An Imperfect Lens (17 page)

Louis said to Emile while they were drinking coffee at the Café Noir in the Grand Square, “When you met your wife, did you love her immediately?”

“No,” said Emile, “she was several years younger, a second cousin whom I met at a Christmas party one year. I thought she was a pretty child, that’s all. But then, two years later, she came with her mother to my sister’s wedding and I had some thoughts about her. Pleasant enough to encourage a visit to her family where they lived in the country, and then to take a few walks with her in our uncle’s vineyard, and there was no doubt in my mind that she regarded me with warmth and would look favorably on a proposal, and that is how it happened that I am the father of three.”

“My God,” said Louis, “was it really so easy?”

“Not exactly,” said Emile. “Her father had someone else in mind, but he was soon dissuaded. I did, after all, live in Paris and had my degrees, which impressed them with my importance.”

Louis nodded and smoked his pipe. Emile stared at the donkey at the corner, which seemed to be in a particularly bad temper. Emile got up from the table and walked over to the donkey. “Hey, hey,” he said to the animal, and stroked it behind the ears. The donkey brought his head forward toward Emile and calmly let him rub the soft gray spot over his nostrils. The donkey opened his mouth and drooled on Emile’s hand. Back at his table, Emile wiped his hand with his napkin and put the napkin in his pocket. “We might just as well see what’s in that donkey’s mouth,” he said to Louis.

Robert Koch was out for his noonday stroll. He was absolutely regular in his habits, and exercise was one of his habits. He passed by the café where the two French scientists sat. “Gentlemen,” he said, “good morning.”

Emile jumped to his feet. Louis followed.

“All is progressing well with you?” asked Dr. Koch.

“Very well,” said Emile.

“Excellent,” said Dr. Koch.

“Are you enjoying Alexandria, Herr Doctor?” said Louis.

“Fine city, and such history everywhere,” he said, and then went on his way with a wave of his hand.

ESTE HAD INTENDED not to return to the laboratory. She suspected that it was improper to be there, even with her maid. She considered it was dangerous, not because of the cholera but because of the very excitement she felt in the room and the reasons she felt it. However, a day later she found herself in the very last place she had expected her walk to lead her. Was it the science or the scientist that had pulled her there? How could she separate one from the other? Louis did not waste time wondering why she had stayed away. He was simply happy to have her back.

Nocard was attempting to brew a concoction of horse dung and cholera-infected bowel. He rubbed at them furiously. Este came and stood behind Louis. Louis thought of Madame Pasteur, who did indeed prepare slides, watch over animals in their cages, serve as her husband’s assistant when his other assistants were elsewhere. He could teach Este how to be his assistant. He thought of them together in a laboratory, his own laboratory. Louis told Este about the living yeast that died in the great vats of beets, thereby spoiling them, if the enemy organisms were not killed through heat. Louis was wanting to redo his tie, the high collar around his neck seemed loose. He thought perhaps the knot in his tie had pulled apart. There was no mirror in the laboratory where he might catch his image. Suddenly, Este reached up and pulled at the strings. “Your tie is askew,” she said, and as she came toward him he smelled her lilac soap. He scolded himself for being surprised. If the purpose of all life is to sustain its species, then he, too, would be led to reproduce. It was natural. It was normal. It was fine, the feeling he had when Este put her hands around his neck and fixed his tie. Este was embarrassed. She should not have been so forward. She should not have touched him. Was this shameful? Este walked away to the other side of the laboratory. She asked Roux what Koch was doing in his laboratory. Roux said he imagined that Koch was also injecting animals and waiting for something to develop. Este did not look at Louis again for the rest of the day. She was, however, determined to learn the name of every chemical in the jars on the shelf that very day. She had them all memorized within an hour.

Marcus had taken Anippe out back. He had found out that the servant was in need of a dentist. She had a swelling in her cheek and a throbbing in her jaw. He had given her a lemonade he had been saving for his own lunch. The two of them went into the hospital and found an empty bed in a dark corner of a long corridor. They took advantage of the moment their brief meeting provided. The girl forgot about her tooth. Marcus felt the strength in his arms and legs. “Look at my muscle,” he said to the girl as they walked back toward the lab.

“Very big,” she said in Arabic, and then translated the words into French. Her accent was terrible. It grated on Marcus. People should not speak French if they can’t do it right.

THE BRITISH OFFICERS decided to find out exactly what Dr. Malina was doing. Was it treason or drug smuggling? Like father, like son. Like son, like father. They sent off a dispatch to Jerusalem.
Find out what you can. What is Jacob Malina doing in Palestine?

NEXT TO HER own wedding night, what could be a more wonderful moment for a mother than the marriage of her daughter? Was this not how the seasons were intended to move? One was married oneself, and showered with candies by one’s friends, and lifted on high by the men of the community, and everyone admired you and then real life began and you had a daughter and the daughter grew and you went with her to purchase the dress for the most important event in her life. Was this not the way it had always been, generation after generation,
l’dor v’dor,
as they said in Hebrew. What did it matter if the diamond that had been given to her daughter was less than perfect? Lydia tried to banish the gray mood that had invaded her mind. She could find no good reason for it. What was wrong with her? Was she afraid of becoming an old crone whose juices had dried up and who was left with sagging bones and thinning hair to watch others touch and flirt, smile and dance? She would become that old crone whether or not Este married Albert, or even if she never married at all. How could a simple woman hope to stop time?

What she wanted most was that her daughter should not be sad. She had never been able to bear the child’s tears, over a top that had rolled under a couch or a doll that had become stained in the rain, or the loss of their cat which had been most miserably defeated by a neighbor’s mongrel. She could not bear it, ever, the things that her child suffered, even this child who had hardly suffered at all.

She was not a particularly superstitious woman, nevertheless she kept turning the matter of the flawed diamond over and over again in her mind. Was it a sign of some imperfection in the character of her future son-in-law, or was it a sign that something tragic that would split the family forever was already written in God’s book? Was it a sign that Este herself was in danger? Lydia called for Anippe to bring her some coffee. Was the flawed diamond simply a chipped stone, or was it a premonition of catastrophe awaiting them all?

IN JERUSALEM, IN a small room in the back of what seemed to be a hotel, Lydia’s son, Jacob, sat with his head in his hands. He was hungry and thirsty and exhausted. He had not been able to shave or comb or wash. The evening before, he had been stopped by several large and unfriendly Turkish men wearing no official uniform, but carrying pistols. Around their waists they wore belts with sheathed knives. He thought he was being robbed, but he was mistaken. The men had pushed him against a wall as he was leaving the small office he had just built for himself in the back of the rickety building he intended to turn into Malina & Co., World Suppliers of Olives and Olive Oil Ready for Your Table. He had inked out the sign on a piece of wood himself and was waiting for the men he had hired to bring a ladder to help him hang it above the door. The sign repeated itself four times, in Arabic, in Italian, in English, in German. He had wanted to add Greek but there was no space on the board.

There were as yet no olives in the building, but he had ordered a press to make oil. It should be arriving at the quay in Jaffa within a few weeks or perhaps months. Nothing was so certain in Palestine as that everything would be delayed, everything would cost more money than expected, primarily because the pasha, whichever pasha was in the neighborhood, would take a cut, and his top man would need a cut, and a simple merchant would bleed and bleed. He had planted three small lemon trees in the hard dirt around the building, which had once belonged to a farmer who had kept his tools and his animals under this roof. Certain odors persisted that did not stimulate the appetite, but Jacob assumed that he could air the place out, that time would make it his. He was eager to begin, to build his business, and now this misunderstanding would probably cost him many shekels, many of his father’s piastres. He knew that he had come to his ancient homeland and should feel at home, but he also knew he was an unwanted stranger here. He didn’t belong with the long-bearded ones who walked in groups in black coats and seemed not to notice that their clothes were too heavy for the warm climate. These were men, unlike himself, who had turned their back on progress. Although they were familiar to him from Alexandria, he did not belong with the Armenian priests who walked through the streets in robes and swung gold censers. He did not belong with the Arab camel dealers, or the sheepherders or the farmers of oranges and apples who loaded the carts pulled by donkeys. He had noticed the British, who were keeping an eye on everyone. They appeared in the cafés at night and asked questions about everyone’s activities. Some of them wore their red uniforms and marched about as if they owned the place, which they didn’t. The Arabs laughed at them, hated them, killed them on occasion.

He had lived in Jerusalem as an entirely private person. He had promised his father that he would not write anymore, never again publish his thoughts in any newspaper or periodical. He had seen that words on a page could have serious consequences, could threaten a man’s life and send him miles from home. He intended, many, many years in the future, to write his memoirs, a document that might be of interest to a few members of his family. Writing, he had decided, was a profession for those who cannot
do,
and he wanted now to make a success of his business, to bring pride to his family and wealth, wealth enough for a Jew to provide protection from those who would harm him. He had decided he would rather be the object of criticism in the press than the critic.

Jacob waited for someone to come to the room. He was thirsty but unafraid. He had done nothing to annoy the Turkish pasha or the British, nothing at all.

A YOUNG MAN, the son of Monsieur Jean Vernon, a patient of Dr. Malina’s, a student in the last year of his study of law at the university, was lying on the floor of the hospital’s entryway. The porter at the École des Jesuits had brought him there in a blanket and then left him on the floor. He had not had the strength to get up on a chair. The sister bent down, her sense of smell the only diagnostic tool she needed. The pool of feces that had collected around the boy’s hips, that had seeped through his trousers, told her all. The young man’s lips were blue. His eyes had sunk back in his skull. His teeth were chattering. His hand trembled as if he had had a stroke, but this wasn’t a stroke. The sister knew exactly what it was. What she didn’t know was what to do about it. What good had it done the young man to make his way to the hospital clinic? The boy gave his name. A note was sent to his father. She gave him some laudanum, which seemed to calm him. She put another blanket on his legs.

The sister knocked on the laboratory door. Emile and Louis hurried to the room where the boy lay tossing on a cot. The sister would have stayed with the young man in his last hours, but there were others in need of her attention. The fact that there was cholera in Alexandria did not mean other threats to the human body retreated or moved on to Cairo or Damascus. Louis and Emile discreetly took some of the boy’s feces and some of the fluid that gathered at the edge of his lips. They wiped him with a towel, which they kept. Louis could just grab his arm and cut in several places and take what he wanted. But he could not do that. The boy was trying to pull himself to a sitting position but was unable. He looked like a new calf, out of proportion, not yet fully firm. What an age to lose your life! Louis felt a sudden rage. He brought out his small tube with its cork stopper and a stick for stirring, which he had brought in his bag. The boy kicked at him. The kick had no force but its intention was clear. Louis waited a moment and then he again approached the boy and wiped his stick against the vomit on his chin and placed his prize in his glass tube and put in the cork and left the room just as the boy’s father could be heard calling his son’s name in the corridor.

They were returning to their laboratory when they saw Dr. Koch, immediately followed by his assistant carrying a large bowl. “Good morning, Dr. Koch,” said Emile. The doctor barely nodded in return. He was in a hurry to take the intestines of a dead woman in whose body he had seen all the signs of cholera back to his laboratory.

ERIC FORTMAN HAD been announced by the serving girl, or at least Lydia and Este were able to make his name out of the garbled words she spoke. “Ladies,” he said, in his large English voice, “how happy I am to find you at home. The
Cassandra
and the
Olympia,
one flying the British flag and the other from Istanbul, have debarked without unloading. They were told about the cholera and simply pulled out to sea. Cowards, I think,” he added. What of their responsibilities to the firms that stocked their cargo, entrusted the goods and expected service? “What kind of behavior is that?” he asked, without actually expecting a reply. But he got one.