An Imperfect Lens (14 page)

LYDIA MALINA SAT down at her dressing table and reached into a back drawer that was hidden by the drapes of cloth that formed a skirt around the table. She pulled out a purple case. In it were her pearls, the same pearls she had received when she became engaged to the young doctor Abraham Malina. These were not her mother’s pearls. Those had actually been stolen when the family was crossing the Mediterranean when a wave of anti-Semitism had erupted in Ulm, where her grandfather had sold furniture bought at auction, very fine furniture, out of a barn set up to resemble a nobleman’s home. It had, Lydia’s mother had told her, a six-foot-wide crest on the door, with two blue herons curling their claws around golden spears. These pearls had been fastened about Lydia’s neck the evening before her own wedding to Abraham Malina by an uncle who had been in the jewelry business in Amsterdam and had come to the wedding in Alexandria because of his interest in antiquities as well as to set up some business possibilities.

Lydia Malina had decided to give the pearls to her daughter. Este watched her mother pull out the purple case. She threw her arms around her mother when she saw the contents. But when she tried them on, both women saw instantly that Este, who was taller than her mother, was also broader, and the pearls seemed unimpressive and almost choked her. “We have to add to them,” said Lydia.

So, one morning, despite the fact that Este wanted to go to the laboratory and had tried to postpone the errand, the two women, with the best and most innocent of intentions, sat at the counter at Goldstein and Brothers, Jewelers, on rue Rosette. “These are for my daughter’s marriage. We need to enlarge, add to the string, match them up exactly,” Lydia explained.

The co-owner of the store, one Robert Kremetz, noticed the ring on Este’s finger. “You are to be congratulated,” he said.

Este smiled her most brilliant smile. “Thank you,” she said, and modestly looked away from his staring eyes.

“What a large and extraordinary ring,” he said. “May I look at it closely?” He wanted an excuse to hold her hand.

“Of course,” she said.

He brought her hand up to his eye. Something did not seem exactly right. Tactfully he said, “Dearest lady, I need to look at your ring with my jeweler’s glass.”

“Why?” said Lydia. “Is something wrong?”

“Most likely not,” he said, “but I think I should look nevertheless.”

Este smiled at him again. She did not doubt for a moment that her ring was perfect.

“Will you have a glass of lemonade while you wait?” he asked.

The servant he summoned appeared with a silver tray and two glasses of lemonade, each with a slice of lemon floating on the top.

“Thank you,” said Lydia. “That’s very thoughtful.” But she was too worried about what Robert Kremetz might find when he examined the ring to drink. Este did not like lemonade. She left her glass sitting on the tray. She ignored the small piece of chocolate imported from Sienna that rested beside the glass. She was looking at herself in the mirror.

In a blink of an eye she would be an old woman, older than her mother, in her grave. It seemed wrong that time could not be stopped in its tracks. Her finger felt bare, even though she had only worn her ring for a few days. “I think,” she said to her mother, “your Eric likes you more than he should.”

Lydia turned her head away. “It’s you he likes,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Este answered. “I’m far too young for him, and besides, I’m engaged to be married.”

“So much the worse for him,” said Lydia. And she added, “He is not one of us.”

Este saw Robert coming through the curtain that separated the back room from the front of the store. He was looking puzzled. It was his duty, his honor, to tell the women the bad news, but he knew that their anger might fall on his head.

“Ladies,” he said, “it is my solemn duty—”

Este interrupted him with a small laugh. “Oh, please, don’t be so solemn.” But then she looked at his face and saw that he really was serious, very serious.

“This ring”—he handed it back to Este—“is a very flawed diamond. In fact, it is worth no more than the setting, which itself is actually brass.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Este.

“There’s been a mistake, I’m sure,” said Lydia, who wasn’t so sure. “Look again,” she insisted. “Perhaps there is something wrong with your glass.”

Robert brought out his glass and a blue velvet cushion. Este placed the ring on the cushion and he bent over it with the jeweler’s loupe in his eye. “There you can see it,” he said.

“I hardly see anything,” said Este, when he offered his glass to her.

“Look,” he said, and he took out a gold key and opened a cabinet door and removed a tray of glistening diamonds of many sizes. He picked one of a similar size to the one they were examining. He placed it on a red cushion and pinned it down with a curved pin just in case he should turn his back and the ladies should think to make a switch. He trusted them, of course, but he trusted no one absolutely, which was a mark of the professionalism on which he prided himself.

Este looked. Lydia looked. “I’m sorry,” said Robert Kremetz. He asked if they would like to look at pearls. But the mother and daughter both shook their heads. This was no time for pearls. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told them, the jeweler thought to himself as he watched their straight backs walk out of his store, each of the women pretending that nothing of importance had happened.

They would be back. He sat in synagogue two rows in front of Dr. Malina. He had served as president of the synagogue and was honored every year because of his contributions to the building fund—the endless building fund. They would not go to another jeweler. But they would rely on his discretion, and discreet he would be. In certain ways a jeweler had to be like a priest, a keeper of secrets.

A LETTER WITH foreign stamps arrived in the post. It was from Jacob. Lydia took it upstairs to her bedroom to read. She sat down at her dressing table and then, with quick fingers, tore open the envelope. Jacob had had a fever, but it seemed to have passed. “Don’t worry, Mother,” he said. “Many people have fevers here.” He had used quinine, which had helped. He had obtained a small warehouse in Jaffa where he would store the olives he would purchase and begin the process of making oil. He had ordered a press from Istanbul, which should arrive soon. He would send her a sample as soon as his firm was operating. He had found a partner who had given the Czar’s army the slip and was a man of great energy. All would be well. “Hope you and father are content, and tell Este I miss her. There was an article in the English paper about cholera in Alexandria. I couldn’t tell from the report if the outbreak is serious. As you can imagine, my finances are low with all the starting expenses. If you would replenish my account, it would be helpful at this critical moment. Affectionately, your son, Jacob.”

Lydia imagined Jacob’s warehouse. She saw his name over the door on a large red sign. She thought of him lying on his bed, the sheets wet with his fever. She wanted to go to Palestine. That was where she belonged. But that was not where she belonged. Jacob would have to return to Alexandria for Este’s wedding. But he might be too busy. He might not come. She had a headache. She sent the servant to Dr. Malina’s clinic. She needed to see him immediately. By the time he came to her bedside an hour and a half later her headache had gone. All that remained was an irritable feeling, having as much to do with Este’s worthless ring as her distant son.

THE BRITISH OFFICER in charge of the customhouse had heard from one of his informants that several thousand pounds of hashish were to be brought ashore in the late evening. He dressed his men as Greek fishermen and spaced them far apart on the empty beach. Around midnight, clearly seen under the bright moon, a small skiff appeared and men covered in scarves pulled their boat up on the shore and began unloading barrels. The British officer did not tell his men to move in for the arrest. He waited until all the barrels were loaded on the donkey carts that appeared as if by magic out of the darkness. He and his men followed the carts at a safe distance to a glass factory down one of the many narrow alleys in the Arab quarter. There they arrested everyone they saw, including Marcus, who had agreed to aid the smugglers because he would be paid. He had been offered the work by a new friend from the Arab quarter whom he had met on the beach and with whom he had shared a bottle of cheap wine. The British arrested the woman who was leaving the brothel two doors down, and the glassblower, who had no business at his place of work at that time of night. Among their catch was the Arab boy who worked for Dr. Malina. In fact the boy kept insisting that Dr. Malina would post his bail if someone just notified him. The name rang a bell with the arresting officer, who had chased a thief to the doctor’s surgery some months before. The doctor had given up his patient reluctantly, insisting that medical attention be supplied him, pushing a clean bandage into a soldier’s hand. The Malina name was recognized by the higher officers, who remembered the son’s hasty departure. The name had a sour taste in the mouth of the arresting officer, who had always assumed that wherever you found Jews, you found crime. But as the officers were about to get their prisoners to reveal the name of their boss, who they were certain must be Dr. Malina, the head of the customs office himself came to police headquarters and insisted on the release of all their captives. This particular group of smugglers had relatives in high places in the Khedive’s government, a shadow government to be sure, but it would be unwise for the British to offend them, to put a hole in the curtain that covered British control of Egypt all the way to the Sudan. The police officers were furious that their night’s work was for nothing. The Arab boy said nothing to Dr. Malina about his near imprisonment, but fell asleep at his post at the door and could hardly be aroused, not even when the cook kicked him. Marcus did not appear in the laboratory the next day but this was no longer unusual, and the French scientists did not find out that they almost had lost him forever.

ERIC FORTMAN WALKED along the sea side of the bazaar and looked at a table set up with odd objects. There he saw a small elephant statue, an elephant from India with red and blue flowers painted on its gray back, and real—or at least they looked real— ivory tusks, and he saw that it was a Ganesh. His cabinmate on the
Grey Falcon
had been a student from India who had spent three years at university in England and had been on his way home. He was to board a steamer for Bombay in Alexandria. Eric wondered if he had survived the wreck. The student had told him that images of Ganesh were good luck. The young man had pulled from his pocket his own small Ganesh, which he claimed had kept the ship afloat across the dangerous waters and through the heavy winds. Here on the table was an identical Ganesh. Of course it hadn’t been so effective off the shores of Alexandria, but it was a pretty little thing. It was placed beside a great tortoise-shell bowl and near a gold necklace with a jade piece in the center. Eric stared. A man appeared from behind a hanging curtain, smiling. “Are you looking at something in particular?” he asked in French.

“Oui,”
said Eric Fortman.

Recognizing his mistake, the shopkeeper shifted into English. “What do you like? What caught your eye?”

“The Ganesh.”

“Ah,” said the shopkeeper, “a very valuable Ganesh, good fortune accompanies him, some think. Even some Christians and many Muslims think this is so,” he added.

“Superstitious nonsense,” said Eric, who didn’t want the price to go above his willingness to pay. He was offered a beer, a good English beer. As he sipped it, the merchant talked on and on.

The Ganesh had been brought to him by a child who had made a voyage from a small village outside of New Delhi, and was headed up to Cairo with his master, who had bought the figure from the boy’s parents for a few pence. The boy had stolen it from his master because he had been badly beaten and intended to run away. The peddler himself had seen the welts. The master had been a collector of fine art. This was a very valuable Ganesh.

“Hadn’t helped the child, had it?” Eric said first in English, then in French.

“Did you know,” asked the man, “that Muhammad Ali himself had a Ganesh that he kept with him at all times?”

The statue of Muhammad Ali in the Grand Square depicted a man accustomed to command.

“I have no doubt,” said Eric who was a salesman himself.

Eric Fortman held the small elephant statue in his hand and did not put it back on the table. He wanted it not for himself but as a gift for a young woman, to show that he had nothing but good intentions toward her, to bring her luck, to bring himself luck with her. He bought the Ganesh, and it was wrapped in purple paper and placed in a small white box. The minute he had the box in his hands, he knew that his luck, the luck that had kept him from drowning at sea, that had brought him to jostle a kind lady with a connection to Marbourg & Sons, the luck that kept his black hair full and bushy and kept the earache he had as a child from doing away with him, that good fortune would hold. Even though he did not for a moment believe that little elephant statues could actually sway the fates, he did believe that he himself was blessed and it could do no harm to purchase a Ganesh for a person whose affections he sought.

After the merchant was certain his customer had turned the corner, he put the bills he had received in a locked box, and from a bag under the table he took out another Ganesh, one of about a hundred he had purchased for a song from a wharf rat who, on a false tip, had taken a barrel from a ship in port in the middle of the night when the watch was sound asleep, thinking the barrel contained gold bars, only to find in the excelsior packing enough tiny elephants to populate a miniature African country. The new Ganesh was placed in the center of the table to wait for the next customer.

LYDIA BROODED. What to do about the ring that was less than it should be? That was another discovery made by a magnifying glass, proving only that seeing more was not always desirable. On the other hand, she thought it was better to know what was there than to be fooled. Albert might be a good-looking young man, but he might have a character that was as flawed as the diamond he had given her daughter. She intended to proceed cautiously, to test out the situation, to be rational in her approach. This she owed her child.