Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  She wasn’t happy, but Samuel was. Her only consolations were the letters she received from Daniel, in which he told her that he was well, and her two younger children, Dalida and Ezekiel, who had adapted to Parisian life without any problems. Miriam took them to school every morning and in the afternoons it was Agnès, the young maid, who took them to play in the Luxembourg Gardens.

  What most drove her to despair was that in spite of her efforts to make Samuel feel comfortable, he barely noticed her. Finally giving in to her hairdresser’s advice, she now wore her hair like the Parisians did, and even dressed like them. Dresses that barely covered her knee, hats, gloves . . . Samuel told her to spend as much as she wanted. But he never noticed when she was wearing a new dress. It was hard for Miriam to realize that their marriage was a farce and that the only thing that tied them together was Dalida and Ezekiel. Samuel loved his children, and it was only when he was with them that anything approaching tenderness appeared on his face. But it would take them two more years to finally decide to put an end to their life in common.

  Miriam had never succumbed to the temptation to read Samuel’s private papers, but one morning she found a note on the floor that had fallen out of his pocket. She picked it up and recognized Katia’s rounded handwriting.

  My dear, we miss you so much. Three weeks without seeing you seems like an eternity. Vera is preparing everything for Gustav’s birthday. Can you imagine, my nephew is going to be ten! He’s going to boarding school next year, so Vera wants this birthday to be unforgettable, but it won’t be if you are not here.

  We’ll expect you.

  Ever yours,

  KATIA

  Miriam didn’t know what to think. She was scared of asking for explanations from Samuel, as she was certain he would point out that this was an entirely innocent letter, with not a single line that could be misinterpreted. But she knew that this was a letter from a woman in love. She was inviting him to Gustav’s birthday celebration, but not extending the invitation to her or her children. Katia had never been affectionate toward Dalida and Ezekiel, as if it were hard for her to acknowledge them as Samuel’s children.

  Dalida had inherited Miriam’s dark hair and olive skin. Ezekiel looked more like Samuel, although his hair was chestnut-colored and there were traces of his mother’s Sephardi heritage. Neither of them at all resembled Gustav, Vera and Konstantin’s son, who looked like an angel from a Renaissance painting. He was so blond, his skin so white, his eyes so blue that it was impossible not to look at him. Also, Miriam was pleased that in spite of his youth the child behaved with such correct manners. Dalida and Ezekiel fought with each other, and she had to tell them not to run in the house and to always sit up straight.

  She spent the rest of the day without knowing what to do, and waited impatiently for Samuel to return from the laboratory. But she couldn’t find the right time to raise her fears with him, because he was tense and preoccupied.

  “I have to go to Berlin in a few weeks’ time, and I don’t like what’s happening in Germany,” he said as a greeting.

  “You mean the new chancellor?” she asked.

  “Yes, this Hitler hates the Jews.”

  “I don’t understand why President Paul von Hindenburg named him chancellor . . . ,” Miriam replied.

  “Because he is afraid of the communists. German politicians are worried that their compatriots will see communism as a solution to all their problems. Do you know how many people are out of work? The country is about to collapse. Konstantin insists that we should sell medicines to Germany, but ever since we’ve set up shop there I’ve only had headaches. And I won’t hide from you that these bands of swastika-waving thugs are terrifying . . . Lots of Jews are leaving Germany, others are refusing to go, they feel German like the others, but Hitler doesn’t believe them to be so. You can’t count the humiliations they’ve suffered.”

  “Then you shouldn’t go. You are a Jew, let Konstantin go.”

  “But he’s a Jew as well.”

  “Not as much as we are.”

  “What do you mean? His grandmother was Jewish.”

  “But his mother wasn’t, so he could be just another Russian. And as far as I know, he never sets foot in a synagogue.”

  “Come on, Miriam, I never go to the synagogue either, and you only go every once in a blue moon. What does going to the synagogue have to do with being Jewish?”

  “If you’re worried, you shouldn’t go to Berlin. Why do you need more money? You’ve got more than you’ll ever be able to spend.”

  They ate with their children. Miriam always sat the children at the table with them; she felt sorry for Gustav because Samuel had told her that he always either ate alone or with his nurse. Vera, sweet Vera, could not stop behaving like the aristocrat she was, and in her understanding it was impossible for a child to sit at the table with his parents. Konstantin did not share his wife’s opinion. But he was out of the house so often that it did not seem right for him to question his wife’s childrearing methods.

  She thrust Gustav out of her thoughts so that she could hear her children’s chatter. Dalida was a clever and perceptive child who never stopped asking questions.

  Then, once the children were in bed, Miriam took the opportunity to ask about the letter.

  “I left a letter on top of your chest of drawers, it must have fallen out of your pocket last night or this morning. It’s from Katia.”

  Samuel shifted in his chair but kept looking straight at her.

  “Yes, they’ve invited me to Gustav’s birthday party.”

  “It’s strange that they haven’t invited me or the children.”

  They were silent. Miriam looked straight at him; he wanted to escape from her gaze.

  “Well, Katia knows that you don’t like to travel.”

  “And how does she know? Perhaps because I’m never invited to be, for example, your companion on one of your interminable journeys to London?”

  “What are you trying to say?” Samuel was on edge now.

  “I’ve been in Paris for four years now, and I still don’t know why. When I came I was your wife, but now I’m only the woman who looks after your children. You asked me to give you time, and I gave you time. You have your laboratory, and a life that fits you like a glove, and there’s no room for me in it. I’m going to leave, Samuel, I’m going to go back to Palestine. Dalida and Ezekiel will come with me.”

  “I don’t understand you! You want to go because you are offended that Katia didn’t invite you personally to Gustav’s birthday party?” Samuel sounded irritated.

  “I want to go because I have nothing to do here. I’ve still not seen my mother’s tomb. My son Daniel is over there. My sister is still ill. I was not able to attend my niece’s wedding to Mikhail. Shall I give you more reasons? Yes, I’ll give you the definitive one: You don’t love me, Samuel, you don’t love me. I am a part of your surroundings and nothing more. You don’t love me and you don’t need me. Maybe you did at the beginning, but now I am unnecessary here. I will never fully adapt to life in Paris. I don’t like those parties where so many beautiful women compete among themselves, where the social relations are so hypocritical . . . Everyone criticizes everyone else . . . The men cheat on their wives with their wives’ best friends, and the wives take their revenge by spending their husbands’ money and cheating on him with the first good-for-nothing who comes along . . . And then, all those exiled Russians . . . Who do they think they are! Some of them still behave as if they lived in Saint Petersburg, as if they still had their palaces and their privileges . . . I am a peasant, Samuel. I was born in Hebron and looked after goats as a child. I ran around barefoot in the summer . . . What do I have in common with these women you introduce me to, who all look at me with condescension?”

  “Are you finished?” Samuel said, barely able to hide his irritation.

  “No, I am not finis
hed. I have something else to say to you. I don’t know if you are in love with Katia, it’s clear she is in love with you. But I see that you are a different person when you are with her. You are friendly, you smile . . . You treat her with so much attention and so much consideration . . . You fit so well with each other . . . I am tired of always feeling like an intruder. I’ll leave the field open to her.”

  Miriam got up and left the room. That night she slept in the guest bedroom and locked herself in, refusing to respond to Samuel’s requests that she open the door. The next day, he was standing outside when she let herself out.

  “You haven’t gone to the laboratory?” she asked, trying to appear indifferent.

  “You think I could do that after what you said to me last night?”

  “It is never pleasant to hear the truth.”

  Samuel knew that Miriam was right, and his selfishness hurt him, as did the fact that he was incapable of loving her more. Irina was the only woman he had ever loved, although sometimes he asked himself if he had been in love with a dream. He had liked Miriam for her strength, her righteousness, her optimism, and her ability to make everyday life easier, but had he been in love with her? No . . . No, he had not. He knew that Miriam was right: She did not fit in in Paris, and as for Katia, she was in his heart without his realizing it. That skinny little blonde girl who had annoyed him and Konstantin so much when they had been children together had become a woman toward whom it was difficult to remain indifferent, even though she was now mature. He couldn’t help but admit that her delicate manners and her Slavic beauty took him back to the years of his childhood, when he had admired all the beautiful women who came to the Goldanskis’ balls. And although he was sure that he was not in love with Katia, he could not resist the attraction he felt toward her.

  “I want us to give it another chance. I don’t know if it will do any good, but I want to try at least,” Samuel said.

  Miriam was about to burst into tears, but she said to herself that she would never forgive herself if she did.

  “I’ve been thinking that we should go to Spain, to Toledo, so that you can get to know the city that your ancestors fled more than four hundred years ago. Dalida and Ezekiel will like it, they are old enough to understand,” Samuel added.

  “Toledo? We’ll go to Toledo?” Miriam’s voice was filled with emotion.

  She couldn’t resist the invitation. When she was a little girl her father had told her how her ancestors had been expelled from their house in Toledo. Her father and uncles had told her about the city in such detail that it seemed to her that she knew it like the back of her hand. She kept the key to their former house in the city, a key that had been passed down from father to son over the centuries, along with the old title deeds to the property. Now the key was in Judith’s hands, as she was the older sister.

  She would find her roots in Toledo, she would find a part of her essence. She had never dreamed that she would be able to visit the former capital of Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella had forced her family to go into exile. In the Greek city of Thessaloniki, at that time part of the Ottoman Empire, they had found a new home, but they would never forget that their true home was in Sepharad, and that their house, their real house, was in a little alley in Toledo, close to the synagogue, not far from where Samuel Levi, the treasurer to Pedro I of Castile, had had his residence.

  When their paternal grandparents had begun to speak of Toledo, she and her sister Judith had listened in ecstasy. Her mother, a Jewish peasant from Hebron, felt proud to have married this man whose ancestors came from the ancient capital of Sepharad.

  Miriam’s happiness made Samuel feel a little less miserable. He had improvised the idea of traveling to Toledo, it was the first thing to come to mind when he was thinking of how to keep Miriam. Later he thought it was not such a good idea, as the journey served only to prolong a relationship that was already dying.

  They reached San Sebastián in the middle of March. It was cold. Spring had not yet reached the city. The children liked the city but they were only there for a couple of days. Samuel wanted to get to Madrid, where he was to have a meeting with a Catalan businessman who was keen to import some of the medicines his laboratory made.

  Manuel Castells was waiting for them at the Estación del Norte. Samuel thanked him for having made the effort to come meet them.

  “The Ritz is not very far from here. You couldn’t have chosen a better place to stay. Relax today, there will be time for business tomorrow.”

  The Spaniard was already quite old, and well but discreetly dressed. Miriam was surprised by the fluency with which he spoke French.

  “There is no escaping it if you want to do business,” he said, flattered. “But I have a confession to make: I am from Catalonia, my family is from Cerdaña, which is a village close to the border with France, and when I was a boy I had a nanny from Perpignan.”

  Miriam was surprised to find that she understood so much Spanish. It was familiar to her because her father had been Sephardi and that old version of Castilian was what she had learned from her mother’s lips. Miriam’s father liked to talk to his children in the language of Sepharad, and now Miriam was proud to find that she could understand almost everything that was being said around her.

  “I don’t like it as much as Paris,” Dalida said, looking at everything that surrounded them as the car drove along Gran Via.

  “How can you say that? You haven’t seen anything yet,” her mother answered.

  “You like it because you are Spanish,” Dalida claimed.

  Miriam sighed but said nothing. Her daughter was right, she did not think of herself as a stranger in Spain.

  When Manuel Castells found out that Samuel’s intention was to visit Toledo, he offered to lend them his car. They accepted gratefully, and four days after arriving in Madrid they set off again, heading toward the destination that Miriam longed so much to see: Toledo, the Imperial City. They booked themselves into a hotel not far from the cathedral, recommended to them by Castells himself.

  “It’s bigger than Notre-Dame,” Dalida said when she saw the majestic cathedral that dominated the city.

  Samuel had studied the map of the city very carefully and had asked his new business partner for directions to the street where Miriam’s forefathers had lived. He wanted to surprise her and take her there without telling her.

  “Let’s have a walk around Toledo,” he suggested to Miriam and his children.

  He made them walk for quite a while around the judería, which was what the area of the town was called where the Jews of Toledo used to live. As they walked, the spirit of the city began to impregnate their skin. The children walked together, surprised at these narrow streets whose corners seemed to form a labyrinth. Miriam looked at everything. She was obviously moved and could not stop talking.

  “It’s like the Old City,” Dalida said.

  “So, it reminds you of Jerusalem . . . It’s not a bad comparison,” Samuel said, who found his daughter’s comments enjoyable.

  “If only my father could see me now! He always dreamed of going to Toledo. He knew it so well . . . ,” Miriam interrupted them.

  “Were our grandparents ever in Toledo?” Dalida wanted to know.

  “No, but they knew all about the city because their parents had told them about it, and their parents’ parents had told them, and so on, all the way back to the fifteenth century, when our ancestors were expelled from Spain.”

  “Why were they expelled? Had they been bad?” Ezekiel asked.

  “Bad? No, they hadn’t done anything bad. They were expelled because they were Jews.”

  “We’re Jews, is that bad?” Ezekiel asked, worriedly.

  “No, it’s not bad, but there are some places where they don’t like the Jews,” Samuel interrupted.

  “But why?” Ezekiel insisted.

  Miriam tried to give an ex
planation that Ezekiel could grasp, but her son didn’t understand what his mother was saying, so finally he surprised them all by stating:

  “Well, all we have to do is stop being Jews, and then everyone will love us and they won’t throw us out of anywhere anymore.”

  Samuel hugged Ezekiel. At that moment he saw himself, many, many years ago, arguing with his father about whether he should be a Jew, and get rid of the stigma that made them different.

  When they had been walking for a while and the children seemed to be tired, Samuel decided to speed up a little.

  Finally they reached the Plaza del Conde, a few yards from where Miriam’s family’s house had been. Samuel took his wife’s hand and led them to an old wooden door, with black nails hammered into it. He saw Miriam trembling and noticed that her face was covered in tears.

  “Mama, why are you crying? Do you think they’ll throw us out for being Jews?” Ezekiel asked, worried ever since he had found out the consequences of Judaism.

  Miriam stood very still by the door and then put her hand onto the old wood and stroked it. Samuel told his children to take a step back to give his wife a little bit of space to gather her strength.

  Dalida and Ezekiel were very quiet, suddenly aware that this was a very special moment for their mother. Then she turned back to them and hugged them.

  “Shall we knock?” Samuel asked.

  “No! No!” she said, scared by Samuel’s daring.

  But he paid no attention and knocked a couple of times with the doorknocker. A few seconds went by, no more than that, and then the door opened. An elderly man looked at them with curiosity, wanting to know who these strangers were. Samuel didn’t think twice, and said that this house had been where his wife’s ancestors had lived, that they had the title deeds to this house, and that they didn’t want anything other than to have a look at the place that their ancestors, one sad day in the past, had been forced to abandon and go seek refuge in exile.