An Imperfect Lens (21 page)

ALBERT HAD TROUBLE concentrating on the report on his desk. It had something to do with a request for investment in a business that would import knives from Damascus to Alexandria and from there send them in small gilded sheaths all over the Mediterranean. The figures before him jumped around. Was it a good investment opportunity or a bad one? Albert was not concentrating. His father was furious with him. The marriage would have been good for the family, not so much in terms of actual funds coming in, but in family prestige, honor. He had botched it with his cheapness about the ring. His father insisted he fix his mistake. The girl would have to be convinced of his undying affection and her family persuaded by their daughter’s tears. It was the only thing he could do. At lunch Albert had a cramp in his leg, which he massaged with his hand under the table. His fish in lemon oil was barely touched. Why was it so damned hard just to get a woman in a house with servants around her, her mother nearby, and all her needs taken care of ever after. Resentment rose in his breast. All he had done, after all, was give her a ring with a small flaw in it. He was entitled to a little pleasure himself. This was such a primitive business, this getting a bride. It was as if he were a fisherman on the Nile, counting out the nets he would give to the bride’s father. It was a wonder, he thought, that more men didn’t just go it alone. He was not feeling friendly when he came to the Malinas’ door and begged most humbly to see Este. “Just a few moments of her time,” he said to the girl who opened the door.

When he entered the drawing room, Este was standing by the window. She was very pale and stood very straight, as if a medal were about to be pinned on her chest.

Albert’s black hair was combed down over his forehead on one side. His shoes were shining. His suit was formal, his tie subdued. His smile was tenuous, eager, sweet. “This is all my fault,” he said. “I asked my friend, my good friend, Achmed, to find a ring for me that was worthy of my bride. He betrayed me, but I should have suspected as much. I should have taken the ring to be examined before I gave it to you. I have been careless, but not because I thought you should not have the finest jewels in the universe.” He stared into Este’s eyes.

He was earnest. He was sincere. He was handsome, as always. He was her best friend’s brother. But her affections did not burst forth. She was surprised at her own reserve. Perhaps he seemed
too
sincere; a sincerity this intense was suspect. After all, no great harm had been done. She didn’t mind, not really. She hadn’t seen any flaw herself. She would have preferred him to laugh at all this parental concern about a mere ring. She would have liked him to tell her she was the only woman he would ever marry, even if she were poor, even if her father were not so well known in Alexandria, even if she were a tailor’s daughter. This he did not even think to say. When she was silent, he pressed on, “I will make it up to you. I will buy you an even more wonderful ring and deliver it into your hands as soon as you say that you still want to be my bride.” Here, unfortunately, his hiccups began and interrupted his speech.

“You need water,” said Este, who rang for the servant. “Sit down, perhaps that will help,” she said. “Hold your breath.” Her nanny had taught her that secret cure for hiccups. Albert sputtered and choked and tried to hold his breath, but whatever he did, his chest heaved and a small squeaky sound came from his mouth. “I’ll open the curtains,” said Este. “Perhaps more air.” Este looked at Albert, who was now turning red from the effort of holding his breath.

“Perhaps we could continue this later, when your hiccups are gone,” she said. “I am beginning to think,” she added, her own heart throbbing in her chest, “that maybe I am too young to get married. I think a wife should be wise as well as beautiful, and I am not yet wise. Don’t you agree with me that too many girls marry before they’ve thought the matter through?”

Albert nodded his head, but he had never before considered the matter. “You are wise,” he said, but he hiccuped between “are” and “wise.”

Este wanted to laugh but knew that would be very rude. She turned her head away to hide the smile that came to her face.

“Don’t turn away from me,” Albert moaned, but he hiccuped three times between “from” and “me.”

“Oh, do go,” said Este, who had lost patience with the man, which she knew was very wrong of her, but there it was. Besides, Papa had said no, and she would never go against his wishes. Or would she? Perhaps, she admitted to herself, she would.

ACHMED’S FATHER HAD called the police. He wanted to press charges. “An eye for an eye,” he roared, “that’s what those people understand.” Achmed refused to call the police. “I’ll get this settled myself,” he said. Achmed’s mother wept. Her son’s face was swollen. His socket would not be ready for a false eye for some months, and there was terror, some shame, some disgrace in her son’s disfigured image. When she thought of the bones of his eye, naked to the air, leading back into his skull, she cursed the day that Albert had been born. She cursed Albert’s bride-to-be, and she flung her arms around her wounded son, who pushed her away in irritation and vowed to move out of the family home as soon as possible.

Achmed called on two of his friends from the university. He told them he had been attacked by a greedy Jew. A Jew? Yes, a Jew, and Achmed said the word from deep within his chest, as if it were a word he never used, a word that implied a curse, carried a curse, was itself dangerous, sent a foul odor up into the air.

WHICH IS HOW Albert found himself in his bed, bruised in his legs where he had been hit with a metal tube, and suffering from a painful bruise on his cheek from a punch one of the boys had thrown. Someone had cut his finger so that it dangled uselessly on his hand. His ribs hurt. His hair had been pulled in patches out of his head. He had been punched into unconsciousness, found by a passing donkey boy, and delivered to his house in a folded heap. The donkey boy was well rewarded for his consideration.

Albert’s father had wanted to call the police to arrest Achmed, but first he called his lawyer. A prominent member of the synagogue, a Monsieur Florent, who had studied in Paris, who wore a monocle, who smoked thin cigarettes imported from Italy that stayed clasped between his lips unless he needed to eat or to speak. Monsieur Florent said, “We must offer a settlement to the family so that they do not press charges about the eye. We will not be able to prove that Achmed was responsible for the beating. Albert cannot clearly identify his attackers. If it comes to the courts, there will be no sympathy for your son. The other boy will show his face with its lost eye, and your son will have little defense. This will not be good for our faith. It will be in the newspapers. It will confirm certain prejudices. Your son did, after all, purchase the diamond for less money than every gentleman knows a diamond of that size should cost.” Monsieur Florent sat down in a Louis XVI chair covered in a strawberry and vine pattern. He leaned forward. “Do not think I am critical,” he said, “but I am certain that others in our community will find it peculiar that your family was stingy with their offering to the bride. We tend to judge the worth of the groom’s family by their generosity to the family of the bride. People will think that you have fallen upon hard times. People will think that perhaps your skills have deserted you. Of course I know better, but we don’t want too much of a scandal here.”

Albert’s father was furious, although he did not reveal it to his lawyer. He simply said, “I thought it was your role to fight for our rights in this matter.”

Monsieur Florent sighed. “I am protecting you, I promise.”

Albert’s father puffed on a cigar. He stared out the window. He was not a fool, only a fool goes deaf in the presence of his lawyer.

Albert’s father agreed that Monsieur Florent should negotiate a settlement, although the sum proposed made his heart sink.

Achmed’s father still wanted to put the Jew in jail. He listened to Monsieur Florent. He called his wife into the room, who wouldn’t hear of a settlement. It wasn’t money she wanted. It was revenge. Achmed himself was interested in the offer, but he said nothing. His father would not have allowed it. After four cups of dark coffee, after several hours in which Monsieur Florent explained again and again how embarrassing the matter would be for Achmed and the family—doubts cast on their honesty, the integrity of their merchandise, and so on—a settlement was agreed upon at three times the amount that Monsieur Florent had proposed to Albert’s father. Albert’s mother’s jewels would have to be sold. The cabana at the beach would have to be given up. The household would, at least for a while, be on a tight budget. Phoebe would have to wait for her own marriage until some funds were recouped, unless a wealthy boy would have her with a very reduced dowry. It was not a small matter.

Albert spent three nights and three days in his bed. When he rose at last, he was not greeted as a hero, as the victim of injustice that he felt himself to be. He could feel the chill in his father’s voice as he called him into his study. He saw that his sister had been crying, and his mother turned her face away from him when he bent to kiss her.

AT THE BREAKFAST table, Lydia Malina read about the affair in the paper, which reported that Achmed had a huge bandage over his eye and contained a statement from Monsieur Florent that the unfortunate matter had been amicably concluded by the two families, who understood that young men had high tempers and no harm had been intended and the loss of Achmed’s eye was a terrible accident. Lydia said to her husband, “We will go to the Sonnenscheins’ for dinner next week, they have a cousin who I hear is most eligible.”

“I hear he is a cripple with a hunched back, that cousin,” said Este.

“You heard no such thing,” said her mother, and the two women laughed.

Dr. Malina got up from the table and went to his surgery, where he knew a woman was waiting whose baby had a bulge in his small belly that boded ill. He would hint at its nature to the mother while not quite telling her all that he suspected.

LOUIS AND EMILE and Edmond decided to increase their hours in the lab. They would work until sleep overtook them. Louis vowed not to think about Este. He would concentrate all his mind on his work. Emile would abandon his wife and children and turn all his attention to the elusive microbe. “There are too damned many people in this filthy city,” said Edmond. “You can’t get a coffee without mud in it. I tell you, I’ve just about had enough. I’m ready to go home.”

Louis said, “Don’t worry, my friend, we’ll have years to walk on our clean streets and eat our own food at our own table, and read Le Figaro on the day it’s published. This is just a small interruption.”

He smiled at Edmond, whose bad humor disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and who smiled back. “Is that a promise?” he asked.

“It’s a promise,” Louis said. “Courage,” he added.

“Courage it is,” said Edmond, who went off to the tents pitched outside of town, where the camels grazed near the river and their owners seemed to doze perpetually on carpets spread on the sand. Camel dung was what he needed.

If a man concentrates, there is nothing he cannot do, or so one of Louis’s favorite professors had said. Of course the professor, despite a very amiable manner, had himself published nothing of note and had, while Louis was still in school, been passed over for a senior administrative position. Nevertheless, Louis stared at the mouse guts that had been gathered in a bowl by his elbow. Was the germ perhaps in the mouth of the mouse, or did it have nothing to do with the mouse? Did mice have a way of avoiding cholera, of spitting it out, or pushing it out with their waste products? Did their tiny ears flick it out with fine hairs, did their eyes close when the germ came near? There were dead mice around, but they did not seem to have cholera in them, not even when he took his syringe and pressed the blood of the cholera victim he had taken from the hospital into the mouse, not even then did they get sick. Lucky mouse, what spared you? asked Louis.

ERIC FORTMAN RESPONDED immediately to the note delivered to his office by an attaché at the British consulate. As he was walking up the steps at the entrance to the building, Lord Cromer himself, flanked by several officers of the Royal Navy, brushed past him. It was as if an avalanche had gone by, leaving him untouched but breathless. The Union Jack hung limply above his head. He was well aware of the fact that Britannia had her foot on his neck, as well as on all of Alexandria and most of the known world. He was escorted up a grand staircase, in a rather firm manner, by the attaché, and ushered into a back room. He was offered a glass of water. The water was poured from a pitcher that had been brought from the officers’ quarters in the rear of the building. He refused the water. This was no moment for congeniality. The room was as hot as a steam bath from the sun beating down on the roof above. Eric was sweating. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “We need some information from you,” said the large man in a fine suit who stood above him.

“There is nothing to report,” said Eric. “I have had dinner with Dr. Malina and his family. I have heard nothing about plots against the British, here or in Palestine. Their son seems to be dealing in olives, and the father is concerned about the epidemic in Alexandria, and the mother and the daughter are going to teas and lunches and buying clothes, things like that.” Eric was embarrassed. This was ridiculous.

“We can have you on a ship back to England in a matter of hours,” said the other man in the room. His jacket was tight across his stomach. His posting in Alexandria had not brought hardship, unlike his five years in India, where he had lost his wife and child to malaria. “We can have you in a jail in Cyprus as quickly as you boil your morning egg. You can be deported on an English ship and never reach England. Is that clear?” said the man.

It was clear, but what was he to do?