The Debt of Tamar (22 page)

“It was said she was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of the isles of Naxos,” Judah continued, “but why she had left Istanbul in the first place, that part of the story is lost. She settled here, along the sea, with a mysterious fortune and a loyal entourage. They were all practicing Jews who went about their business with quiet dignity, babbling amongst themselves in their native tongue, only the duchess refused to speak. They say she roamed about Tiberius like a ghost, speaking to no one, just whispering words to this ring here.” At this, he pointed towards the ruby ring his wife was wearing. It was as though this ring was a key to some unknown world—as though, only it could understand her foreign tongue. His wife slipped the ring from her finger, then handed it to her husband.

“Of course she came with much more jewelry, but this is all we have left. See here, this small inscription in the band, this is old Ottoman, but me, I don’t know what it means.” He shrugged as he handed the ring to Davide.

The stone was flawless. Its color, intoxicating. The ruby was a deep, sumptuous crimson. The same color of the aged red-wine from Bordeaux Davide had only been allowed to sip on Easter and birthday celebrations. He turned it around, letting the
shabbos
candlelight flicker off its gleaming facets. Examining the cryptic inscription on the inset of the band, he wondered what it meant.
Where did you come from?
He wondered, half expecting the ring to respond. He was sure the answer was in the inscription. It was a question he had asked a thousand times before, but until that time, he asked it only of himself.

For the first time in his life, he celebrated the
Sabbath
. The candles, the
Challah
, the sweet red wine. It all seemed so familiar—Judah, the red-faced man who smelled of the sea, and his soft-spoken wife with her silk headscarf and gold bangles—It felt like something that had been lost. Two thousand miles away from his birthplace, he finally found his home.

The fisherman never asked Davide about his family. Like Judah’s own curious lineage, Davide’s past was shrouded in mystery. He, like that strange Ottoman traveler, arrived inexplicably on the shores of Lake Tiberius, a suitcase in tow, donning weathered, foreign garb. All he knew was that the boy was alone. The fisherman had seen the detached look in Davide’s eyes, and understood that he was a wandering spirit. He hired the boy as a fisherman but took him in as a son.

Work as a fisherman was not a tidy affair. Davide soon learned that his wardrobe of pleated slacks and cotton vests were useless at sea. His new attire consisted of synthetic trousers cut-off above the knee and thick-soled moccasins that he wore when stepping along the rocky shoreline on the occasion the boat needed towing. At dawn, Davide and Judah would board the weathered boat docked along the harbor and set out to cast their fishing nets with the hopes of catching a fat school of tilapia, flounder, or mullet.

They’d unload the day’s catch onto the flat bed of Judah’s pickup and circle around to deliver orders to a handful of shopkeepers in the bustling marketplace. The first delivery went to Adon Haddad, a Sabra in a straw hat sporting a foul-mouthed parrot on his shoulder, whose screeching cusses amused everyone in the bazaar, save little old ladies and bearded yeshiva boys. Then, further down the market, they’d deliver flounder and tilapia to the Ruski, Sasha Chekov, a hulk of a man with a keloid scar across his neck and the words “Only God can judge me,” tattooed across his chest. Their best customer was Miss Hula, a middle-aged spinster who liked to pinch Davide’s cheeks and compliment him on his healthy complexion and fine broad shoulders. She was especially impressed with his Parisian accent and cackled when he said something she liked the sound of. She accosted him with slobbery kisses, her singsong voice whining as she recited the petty gossip she herself invented and spread throughout the village. Later, they’d head down the road to the Arab market to deliver catfish, because, as Davide learned, catfish did not have scales and therefore were not kosher.

There were less prosperous days, when they would merely retrieve a few straggling sardines or a net full of seaweed. The work was arduous, but Davide enjoyed the summer sun on his bare back and shoulders and the cool breeze that sometimes rushed south from the Golan Heights. His arms grew thick from working the sails and drawing up the day’s trappings. His lean face bronzed and his pale eyes grew bright whenever he looked out upon the rippling waters of the Sea of Galilee. Summer rays beat down on the water’s surface, as though the sea and sky were engaged in a thrashing affair.

In school, he’d been taught that these were the same waters Jesus had walked upon. He’d never believed that story until now. Even if Jesus was just a man, the lake held magic, of that he was sure.

Saturdays were the only day Davide did not work. While everyone was gathered in the synagogue, Davide, ashamed that he could not read Hebrew or recite prayers, would wander through the ancient streets of Tiberius. There, in the quiet calm of the Sabbath, he came across an elderly Arab man, Sheik Mohammad. Sheik Mohammad was a Sufi mystic, a spiritual adviser who would interpret dreams for shekels. He was a short round man, with white hair and snow-sloped, whiskering brows. Bowlegged to a crippling degree, he required two canes when he walked, one on each side. As he moved, he resembled more of a gnarled tree trunk than a man. Bearded youths in skullcaps snickered as he shuffled passed. He would look up at them and smile, with eyes so soft and sweet that the boys would become utterly ashamed and wholly uplifted all at once. They were eyes that could melt lies on the tongues of their bearers and turn the hearts of bragging criminals.

Davide found him sitting atop a wooden crate under a tin roof dangling with pots and pans in the metal worker’s bizarre. He dropped a shekel in the old man’s can.

The Sheik looked up and smiled. “You’re a stranger here?”

Davide felt his face flush, ashamed it was so obvious.

“You’re looking for something?”

He contemplated this for a moment. “I suppose I am.”

“Come with me.” Without waiting for a reply, the man rose to his feet, grasping the arched tip of each one of his canes. “Hurry or we’ll miss it.”

Davide made no effort to move.

“
Yalla!
” He wobbled clumsily as Davide followed two steps behind. He kept his arms ready, half expecting the old Sufi to collapse like an accordion with each step. Down a quiet alley and across the empty square, Sheik Muhammad led Davide towards an unassuming building, then followed the hedges round back, stopping at the entrance to the cellar. The rusty iron doors opened out from the ground like outstretched arms. They framed a dim-lit stairway leading to the underground bunker. A faulty light bulb flickered overhead as the Sheik descended the steps slowly and steadily. His arm linked through Davide’s as their heads bowed beneath the low ceiling.

Fast paced chanting and the rhythmic beat of darbuka drums echoed up the stairwell. Inside, two-dozen men stood in long white robes, banging drums and stomping their bare feet, bells jingling about their ankles with each step. Clapping, singing and dancing ensued, until several men in tall burgundy hats took to the center of the room with outstretched arms. They began to twirl in an ecstatic dance like the spinning tops Davide played with as a boy.

“What is this dance?” Davide whispered.

Sheik Muhammad looked up at the boy. “This is no dance.” He turned away and let his eyes fall upon the whirling dervishes, their majestic white robes floating out from their waists in a perfect circumference of symmetry and grace. “This is a prayer. A prayer with all the body, mind, and soul.”

The whirling dervishes tilted their chins towards the heavens and stretched out their arms as though cradling all the earth in their embrace. Davide felt a rush of excitement. He leaned in close to the Sheik. “Why do they whirl?” The music grew bolder and the walls of the cellar grew tipsy with the drunkenness of men’s spirits.

“All of the universe is whirling,” the Sheik responded after some time. “The moon is whirling round the earth. Our earth is spinning on its axis whirling forever round the sun. The planets, the constellations. The clouds in the sky and the stars in the furthest galaxies. We are not careening aimlessly through the universe. All the heavens and all the earth whirl eternally in perfect accord.” He took David’s hand in his thick leathery palm. “These men whirl because they are at one with the universe.”

Davide looked into the Sheik’s kind eyes, then stepped forward, and with arms outstretched towards the heavens, began to whirl. He would whirl in unison with all the earth, the moon and the sun. He would whirl with the stars in the sky. He wept for the mother and father he never knew. He wept for the millions lost to the ovens. He was taken over by this volition to feel thoroughly, to be swept into the violent rhythm of the earth’s fiery breath, to sigh when she sighed and sleep when she slept. He would reach out his arms and open his heart to the suffering of all humanity. Deep inside, he knew this was the only way he could lay claim to a small piece of the world’s joy. With arms raised toward the heavens, he whirled and whirled until he too was one with the universe.

When Marie and Edward filed an official complaint at the old police station on Boulevard St. Michel, they were politely informed that without a cooperating witness or shred of tangible evidence, there was no way they could charge Jean Pierre Prideux with assault or any other crime for that matter. “But they’ve torn his retina.” Marie charged. “He’s blind in one eye!”

“Madame, not to worry. We’ll head over to Monsieur Prideux’s flat and check into his alibi.”

Later that evening, Marie received a phone call from an officer down at the station. “Monsieur Prideux claims he was at church with his father the day in question…his father confirms this. Well why would the man lie? Madame, with all due respect, Monsieur Prideux is a very well respected member of our community, if he says his son was with him at church…Oui oui! Of course we are serious about bringing the perpetrators to justice, but perhaps your son is confused about who the aggressors were. He did sustain head injuries as you yourself have claimed... Madame, I do not appreciate your tone…yes, of course we are doing our very best…We are certainly not going to drop the case. We’ll continue our investigation until we bring the criminals to justice.”

And so it was that Jean-Pierre Prideux, son of a decorated war hero and grandson of the retired chief of the Marais district police, escaped punishment for his crime, and Edward’s dream of becoming a pilot in the Royal French air-force was snuffed out forever.

The letter came a month after the beating.

In light of recent events, it is with much regret that we are forced to rescind your acceptance to the National Aviation Academy. As you are well aware, the safety of our students and pilots has and always will be our number one priority. While your visual impairment restricts you from our aviation training program, we welcome and encourage your application to an administrative position within the academy.

Edward folded each corner of the letter, until it took on the winged shape of his dreams. He examined his creation before crushing it in the palm of his hand.

“I will never forgive you,” he whispered that evening to the empty bed where Davide had once slept. The old floral sheets were drawn taut over the thin mattress at the far end of the room, the lonely space where a brother should have been illuminated by the pale glow of the moon. “I was never a twin,” he thought to himself. “Not even a brother.”

A few weeks later, Edward received a letter addressed to him with a foreign stamp sealed with the mark of the newly established Jewish state. He placed it in the pocket of his oversized blazer and went about his day in no particular hurry. School had ended and he was now working in his family’s bakery. Business had slowed as two more bakeries had opened just across the street. Marie and her husband left the bakery in Edward’s care and went off to work in a local factory to help make ends meet. Edward greeted the customers slowly. There was no rush. He’d probably be working there for the rest of his life now. When they asked for the usual chocolate crepe or custard croissant, he moved behind the counter at a glacial pace, eliciting the irate glances of impatient customers. He made no attempt to mitigate his limp, but exaggerated it as an expression of disgust with everyone and everything. When the sun began to set he closed up shop for the evening, then wiped down the counters and slowly swept up the powdered sugar and crumbs from the floor, before heading around the corner and mounting two flights of stairs to the family flat. In his pocket, he still held the letter from someone he considered no more real than a ghost, but no less haunting.

It was a damp October night, but with the furnace lit in the parlor, the Rumie household was warm and quiet. He held the envelope in his hands for several minutes. Then he tossed the letter into the furnace without bothering to read it. The next week, he found another letter in the post addressed to his parents. He tore open the envelope and read it. Davide was to be married to a fisherman’s daughter and was settling in a lush region of Israel called Tiberius. He was saving up his earnings as a fisherman to buy them all passage on the steamship to meet his soon-to-be wife—and could they please write back as soon as possible?

Week after week Edward fueled the furnace with Davide’s letters, some were about his newfound religion, some about living in times of war—at the end of every letter, “Why haven’t you written?” Some of the letters showed concern. “Has Papa thrown out his back again? What’s going on there? Is someone ill?” And always they ended, “Why haven’t you written?” As time went by, the letters turned bitter. “I know you raised me as a Catholic, but please respect my decision.” Edward kept watch for the post every day.