The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

by Lucette Lagnado

  Meanwhile, I discovered my favorite spot in all of Paris. It was a small doll factory a few steps up the passage, whose door was usually left ajar, so I could peek in every morning on my way to school and on my way back. The factory was heaven as defined by a seven-year-old girl—hundreds and hundreds of dolls, in various states of completion and undress, all lined up on shelves.

  There were dolls without heads, and heads without dolls. There were dolls on racks with no clothes on, and dolls decked out in their full finery. There were dolls with long cascading hair and dolls that were bald. On a stand, miniature wigs were piled one on top of the other—blond curls, red tresses, dark sweeping chignons, sultry pageboys, all waiting for their turn to be placed on the head of some lucky doll and make her beautiful. In those restless final weeks in Paris, that became my favorite activity: marching obsessively past the factory’s open door and staring at the dolls.

  A breakthrough came in late October: my father was summoned to the rue Lota and asked by HIAS to sign a promissory note.

  We were going to America. The document stipulated that we would have to repay any money advanced to us to cover the expense of traveling by ship to New York, including taxes and inland transportation. There was also the freight cost of moving our 1,510 pounds of luggage—a staggering amount of pajamas, lingerie, bedding, pots and pans, sardine cans, and one twenty-year-old wedding gown.

  The HIAS loan was routine for the agency, which after all was in the business of sending destitute refugees to America and other countries. The agency would typically purchase tickets and advance families the money to cover travel expenses, expecting them to repay the agency years down the road, when they were back on their feet again.

  No amount was specified on the promissory note Dad was asked to sign. We were agreeing to a loan for an unknown sum. My father signed it anyway, of course, though it was only months later, in New York, that we learned the extent of our indebtedness: $1,199.94.

  We were finally on our way when I suddenly developed another of my mysterious maladies. I became violently ill with a fever, a rash, a stomachache, and an excruciatingly sore throat. My mother fretted as she bundled me up in bed under every blanket she could cull from the Violet Hotel’s poorly stocked linen closet.

  My father decided to summon the kindly Dr. Sananes, who had given him a glowing bill of health: he would pay for the house call using a week’s allowance, if need be, but at least I would be seen by a proper physician, without having to trek to one of the public clinics, where we had found the care to be singularly unimpressive. In my case, all that our local dispensaire did was order more and more blood tests. Typically, I wasn’t even seen by a doctor but by nurses. I longed for the distinguished men in white coats bending down to examine me in their private studies in Cairo. I even missed the Professor, of the white gloves and the cold and formidable manner.

  Did the West really have a superior medical system to ours? Not in the Paris we had come to know.

  When Dr. Sananes arrived, he glanced at our shambles of a hotel room, with suitcases piled one on top of the other, and shook his head. After examining me, looking at my throat, taking my temperature, and peering at the rash I had developed, he rendered his diagnosis.

  I had la scarlatine—scarlet fever—a dangerous infection whose key symptom was the pink rash that seemed to be spreading. The disease often began as a simple sore throat, he explained, but could turn fatal. We shouldn’t even think of traveling to America now—not for months. He offered to sign a note asserting that under no circumstances could we leave France.

  My parents were stunned. How on earth had Loulou contracted scarlet fever? they asked each other.

  News of my illness reached HIAS, the Cojasor, and every other agency handling our case. The officials reacted with alarm. The diagnosis was so dire, it threatened to unhinge their meticulous travel plans. HIAS had finally managed to book the family tickets aboard the Queen Mary, which was to sail from Cherbourg to New York in early November. Clearly, because of my scarlet fever, we weren’t going to make the voyage.

  Telegrams about my plight were dispatched to any number of overseas offices. “The youngest, a little auburn-haired girl, is sick,” read one cable. There was now an even bigger question mark. When would my family, which had already consumed an inordinate amount of resources, attention, and psychic energy from the local and international relief agencies, finally be able to leave France?

  Between our inability to make decisions, our endless need for services, my siblings’ unhappiness, and the clear signs of discord in our family, we had taxed these relief and support agencies to their limit, and they were anxious for us to be on our way.

  Agency officials debated how it was possible for a seven-year-old girl in a Paris hotel to contract la scarlatine. Was this an elaborate plot to remain in France? They had certainly heard of refugees delaying their departure to linger in Paris, but inventing a deathly illness for a young child would be a first.

  At last, agency officials thought of sending over a seasoned doctor to examine me and confirm the diagnosis. My mom was overjoyed. “Le bon docteur arrive,” she cried, once again praying for the mythical, all-knowing physician of her imagination.

  For once, she wasn’t disappointed. A distinguished French doctor holding a small black bag knocked on our door and made his way immediately to my bed. He seemed oblivious to the chaos in the room. After examining me thoroughly, he rendered his diagnosis: I only had a sore throat, maybe a severe sore throat, at most a strep.

  What of the scarlet fever? my father asked.

  “Absolument pas,” he declared. With his calm, commanding manner, he seemed to have stepped out of my mother’s dream of le bon docteur. He scribbled a prescription for an antibiotic on a pad and ordered me to stay in bed for another week. After that, he said, I was free to go to school—or even to America.

  When my dad offered to pay him, the doctor said, “Non, merci,” shook hands, bowed, and left.

  My father was so distraught at Dr. Sananes and his dire pronouncement that he called him. Why had he frightened us with his diagnosis of scarlet fever, he asked the young doctor, when all I had was a sore throat? The physician seemed puzzled. He had assumed we wanted to stay in Paris a while longer, that we needed more time to prepare for our journey. He had tried to do us a favor now by stressing the grave nature of my illness, knowing that a family with a sick child would be able to stretch out their stay in France.

  Within a matter of days, HIAS announced they’d bought new tickets for us on the ship’s next crossing, in early December. The ocean liner was to sail from Cherbourg, with a weeklong voyage that would get us into America shortly before Christmas. They were purchasing five and a half tickets for the family.

  I was the half.

  There were no elaborate preparations for our voyage this time, no major shopping expeditions. In one brief burst of anxiety, my mother insisted that my father take me at once to a shoe store. I had to have a pair of boots, she said: it was the only way to shield “pauvre Loulou” from a country likely to be even colder than France.

  Hand in hand, Leon and I walked to Montmartre and its bargain-basement stores. There, in the window of a popular discount chain, were dozens of children’s boots—boots with thick fur lining, suede boots, rubber boots, and boots entirely of leather. I had never owned a pair of boots, so the mere act of trying them on felt like an adventure.

  I pounced on a pair of jaunty galoshes. My father agreed to buy them, though they were plastic and flimsy. But he also nudged me gently toward a practical pair of blue suede boots that reached past my ankles, with furry pile lining and thick yellow soles of caoutchouc—rubber. They looked like an Eskimo could happily have worn them. My father examined the lining with an expert eye and nodded his approval.

  I felt tough and invincible as I stomped around the store in my arctic boots. I felt ready for America.

  A couple of weeks before we were scheduled to leave, we heard a scream comin
g from the passage Violet.

  “Ils ont assassiné votre président!” the porter was shouting toward our window—They have killed your president! My family looked at one another, thoroughly befuddled. Had Nasser been murdered in Egypt? Had they assassinated King Farouk in his Italian exile? Or was it General de Gaulle who had been killed here in Paris?

  It took a few minutes before we realized that “our president” was the president of the United States. John F. Kennedy was dead. All day, my family huddled around the small table. The small leather-cased transistor radio we had purchased in Alexandria, and which had been our lifeline to the outside world since leaving Egypt, was blasting.

  I caught only the same six words, “Le Président Kennedy a été assassiné,” repeated over and over again. My parents and siblings seemed shaken. They spoke in such low voices, I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Discussions about where we should go resumed with intensity, and were more agitated than ever. Should we really move to New York? What kind of country were we going to that murdered its own leader? Even Farouk, the victim of a military coup, had been permitted to leave safely and sail out of Egypt aboard the Mahrousa, the royal yacht.

  Our decision appeared terribly flawed, though we felt helpless to change course. Of all of us, my sister reacted the most emotionally. Only when Alexandra died had I seen her cry so copiously. To Suzette, the murder of JFK underscored the inchoate fears and misgivings she’d felt all along about the family moving to America, the sense that it was fundamentally the wrong place for us.

  A couple of weeks later, we boarded the train to Cherbourg, where the Queen Mary was waiting to take us to America. We were all glum. César, who had liked Paris more than any of us, felt as if he were waking up from a dream.

  When we arrived in Cherbourg, my father and I broke off from the rest of the family and took a long walk. It was after sunset, and we always loved to walk together at night, though I noticed that his gait was more tentative in the dark, and I wondered if he was in pain.

  Dad and I found ourselves standing in front of a massive ocean liner shimmering in the still dark waters. It was the Queen Mary, so close we could almost touch it. Vast and imposing and stretching out for what seemed like a mile, it was like no ship we had ever seen before. In comparison, the Massaglia was a shabby little rowboat. Yet despite its majesty and heft, the Queen Mary offered us little comfort, and indeed, even heightened our sense of terror.

  Or perhaps it was simply despair we felt at finding ourselves staring at another ship we would be boarding for yet another voyage into the unknown. I held my father’s hand a little more tightly as we lingered, dazzled and scared at the same time.

  Dad was still in his faded raincoat, which had become his armor during our months in Paris. He was trying to come to terms with the fateful decision he had made. He realized, of course, that choosing America over Israel dashed any hope he had of rebuilding what he had lost. Never again would he live within walking distance of his brothers and sisters, never again would the family come together as in the dining room on Malaka Nazli, the men in their crisp new cotton pajamas, the women in their elegant robes, looking to him—the Captain, the patriarch—for guidance.

  My father’s entire life had been guided by the primacy of family that was the Aleppo way. Family above work, family above money, family above ambition, family—though his wife would deny it—above personal pleasure. Yet there we were, on our way to a city where we had no one except a handful of relatives who didn’t care enough about us to meet us at the dock.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Wrath of Sylvia Kirschner

  My jaunty gray Cicurel coat did little to shield me from the arctic chill of Pier 90, where the Queen Mary berthed after arriving in New York. We stood on the ship’s bow, looking down toward the dock. The entire landscape was white, and we were mystified. César decided to investigate.

  “What is that on the ground?” my brother asked the passenger next to him.

  The man’s eyes widened, as if he had encountered a Martian.

  “Snow,” he replied, and then edged away.

  After going through customs, we stood in front of the pier, our mountain of luggage piled up around us, waiting I wasn’t sure for what. Our fellow travelers were leaving us behind one by one. They disappeared into waiting arms or waiting cars or waiting taxicabs even as we continued to stand out in the cold. We had come so far, yet we didn’t know where we were going, and we had no one to take us there.

  We were somewhat in shock, staring at the cars bobbing up and down the West Side Highway; they were all so enormous—so outsize: nothing like the endearing little Citroëns and Renaults we were so used to seeing on the streets of Paris. Those were my first impressions of America: the bitter cold and the large imperious automobiles that occasionally came to a full stop and picked someone up, but never me or my family.

  I went over to my father and reached for his hand. He had on his thin old raincoat, which was, if possible, even flimsier than my woolen coat with its matching scarf, but he didn’t complain, though I noticed that he wasn’t wearing gloves, and his hand felt like ice. He was strangely silent: no cries of “Ragaouna Masr.” He simply stared, as we all did, at the grayness of the sky, the whiteness of the ground, the bleak horizon of low-lying buildings and the cars moving, moving along the highway.

  I tugged at his sleeve, which I did whenever I wanted his attention, and he managed to dig into his pocket and remove a piece of candy. He had bonbons left over from the stash he’d collected on the Queen Mary, where every night was a feast, an occasion to shower passengers with desserts and favors and music and treats.

  Our passage across the Atlantic had felt like a holiday cruise, one long luxuriant party. The sheer opulence of it all left us almost in a daze after the miseries and privations of the prior year. It was sheer luck that we had maneuvered a trip on a grand ocean liner, instead of flying coach for ten hours or more on Pan Am, the usual mode of travel for refugees. My father told HIAS that he couldn’t tolerate an extended plane ride because of his leg. We were steered toward the Queen Mary, since its departure for America coincided with the date HIAS had decreed we should leave. Before we knew it, we had tickets on the grandest ship afloat, fit for dukes and duchesses and debonair film stars.

  Admittedly, we had the least expensive accommodations available—third class, modest quarters for the most budget-conscious travelers. They didn’t strike me as particularly modest, though, not compared to our recent digs—the cabin by the engine on the Massaglia, or the Violet Hotel.

  The gracious, exquisitely polite culture of the Queen Mary suited us to perfection: at last, a world outside of Cairo where people weren’t rude or impatient, where they were actually solicitous, and deigned to show us some kindness and concern.

  My father felt at home with the British crew. He bantered amiably with everyone from the captain to the purser, showing off his command of the language and his exquisite accent. None of us could compete with him when it came to speaking English.

  We sailed a couple of weeks before Christmas, and a holiday mood prevailed. There were nonstop diversions—concerts and dances, movies, plays, games, and soirees, organized by an energetic crew that seemed interested in our well-being—making certain we were happy and enjoying ourselves.

  I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cared whether we were happy.

  While I stuck close to my dad, my siblings roamed a ship that felt as vast as a city. Though first class was technically off-limits, César made friends who let him peek at its dazzling ballrooms and lounges, tall staircases and elegant carpeted suites. At night, he went dancing at the clubs that catered to teenagers and featured the latest American hits, including a jazzed-up, souped-up Latin version of “If I Had a Hammer,” sung by Trini Lopez.

  After months of the greasy dishes of Le Richer, dining on the Queen Mary was the greatest extravagance of all. We enjoyed gourmet meals served by our personal waiter who b
oasted a command of some twenty-five languages, and had each language that he spoke stitched into the fabric of his sleeve. Every lunch and dinner, he appeared magically at our side, offering to translate the menu into the language of our choice. Unlike the lone other family on our side of the ship who kept kosher, and insisted on Yiddish translations of every entrée and appetizer, we remained mostly silent and tried to follow along in English. We ate on elegant porcelain china, using fine silverware engraved with the word Kasher.

  I sat, as always, at my father’s side; he was more cheerful than I’d seen him in months. It was as if the magical powers of the Queen Mary, its British culture, its deferential staff, its soothing vegetable broth prepared in the ship’s kosher kitchen, made him feel hopeful for the first time about our lives outside of Egypt.

  We had felt protected the entire time we were aboard the ship, but now, on the pier, the old feeling of being lost and at the mercy of an uncertain fate returned. I noticed that my parents and siblings kept looking anxiously out toward the highway, as if some familiar face would materialize from the icy gray blur. No one could explain to me what we were doing, why we had come all this way only to be left out in the cold.

  We were officially welcomed to America by an HIAS bureaucrat, who apologized profusely for being late. She handed my father $50 to help tide us over those first few days, and arranged for a taxi to transport us and our suitcases to our hotel.

  The Broadway Central was a lumbering old hotel, long past its prime, perched between Greenwich Village and the Bowery. It had once housed any number of illustrious guests and visitors, from Diamond Jim Brady to James Fisk, the railroad tycoon who was shot there, to Leon Trotsky, who waited tables before hastening back to Russia to lead the Red Army.