The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (46 page)

“Is that how you feel about me? About all of us?” Francesca said levelly, her throat aching, tears springing to her eyes.

“No! I don’t! I’ve always cared, enormously. Not because I have to, but because I
want
to. That doesn’t mean that I can always give you what you want, because in my opinion, it’s not always good for you.”

“The big expert on what’s good for people! You with your sponging and your alley-cat morals!”

“And you with your vision of life as an FDA-approved drug! Take two green ones twice a day and your life will be safe and perfect. Nothing spontaneous, nothing that forces her to feel will ever happen to Francesca Abraham, G-d forbid! She’ll sit up on her high bench in her black robes judging the rest of us according to her warped standards, no matter how miserable they make her!”

Francesca’s eyes widened. “Answer me this, Miss Spontaneity. How do you justify copping out of your commitment to Gran and me to shack up with some one-night stand!”

“Oh, Francesca, it wasn’t like that!”

“Tell me the truth for once. You were in it for the money, weren’t you, right from the start?”

“I don’t know.” Suzanne hesitated. “I thought about the inheritance, about staying on Gran’s good side so that some of the money would go to good causes. It also crossed my mind that Renaldo was in Europe, and this was a way of finding him.”

Francesca shook her head slowly.

“But all that changed somehow once I got involved. I
am
just as committed as you are. Just not in the same way. I’m committed to fulfilling Gran’s real need, which isn’t the same at all as looking for an old manuscript.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You just don’t get it, do you? This quest has a secret agenda, one we’re not supposed to know about. It’s a way for Gran to expiate her sins with us.”

“Sins?”

“Yes! Don’t you see? We’re the last links in the golden chain, and both of us are utter failures. We aren’t interested in the family’s past or religion. Worst of all, neither of us is married or even engaged to the ‘right’ kind of boy. What we are really supposed to be doing here is giving ourselves the good education Gran feels she failed to pass on. Culture, religion, heritage…The manuscript isn’t really the point.”

“When did you figure this out?”

“I think I understood all about it right from the beginning. For me, it was never just the money or Renaldo. I felt Gran’s need. It didn’t make any sense to me at first, but I looked at her and realized she was, I don’t know, so frail. And she was asking this of me.”

“Even if I believe you—which I’m not sure I do—how does any of this connect with what you did!?”

“I had no choice, really!” she blurted out. “I mean, I
did
, of course, but…” She stopped, swallowing hard. “Do you remember what Gran said that night, about hearing something you had always known was true, something that matched exactly all the information stored in your heart so that there was no question of disagreeing, of finding reasons to resist?” She reached out and took her sister’s hand. “Please, Francesca, try to understand…this wasn’t the same as the other times. This was really, really different. It was overwhelming.”

Francesca looked at her thoughtfully. “If it was really so different this time with you and…What’s his name?”

“Gabriel,” Suzanne whispered, growing paler still.

“Gabriel. If it was the grand, once-in-a-lifetime passion Gran was talking about, then what in heaven’s name are you doing here looking up Renaldo?”

Suzanne stared at her, stricken. “Please, Francesca. Don’t make me answer you now. Please don’t…I’m begging you…”

“Okay, okay! What’s wrong with you? You look positively ill!”

“And you look lovely,” Suzanne said hoarsely, pressing the palms of her hands into her eyes.

“My hair needs to be cut,” Francesca murmured, running her fingers self-consciously through her hair, strangely pleased.

“Don’t you dare touch it! You look like an angel. Actually, I’ve never seen you so…relaxed? Happy?”

“Really? Do I really look different?” A slow smile spread across her face.

“Is it Marius, Francesca?”

She nodded. “But nothing’s settled, of course. So many things are up in the air. We’re so…different.”

Suzanne reached out for her hand and squeezed it. “Where is he?”

“Back in London examining something at the Bodleian Library he thinks might be useful.”

“And what have you heard from Gran?”

“I’m scared, Suzanne. There are all these too cheerful phone calls, but she’s never at home when I call her….” She shrugged.

“She’s never home?”

“Not for the last few weeks.”

“You don’t think that means…? G-d! Someone would have told us if it was serious, if she’d been hospitalized or anything. I mean, Mom would have let us know, right?”

“When was the last time you spoke to Mom?”

“Well, actually, not since we left New York.”

“Mom would know. We should call her.” Francesca shook her head.

“Mom might know, but she won’t necessarily tell us. They might be in cahoots,” Suzanne pointed out.

This shocked Francesca. “But why? Why keep her illness a secret?”

“Because she doesn’t want us to abandon this quest and come running home to be with her.”

“But you’ve already abandoned the quest and run off!”

“I did exactly what Gran wanted me to do!”

Francesca stared. “What are you talking about?”

“Gabriel and me. Even my running off. It was all part of Gran’s plan, the real purpose of this trip.”

Francesca looked flabbergasted.

“She set us up, Fran. That is, she set
me
up. With Gabriel. She was
hoping
I’d run off. I’m not sure about you and Marius, though. But it wouldn’t surprise me. You see, it’s time we two were married to nice, Sephardic boys and got some leaves growing on the bare-branched bough.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m telling you it was no accident that Marius and Gabriel were at the River Room the night we were. I know, because Gabriel told me all about it.”

They sat across from each other in silence.

“He told you himself that Gran arranged for the two of you to meet?”

Suzanne nodded.

“My G-d!” Francesca chewed her lip, remembering her grandmother’s odd behavior in the restaurant after Suzanne’s disappearance: her radiant face, her laughter. It all made perfect sense now. “Do you think…did she…Gran…make some arrangement? With Marius, I mean. Did she promise him…them…something like…like…” Her voice grew low and horrified. “Dowries?”

Suzanne, to whom such a thought had never occurred until now, turned ashen. She stretched out her legs and moved down low in her chair, staring at her spoon with stony-eyed malevolence. “Who knows?”

“I wish,” Francesca said in a low groan, “that I had never been born.”

Suzanne rubbed her forearm, feeling the goosebumps rise. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

They walked slowly into the fading daylight and sat wharfside, looking down into the swirling, dark eddies of water. Now and again, the laughter of holidaymakers drifted back to them, sounding hollow and unreal. The wind blowing off the canal turned rude, whipping their clothes and disheveling their hair, destroying any attempts to pat things neatly back into place.

“Suzanne, did you find Renaldo?”

“Yes,” she answered softly. “I did.”

“So, what happened?”

“He was standing in a church. He looked happy. And there was a girl, a student, very young and pretty. She was smiling up at him and he was smiling back, giving her his special smile,
my
smile.” She swallowed. “But it was all right, you know? I realized, then, that it was never meant to be.”

They listened to the slap of the water against the wooden sides of the boats.

“And Gabriel?”

“I left him standing on the quay in Gibraltar. I feel like part of my body is missing,” she whispered. “I’ve never felt this kind of pain before.” Her chin quivered. “What are you going to do about Marius?”

Francesca hugged herself. “He…he made me believe that he cared. That it was me…” She choked, devastated. “The heiress. That’s what Peter used to call me, remember? I
trusted
Marius, Suzanne. And I haven’t done that with a man in a very, very long…” She suddenly sobbed.

“Don’t,” Suzanne said, holding her tight, ignoring the stares of the sympathetic and interested drama-seekers among the passersby.

36

“Come, Francesca.”

She looked up, bleary-eyed. It was almost dark. “Where?”

“I don’t know. Your hotel, I guess.”

A certain cool light came into Francesca’s eyes as she wiped them dry. “Yes. And I’ll tell you what else we’re going to do. First, we’re going to check you into the largest suite they’ve got, Suzanne. And then we’re going to have the most extravagant meal in the most expensive restaurant. And after we charge it all to Gran, we’re going to call her and…”

“Yes?”

“Make her tell us the truth!”

“Is there any hope she would?”

“She has to! You just can’t do these things to people, no matter how good your intentions are. You can’t manipulate lives like this! My life!”

“But we can’t even be mad at her, can we? Not now. Not with her condition.”

“All I know is if she promised Marius something, if this whole thing was some sort of scheme, I’ll never forgive her for as long as I live.”

“Yes.” Suzanne nodded. “Exactly.”

“Oh!”

“What?”

“I just remembered. I’ve got to go out this evening. I promised someone. That is, someone promised
me
. There’s a costume party, and she was going to give me a tour of Venice…all kinds of places tourists never get to see.”

“Who is this person?”

“It’s this woman I went to see this morning about the manuscript. I think her name is Elizabeta Bomberg. She never really said. I haven’t decided if she’s real or a ghost, a sorceress or a good fairy!” Francesca shook her head.

“I can’t believe my sensible sister is going to put herself in the hands of some weird stranger. Where’s your New York smarts?”

Francesca hesitated. “Do you remember those books by Carlos Castaneda?”

“The ones where this college student doing research finds this old Indian who becomes his spirit guide in Mexico and he has all these out-of-body experiences? Didn’t that all turn out to be a fake?”

“I can’t explain it, Suzanne. I know it doesn’t sound rational, but there really is something magical about this woman. She’s an aristocrat, but from another age. Someone who doesn’t seem to belong to this world anymore. And she has this grasp of things—history, human nature. A kind of wisdom, I guess you’d call it. The things she told me were awesome. You must meet her!”

Suzanne eyed her skeptically. “This doesn’t sound like you at all. What did she do, cast a spell over you? My friend from Haiti says that witch doctors can do that. How did you meet her, anyway?”

“Her name and address were in a book we found, together with the manuscript pages in Cáceres.”

“Does she know anything about the manuscript?”

“You wouldn’t believe what she told me! I’m still in shock! Come to my hotel room. We’ll order some drinks, and I’ll tell you everything.”

They sat on the bed in their slips, drinking expensive champagne brought in a silver ice bucket by room service. Between them, they finished the bottle.

“This is the story: David Montezinos was a famous book collector who lived in Amsterdam. He was a rabbi’s son, and a teacher at a famous Talmudic academy founded in 1616 called Etz Hayyim—which means ‘tree of life.’ Anyhow, there were more than twenty thousand books and manuscripts—mostly in Spanish and Portuguese, having to do with the Sephardic Jewish community—in his collection when he died in 1916. Including, most probably, the Gracia Mendes memoirs. He bequeathed the collection to the academy.

“When it began looking likely that the Nazis were going to take over Europe, the curators at Etz Hayyim were afraid the Nazis would either steal the collection or, worse, just burn down the whole building. Actually, the Nazis did steal another famous Jewish book collection in Amsterdam called the Biblioteca Rosenthaliana. They sent the whole thing back to Germany.”

“What does any of this have to do with—”

“I’m getting to it. Elizabeta Bomberg was a well-known book dealer in Venice. She offered to help hide the Montezinos collection until the war was over. Bit by bit, couriers took out some of the most valuable books and manuscripts and delivered them to her. But then it got very dangerous. One of the couriers got caught and others panicked, just abandoning suitcases full of books and manuscripts wherever they happened to be. Under torture, one of them talked, and Elizabeta was arrested.”

“What happened to her?”

“The Nazis tortured her, but she wouldn’t tell them anything. She had powerful friends who got her released. But she suffered tremendously.”

“What happened to the collection?”

“Elizabeta returned it after the war. But she was heartbroken about the losses. She was especially upset about the Gracia Mendes memoirs. It seems she had a great interest in our ancestor and had done a great deal of research into her life and history. This woman I met said she wanted to share that with me.”

“Wait a minute—this woman, the one you met, the one who’s coming over tonight, is she or isn’t she this Elizabeta Bomberg?”

“I don’t really know!”

“That all happened half a century ago. If that’s who she is, then she must be ancient!”

“It’s so strange. When I first saw her, she seemed, I don’t know, youngish. But when I looked closer, I realized she was very old. She could hardly walk.”

“And she’s taking you on a guided tour of Venice?”

“You know what, I’m not sure of anything anymore,” Francesca answered, throwing back her head and draining the last drops from the glass. “But I have this feeling”—she pressed her fist into the center of her body—“that she knows something really important, and that she’ll tell me what it is tonight. I’ve simply got to go. Please, Suzanne, you’ve got to come with me!”