City of Secrets

by Stewart O'Nan

  The note Pincus returned with was unsigned as well, on plain paper. Her penmanship was surprisingly elegant, reminding him of his mother’s: I’m wearing your necklace. Be careful. I’ll see you soon.

  “How is she?”

  Pincus shrugged as if he had no opinion. “She looked good.”

  “Thank you for taking her.” Brand tried to give him a pound, but Pincus fended it off. If he knew her as The Widow, he was too polite to say so, for which Brand was grateful. He didn’t need to be told he was a fool.

  He knew he should throw the note away or, better, burn it. He fit it in his cigar box, another treasure, and wondered what she’d done with his.

  Tuesday was the eve of Pesach. By noon traffic had thinned as if the city were under curfew. Only the Arab buses were running. The streets of Mea Shearim and Mekor Baruch were deserted, the shops along the Jaffa Road closed. On Princess Mary Avenue a line of housewives waited on the sidewalk outside the one open grocer’s, hoping he wouldn’t run out of lamb shanks and horseradish.

  Brand remembered his mother’s endless preparations. She began cleaning weeks in advance, going through the house room by room, hunting down every crumb of chametz. When he and Giggi were little, she’d hide five pieces of bread for each of them so they could help. He took pride in finding his first until, one spring when he was six or seven, his mother came to him at bedtime and said it might be nice if he let his sister find hers first, and Brand understood that he’d been thoughtless. His joy poisoned, he turned dutiful, tagging after her with his own dust rag, rubbing at schmutz. When she finished a room, it was off-limits for eating. She did the kitchen last, on her hands and knees, digging in the cracks between the floorboards with toothpicks, which his logical father—and Brand, his father’s son—thought was going too far. The Udelsons were proper. His grandfather could perform the ceremony with the feather and the spoon and it would never be clean enough for his grandmother. The tears his mother shed making everything perfect for them. Even before they arrived, her failure was apparent. She didn’t like their seder plate, which they’d received as a wedding present. There was the wine stain the dry cleaners could never get out of her good lace tablecloth, and now the kugel was ruined. She apologized, inconsolably angry, waiting for his grandmother to point out the obvious. “What a lovely table,” his grandmother said. His grandfather wore the kittel, since his father wouldn’t. It was a yearly ritual, the three generations gathered beneath the golden battlements of the lithograph, celebrating their freedom from Egypt and the mysterious bondage of family. After such pains, to think it had all been swept away, burnt to cinders like the chametz, Brand himself the last remaining crumb.

  Even Zion Square was empty, the students sent home for recess, Café Europa shuttered against the Shomrei Shabbat, fanatic Hasidim who tossed rocks through windows of businesses that didn’t respect the Sabbath.

  Baruch Hashem, there were always the tourists. Outside Herod’s Gate, among the stooped water vendors and strutting pigeons, an American couple in matching sunglasses held a folding map between them, pointing in opposite directions. Brand swooped down on them like a hawk. It was their first day. Of course he knew where the Church of the Ascension was. He wouldn’t recommend walking in this heat.

  “Why is everything closed?” the husband asked when they were moving, leaning in close behind him.

  Why is this night different from all other nights? For years, until Giggi could read, he was entrusted with the four questions, his grandfather comically drawing out the answers, making them wait before they could hide the afikoman and then find it later to claim their prize.

  He adopted the couple, treating them to the best views from the Mount of Olives and all seven gates, selling them two rolls of film. When he dropped them at their hotel, the man shook his hand. If Jossi was ever in Boston, he should look them up. Brand imagined them showing him the town, the harbor lights and nightclubs, the dancehalls and neon boulevards he knew from the movies.

  He’d never go. He was just lonely. It had only been four days since he’d spoken to her.

  The Alaska would be closed, so he quit early and looped back to Princess Mary Avenue. The grocer’s was still open. Brand parked and joined the line like a long-suffering husband sent on an errand. That there was wine left he counted a miracle.

  In his room he prepared the feast. Thanks to the blackouts, he had candles. The one by his bedside was just a nub, and he chose two new ones. Instead of his mother’s sterling silver candlesticks, used solely for this purpose, sharing the walnut hutch the rest of the year with her good crystal, he fit the candles into beer bottles and placed them on his bare table. It had been his mother’s job to light the candles, then Giggi’s, when she was old enough, and as he scratched a match against the side of the box and bent to touch the wavering flame to the wick, he saw his sister—ten or eleven, in her best Sabbath dress, her blond braids crowning her head like a milkmaid—circling their table, folding napkins and setting out the wineglasses, an extra goblet in the middle for Elijah. Though he was only one tonight, Brand did the same, as if he were drinking with the prophet.

  After sundown, he took the pillow from his bed and tucked it behind him on his chair so he could recline as he told the story.

  Like his grandfather, he blessed the wine. As a child he hadn’t listened, and his Kiddush was makeshift. After a taste of sweetness, he had to walk down the hall to the bathroom to wash his hands, then came back and started on the seder plate. Here was the parsley dipped in salt water to remember the tears of the people, the egg and the lamb shank, the bitter herbs. He broke the middle matzoh and asked himself the four questions, for years his only real Hebrew, the sacred language diligently memorized, indelible yet rote, never fully taken to heart. Like his father, bored by the pomp and pace of the ceremony, he was a skeptic, leery of any outward show, except even then, in his rational lack of faith, he felt guilty. Now he could see he wasn’t the wicked child, as he’d sometimes thought, or as he suspected later, the simple one, but, like his father, the one who didn’t know how to ask. Proud Brand. Why did he think he knew more than God?

  He dipped a finger in his wine and spilled a drop on the table for each of the ten plagues. As children they thrilled at the rain of blood, the frogs and lice and flies. This was their favorite part, God’s messy retribution on their persecutors, even as Grandfather Udelson reminded them that no one should take pleasure in the sufferings of God’s creatures. The lesson seemed even truer now, after the camps, as did the idea that in every generation each of them needed to realize they’d been delivered from Egypt, and for the first time, sitting there in the shifting candlelight, recalling all he’d lost, Brand understood there was a reason he’d been spared.

  The meal itself wasn’t worthy of his mother, but he ate the matzoh ball soup and roast chicken and fruit compote gratefully, wishing Eva were there to share it with him. He thought of Asher and Lipschitz in detention, and their families at home. In the camps, when there was no food, the devout celebrated with the word. Brand in his disillusion abstained, an evasion he regretted now. He wished he were a better Jew. This was a start.

  For Giggi he’d hidden the afikoman behind his radio. At home, for finding it, their grandfather gave them each a shiny silver five-lats coin which his mother insisted they put in the bank. Now Brand didn’t need a prize. He could recall only a few lines of the psalms, and said their everyday grace, still intact after all these years. He filled Elijah’s cup and opened the door for him, then sat back down as if to wait.

  “Next year in Jerusalem,” Brand said, and drank to the dead and to the future.

  A cuckoo had built a nest in the cemetery. As if in rebuttal, it started up its monotonous call. Outside his window, beyond the darkened crypts and the Church of the Dormition, the wall by the Zion Gate glowed a lurid honey-gold in the floodlights. With the holiday, the British were on high alert. Eva had made it clear they should have no contact, yet, as if he’d had a vision, Brand wanted
to go and tell her what had happened. This was what he’d come to Jerusalem to find, a new purpose, and as he washed his dishes in the bathroom sink, moved by his revelation, he thought recklessly of proposing to her.

  By morning his wits had returned. She was no believer, and might be angry with him for asking too much of her. He’d confused religion and emotion, the universal and the personal. With no one to confide in, the excitement he’d felt seemed private and suspect, the product of alcohol, nostalgia and loneliness—except he had been delivered out of this last Egypt, along with a million and a half others, and the fact that he was here, now, among thousands of them, wasn’t luck or chance but history. He was free. What he did now was up to him, so while he didn’t run out and join the nearest temple, he felt renewed, and when, Maundy Thursday, Fein called to say their young friend was out of the hospital, Brand saw it as a sign.

  “He’s not well enough to visit,” Fein said. “He needs rest.”

  “Is it all right if I give him a call?”

  “I’d wait. He may be contagious.”

  “I’m glad he’s feeling better.”

  “So are we,” Fein said.

  He thought of sending Pincus to her flat with a message, but knew he was being stupid. When had he become so impatient? For years all he’d done was wait.

  It was Passion Week, and the Old City was choked with processions. Gentiles of every sect traced Christ’s steps along the Via Dolorosa, stopping at the numbered Stations of the Cross to take pictures of the reenactors and buy mementos from the Moslem shopkeepers. Brand made a killing selling film and running people up the Mount of Olives. Time moved faster when he was busy, and like an actual cabbie he was grateful for the crowds.

  Easter Sunday the draw was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He was second in the queue at the Jaffa Gate when he noticed an Arab at the head of the line give his spot to the couple behind him so he could ride with Brand. He was short and pale, in a black kaftan and keffiyeh, ducking behind the couple as if to hide. Among the pilgrims clutching olivewood crosses and the tourists draped with cameras he was conspicuous, and as soon as Brand pulled up and saw the glasses and piggy cheeks he knew who was beneath this hapless disguise.

  Brand flashed on driving right past him, but Lipschitz grabbed the door handle and let himself in.

  “Jossi, it wasn’t me, you’ve got to believe me. They all think it was me, but it wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know what they think.”

  “Someone broke into my flat while I was away. No one will talk to me.”

  “We’re not supposed to be talking to anyone.”

  “I swear I didn’t say anything. You know me, I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Brand said to calm him down. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Eva’s.”

  “We can’t go to Eva’s.”

  “Your place.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” Lipschitz probably had a sketch of it showing all the exits.

  “I can’t go back to my flat. They’re watching it.”

  They were probably watching them now, Brand thought. “Do you want me to take you to the station?”

  “That won’t help. Tell Gideon I didn’t say anything.”

  “When would I talk to Gideon?”

  “Tell Eva.”

  He couldn’t lie, and after everything, he couldn’t say no. “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you, Jossi. I knew you’d help me. You saved me before.”

  “It may take a while. We’re not supposed to be talking to anyone right now.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  They were cruising along Sultan Suleiman Street in the shadow of the wall. Lipschitz twisted round to watch the cars following them as if they were being tailed. Across from the Damascus Gate was the Arab bus station. In their numbered stalls, under a shady overhang, a dozen coaches waited to take him to Nablus and Beersheba and Jericho.

  “Want me to drop you at the station?”

  “No. Turn here.”

  They headed for the western suburbs. Instead of shooting straight out the Jaffa Road, he had Brand detour north through the Russian Compound, then left on the Street of the Prophets, cutting up to Mea Shearim until the traffic behind them had dwindled. He checked over his shoulder before telling Brand where to turn next. As Brand had guessed when they were casing the substation, Lipschitz was from the teeming apartment blocks of Zikhron Moshe. Instead of taking a room in an obscure corner of the city, he was hoping to disappear into the familiar alleys and boardinghouses of this far-flung outpost of Kraków.

  Brand let him off outside a bookbinder’s with the slate of the Workers’ Party decorating its window.

  “Be careful,” Brand said.

  “Tell them.”

  “I will.”

  “Thank you. You be careful too.”

  Brand gave him a last wave, and once he was in traffic and free of him, banged the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Damn it.”

  Contagious, Fein said. As Brand would be if anyone found out. How was he supposed to tell Eva, and who was she supposed to convince?

  You saved me before. Brand cringed, remembering. He hadn’t saved him, it was just a splinter. He’d never saved anybody.

  His hope was that Asher would be released, relieving him of the responsibility, but tomorrow was Monday. At his table, by lamplight, he toiled over his note to Eva. Below, Mrs. Ohanesian stumbled through a Chopin étude, making him start again. He was a poor spy. He didn’t know any secret codes, and every metaphor seemed obvious and incriminating.

  Our young friend is out of the hospital but feeling lonely. Please let everyone know he’s no longer contagious. He’s had laryngitis for two weeks and would love to talk to someone.

  She wrote back: The doctors said no visitors for a reason. The most important thing for him now is rest.

  Brand thought her advice wise, but with no way to tell Lipschitz, felt he hadn’t fully discharged his duty. Every time he queued up at the Jaffa Gate, he expected to see the pantomime Arab standing in line. In his flat, when the phone rang, he cocked his head, froze until Mrs. Ohanesian closed her door again. Like Lipschitz, he was turning squirrelly on his own.

  Two days later, the radio broke the silence. While he was sleeping, an Irgun team masquerading as policemen bringing in a busload of Arab detainees had raided a detention camp in Ramat Gan, liberating a dozen prisoners and the contents of the armory. “This is the voice of Fighting Zion,” the announcer heroically signed off, and though he had no evidence, Brand was convinced Asher was one of them.

  Lipschitz must have figured Asher had escaped, because that morning when Brand called in from the Jaffa Gate, Greta had a pickup for a Mr. Ge’ula in Zikhron Moshe. Mr. Hope. He thought it was unfair of Lipschitz, and on the way out, checking his mirrors to make sure no one was following him, Brand bit his cheek, trying to find the right words to tell him this had to stop.

  The address was a basement flat in the rear of a cement apartment block, the kind of dingy hiding place Brand himself would choose. The back door was riveted steel, the windows louvered slits at ground level to let some light in, and as he pulled the Peugeot abreast of the stairwell, he noticed the pair on the left was boarded over. He expected the place was fortified, wired with Asher’s favorite booby-traps, and rather than risk tripping one, he didn’t get out, just honked twice, lightly. Lipschitz could come to him.

  He honked again, longer.

  When there was no answer, like a bit player in a movie, he called, “Taxi! Taxi for Mr. Ge’ula!”

  He didn’t turn the car off, left the driver’s side open as he approached the entrance. The cement of the stairwell was cracked. At the bottom a mat of trash and wet leaves had gathered in one corner. Brand examined the lock. Years of keys had left scratches in the brass. It was impossible to tell if it was rigged. By twisting the knob, he might be wrappin
g a half-inch of piano wire around the other side, pulling the pin on a homemade grenade, the blast unleashing a handyman’s blend of shrapnel—fence staples and roofing nails and wood screws.

  He knocked.

  “Mr. Ge’ula.”

  He knocked harder.

  He scanned the backs of the other tenements to see if right now Lipschitz was watching him. That was the problem with going out on your own. You had only one set of eyes.

  He thumped the door with a fist and called for him again, then dropped his hand to the knob and, averting his face, turned it gently, listening for a click.

  The door opened.

  A dank concrete hallway, dimly lit and smelling of dead mice, ran the length of the basement. The number Greta had given him matched the first flat on the left—the one with the boarded-up windows. He knocked, expecting nothing, and was surprised to hear from the other side a faint scratching, like a cat asking to be let out.

  “Taxi,” Brand said.

  The scratching stopped, making him stoop to see if he could pick it up again.

  It might just be mice.

  “Mr. Ge’ula.”

  He dropped to one knee and pressed an ear to the door like a safecracker. Nothing, but now a second smell reached him, familiar yet unwelcome, and he recalled the scene in Eva’s bright bedroom and, later, kneeling in the driveway, scrubbing his backseat.

  The door, for all his precautions, was unlocked. It opened a few inches, then abruptly stuck, caught on Lipschitz’s hand like a doorstop.

  He was facedown, reaching for the door as if to answer it. A dark smear stretched across the linoleum behind him. He must have crawled.

  His hand was still warm. Brand moved it and sidled through. He turned Lipschitz over. His throat was cut, his shirt soaked. He was missing his glasses and his face was swollen, his eyes rolled back, showing the whites. Brand wanted to ask who’d done this to him, but saw it was useless.