out. The word perished was always used in reference to her fate. And that was a word my family never used except in a historical context. Usually, discussing our relatives murdered by the Nazis.”
“I can assure you, she survived,” he said with a faraway look. “She survived the Holocaust by several years.”
“And this is what I do not understand. Neither my family nor my other relatives were given to falsehoods.”
“I think I can explain,” al-Khalid said flatly.
“What is it?”
“Your father meant that she had died not because she had ceased to physically exist, but because he had said Shiva over her. He declared her dead.”
Hadassah shook her head in bewilderment. “I’m sorry—what in the world do you mean?”
“Maybe I should start at the beginning.”
Al-
Khalid shifted in his seat and took a deep breath. “Surely you’re aware of your father’s 1941 traverse across Hungary to Trieste with a group of his closest family members.”
“Yes, I am. Or at least, I thought I was.”
“Well, Rivke was with him on that journey. She used to spend hours describing the two months they spent sneaking along country roads at night, sleeping in haylofts and forest glens, living off the stores in their backpacks and whatever fruit or produce they could scrounge from the fields. When they reached Trieste, they stowed away aboard a ship with the help of one of David’s childhood friends, who was a sailor aboard a cargo vessel.”
“Yes, this much I’ve heard.”
“Oh, well . . . then you probably know how they reached London and were given refuge by their second cousins, the Rosensweigs.”
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose, the new part of this story begins four years later. You know, I met Rivke not twenty yards away from where we sit right now. She and her brothers had come, like so many before them, to see what an Israeli embassy would look like. I spotted her in the crowd. She was . . . stunning. Especially on that day. Her hair was long and free, her eyes sparkled. She had the glowing skin of someone who has just regained her health after a long illness. She was with her brothers, teasing, bantering, beaming, laughing more freely and openly than she probably ever would again—simply from the sheer joy of seeing for herself that there really was a State of Israel. I’m sure it was the best day of her life.”
He let out a sigh that ended in a sob.
“That is, until our eyes met.”
He closed his eyes, seemingly fighting back tears, and fell silent. For several minutes Hadassah felt it would be sacrilege to urge him on.
Finally, she lightly touched his arm. “How did you meet her?”
His chuckle was wistful. “I was a confident young man back then. And I certainly cut a more dashing figure than I do today. But there was more. Something incredible passed between us in that moment our eyes locked onto each other. Her smile did not diminish one bit. Even though I was a stranger, she seemed to realize immediately that I was reveling in her smile, and everything it represented, as much as anyone with her. So my stare only added to her joy, and she just continued to ride the crest of her bliss and included me in its warmth. Just wrapped me up in that smile. Such generosity of spirit . . . And for the first time ever with a girl that beautiful, I did not wince, waver or glance away. So when the moment had passed, I simply walked up, offered my hand, and introduced myself. The instant our fingers touched, her brothers fell completely silent. By the time our hands parted, it was already clear that something remarkable was in the offing.”
