True, Hamdi-Ali’s body did appear whole. The autopsy later revealed that only the skin was untouched. Inside his body, the organs had turned to mush. The doctors were unable to explain it.
Officer Nawas asked again what the police had already inquired about that morning: Had the deceased left a note?
Emilie had found nothing, and neither had David or Victor.
“Suicide victims tend to explain their motives,” Nawas said. “A man doesn’t just jump off the seventh floor out of boredom, having not found a better way to amuse himself. He does this to prove something. Without a note, what is the point of the whole thing?”
“The officer’s right,” said the Hakham, standing up. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? This gentile, with his mustache and uniform, solved in an instant the riddle that had been preoccupying him. Yosef Ben-Abraham could rest for eternity in a Jewish grave. “Joseph didn’t kill himself, Emilie, I’m sure of it. He went up to the roof to get some fresh air … got dizzy … and … Adonai gives, and Adonai takes away, blessed is the name of the Lord. If he had planned on jumping, would he not leave a note?” He sat down, satisfied and turned to the officer. “Mush keda, ya sidi? Isn’t it so, sir?”
Nawas confirmed the matter with a wide smile, glad to have his version accepted. His friend who was investigating the case would be happy to close the dossier.
“Can the officer make sure that the investigator in charge of this case sends an appropriate message to the press, especially the European press?” asked the rabbi. If even a tiny statement appeared in Le Progrès Egyptien, the paper read by his community, no one would be able to say he’d made an exception for his precious convert. It was a tragic accident, Oo halasna, and that’s that!
Emilie almost smiled with relief.
44. RAIN
The tiny Topolino curled up, asleep, along the sidewalk. The royal family stood beside it. The entire household was bent over in sadness. Four had come there, but only three would leave. The little car would no longer be so cheerfully crowded as it raced down the Cairo-Alexandria road. There would be no more expectation tickling in their fingertips, the expectation of early summer. The sky was cloudy, leaning heavily on the flat roofs of the buildings. It was as if the city had been plagued with the early onset of old age, and a gray murkiness poured over its face. Emilie Hamdi-Ali, a former queen, was plopped over her son’s arm like a tired old sack, hunched over, her life devoid of meaning. Few women in Egypt had a life of their own. Most of them lived the hopes and dreams of their husbands. They’d been trained since childhood to be trusty companions, shadows.
In the gray clouds, the sun looked like an exhausted, pale blotch, too tired to sketch shadows on the sidewalk. Objects seemed scattered pointlessly, with no forethought, like a collage in an illustrated magazine.
The preparations were carried out calmly, in utter silence. Salem carried suitcases and bundles with his usual lassitude, and Badri the doorman and his son did not make too much of an effort, since the young Hawaga Hamdi-Ali was not known to be very generous.
What surprise they all felt then, when at the end of the loading process, David gave each of the three men a whole rial. Salem thought: the Hawaga David is confused with grief. The doorman’s son could not contain his pride. He’d never held such a sum of money in his hand. Twenty piasters! But his joy was short-lived. His father snatched away his reward, and when the child tried to protest, Badri slapped the back of his neck fiercely, and he fell to the sidewalk and burst out crying. Salem pitied the pathetic soul and fished one mil from his pocket to give to the child. He was proud to be able to give, like a true Hawaga. That Salem … he was a special boy. Alert, clever, not too industrious and not too lazy either. Incredibly talented at picking up languages by ear (French, a bit of English and even Ladino), and most of all—self-sufficient, with a world of his own which no one else could enter. Had he been born in a different class, in a different time, he might have made it far. And perhaps he had made it after all? Maybe Salem was one of those whose horizons had been suddenly opened by the Officers’ Revolution? For years, Robby wondered what became of the boy who grew up in his home with him.
Robby stood by the balcony railing as the small car went on its way, swallowed up beyond the bend in the road at the boardwalk. For a moment he looked at the gloomy, thickening sky, and felt his throat contract. Why was he working harder than ever today, in a sort of desperate fervor, to take down license plate numbers? He hurried to dip his pen in the ink well placed on the railing, and wrote, and wrote and wrote … He’d missed only one car. Not bad.
Suddenly a drop landed on his head. He looked up once again, and was hit by another drop, straight in his eye. Then another on the tip of his nose. The first rain. Robby ran inside and announced all through the house, “It’s raining! The rain is here!”
The notebook was left on the railing, and the rain splattered over the numbers, the water blurred the ink, blurred the shapes, erased everything.
A gust of wind blew the notebook off the railing, and the soggy mess fell to the ground.
The summer was washed off the city streets. Winter came to Alexandria.
GUYS LIKE ME BY DOMINIQUE FABRE
Dominique Fabre, born in Paris and a life-long resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift. He’s looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/guys-like/
I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAŠAR
Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/called-necktie/
WHO IS MARTHA? BY MARJANA GAPONENKO
In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha—the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons—died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. This gloriously written tale mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/martha/
ALL BACKS WERE TURNED BY MAREK HLASKO
Two desperate friends—on the edge of the law—travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the handsome native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov’s younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov’s business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn’t help that a beautiful German widow is rooming next door. A story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, conveyed in hard-boiled prose reminiscent of Hammett and Chandler.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/backs-turned/
KILLING AUNTIE BY ANDRZEJ BURSA
A young university student named Jurek, with no particular ambitions or talents, finds himself with nothing to do. After his doting aunt asks the young man to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. This short comedic masterpiece combines elements o
f Dostoevsky, Sartre, Kafka, and Heller, coming together to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and— just maybe—redemption.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-auntie/
COCAINE BY PITIGRILLI
Paris in the 1920s—dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits … unless he is led into temptation. Cocaine’s dandified hero, Tito Arnaudi, invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli’s classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and retains its venom even today.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/cocaine/
SOME DAY BY SHEMI ZARHIN
On the shores of Israel’s Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/some-day/
THE MISSING YEAR OF JUAN SALVATIERRA BY PEDRO MAIRAL
At the age of nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of canvases on which he detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with rolls over two miles long. But an essential roll is missing. A search ensues that illuminates links between art and life, with past family secrets casting their shadows on the present.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-missing-year-of-juan-salvatierra/
THE GOOD LIFE ELSEWHERE BY VLADIMIR LORCHENKOV
The very funny—and very sad—story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts to emigrate from Europe’s most impoverished nation to Italy for work. An Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; and thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the Italian Promised Land. A country where 25 percent of its population works abroad, remittances make up nearly 40 percent of GDP, and alcohol consumption per capita is the world’s highest – Moldova surely has its problems. But, as Lorchenkov vividly shows, it’s also a country whose residents don’t give up easily.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-good-life-elsewhere/
KILLING THE SECOND DOG BY MAREK HLASKO
Two down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1950s scam an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the widow who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. What follows is a story of romance, deception, cruelty and shame. Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hard-boiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/killing-the-second-dog/
FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: DAUGHTER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT BY HILDE SPIEL
In 1776 Fanny von Arnstein, the daughter of the Jewish master of the royal mint in Berlin, came to Vienna as an 18-year-old bride. She married a financier to the Austro-Hungari-an imperial court, and hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted luminaries of the day. Spiel’s elegantly written and carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a passionate woman who advocated for the rights of Jews, and illuminates a central era in European cultural and social history.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/fanny-von-arnstein-daughter-of-the-enlightenment/
To purchase these titles and for more information please visit newvesselpress.com.
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