The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (19 page)

To catch flies, tie bunches of ferns shredded at the edges across a room; or set out a dish of milk with hare’s gall or crushed onions, which the flies will sip and then expire
.

To keep clothes clean, she maintained, spread them in the sun, and brush with dry twigs. To take out spots, heat urine and soak the spot two days. Then squeeze out. If it wasn’t gone, add more urine and fuller’s earth soaked in lye (or ashes), and clean with a chicken feather soaked in hot water
.

If one’s furs got hard, take a mouthful of wine and spit on them. Then throw them on the floor and let them dry
.

As for the care of a husband, my aunt declared, one should treat him like a good groom treats a valuable horse: unshoe him, give him good feed, and bed him down!

For hours she would keep me in the kitchen, teaching me her wearisome recipes. The worst, I remember, was her compote. For this dish, I had to shell five hundred new walnuts before their shells hardened, and soak them in well water until they turned black. Then they were boiled and drained and added to pots of honey. This had to settle for three days. On the fourth, we added ginger and cloves, quinces boiled in red wine and strained, powder of hippocras, grains of paradise, galingale, a pound of sugar, and a quart of wine….

It tasted like G-d’s gall!

And then she showed me how to make sweet barley soup, a watery horror made with licorice and figs; as well as Flemish broth, a nightmarish confection of water, egg yolks, and white wine
.

All this, instead of letting me attend my lessons!

Again, I complained bitterly to my father
.

“Try to be gracious, child! Can you not see that I have more important things to do?” he said with impatience
.

Fearing his wrath, I could do nothing
.

One day, however, he unexpectedly (or had he actually repented and come looking for me?) walked into the kitchen, where I was stirring a pot of boiling beet soup, my sleeves rolled up and my face red hot, as smeared and sweaty as a kitchen maid’s. My aunt was ensconced on a kitchen stool eating sweetmeats
.

Surveying the scene, my father’s face registered a new understanding. “Dear sister,” he addressed my aunt politely but firmly, “the poor tutor complains that Gracia has not been to class for several weeks.”

“Please forgive me, Don. I am trying to instruct her in the ways of running a household, of which she is scandalously ignorant!”

My father clicked his heels together and bowed. “Nevertheless, good sister, her absences waste the good teacher’s time, and my good money. Most of all, it wastes her precious mind.”

I was absolutely thunderstruck. Never had my father expressed such a feeling to me
.

“To give her religious instruction in the sacred Hebrew texts is foolhardy and dangerous,” Malca protested vehemently
.

“It is a risk, true. But ignorance is a greater one, or so my dear wife convinced me. So we must trust in G-d’s benevolence,” he whispered back, equally adamant
.

“As you will it. But a woman who learns to read will never wed a nobleman with a great estate or find any husband!” she declared. “She is already too old!”

This was too much for my father
.

“Hold your tongue, woman! I have received many offers for Gracia’s hand. I do not warrant she is yet ready to choose among them. Noblemen have a way of disappearing for months on business. I am preparing our Gracia to keep his accounts, fight his lawsuits, ransom him if he is kidnapped, and collect his taxes. In addition to that, if she knows how to read and write and think, she will also be better equipped to oversee the servants, who will bake bread, salt and store meat, spin cloth, and sew clothes, and”—he paused, his mouth tight—“stir soup.”

My mind could not take it all in. Suitors had come. For me! Again, my mouth went dry. I had not even suspected!

“I never learned to read!” Malca said haughtily, as if that were all that was needed to substantiate the rightness of her claims
.

“Ah, but I am sure your dear, late husband had you to thank for his prosperity nevertheless.” My father grimaced, turning on his heel and leaving
.

Aunt Malca’s face took on an eerie resemblance to my soup
.

From then on, the war between my aunt and myself took a different course. Instead of torturing me, she began to spoil my sister, Brianda
.

Unlike me, Brianda had no patience for quill and paper. Numbers, she said, gave her a terrible ache at each temple. As for her religious instruction, she declared the Hebrew language unlearnable by anyone who was not sixty years old with a great white beard. She never did try to reconcile this opinion with the fact that I, her sister, had easily mastered the Hebrew
aleph-bet,
whose sounds and letters were so close to our own. She declared that she would pray in Portuguese, so at least she would know what it was her mouth was saying, and imitate those things she remembered our mother doing. Formal instruction wasn’t necessary if one had piety in one’s heart
.

I knew she slept until ten and never performed her morning devotions, unless attempting to impress our father. I scolded her, but she tossed her head and went to Aunt Malca, who accused me of undermining her authority
.

Day by day, I saw Brianda change before my eyes. Whereas before she had always been satisfied with the fine weave and simple cut of her dresses, she now whined and demanded that new clothes be ordered for her with fine gold embroidery and real pearls. She had always had a slight tendency to fill her plate overmuch and transfer the damage to her stomach, but now she increased her portions twofold, declaring that her cheeks needed plumping and her bosom ampler padding. Her favorite foods became fried breads and
yemas.
Very soon, new dresses for Brianda were not a choice, but a necessity
.

I could also see my aunt’s influence upon her in other ways, some petty and vainglorious, and others quite dangerous. We were on our knees during mass, saying our psalters, when I heard Brianda whisper
gloria patri
with the others, instead of keeping silent and thinking, as we always did, “In the name of our Lord, Adonai: Amen!” And then, even more incredibly, I saw her take the Host, chew it, and swallow it instead of leaving it whole in her mouth to take out discreetly once we were alone in our carriages
.

I glared at her, but it was too dangerous to say anything. She gave me a smile of such smug superiority that I felt myself like some great cathedral bell that has been yanked with such force it is nigh to splitting. “Why have you done such things?” I fumed once we were safely on the road, out of earshot of milling eavesdroppers
.

She tossed her head at me like a silly brat and stuck out her tongue. I kicked her hard and heard her squeal like a little stuck pig. “Aunt Malca says it does no harm to believe in two Saviors, and as the Host is His body, then I will have all His glory within me should I swallow it,” she sobbed, rubbing her leg where the red welt spread like a rash
.

I was dumbstruck. “And do you believe, you little fool, that the body of the Lord G-d is in the bread that goes down your throat and is then wasted in the chamber pot!?”

“Aunt Malca says it is very dangerous to believe otherwise, and that one must be sensible, even if others are fools,” she declared
.

“Does she mean, then, that Mother, Father, Grandfather, and Grandfather—all of our ancestors—were fools?” I screamed at her, pinching the fat, self-indulgent flesh of her white arms, folded so calmly and stupidly over her chest
.

She wept and howled and rubbed her arm and her leg and threatened that she would make me pay. That someday, somehow, I would be sorry for how I’d treated her
.

Truth be told, I was already sorry. As it is said, if you chew iron, you will swallow nails. I should have befriended my sister and turned her into an ally. Instead, I pushed her closer to Aunt Malca, who continued to feed her far more damaging things than
yemas.

But little did I know then how much sorrier I was destined to be. My sister, it seems, had started down a bad path. And a bad path cannot lead to a good place
.

16

“This can’t be it!”

“Why ever not, Suzanne?” Catherine replied, puzzled.

“But, Gran, it’s so…”

“Dumpy? Dingy?”

“Well, you’d think they’d look a little more like Sotheby’s….”

“What, with posh lighting fixtures and mahogany wainscoting, smelling like wax and brass polish?” Catherine chuckled, leading the way slowly up the rickety old stairwell. Halfway up, she paused, her breathing heavy, her hand outstretched in a speechmaker’s gesture of emphasis: “Never be deceived, my dears, by packaging.”

On the first landing, metal signs indicated a trading company of some kind; and on the second, old cartons overflowed with long tongues of computer printouts, almost blocking their way.

“Are you sure, Gran?” Francesca shook her head.

“Yes, of course!” Catherine declared, horribly winded and not at all sure. “Keep going. I’ll catch up.”

When they reached the last floor, there were wooden doors with milky glass inserts on which the name
Serouya
was painted in fading black letters.

“It looks more like some 1950s TV detective agency,” Suzanne grumbled.

“And what is a rare-book dealer if not a detective, my dear?” Catherine smiled, relieved, a small shiver of excitement crawling up her spine as she slowly caught her breath.

“A pirate, perhaps?” a deep male voice suddenly answered.

He’d crept up behind them as silently as a mugger, or a person well exercised in the hushed etiquette of libraries.

The women turned and stared.

He wore dark jeans stretched loosely over long, muscular legs, a wide-sleeved Greek fisherman’s shirt, open at the collar, and a weathered brown-leather vest. His shoulders were broad, and his forearms as muscular and tan as a dock worker’s. His hair, a rich, loamy brown, still bore faint traces of a no-nonsense haircut by a barber who had never heard of mousse or hairdryers. His dark beard was severely trimmed, giving him the gentlemanly, yet slightly rakish, appearance of a sea captain.

Francesca stared at him. There was something aggressive, almost offensive, in the way his broad male body had suddenly insinuated itself between them. She looked into his eyes: they were dark, vital, full of inspired humor.

“Excuse me, but I wasn’t aware you were part of this conversation,” Suzanne said coolly, thinking that he looked like a depiction of Apollo she’d once seen engraved on a Greek coin.

“Pardon me!” He clicked his heels together with a slight bow. “But I believe that I may be the
only
one here qualified to make any statement at all on this subject.”

“Who are you?” Catherine demanded.

The milky glass doors suddenly opened.

“Catherine!”

They saw a girlish blush that startled them creep into their grandmother’s pale face.

“Alex,” Catherine whispered.

“My dear.”

He was an elderly gentleman with impeccably cut silver hair and a dark bespoke suit. They watched in utter astonishment as he bent over Gran’s trembling hand and kissed it with courtly affection.

“Long time, Catherine…”

“Yes, so it is….”

“Do you two know each other?” Suzanne blurted out, glancing from one to the other.

There was an awkward silence as the two looked at each other meaningfully.

“Yes, we are very well aquainted,” Alex Serouya murmured, still holding their grandmother’s frail, white hand.

Catherine looked down, overcome.

“Grandmother?” Francesca probbed.

“Don’t they know, Catherine?” he asked softly.

She shook her head. “There didn’t seem to be any point.”

“Give us a hint, will you, Gran?” Suzanne urged, dying of curiosity.

Alex Serouya cleared his throat. “I see that you and my nephew Marius have already met.”

“So that’s David’s son,” Catherine said, grateful he’d changed the subject. She looked the young man over more forgivingly. “I wouldn’t have suspected it.”

Alex laughed out loud. “His mother’s Italian, from the Benvenida family in Trieste. He’s got all their brilliance and their impulsive charm, as well as those impossible Italian manners. But it’s made him one of the best rare-book hunters in England.”

“Please, Uncle! In Europe. In the world.” Marius shrugged, a slow, impudent grin spreading across his face.

It was impossible not to grin back.

He was the classic heartbreaking male, Francesca decided. The foreign-correspondent or news-photographer type: rootless, coasting on charm, relentlessly in search of wonders. The stability of wife and children, family and friends, would be a chain around his neck, she judged, going into husband-material-assessment mode. All males over eighteen and under sixty were candidates, she finally admitted to herself, embarrassed yet helpless.

Suddenly, he turned to her with a knowing grin. She looked down, confused, wondering if he was a mind-reader. To her dismay, his smile broadened, white and disarming, his large brown eyes narrowing in amusement and an alert intelligence that was at once flattering in its intensity and almost insulting in its presumption of intimacy.

Francesca felt suddenly strangely warm, as if some electric current was passing through her, making her skin tingle and her throat dry. To her utter mortification, there, at the center of her body, some uncouth, savage organ, with no manners and little discipline, began throbbing away. She turned away, cupping her hot cheeks in both palms.

“Ah, yes, one of the best and one of the most foolish in the whole world!” Alex shook his head. “Last winter he took a car across the Carpathian Mountains because of a rumor that hidden in the woods was a small farmhouse attic filled with medieval manuscripts!” He sighed. “It was tantamount to suicide. There were no roads, and if the car engine had broken down, he would have frozen in thirty-five minutes.”