and she sat facing him with a cup of coffee and an apple strudel that he’d ordered without asking her.
She started playing her daily game of signs. If he eats a piece of schnitzel together with some mashed potato, she thought, that’s a sign that he’s broad-minded and there might be a chance here. If he eats his schnitzel first and his mashed potato at the end, or the other way round but still one thing after the other, he’s boring and a waste of time, and if he cuts off a piece of schnitzel and piles a lump of mashed potato on top, there’s no chance of even a quickie with such a glutton.
He held his knife expertly between his long fingers, cut off a piece of schnitzel and popped it in his mouth, followed by a forkful of mashed potato. He cut off another piece and offered it to her: “Why don’t you try some after all? We can still order one for you if you like it.”
She scrutinized his plate enviously, remembering the sandwiches she used to take to school. Most of her friends bought a roll and cheese from Menashe’s grocery store, and she would watch them, her heart sinking. She had never asked her father for money. He always wanted to give her some, even though he had none to give and she insisted that she didn’t need any. She accepted only enough for her Carmelit tram fare to school on Hillel Street, and that was to avoid having to climb up those steep Haifa streets. On the way home she would leap down the stairs at a gallop, her schoolbag on her back. She remembered how she had wanted to buy a roll from Menashe; only in retrospect did she understand that it was with envy that the others had looked at her homemade sandwiches, those sandwiches that her dad had prepared with so much love out of Bulgarian cheese and thin slices of tomato that absorbed some of the cheese’s saltiness and added moisture; or that excellent kashkaval cheese that the Romanians love, not just any old dry yellow cheese.
Years later, when they were already married, she told the man about the rolls with yellow cheese that she had remembered with such longing on their first date, and he wanted to take her to Menashe’s grocery store and buy her all the rolls with yellow cheese in the world, to prove to her that she hadn’t missed out on anything, but Menashe was dead and the grocery store was now occupied by an upholsterer. Once the school had been transferred to the French Carmel, there was no longer any need for it—neither for Menashe, nor for his rolls.
“How did the Jews end up in Barcelona?” she asked on their first date. And he told her that some Jews had escaped there from a burning Europe during World War II. His parents, he said, had lived in France, and when war broke out, his father had stolen across the border to Spain and lived there for three years until his wife joined him. “With their blond hair and blue eyes,” he explained, “my mother and her twin sister looked like Aryans. So they remained in France with their parents, until my mother crossed the border on her own and joined my father and his brother.”
“So, all your family lives in Barcelona?” she asked.
“My sister moved to Israel three years ago, when she was twenty. My parents have just bought her an apartment here in Jerusalem, and I’ve been given the job of fixing it up.”
“And what about you,” he asked, “have you ever been to Barcelona?”
“I’ve never been out of Israel,” she said.
“I’m not surprised,” he said. “With the kind of salaries they pay you here, I don’t see how anyone can even finish the month. Life in Barcelona is much cheaper, and salaries are much higher. Do you know that the nine-hundred-square-foot apartment they bought here cost more than the twenty-seven-hundred-square-foot one we bought in Barcelona?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked him suddenly. She was more interested in his response to this question than in real estate prices in Israel. In any case there was no way she could ever afford to buy an apartment of her own, even if she saved everything she earned for the next twenty years.
“Yes,” he replied, and she almost choked. Luckily she didn’t have any schnitzel in her mouth. So much for the romance; still, he was obviously broad-minded.
“Steady?” she asked, disappointed.
“Five years,” he replied. “We’re engaged.”
“So when’s the wedding?” She was annoyed that he hadn’t bothered to volunteer the information in the first place. Then she remembered that that she hadn’t actually asked him until that moment.
“Eight months after I return to Barcelona,” he replied, frugal with details, as if they were of no importance. She looked dolefully at the plate of excellent schnitzel that was emptying before her eyes.
“And when exactly are you going back to Barcelona?” She needed to put some order into her life.
“In two months’ time, when I finish the renovations. But what does it matter? I’m here now, and you are here, and I enjoy looking into those laughing eyes of yours, and I’d love to know why they are enveloped in sadness.” Maybe it’s because of Menashe’s rolls, she thought to herself, but she knew that he didn’t know Menashe or anyone like him, and wondered why he didn’t ask her if she had a boyfriend.
He held her hand, and a tremor passed through her body. A woman who gets turned on quickly gets turned off just as quickly, she thought.
“And I am thinking,” the man went on, scrutinizing her eyes, which had become even sadder, “about your lovely legs in a miniskirt and your angry face when you are asked not to come to work in a short skirt and your laughter—you make me laugh.”
“I’m glad I make you laugh.” She didn’t take her hand away from his.
“So I’ve noticed,” he said, and began suddenly to make trumpeting sounds with his mouth and playing the theme song from Love Story. She looked at him and started to laugh. He trumpeted the song so nicely, it sounded as if he really was playing a trumpet; he even blew out his cheeks like a real trumpeter.
Then he covered both her hands with his and brought them to his chest.
She had to escape this confusion. “Are there any other specialty restaurants you know of, in other parts of the world?” she asked, wishing for this moment, with him holding her hands in his, never to end.
“There’s one in Zurich, and of course in Paris.” He said “of course” as if it was as matter-of-fact to her as to himself. “There’s a restaurant there that serves only entrecôte. There’s no menu, and the only thing you get asked is how you’d like your steak, medium or medium rare.”
“What about well done?” she asked
“No such thing.” He grimaced in disgust at the very suggestion.
When he returned her to the apartment she shared with the two revolting students, he floated a kiss on her cheek and went off with a “See you tomorrow.”
“Where?” she asked enthusiastically.
“At work. Tomorrow morning,” reminding her that they worked in the same office, which is actually how they met.
My mother didn’t speak Hebrew. When they arrived from Romania, Dad joined an ulpan to learn Hebrew and Mom went out to clean houses; for this you don’t need Hebrew. In Wadi Salib you didn’t need to speak Hebrew for people to understand you. During the 1950s, with the huge assortment of languages in common use—from Moroccan to Romanian, Ladino to Yiddish, Arabic to Polish—everyone understood everyone else.
But not only did Mom not know Hebrew, she was also hard of hearing, which made it impossible for her to pick up the language of the street.
In Romania, apparently, they’d wanted to correct her slight hearing impairment; a “simple little operation,” they’d told her when she was thirty, “one hour under the anesthetic—you won’t feel a thing, and you’ll be able to hear.” But Mom wasn’t listening to them. She knew you couldn’t trust the doctors in Romania.