Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead

by Julia Navarro

  Miriam felt uncomfortable, angry at Dalida’s entrance, and ordered her to leave the room.

  “You are so ill-mannered! Your father and I are talking. How dare you eavesdrop and then interrupt us! Leave here at once!”

  “No, Dalida is right. She has a right to have an opinion about her future; she’s not a child anymore, she’s sixteen; Ezekiel is twelve, he’s old enough to decide.”

  My mother looked angrily at Samuel. She knew she had been beaten. Dalida made me come into the room and confront my parents.

  “Mama, I know what I want to do, I have decided to go with Papa and with Katia. Papa is right, we’ll be better there and we’ll be able to come see you.”

  My mother’s face showed the pain she felt. I saw that she was trying hard not to cry. Dalida’s betrayal had left her speechless. She looked at me and I wanted to hug her, to protect her, to shout at my father and my sister to get out, to leave us in peace. But I stayed silent, unable to move or utter a single word.

  Samuel seemed pleased, and took Dalida’s hand and squeezed it with affection.

  “And you, Ezekiel, what do you want to do? Will you come with us?”

  I don’t know how long I took to reply, but I remember my mother’s anguish as she waited.

  “No, I’ll stay with Mama.”

  This obviously surprised my father, he was expecting me to copy my sister’s decision. My mother was relieved and burst into tears.

  “Come on, Miriam! Don’t do this to the children! They have the right to choose.”

  She walked out of the room without saying another word and I ran after her. She hugged me so tight that I could scarcely breathe and said, in a faint little voice, “Thank you . . . thank you . . . thank you.” I wanted to go back to the room and tell my sister that she was shameful and disloyal, and that if she left I would never speak to her again. But I stayed still and hugged my mother.

  When they were going to leave, my father said he wanted to speak to me; we agreed that I would go to the King David Hotel and that he would not force me to see Katia.

  You can’t imagine what the King David was like back then. In the corridors you were as likely to pass a sheikh as you were to see a European aristocrat or a famous painter. Everybody who was anybody who came to Jerusalem stayed at the King David.

  My father had reserved a table on the terrace that was far enough from the rest of the hotel for us to be able to talk with a certain amount of privacy. I didn’t see Katia, but I did see Konstantin, who was very friendly toward me. But this was nothing new. Konstantin was like that, friendly and well disposed toward everybody.

  My father took a while to work his way round to the real reason for that meal. It seemed that he did not dare ask me straight out why I had decided to stay in Palestine, so I felt ever more nervous, as I knew that this was the only reason we were alone there together. When I could not bear it a minute longer I gave him my reasons, before he had a chance to ask for them.

  “I’m not going to London, I’m going to stay with Mama. I don’t think it would be good for us both to go with you and to leave her alone. You have Katia, but Mama only has us. Also, if I go to London I wouldn’t live with you, I’d be at a boarding school, which I would like even less. I wouldn’t like to live with Katia, I would think of Mama too often.”

  My father looked at me in surprise and I think he was even a little nervous.

  “So you’ve made your decision . . .”

  “Yes, I’m staying with Mama, and I think it’s a bad thing that Dalida is going with you. I’ve already told her that I will never forgive her.”

  “That’s not fair. You are free to choose, don’t blame your sister for having the same freedom.”

  “I don’t think it’s right to leave Mama. She loves us more than you do, she’s never left us alone. Mama never left us to be with anyone, but you did to be with Katia.”

  These reproaches hurt Samuel. You could see it in his expression, in the way his gaze became unfocused.

  “You shouldn’t judge me. When you are older I hope you will understand me.”

  “What do I have to understand, that you love Katia and you don’t love Mama?”

  I was being insolent. I was too hurt by my father to spare him this suffering. In fact, I needed him to suffer like I was suffering at this new separation.

  “I love your mother, and I assure you that I always think about her, just as I always think about you. But there are things that I do not know how to explain . . . that I do not want to explain. Yes, Katia is important for me and I want to live with her. You, too, will decide one day whom you want to live with and you won’t care what the rest of the world thinks.”

  “I don’t ever want to leave Mama.”

  “I’m very sorry you are not coming with us. I think that the best thing for you would be to receive a good education in a British school, but I cannot force you, so I won’t insist.”

  He said that now that I had made my decision there was nothing more for him to do in Palestine, and that he would leave Jerusalem in at most three days to head to Marseilles from Jaffa, and then he would go to Paris before leaving for London.

  We said goodbye at the hotel, because when he went back three days later to pick up Dalida I was nowhere to be found. I asked Wädi to help me hide. He insisted that I should say goodbye to my father and my sister, but I didn’t want to because I was afraid I would cry.

  When at last they left I went back to the house. My mother had locked herself in her room, and Kassia said that it was better for me to leave her a while.

  “She needs to be free to cry, it was not easy for her to say goodbye to Dalida.”

  Kassia seemed angry, as did Ruth, who had used her illness as an excuse not to leave her room to say goodbye to Samuel. The only ones who had kept up appearances were Marinna and her son Ben, as Igor was at the quarry and he, too, had saved himself this scene.

  Marinna held me tight and tried to console me, but I escaped once again and ran to Wädi’s house and asked Salma if I could stay for dinner with them. Salma agreed and sent me to be with Wädi.

  We were all upset at Dalida’s absence, especially my mother. I think that Miriam saw it as a betrayal on her daughter’s part. I don’t know why, but we stopped mentioning Dalida, as if she had never existed. I suppose we did so to lessen Miriam’s suffering. I only spoke about my sister with Wädi, who said that he would never pardon his sister Naima if she did what Dalida had done.

  Nineteen thirty-eight was a year in which death decided to visit Hope Orchard without showing us any mercy.

  The first to go was the old pharmacist, Netanel. He died of pneumonia. Sometimes I wonder if he actually wanted to die, because for all that my mother and Louis insisted that he go to the hospital he claimed the opposite.

  “It’s nothing, just a cold and general old age,” he said to calm us down.

  One morning, when he seemed to be choking to death, Louis sent my brother Daniel to look for Yossi. When my uncle arrived, even though they took Netanel to the hospital, it was too late for them to do anything for him. He died a few hours later.

  Daniel was the one most strongly affected by the old pharmacist’s death.

  Netanel had been like a second father to him. After our mother, the pharmacist was the most important person in his world. They had spent many hours in the laboratory together, and Netanel had, with great patience, taught the young man all he could.

  Daniel had never been all that fond of Samuel. He thought he was an intruder, someone who came between him and his mother, and when Miriam brought Dalida and me into the world, I suppose that only made him feel more alone.

  In spite of always being attentive to Daniel’s wishes and desires, Samuel didn’t show him very much affection either. As for Dalida, she did not seem to take much interest in her big brother, who preferred to spend all his time i
n the laboratory and whom my mother had to send for to make him come and eat with us. The difference between our ages was too great for us to feel close to one another, so Daniel grew up feeling lonely, and he found the affection that he didn’t find at home in Netanel.

  I still remember how I felt to see him weep for the old pharmacist. Nothing my mother said could console him.

  Back then, although he was already a man, Daniel was still studying at the university. Netanel had decided to make a good pharmacist out of him, and so, although the laboratory had been destroyed in the fire, he undertook the task of building it back up. It was more modest even than the first one, because Netanel was really too old now to do such work, but it was enough for him to be able to teach Daniel, and most importantly, for Daniel to have a place where he could hide.

  “That boy’s going to get ill,” Kassia said to Miriam, worried because Daniel hardly ate anything.

  “I don’t know what else I can say,” Miriam said sadly.

  “He needs you more than he’s needed you his entire life. He needs to know he is not alone,” Kassia insisted.

  “But he’s never been alone! I’m his mother and I love him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t see it like that. You were too much in love with Samuel, too busy with Dalida and Ezekiel. I think that Daniel feels he’s not important to you, at least not as important as the family you created with Samuel.”

  Kassia’s words hurt her because she knew in her heart that she was right.

  “What can I do?”

  “Be with him, speak to him, convince him to finish his studies.”

  “Of course he will finish his studies! With what the university is costing us, how could he want to drop them now!”

  But Daniel did leave the university. He refused to finish out the year, and the most surprising thing was that he told his mother he wanted to be a rabbi.

  “But you’ve never wanted to hear a single word about religion before now!” Miriam said, trying to understand her son.

  Yossi found a solution for Daniel. He would go to a kibbutz in Tiberias. If he still wanted to be a rabbi after a few months, then no one would stand in his way.

  “He needs to find a meaning to his life, and he needs to do it by himself. Let him go, he’s a man now,” Yossi said to Miriam.

  She accepted, even though it hurt her to see Daniel leave. She felt guilty that she had not been able to show just how much she loved him.

  I also suffered to see Daniel go. He was my older brother, and although we treated each other with indifference, he was a part of my daily life.

  “I don’t think I’ve been a good brother to Daniel,” I admitted to Wädi.

  “Don’t be silly! Of course you’ve been a good brother, why would you think that you haven’t?”

  “I didn’t speak to him much, I wasn’t interested in what he did and . . . Well, I heard him say once to Kassia that he felt as if he’d been pushed to one side because my mother loved Dalida and me more than him.”

  “Brothers don’t always get on well, I fight with Naima all the time, she’s a busybody, but I love her even if I never say so.”

  “Do you think that my mother loves Dalida and me more?”

  Wädi was silent for a while. I knew he would tell me the truth.

  “No, I don’t think so. When you were born, Daniel was already quite grown up and your mother had to pay more attention to you than him. Daniel might have been angry that his mother married another man.”

  “But Daniel’s father had died . . .”

  “Yes, but . . . Well, I wouldn’t like it if my mother married another man. Would you?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know whether I would care or not, I was so angry with my father. I couldn’t forgive him for having left, and even less for having left with Dalida.

  I went to Wädi about everything. He was eighteen and a man, and I was an adolescent, twelve years old, but he was always patient and affectionate with me. There was no one I trusted as much as him, when it came down to it I owed him my life.

  I would fight with Ben, Marinna and Igor’s son, over almost every little thing. We were very different even though we loved each other, having grown up together. Ben preferred action, he was always planning some mischief or other, and I was more peaceful. I liked to read and had no trouble with my studies, but Ben passed each subject with great difficulty. The teachers said that he couldn’t sit still for a minute, that he was incapable of concentrating on what he was doing. But although he was not good at math he had other qualities. With just a quick glance over any machine he could take it apart and put it back together. He could fix anything, even the motor on our old truck. He had a prodigious memory. He could remember anything, even if he had only heard it once. I think that Ben liked to flirt with Naima back then, but Marinna and Salma did all they could to keep them apart. Marinna, normally so easygoing toward her son, would get seriously angry if she saw him going over to the fence that separated our land from that of Mohammed and Salma.

  “Do you want to ruin Naima?”

  “I’m only going to talk to her!” Ben protested.

  “There are enough problems between the Arabs and the Jews for you to go throwing more wood on the fire. Naima is fifteen and she’s not a child anymore, she can’t go running around with you anymore.”

  “Why not?” Ben asked.

  “Because it’s not the right thing to do. Do you want to make problems for her? I won’t allow it.”

  One morning when I was getting up to go to school I saw Igor with his mother in his arms, and Louis helping him. They took her to the hospital and she died that morning.

  Ruth had been ill for a long time and had not left her room. She had suffered a stroke and the left side of her body was paralyzed. We all looked after her, but it was Kassia who treated her like a sister.

  I was affected to see Igor crying like a child over the death of his mother. Not even Marinna seemed able to console him. Ben seemed to have become invisible for a few days. He was deeply affected by his grandmother’s death. The only moments in the day when Ben was quiet was when he came back from school in the evening and sat next to Ruth’s bed to tell her what he had done that day. Ruth could barely speak a word, but her eyes lit up when she had Ben near her.

  “We’re getting old, first Dina, now Ruth, I’ll be next,” Kassia said, and her words made a chill run down my spine.

  Kassia was the pillar holding up Hope Orchard. I could not imagine the house without her, I thought we could all disappear without anything happening, but not Kassia.

  I was still an adolescent when I realized that in the ever more bloody conflicts between the Arabs and the British, it was the Arabs who were getting the worst of it. Louis always said that they were disorganized and this made them more vulnerable.

  Louis still disappeared from time to time, although less often than before. He had, in a natural way, assumed the leadership that Samuel had abandoned years before. Igor, the other man in the house, recognized his authority, as did Moshe.

  The relationship between Louis and Moshe was tense, as Moshe had decided to support the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel (Irgun Zevai Leumi), better known as the Irgun. They argued a lot nowadays, as Louis, an important member of the Haganah, disagreed strongly with the Irgun’s military and political plans.

  “We are not at war with anyone; our aim is to defend ourselves, defend our farms and our homes,” Louis never tired of repeating.

  But Moshe thought that the Arabs and the British were just two sides of the same coin, both of them creating obstacles to the Jews having their own homeland.

  “You know what, Moshe? They persecuted us for centuries in Europe, the tsars organized pogroms against the Jews, and the only places in the whole world where we could live peacefully were in the East, within the borders of the Ottoman
Empire or even farther afield. The Arabs are not our enemies, we’ve lived with them for centuries with no greater problems than you would normally have with any neighbor.”

  Moshe did not listen to reason.

  “The British will leave, and then it will be them or us. The sooner that the Haganah realizes this, the better it will be for all of us.”

  Kassia didn’t invite Moshe and Eva to spend Sabbath with us very often. She said that she was tired of these interminable discussions that never led anywhere.

  “You know that Moshe is a part of the Irgun. He shouldn’t even be with us. I don’t agree with any of the atrocities they have carried out, and when I see him I wonder if it was he who carried them out,” Kassia complained.

  Marinna agreed with her mother.

  “We gave them shelter when they arrived, but many years have gone by now, they’re not poor immigrants with no resources anymore. They could go anywhere. Their children live on a kibbutz in Galilee, why don’t they go to be with them? Every time I think that it was their group that threw grenades into that café in Jerusalem . . .”

  “But we don’t know if he was involved,” Miriam said, uncertainly.

  “You should talk to Moshe,” Kassia insisted to Louis.

  Miriam, my mother, tried to mediate. She didn’t sympathize with Moshe and Eva, but she didn’t like the idea of throwing anyone out of Hope Orchard. I suppose that in her heart of hearts she thought Samuel would not have approved, as he saw Hope Orchard as a place of welcome.

  “We must learn to respect one another. Moshe and Eva don’t live in this house,” Miriam said.

  “Yes, but they live two hundred yards away,” Marinna replied.

  “But we never even see them,” my mother insisted.

  “I want to have Moshe nearby. I think it’s not a bad idea for the Haganah to have some notion of what the Irgun is up to, although our leaders don’t think it’s a good idea to deal with them,” Louis explained.

  I liked to hear the adults talk, especially Louis, to whom I had assigned, without realizing it, the role of father. I told him all my little secrets, and it was also he who scolded me when I did something wrong, or when he saw me trying to get out of helping my mother.