Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  9

  The Twenties

  “Marian stopped talking. She shut her eyes for a second or two, and when she opened them again she was confronted by Ezekiel’s intense stare.

  “But you found out about this story via your father,” she mused.

  “Not in such detail. I always knew that there was a strong connection between my father and the Ziad family, but you have made me see these events in a different way, through different eyes. I can assure you that this conversation is very important to me.”

  “Can we continue?”

  “Yes, of course, but we need to eat something. Do you know what time it is? Almost two o’clock.”

  “I’m so sorry! I started to talk and talk and lost track of time.”

  “Don’t apologize. Time flew by for me as well.”

  “May I take you out to lunch somewhere?” As soon as she said this, Marian regretted it.

  Ezekiel looked at her with his face split between amusement and surprise.

  “Isn’t that against the rules? I thought you couldn’t fraternize with the enemy.”

  She grimaced uncomfortably.

  “Don’t laugh at me, I just want to hear your part of the story and . . . Well, what with the time . . .”

  “I accept your invitation.”

  “What about the American Colony?”

  “I like it a lot, but it’s too expensive. I don’t think that your NGO will put it on your expenses.”

  “My NGO isn’t paying, I am.”

  “Too far from here, maybe?”

  “Well then, you decide where.”

  “Alright, I’ll take you to a good fish restaurant near the Jaffa Gate.”

  “In the Jewish Quarter?”

  “In Jerusalem.”

  Marian drove following Ezekiel’s instructions. The restaurant was modest, but full and clean. A waiter smiled when he saw them and showed them to a table away from all the hubbub.

  They ordered hummus, fish, and a bottle of white wine, and spoke about unimportant things while they waited for the food to be served.

  “Your granddaughter is going to be angry with me,” she said.

  “Yes, she will be, she doesn’t understand why I’m giving this so much time and importance, nor where this exchange of stories comes from.”

  “I’m grateful for your time,” she said sincerely.

  “You’ve brought a bit of life back to a bored old man like me. Who would have said that I would get to have lunch with an important woman such as yourself? No, there’s no need to thank me for anything, these conversations are very interesting. You know, I think that one of the problems we have is that we’re not able to put ourselves in each other’s skin. You are opening new perspectives for me about what happened.”

  “And you are doing the same for me,” she muttered without thinking.

  “Well, shall we start, or shall we wait for dessert?”

  Mikhail didn’t know how to begin the conversation. It was still difficult for him to have a normal relationship with Samuel. He lit a cigarette as he hunted for the words he needed to tell Samuel that he was going.

  He had spent the last two weeks in Tel Aviv, and he had decided that he would stay there.

  “Come on, tell me,” Samuel said impatiently.

  “How did you know I wanted to tell you something?” Mikhail answered.

  “You got here a few hours ago, you barely paid any attention to the conversation during the meal, and for all that Marinna has asked you to tell us something about Tel Aviv, the most you’ve done is make a few vague statements. Also, you’ve asked me to come outside and walk with you for a while.”

  “You’re right, of course I have something to say. Well . . . I . . . I don’t want you to get angry, but I have decided to go to Tel Aviv. It’s a new city with possibilities. The people there are alive, not like here . . . I don’t like Jerusalem, it’s a city that oppresses me and I don’t hold it in special regard like some other Jews do. I like what’s happening in Tel Aviv; I can devote myself to music there. They are organizing orchestras, music groups . . . There is everything still to do, but here . . . I think Jerusalem is dead even though the people who live here don’t know it.”

  Samuel felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. Mikhail was the only reminder he had of his roots, of Russia, of Saint Petersburg, of the days of his youth that still troubled his dreams.

  “Well, I thought you didn’t like Tel Aviv. When we got here you said that it was only a village . . . I understand that you want to go, you’re right, there will be more opportunities in Tel Aviv than here, but maybe you should even think about going back to Paris. You can continue your career successfully there, but here it’s cut short somehow. Everything is still to be done here.”

  “France is at war, it’s not the best time to go back.”

  “The whole Ottoman Empire is at war and Palestine is a part of the empire,” Samuel reminded him.

  “You’re right, but here everything is so different. I know we find it difficult to understand each other, so you don’t need to understand my reasons. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future, but for the time being I want to stay in Palestine. Everything that is happening in Tel Aviv seems so inspiring. It is a city that is inventing itself, that has its whole future ahead of it. Also . . . Well, I think it is now time for me to live my own life. I will come back to Hope Orchard as often as I can, it is the closest thing I have to a home.”

  They must have felt the same impulse, because they hugged each other. Surely at this moment they were closer than they had ever been before.

  Mikhail spent the next few days saying goodbye to Yossi and Judith, and promising Yasmin that he would visit. He also wanted to say goodbye to the Ziad family. Mohammed had come back a few days earlier to see his mother and his grandmother Zaida, who was ill in bed.

  Mohammed’s house seemed gloomy. Dina had closed herself away in her sadness and her face no longer showed the smile that she had once offered to any visitor to the house. But as Kassia herself said, Dina was a strong woman and knew that she could not falter, so she carried on looking after her family, and it was Zaida who now needed her care.

  “You are lucky you can go,” Mohammed said to Mikhail in a low voice.

  “I’m sorry about what happened, I didn’t know your father well, but I am sure he was a great man.”

  “Yes, and he paid for that with his life.”

  They spoke for a while about the war and both agreed that it would be the beginning of the end for the Ottoman Empire.

  “The old folks don’t see it, they are even frightened by the idea that the empire might go, they ask themselves what would happen if it did disappear. I think that our hour has come, that we should stop being strangers in our own land. Damascus, Beirut, Mecca . . . That’s why I have joined Faisal’s troops; we need to fight for a greater Arab nation.”

  “Will you be here long?” Mikhail asked.

  “One more day, I have to get back, I can’t stay longer even though I’m worried about my grandmother’s health. It is time to fight.”

  Mikhail listened to him with interest. He felt sympathetic toward Mohammed and could understand his pain, which was why he told him how he had lost his father and had left Russia with Irina and Samuel.

  “You see, they killed my father as well. I have never recovered from the loss. I don’t remember my mother, but I do remember my father.”

  They spoke until night came down on them like a starless blanket, and felt comforted by talking about their loved ones. The next day each of them would go in a different direction. Mohammed would rejoin Faisal’s forces to carry on fighting, and Mikhail would go toward that city where the Jews felt entirely at home.

  It was hard for Samuel to say goodbye to Mikhail this time. He felt fonder toward him than he had realized.
Tel Aviv was close, but he still had a strong sense of loss.

  “I would have liked to have known Mohammed better,” Mikhail confessed.

  “He’s a good lad,” Samuel said.

  “You know what? I understand why he took revenge for his father. If I had been able to . . .”

  “He will have to live for the rest of his life with . . . with those men’s deaths.”

  “But he was right, there are times in life when the only way to save yourself is by dying, or killing, and Mohammed chose the only option that was open to him. If we had been friends, I would have gone with him.”

  “Yes, Mohammed said that, but you forget the most important thing: conscience.”

  Mikhail did not answer. He didn’t want to argue with Samuel now that he was leaving, so he went out to find the other people of Hope Orchard.

  Jacob gave him a couple of books by Dostoevsky, and Ariel surprised him by giving him a violin that he himself had made in secret.

  “It’s not very good, but at least you won’t forget about us,” he said, putting the violin into his hands.

  Mikhail was overwhelmed. He had grown fond of this rough man who seemed moved whenever he heard Mikhail practicing the violin, and who read the books that Jacob had lent him at night, by the fire.

  Kassia gave him a sweater that she herself had knitted, and Marinna gave him a scarf.

  “It’s not so cold in Tel Aviv as it is here, but it will come in handy,” Kassia said as she hugged him.

  Ruth had made a basket of food, and said several times that he should come straight back if things weren’t as he expected.

  None of them came to the door with him, as they knew that Samuel wanted to say goodbye to him alone.

  “I’ll come back to see you all soon,” Mikhail promised.

  “If you don’t, then I’ll come to Tel Aviv,” Samuel threatened.

  “There’s no need.”

  “And write to Irina, she’s always worried about you.”

  “I will, I’ve never stopped writing to her.”

  They hugged one last time, and then Samuel turned away so Mikhail would not see him crying. And life went on.

  It seemed as if 1917 was to be a prodigal year. For example, one day Jacob came in shouting “The tsar has abdicated,” showing them a newspaper he had just bought in the city.

  Samuel and Ariel huddled round him, anxious for all the details, and Kassia burst into tears.

  “But Kassia, you’re not crying for the tsar?” Ruth said, accusingly.

  “No, not for the tsar, I couldn’t care less what happens to Tsar Nicholas II; I’m crying for us, who had to leave our houses and flee simply to survive.”

  Jacob read the article to them: Nicholas II had had no other option than to abdicate. They didn’t know what his fate might be. Revolution was triumphant in Russia, and the will of the soviets was conquering that of the government, which controlled less and less of the country every day.

  “What if we went back?” Kassia’s voice held a mixture of anxiety and emotion.

  “Back? You want to go back to Russia? No, never, and why should we?” Jacob asked, surprised at his wife’s reaction.

  “The revolution is triumphant, and if that’s the case, then us Jews have nothing to fear. Lots of the Bolsheviks are Jews . . . If the tsar has abdicated, then they won’t persecute the Jews or the socialists any more.”

  “This is our home, the lost land that we have recovered. We are Jews, Kassia,” Jacob said to his wife.

  “Vilnius is so beautiful,” she replied, in tears.

  Neither Samuel nor Ariel, not even Ruth, dared to enter into this argument between Jacob and Kassia. They were surprised to see her cry: She was one of those who could work all hours of the day, could inspire the others, and it was she who had transformed Hope Orchard into their home, and now she was showing signs of weakness. Samuel thought about Kassia’s silence, because not once in all those years had she said a single word that showed any sign of nostalgia for her native Vilnius.

  “I will write to my friend Konstantin Goldanski. He will tell me more about what is happening, I won’t be satisfied with what the papers say,” Samuel said, trying to draw attention away from Kassia.

  “Russia is free of a tyrant, we should celebrate,” Ariel proposed.

  They did celebrate, but less joyously than they had thought they would. The war was a constant source of worry for them, and the abdication of the tsar was not enough to stop them from being concerned. Also, apart from Kassia, none of them had said openly what the fall of the tsar implied. It put them in a difficult situation: Should they return, or forget about Russia forever? Yes, they had not wanted to leave, but now that the door was open again, they did not want to return. Can you love two homelands? They asked themselves that question without being willing to pose it aloud.

  Konstantin’s letter took a while to arrive. When Samuel finally opened the marble-colored envelope with the Goldanski family crest, this is what he read:

  My dear Samuel,

  We were extremely happy to receive your news. My sister Katia complains that you are forgetting about us, for all that I am constantly telling her that in spite of the distance between us we will always be joined by friendship.

  When this letter reaches you, you will already know that Russia is in a state of civil war. This is not to say that I do not think the tsar should have abdicated. His reign has been a disaster for Russia, and he is directly responsible for the deaths of millions and the suffering of their families.

  This war is madness and it will leave wounds on all sides that will be difficult to heal.

  I do not know what is going to happen to Russia, and I do not know what will become of us. You know that I felt some sympathy toward socialism, but I must tell you that some of the Bolsheviks provoke as much rage in me as the tsar’s policies did before them.

  I’m sorry to tell you that the Jews are suffering all the more in this war. The tsar’s incompetent government has found in them the perfect scapegoat for all their military failures. Because a large number of “our” Jews live in provinces that border on Germany, they have all been accused of being in the service of Kaiser Wilhelm, yes, the Kaiser, our tsar’s “dear cousin Willi.” So, in the midst of the tragedy of war, lots of Jews have suffered new pogroms. The tsar and the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich have provoked a new wave of emigration.

  You know that I have never fully “felt myself” to be Jewish, perhaps because I am only half Jewish and because my dear grandfather was keen on breaking down the differences that religion erects between people.

  Lots of Jews today in Russia are praying for the revolution to triumph and destroy forever the memory of the tsars who have caused so much trouble.

  I am not sure what the future has for us. As I wrote in my last letter, I am married, and my wife Vera begs me to go with her to Switzerland for a while, but my sister Katia refuses to come with us, and I don’t want to leave her alone in such circumstances.

  Yes, I know that Katia is not a child, but I feel responsible for her, so I am still here, watching events unfold and worrying about what the future might bring . . .

  Samuel read the letter to his friends and Jacob took the chance to scold Kassia.

  “Do you realize what would have happened if you had gone back to Vilnius? More persecutions! More of the same!”

  “But the Bolsheviks are winning,” Kassia replied, “and we are socialists. No one will do anything to hurt us.”

  Jacob did not reply. For all that he missed Russia, Jerusalem was now his homeland.

  Lord Balfour’s declaration in November 1917 caught them all by surprise. The Palestinian Jews knew about Chaim Weizmann’s good relations with the British government, but they had never imagined that these could crystallize into this declaration of principles, which stated the British acceptanc
e of the idea that there should be set up in Palestine “a national home for the Jewish people.”

  They celebrated at Hope Orchard, but less than they had celebrated the Bolshevik revolution.

  “We need to help the British,” Jacob said.

  “And how are we going to do that? Let’s be careful,” Samuel replied.

  “Don’t you see how significant the Balfour Declaration is? If the Ottoman Empire is defeated, then the European powers will grant us this land.”

  “They will never give us this land. They will only allow us to carry on where we already are,” Samuel said.

  “No, that’s not what it says, it promises so much more. Do you think that a declaration like the one the British foreign secretary has made is only a piece of paper? Haven’t you thought that Palestine could go back to being our home? They threw us out, they took it away from us, and we are back.” Jacob’s eyes lit up.

  “It’s not that it can be our home, it already is, aren’t we here already? But that doesn’t mean that it will be more than a home, a place where we are allowed to live,” Samuel objected.

  “A country, Samuel, lots of us want to have a country once again,” Ariel said.

  “I thought that other things were more important for us, like equality, and liberty . . . I didn’t come here looking for a country.”

  “So why did you come, why not go somewhere else? You came because we were made from this soil that we tread here, because this is the homeland they took away from us. Now it is time for us to take back what was taken away from us,” Jacob insisted.

  “You surprise me, Jacob, I didn’t know you thought like that. We say that we are socialists, so that we fight for all men to be equal and to breathe freely wherever they may find themselves, apart from any idea of ‘fatherland.’”

  “I’m not fooled by that anymore. I want this to be my daughter’s home, and my grandchildren’s home. I never want to be a stranger again, not in any land, I don’t want my children and my grandchildren to be expelled from any country, or persecuted because people say that they are different. We were expelled, we were even expelled from here, our own homeland, but we are back, and some of us are ready never to leave again.”