Bristol House (39 page)

“I want to come,” Annie said. “Every day if you’ll have me.”

“We’re not talking about a lot of days,” Maggie said. Geoff started to protest, but she went on as if she hadn’t heard. “Tell me everything now. Once I start ‘kicking old Buddha’s gong’”—she nodded toward an apparatus at the side of the bed, one of many sporting a tube that led to some part of her body hidden by the blankets—“nothing you say will make a bit of sense.”

Annie looked puzzled.

“Morphine, darling,” Maggie said. “They’ve got me hooked up to dope-on-demand. ‘Buddha’s gong,’ according to the old Hoagy Carmichael song.” She hummed a few notes. “‘Hong Kong Blues.’ More of my Bletchley music. Geoff knows it—get him to play it for you sometime. He’s to have the piano, by the way. I’m trusting you to make sure he keeps it and practices once in a while.”

The way she said it—the utter seriousness of her tone—was a small surprise. As if . . . Maggie and Annie, partners in a conspiracy to keep Geoffrey Harris on the straight and narrow. Annie choked back tears.

Geoff was standing near the head of the bed, a vantage point from which he could see his mother and avoid looking at the paraphernalia of her illness. “Maggie, there are still things they can try. I don’t—”

“Hush, darling. It’s not going to happen, and I do not have the strength to argue with you. Now, tell me everything about Strasbourg. I haven’t taken a hit for an hour so I’ll be sensible enough to understand, but I won’t be able to resist much longer.”

For long seconds Geoff didn’t speak. He was, Annie realized, struggling with tears of his own. She pulled her chair a bit closer to Maggie’s bed. “Philip Weinraub’s name was originally Wein,” she said. “And the family were Catholics. He wasn’t circumcised until he was fifteen.”

Maggie’s eyebrows shot up.

Geoff had regained control. “There’s more,” he added. “They were living in New York by then, but his father brought him back to France to have the deed done by a sort of public health nurse in a tiny village in Alsace.”

“Meaning,” Annie chimed in, “that it couldn’t have been because young Philip planned to convert to Judaism. If that was it, he’d have had the circumcision done by a rabbi.”

“What the father planned,” Maggie said, “was for the record to disappear down the sinkhole of French bureaucracy. Than which nothing is deeper. Otherwise, unless he was going to be a monk, the deed itself would prove hard to hide.” She managed a weak smile, but it only lasted a moment. “How sure are you about this Alsatian caper?”

“Entirely sure,” Geoff said. He explained about the woman in the bar and her record of the procedure performed in 1967. “She was absolutely genuine,” he said. “The document, as well. My tried-and-true bullshit meter didn’t budge.”

“Tell me again how you found her?”

“My friend Clary Colbert,” Geoff said. “Remember, I sent him to Strasbourg to do some sniffing.”

“I remember. But just like that he uncovered this evidence?”

“Not just like that. I have a Strasbourg source. I put Clary in touch. He chased down a couple of leads the other bloke never bothered with because there didn’t seem any reason.”

“Anyway,” Annie added, “I think the woman, the nurse, would simply have turned away anyone who came asking questions. Until now.”

“Why now?” Maggie’s voice was getting weaker with each word, but her mind appeared to be as sharp as ever.

“Because,” Annie said, “we happened along at the right time. She was desperate.”

Geoff explained about the woman’s life behind the counter of the café-cum-grocer’s shop.

“Like Portsmouth,” Maggie said, “with Riesling.”

“Exactly,” Geoff said. “And trust me, the Riesling was barely drinkable. She’d reached the end of her tether.”

“So she opened her heart to my boy.”

Maggie reached out the hand that wasn’t intravenously connected to the supply of morphine. Geoff took it. “Your boy,” he said, “and ten thousand quid.”

“Maybe,” his mother said, “it’s a good thing you’re not a musician.” Then: “Jack Harris should never have got mixed up with me.”

“On balance,” Geoff said, “I think he was glad he did.”

“On balance, probably,” Maggie agreed. “Your father was a mensch, Geoffrey. A good man. It wasn’t his fault I was bored out of my skull.”

“I know.”

Maggie turned her head and looked at Annie. “Will you give us a minute, darling?”

“Of course.” Annie stood up and leaned over and kissed Maggie’s cheek. “I’ll come back soon.”

Maggie smiled but didn’t comment. Annie saw her disentangle her hand from Geoff’s and reach for the button she’d called Buddha’s gong.

“I’ll be in the visitors’ lounge down the hall,” Annie said.

Geoff joined her there in about a quarter of an hour. “She’s sleeping,” he said.

“I’m so sorry, Geoff. Truly.”

“So am I. But Maggie’s always done it her way. Dying as well as living, it seems.”

“Staying in Portsmouth until you were grown up and your dad died,” Annie said. “That was her way, too.”

“Definitely. Maggie was no quitter. And she still never fails to surprise.” He took something from his pocket. “I’ve had another installment of what she calls the legacy. The last important bit, she says, except for the bloody piano.” He handed over a small object folded into a piece of worn blue silk-velvet. “Have a look at this.”

Annie unwrapped it. “A mezuzah.”

“Apparently something that has been in her family for donkeys. Sewn into her knickers, my mother tells me.”

“Knickers? You mean her underpants?”

“Yup. When she was sent out of Germany with the Kindertransport.”

“My God . . . it’s beautiful.” The mezuzah was silver, some four inches long, including the finials at either end. “Geoff, I think this is very old.” The idea, the possible connection, was swimming out of her gut and rushing for her brain. It seemed too preposterous, particularly in this setting where the harsh realities of life so frequently overpowered the dream.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I can’t get my mind around it. Besides, Jews always have these things. Everywhere. Why not Maggie’s family?” He took the mezuzah from her and held it in the palm of his hand. “This is a Hebrew letter,” he said, pointing to the single character engraved in the metal. “Maggie knew that much, but not what it means. Obviously, neither do I.”

“She never asked Rabbi Cohen?”

“Apparently not.” Geoff turned the mezuzah back over so they were both looking at the front. “What do you think this engraving represents?”

Annie studied the delicately wrought image. “It’s a flowering branch,” she said. “I’m not saying it is, but it could be an almond branch.” She was hearing it again, that dog whistle that went off in her mind. No sign of the ghost, only a conviction that did not require additional evidence. “This is the vanishing point, Geoff. You and the monk, and Philip Weinraub, who’s only masquerading as a Jew but has a powerful interest in almond trees and
mezuzot
.”

“I think you’re saying, to use Rabbi Hazan’s analogy, we’re approaching the bend in the river.”

“I think we may be,” she agreed.

Geoff looked back toward his mother’s room. “I wish,” he said, “Maggie could come along for the ride. She’d love it.”

A man and two young girls came into the lounge. Both girls were sobbing. The man looked ready to join them.

Annie felt a great melding of grief: theirs, Geoff’s, and even in some measure her own. She wanted to say something about letting go and accepting the things you could not change. In this place, absent an audience of recovering alcoholics, it seemed banal. They left.

***

Rabbi Cohen produced a small black skullcap and put it on. For him, Annie realized, what was about to happen was holy.

The mezuzah decorated with the almond branch—Annie had found a horticultural illustration that confirmed her guess about the engraving—lay on his desk. More accurately, on the piece of silk-velvet in which it had been wrapped. “Very old,” Rabbi Cohen said quietly, repeating the judgment expressed by Annie and Geoff.

“We believe,” Annie said, “it’s one of the treasures of the Jew of Holborn. Which would make it at least from 1535.”

“An idea,” Geoff said, “that obviously never occurred to Maggie. I had mentioned to her that whatever Weinraub told Annie he wanted, he seemed to be looking for a particular mezuzah. She never told me she had that.” He nodded toward the mezuzah on Rabbi Cohen’s desk.

The rabbi shrugged. “There is no more common piece of Judaica. Many families have one that’s been passed down through generations. There’s no reason Maggie would have made the connection.”

“And maybe she was right,” Geoff said. “I’m starting to wonder if we’re all going off the deep end. We don’t have any proof.”

“None,” Cohen agreed. “But—” He was interrupted by a loud thud above their heads. He looked up and waited. Silence. The nurse apparently had everything under control. He returned his attention to the mezuzah. “This”—he pointed to the Hebrew character—“is the letter
shin.
In this context it stands for
Shomer Delatot Yisrael,
‘Guardian of the Doorways of Israel.’ The mezuzah fulfills the commandment—the mitzvah—to write the words of the Lord ‘upon the door-posts of thy house and upon thy gates.’”

“Not all the words, surely,” Geoff said.

The other man shook his head. “All these years she kept this, but she didn’t teach you even the
Shema.
” He reached into a desk drawer and came up with another skullcap. “Here, put this on.”

“Look, Rabbi, I told you, I’m not—”

“I know what you told me. But your mother is a Jew, and you’re circumcised. So—”

“How do you know that?”

“Who do you think did it? Put on the
kippah.
”

Geoff looked at Annie, shrugged, and put it on.

“Better,” Cohen said, and turned back to the mezuzah. “The design is classic.” He pointed to one silver finial, the one that looked like an open book with a rounded top. “This represents the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain. While this”—he indicated the opposite end, a series of narrowing ridges that created the illusion of depth—“stands for the stairs leading to the holy of holies, the place in Solomon’s Temple where the Ark of the Covenant rested. We call the entire thing a mezuzah. In fact, this is a mezuzah case. The piece of parchment inside, the
klaf,
that is the mezuzah, so—”

“Inside?” Geoff asked.

Cohen looked up. “Yes. Why?”

“Maggie told me the mezuzah was never to be opened. That’s all she knew, the only thing she remembered. The last time she saw her father, on Kristallnacht, when the gentile friend came to get her, her father gave her this and whispered she must keep it hidden but always with her. That she was never to open it and never to tell anyone she had it.”

“And she never did?” Annie asked. “That doesn’t sound like Maggie.”

Geoff shrugged. “The last request her father made . . . yes, in a way it does.”

Rabbi Cohen had listened to all this in silence. “It’s a very strange request,” he said. “Usually the
klaf
is checked every seven years. You remember, Annie, I told you about a cracked word in a Torah making it not kosher?” Annie nodded. “Inside a mezuzah case, on the
klaf,
are written the holiest words in all of Judaism. Our raison d’être, if you will, our message to the world and perhaps the reason we continue to exist.”

“All that,” Geoff said, “in something no bigger than my middle finger.”

Cohen sighed. “Listen to me, Geoffrey.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ That is fundamental. You have to know at least that. For your mother’s sake.”

“I don’t see how that follows,” Geoff said, looking, Annie thought, extremely uncomfortable.

“When the end comes for Maggie, I will probably not be there. Please God, you will be. You must say the
Shema
with her. Or for her. For a Jew, those must be the last words.”

“I won’t remember it,” Geoff said. “And Maggie’s not a religious Jew.”

“She was separated from her parents and forced out of her country by people who wanted to put her in an oven. That’s Jewish enough. I’ll write out the words for you. Promise you’ll do it.”

He gave in. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. Now, what about the mezuzah? Am I to open it?”

“Yes,” Geoff said instantly. “If Maggie were here, she’d say the same thing. Jew or not, I think Weinraub and his crowd want to start a third world war over some supposedly holy hill.”

Cohen’s head shot up. “What does that mean? Jew or not? Who, Weinraub?”

“Jesus.” Geoff ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. So much has happened so fast. I meant to tell you on the telephone earlier. But . . .” His call had been to say that Maggie’s cancer had returned, and she was in the hospital, and it was not expected she would leave. And to ask if they could come and see him and bring a maybe extraordinary bequest.

“But we had other things to talk about,” Cohen finished for him. “So tell me now.”

“I sent someone to Strasbourg,” Geoff began. “Because as I think I told you earlier, that’s where Philip Weinraub was actually born. When the family’s name was Wein.”

After that they told it in tandem. Annie finished up with how desolate the village where they’d met the nurse was, and how happy she seemed to be to have gotten the wherewithal to leave it.

Cohen listened to the recitation in silence, then tented his fingers below his chin in that way he had. “So,” he said softly, “we have another wrinkle. The Jewish fanatic is a goy.”

Annie thought of Nachum Hazan’s comment that the disappearing provisioner might represent a wrinkle in time, but she dismissed it. This wasn’t of the same order. “Maybe not so much,” she said. “There are all these Protestant groups in America who claim to be devoted to Israel. Maybe Philip Weinraub is just taking that a step further.”

“Identification to the point of lunacy,” Cohen said. “The very clever Philip Weinraub . . . I’m not sure.”

“Nor am I,” Geoff agreed. “But we know the people he’s mixed up with, the restore-the-Temple crowd, wouldn’t hesitate to start a war over the Temple Mount.”