The Covenant (9 page)

Only last night she’d dreamed about her own granddaughter. The dream had started with a knock on the door. Whe n she’d looked through the peephole, Elizabeth had been standing there, angry and impatient, wheeling a baby carriage while two little ones clutched her side. And whe n Esther had opened to let her in, Elizabeth had shouted angry accusations and explanations at her. Instead of defending herself, she’d just gathered her granddaughter into her arms and cried and cried and cried.

It had felt so incredibly real.

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, getting black mascara on the Belgian lace. Her daughter Marietta, Elizabeth’s mother, had dealt with the situation much better than she had. Marietta and Elizabeth were not only in touch, but mother and daughter saw each other every few months—although
Marietta couldn’t actually travel to visit Elizabeth; they didn’t let Jews into Saudi Arabia.

From the pictures Marietta had brought over, the children were beautiful, with Elizabeth’s blue-green eyes, and her husband’s black hair and swarthy complexion. Beautiful Elizabeth. How she longed to see her!

But even if she could bring herself to invite her granddaughter, would Elizabeth agree to come? And if she did, would she insist on bringing the Arab with her? She felt her blood pressure rise and her face flush at the thought of one of her offspring, a convert to Islam…

The interviewer coughed politely, leaning forward. “Ready?”

“No! Wait. Give me a mirror, Morrie,” she called out.

“Gran… really!”

Whatever they said about Morrie not being the brightest star, he was her favorite; her choice to take over the company when she died. She kept him by her side.

“I just want to check if my mascara streaked.”

“Gran, don’t worry about it. This is not going to be broadcast on the Fashion Channel. It’s for history.”

“Everything you do when you are seventy-five and the head of Elizabeth Estay Cosmetics is for history, Morrie.”

“Seventy-eight, Gran,” he murmured, handing her a mirror.

She eyed herself, taking in her still remarkably unlined complexion, the lovely blue eyes, the beautifully cut silver hair.

“He never lets me get away with anything, do you Morrie?” she said with a sidelong glance and the barest of smiles. “All right, all right. Seventy-eight. But even when I’m one hundred and twenty, lying in that expensive, silk-lined oak box, I still want people to look at me and say: ‘That Esther Gold! I should only look as good alive as she does dead. Maybe I should buy her creams and potions…’ When the time comes, I could be a great advertisement, Morrie. Don’t forget.” She handed him back the mirror.

He looked pained. “Really, Gran…”

A small, wicked smile curled the ends of her perfectly made-up lips. “What do you think of this color?” she asked, turning to the interviewer, pouting. “Just in from the laboratory. They don’t even have a name for it
yet,” she said, taking in the young woman’s pale lips and colorless cheeks, her ringless fingers with their chewed-off nails. Hearing these horror stories day after day would take the curl out of anyone’s lashes. Still… “You are a lovely young lady. You should pardon me, but you should take time from your important work to be nice to yourself. Put on a little moisturizer, some mascara, blush…”

“Really, Gran…” Morrie protested.

“I know what you think. Frivolous. Vain. But sometimes a woman’s looks can be a matter of life and death. In Auschwitz, I taught the other members of the Covenant to use machine grease to darken our lashes, and blood to rouge our cheeks to make us look healthier. To avoid selections. With good cosmetics, you can even flirt with the Angel of Death…” She sighed.

“The Covenant?” The interviewer asked, intrigued.

“Have you ever read the Bible, my dear?”

“For my Bat Mitzvah.”

“Do you remember the covenant God made with Abraham? It was more than a promise. It was an everlasting bond, an agreement that couldn’t be broken: ‘Unto thy seed have I given this land…’ Believe me, some of the Jews are sorry they ever agreed. They wish God would pick another people to be the Chosen Ones for the next few thousand years… But that’s just too bad. You agree, and that’s it. That’s what the four of us called it, the agreement we made in Auschwitz between ourselves: a Covenant. You can’t get out of it—not like what my lawyers put in my contracts—there’s no ‘escape clause.’ “ She chuckled. “Believe me, it hasn’t been easy.”

“What did you four agree to do?”

“Ah. I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it.”

They had managed to keep it a secret for almost sixty years.

“Would it be all right if we got going again, Mrs. Gold? I know your time is very valuable and we appreciate your being involved in this import—”

She held up her hand. “Just ask.” She clasped her hands together, the knuckles turning white from the grip. “And I’ll try to remember.”

“All right then.” The woman nodded to the cameraman, who started the camera rolling. “Let’s continue. You had just finished telling us about your childhood, before the war.”

Did I tell it right? Did I explain the golden summer days swimming in bright green lakes as clear as crystal? The falls and winters up in the mountains, skiing? The evenings sitting beside Father on the garden swing, with him singing Hungarian folk songs in his rich baritone? Waking up in a roomfilledwith feather beds, and hand-made dolls imported from Germany and France? The feeling of being loved and privileged and happy and safe, part of a world that was infinitely generous? Infinitely compassionate and fair?

“What is your first memory of when things began to change?”

In the blink of an eye, Adam and Eve banished from Eden. Had they also wondered if they’d dreamt it?

“That was in 1940. In our Hungarian village,Jewish men were called up for forced labor. Until then, we didn’t even realize we were Jews. Father was spared because he was a war hero, but my brothers were taken. And then, in 1942, Admiral Hrothy’s gendarmes came to the store. They wrote down everything we had. Soon after, they boarded it up and took my father away.” Her voice grew husky. “I never saw him again.”

“Would you like to stop for a minute?” the interviewer asked gently.

Esther looked at the young face suffused with understanding and sympathy: no makeup in the world can make a face so beautiful, she thought gratefully. “No, thank you darling. Let’s just keep going…” She waved away the glass of water Morrie held out to her, touching his face. “It’s all right. All right.”

She took a deep breath. “It was just me and Mother. My brothers were already in labor camps. I remember the day they forced us out of our house. Our own foreman did it. The one my father had trusted most.”

The streets, lined with friends and neighbors, people who had worked for her good father, people who had asked for his help, asked for food, clothing, loans, and had never been turned away. Their smug, satisfied faces. Couldn’t they have at least shed a few tears?

“The train took us to the central ghetto. They took us into an interrogation room and…” She mopped her forehead. “I’ll need that drink now, Morrie…” She waved the water away impatiently. “Double vodka, and don’t be cute.” The liquid burned down her throat.

“They took me into an interrogation room,” she repeated hoarsely.

The fat gendarme with the filthy fingers and the leering mouth. Her skirt lifted
,
hisfingersinside, searching for jewels. A young girl
. . .
But you don’t die of shame. Only one thing kills you, only one: death. Everything else, you can survive.

“And then, they took my mother.”

Mother, whose white hands painted watercolors, who sat at the head of a gracious table speaking of French cinema and Russian literature
. . .

She balled her fingers into a fist. “They molested me. And I knew what my mother was in for. I wanted to grab the guards. To stick my fingers in their eyes, to scratch their faces bloody! But I knew if I did, they would torture and kill us both. I was helpless.”

Can she, can any American, conceive of that? Even begin to understand?

Totally helpless.

“I just sat there and waited. When she came out of that room—
how can I explain it?
—it was as if she was already in another world. I knew then that the horrors I was about to face would be unimaginable. But at least, I thought, I wouldn’t be alone. I still had my mother.

“We were shoved into boxcars. Each moment, she seemed to grow smaller and paler, almost translucent. She was fading in front of my eyes. I begged her to hold on, but I could see she didn’t hear me. And then, suddenly, on the third day without food or water, she turned to me with this otherworldly light in her eyes: ‘Live,’ she said. ‘Teach my grandchildren that… that… human beings are capable of infinite glory.’ ”

She sat silently, her head bowed, staring at her lap. Her chin trembled as she took deep breaths of the sweet, clean air of her own perfumed home.

Mother.

“I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt. Gran…”

“Not now, Morrie!”

“Gran. It’s your friend Leah from Brooklyn.”

“Leah? Rabinowitz?” She looked at her watch. “Listen, tell her I’m finally doing the tape. Tell her I’ll call her right back. She’ll understand.”

“Will you excuse us a moment?” he said to the interviewer and cameraman.

“Morrie, this is the reason that people complain about you. You don’t listen…”

“Gran!”

She stared at him, her annoyance giving way to alarm.

He took her arm and tucked it through his, helping her out of the chair
and over to the phone. “It’s Leah’s granddaughter, Elise. There’s been a terrorist attack. Elise’s husband, her child…”

Esther felt a sudden vulnerable space open inside her body, a place that she had kept closed so tight, made so hard over the years. A soft, fleshy spot began to throb, naked and exposed.

This couldn’t happen. This was a new world. A world all her work had made safe and comfortable for those she loved. She wouldn’t permit it to happen.

“Give me that phone… Leah? My God, my God!” Esther put her hand over the phone and hissed to Morrie: “Get me Dr. Shavaunpaul at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan on your cell phone. Use his private pager number and tell him it’s me and it’s an emergency—

“Leah. This is not like you… “ I thought you had no tears left, Leah, my Leah.

Morrie motioned to her urgently. “The doctor’s on the phone.”

She reached out for it. “Leah, go lay down. My doctor’s coming over. Go lay down. Go! What use will you be to Elise otherwise? Take your medicine and lay down. Of course you’ll go to Israel, to be with her. Of course, we all will. But now go lay down, so you’ll have the strength. Good-bye. I’m hanging up, Leah. Good-bye. Yes. Go, go.”

She grabbed the cell phone out of Morrie’s hand: “Doctor? Esther Gold, of Estay Cosmetics. Yes, of course… I’ve been giving that cardiac intensive care unit you wrote me about a lot of thought… But I’m actually calling for another reason. I have a friend in New York, not far from you, with a heart condition…”

Her grandson listened, amazed and appalled as his grandmother wheedled and bullied the world-famous heart specialist into making a house call.

“Morrie. Send a car to pick up the doctor and take him to Leah’s. And isn’t there some kind of private agency that negotiates the release of kidnap victims? Find out, Morrie. And get them on the phone… maybe send the plane to pick them up…”

“Now, Gran…”

“And we need to tell Maria… and Ariana…” She suddenly remembered the interview.

“Oh, the Shoah Foundation people…”

“I’ve already spoken to them. They understood. They’ll reschedule.”

”Did you give her a box of samples?”

“I gave them both a box of samples.”

She sighed. “You’re a big help to me, Morrie.”

“Thank you. Now I want you to sit back and listen to me,” he said with authority.

“I don’t have time…” She stood up.

He pushed her gently back into her chair. “Gran, be realistic. First of all, there’s no evidence they’ve actually been kidnapped…”

“Don’t go there, Morrie. Just don’t.”

“All right, calm down. Okay. Let’s say they are alive and well and ransom demands suddenly do surface. These Islamic terrorists aren’t going to ask for money, like the South American kidnappers. They’ve got money, and plenty of it. They’ll make political demands, or try to get their terrorist friends out of jail… In either case, you won’t be able to satisfy them. In the end, the army will have to deal with it. Don’t you trust the Israeli army?”

“Yes. But I don’t trust Israeli politicians.”

“Why not?” he said, surprised.

“Because they’re like all politicians. Jon and liana’s lives won’t be their only consideration in sending in the army to rescue them. They’ll have to decide what the UN will say, or what CNN will broadcast, and what headlines will be in the
L.A. Times
. . . I want my own army, which takes orders from me. And I can afford it.”

He allowed himself a small smile, then became completely serious. He knelt down beside her, holding her trembling hands and looking into her flashing eyes. “Gran. With all the goodwill and all the money in the world, you aren’t going to be able to do anything. You’re helpless.”

She flung off his hands, bolting upright, all five feet of her shaking with fury. He stepped back, alarmed.

“What do you know about helpless? You want helpless? What about being fifteen years old and weighing forty pounds and waiting outside at a train station in subzero weather all tarted up in a summer dress stolen from some murdered woman? And all around you are beastly armed guards, and their vicious barking dogs, and you know that when the train comes in, you are going to get a one-way ticket to the most horrible death imaginable to any woman? You talk to me, to
me
, about
helpless situations?”

”Gran… I just… meant…” He stuttered.

“Listen to me, Morrie: those days are over, the days of
helpless.
You see this house? The furniture? You think I worked so hard for this? Got rich for this? This could burn down tomorrow, it wouldn’t mean a thing to me. No. Everything I ever did in my life was to make sure those days were over. Do you understand me, Morrie?!” Her body trembled. “Do you have any idea who Leah Rabinowitz is? What she did for me?” She took a deep breath, fingering her pearls. Her eyes narrowed. “We are going to find Jonathan Margulies. We are going to find liana. And we are going to do everything humanly possible to bring them back to Elise and Leah. Is that clear?”