Every House Needs a Balcony (6 page)

My mother, who saw my father's extravagant use of heaping spoonfuls of coffee as an affront to the taste buds as well as to the family's pockets, would lie in wait for him to step out of the kitchen for just a second, when she would skip over to the
finjan
to rescue a few spoonfuls of coffee, which she returned to the brown paper bag, before they had time to melt into the boiling water. She didn't always succeed, however, because as soon as Dad's eagle eye caught sight of the reduced coffee level in the
finjan
, he would replace the spoonfuls she had returned to the paper
bag, plus an extra heaping teaspoon, to get his own back at Mom.

Mom was forever yelling that his extravagance was gnawing away at his daughters' dowries, but we always knew that, because of our father, neither of us would ever have a dowry, so what were we missing anyway—and apart from that, he had a knack of getting us on his side in all his quarrels with Mom. What did he want, after all? All he wanted was to enjoy life here and now; unlike Mom, who was forever thinking of her daughters' futures.

On Saturday nights we went to the movies. Every Saturday the whole family went to see a movie. It was the only thing my parents had in common—their great love for cinema. And they always took us along with them so that we too could soak up this culture.

When the movie
The Ten Commandments
arrived in Israel, Mom was sure she could make a small fortune. She went out a week before the first showing and bought up twenty cinema tickets; on the day, when a long queue had formed at the box office and most people had no chance of obtaining a ticket, Mom sold hers at an exorbitant price. In short, here in Israel and with no command of the language, my mother, who had once been a movie house owner, turned into a ticket scalper. How proud we were of her; even Dad was proud of her. Of course we were sorry we hadn't bought up fifty tickets; the demand was huge, and hundreds of people queued up in front of the movie house without a hope of getting in.

We saw the movie
Oklahoma!
three times. But the first time we saw it, we didn't enjoy ourselves at all. The movie was being shown at the Tamar in the Upper Hadar neighborhood, close to the Carmel and very far from Stanton, which was located on the slopes of Haifa's downtown region. By the time Dad, Fila, and I had climbed up hundreds of stairs and arrived, breathless and pale, at the entrance to the Tamar cinema, it became apparent that Dad had only enough money for two tickets and no more; it was a three-hour movie, and consequently the price of a ticket had been doubled. All of Dad's pleas and explanations—that we had come a very long way to be there, that he had no more money on him, and how could they allow two little girls to go into the movie house alone?—were of no avail. The stone-hearted usher would not relent; my sister and I went in on our own, leaving our father outside to wait for us. In the intermission we rushed outside to him, and with tears and pleas we tried to persuade the usher to at least let our father in to see the second half of the movie—surely he'd been punished enough, forced to sit outside for an hour and a half. The usher refused to relent, while we, our hearts breaking at the thought of Dad having to spend a further hour and a half outside, just didn't enjoy the movie. When it was over and we were making our way out, we cursed the usher with a visit to the grave of the black-hearted Hitler. At the tops of our voices, we said it, so he'd hear!

On Thursday our mother left us in the bath for a full two
hours—as if the longer you soak yourself in the water, the more likely you are to be thoroughly rid of all the dirt.

“We're expecting an important visitor tomorrow,” Mom explained to us as we were falling asleep in the water, as usual. “The famous playwright, Eugène Ionesco, is coming to visit us.”

“What's a famous playwright?” I asked my mom. And even Yosefa, who was wiser than anyone, didn't have an answer to my question.

“It's someone who writes plays,” Mom explained. And I didn't understand how you could write plays. You watch plays, like you see movies, don't you? It's not a book that you can read.

“Why is Ionesco coming to visit us?” my sister asked my mom. She'd always been practical, my sister.

“Because he's a friend of Tante Marie's, and he's coming to visit her.”

“And will he live here with her?” My sister went on being practical and suspicious, knowing that it was crowded enough already in Lutzi's house.

“No. He's a tourist. He's not immigrating to Israel. He's only coming for a visit,” Mom replied, and left us too long in the bath.

The important guest arrived the following day. So important was he that even Tante Lutzi opened wide her red room, with all its chairs; she ran out the red carpet, as they say.

Tante Marie was my father's aunt, as well as Lutzi's and Vida's. When she immigrated to Israel to live out the rest of her life near her nieces and nephew, she was housed in the kitchenette, and when Dori, Lutzi's younger son, was recruited into the Israeli navy, she moved into the elegant room that faced the balcony; because she was elderly and because she was well educated, she deserved to have a room of her own.

Before World War II, Tante Marie had been a teacher of French in Paris, and it was there that she met her Christian husband, who was later appointed French consul in Tunisia. They had a daughter, Odetta, and Tante Marie continued to teach French to the children of the French colony in Tunisia. In time, she fell deeply in love with a Tunisian army officer and spent more time alone with him than was respectable for the wife of a consul. When her husband discovered her betrayal, he sent her packing and returned with their young daughter, Odetta, to Paris. A sad Tante Marie went back to Romania without her daughter, who had been torn from her suddenly; she obtained a decent position in Bucharest as headmistress of the French school for daughters of the Romanian aristocracy. She reverted to her maiden name—Franco—and when war broke out, she was known by that name. Franco, which had a non-Jewish ring to it, enabled her to continue in her post in the school for Christian girls, despite the war. She met Eugène Ionesco at the school in which she taught; he taught literature in the same school.
Now that she was retired, she had come to live in Israel to be near the only family she had left, her nephew Moscu and nieces Lutzi and Vida. Convinced that French was the international language that all educated people should be able to speak if they are to get along in the big world, she undertook the task of teaching French to the princesses of the house of Franco: Yosefa and me. She decided to instill in us—the last known members of the Franco dynasty—her accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Tante Marie told us that in Spanish the name
Franco
means freedom and generosity. She also told us that our family had been among the most established in Spain, and when the Spanish Inquisition began, the family had moved to Turkey and from there, one part of the family settled in Bulgaria and another part went to live in Romania.

Once we understood that Dad was the last in line of the Franco dynasty—since our mother didn't know how to make sons—my sister and I were riddled with guilt for cutting short this aristocratic line; so I agreed to learn French. Yosefa agreed because she wanted to learn everything.

Because we were having private French lessons, Mom forbade us to go around looking like urchins and insisted that we had to be suitably dressed.

So we got ourselves spruced up in the clothes we owned, washed our faces, and crossed the landing from our room to Tante Marie's.

Over ten lessons we learned to how to say “Bonjour,” “Com
ment ça va?” and “Frère Jacques,” until I rebelled and refused to continue with the lessons. Having to give up a whole hour of playtime out of only three at my disposal every afternoon between four and seven o'clock, coupled with the pungent smell of age that emanated from Tante Marie, just to learn a subject that was not included in the official school curriculum was just too much for me. Also, I had told my sister that in all the movies we went to see, they always speak English and not French, a sure sign that French was not so important a language as Tante Marie made it out to be. The lessons were discontinued. I don't know why Tante Marie didn't continue teaching my sister, who wanted to learn everything. She probably felt that teaching only Yosefa was too much like a private lesson, whereas having me there gave her more of a feeling of being in a classroom, which she must have missed.

My sister never forgave me; because of me she never learned French, because of our poverty she never learned to play piano, and because of the steep streets of Haifa she didn't know how to ride a bicycle.

And then Ionesco arrived in Israel in search of the stimulation he hoped to find in our tiny little country. As a famous playwright, he was sure that the post-Holocaust Jewish state would provide the perfect inspiration for a new play, and the new landscapes would expose him to materials he could never have found in Europe.

For five full days, my father took Ionesco all around Haifa step by step and on foot. Ionesco was shown the vista from
the top of Mount Carmel, spreading down toward the sea. He saw the golden dome of the Baha'i temple, a source of pride to the city, and went down the myriad stairs and slopes that led from the Carmel to Haifa's downtown region, while the scent of coffee (from my father, no doubt) filled the air. Together they wandered among the laborers of downtown Haifa, a complex blend of colors, languages, and people; Arabic, Romanian, Yiddish, Polish, and Turkish ruled the street. And Moroccan—a lot of Moroccan.

And everyone was friends with everyone else, everyone went to the same place, even though they had not come from the same place, and most important of all, they were all Jews—well, apart from the Arabs, who in our eyes were also Jews.

Ionesco was very keen to know how a nation that had lost six million of its sons had succeeded in building such a state, albeit surrounded by enemies, but a homeland nonetheless. And Dad told him that he didn't for a minute regret having left the fleshpots of Romania, the movie house that the Communists had confiscated from him, so that his daughters could grow up as proud Jews in Israel; and it made no difference that, just for the time being, he was making his living selling cups of coffee.

After five days, Ionesco informed Dad that all the material he had accumulated would enable him to write ten plays about Israel.

In the end, after everything that he saw and absorbed and smelled and was impressed by in Israel, Ionesco wrote
the play
The Chairs
, about my aunt Lutzi and uncle Lazer's front room. The room was described in great detail: the double bed at its end, the long table—about ten feet of heavy mahogany—with many, many chairs all around, as many chairs as such a long table can accommodate. And along the room's western wall, as if these chairs were not sufficient, there stood a further row of chairs belonging to the same dining room suite. The chairs were heavy, their edges decorated with a carved circular pattern, hand carved, of course. And most important, their red velvet upholstery had the soft, embracing feel of a loving chair. Like soldiers, Tante Lutzi and her husband Lazer's chairs stood regally along the wall, and this is what Eugène Ionesco wrote his play about. The play tells the story of an elderly couple setting up chairs, arranging and rearranging them like soldiers, in anticipation of the arrival of invisible guests.

The Chairs
is 40 Stanton Street; at least that's the story that was repeated proudly in our home.

And my father, who spent five whole days taking Eugène Ionesco all over Haifa to provide him with inspiration, waited a long time for the play to be released, only to discover that he didn't get so much as a credit in the list of acknowledgments.

Mercedes was smiling broadly as she opened the door for them. “Hola,” Mercedes said, and kissed her on the right cheek, then the left, then the right again. She recoiled, jumped back, not understanding exactly—since when was she supposed to be kissing strangers?—and the man told her that in Spain people say hello and give each other three kisses. To her, it appeared very odd, and he went on to explain that in France the habit is to give two kisses, one on each cheek. In Spain it was three.

At night, when she was introduced to Jorge, who also kissed her three times, she asked the man if she was supposed to kiss all the men in Barcelona, and he said that such was the custom, and it seemed a much nicer one to him than the limp handshake meted out by Israelis, as if they were doing you a favor. She agreed, recalling his firm handshake when they were first introduced and how impressed she had been by it.

“So why didn't you kiss me three times when we were first introduced?” She laughed.

“Believe me, I wanted to.”

“Well, why didn't you, then?” she insisted, laughing.

“Because you would certainly have slapped my face.”

Beyond the mandatory kisses, the two women were unable to exchange a single word. Like many Spaniards, Mercedes spoke no other language than Spanish and Catalonian. Mercedes was gorgeous and kindly and dressed in well-cut jeans, a button-up shirt, and killer heels, her taste exactly.

The man took her suitcase into the very small bedroom she would be using. Mercedes's room was much more spacious, and the living room was very pleasant. The apartment was extremely clean, and it was only after she'd learned to say a few consecutive sentences in Spanish and stayed for lunch with them a few times that she witnessed how the efficient Mercedes came home from work at lunchtime carrying shopping, stuck a chicken in the oven, washed down the floor, and served her boyfriend, Jorge, a glass of whiskey, straight to the armchair in which he was sitting watching sports on TV. When the meal was over, Mercedes would quickly wash the dishes and tidy up the kitchen; if Jorge was feeling horny in the afternoon, she would follow him into her bedroom and emit a few moans and groans before rushing off back to work, to unlock the office from four thirty until eight thirty in the evening. She could never understand where this pleasant
woman got all the energy to do so much work singlehandedly, while her boyfriend just sat there watching TV, and even to smile at him. Sometimes he'd get through half a bottle of whiskey during a single afternoon break. On such occasions, when he pushed Mercedes into their room, she would hear her moaning—but not with pleasure.

She wanted to unpack her suitcase and hang up the clothes she had brought for the next three months, but the man said that his parents were longing to meet her and had been waiting from the moment of her landing in Barcelona. She felt guilty for the time she had wasted buying glasses.

She was hungry, a hunger accumulated over three months of going without food in order to save enough money to fly to the country of her bridegroom-to-be.

The arrived at a swish apartment block, and he pulled into an underground parking garage, where he parked next to a brand-new BMW. “This is my parking space,” he explained, “and that's my father's car,” and when they stepped out of the car and into an elevator, she felt she as if she were in a movie.

On the tenth floor, the man opened the door, calling out “Mummy” and announcing in French that they had arrived. She was sorry now that she had stopped her French lessons at Tante Marie's, but she understood a little, because it wasn't unlike Romanian. They entered a square hall, with one wall covered in mirrors and green marble pedestals; the other side had two shiny wood doors with painted flowers. Next to the entrance stood a red-velvet-upholstered chair,
on which the man placed his briefcase. The hall was the size of her parents' living room.

A plump woman with ingenuous blue eyes walked toward them, smiling, and he went up to her to give her three kisses. Next, a distinguished-looking man with piercing blue eyes and a Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin came up to shake her hand. He introduced his parents, Luna and Alberto, and they remained standing, a little embarrassed, in the elegant hall. His father spoke fluent Hebrew and explained that he had learned the language when he belonged to the Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement in Bulgaria. She spoke a stilted English with the mother, but the father and the man broke out in simultaneous translation as soon as she opened her mouth.

They entered the salon, and she caught her breath. It was very large, with two separate reception areas, one with a television, where they sat most of the time, and another, for guests, with wall-to-wall red velvet furniture. Leading off the salon was a dining area, containing a long table with enough room to seat sixteen. So there would be enough room for anyone wanting to eat.

She remembered that when they'd had all the uncles and aunts over for the seder, they'd had to spill over into the neighbors' apartment to accommodate all sixteen diners. The table was laid for a festive meal—a white tablecloth embroidered with delicate pale blue flowers and matching napkins, on which the cutlery had been laid. Each place setting
consisted of a large plate under a smaller one and two kinds of drinking glasses, one for wine and one for water. A stainless steel bowl lined with a white napkin contained small slices of baguette; several other small bowls contained diced red pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onion; and there was another bowl filled with croutons.

She looked up at the crystal chandelier hanging from the dining room ceiling, at the beautiful pictures hanging in the salon, at the large ceramic figure on the parquet floor in the corner of the room, and at the elegant dishes on the dresser and wondered if her gift would appear pathetic among all this splendor. Still, she put her hand into the bag she had carried close to her heart throughout the flight and pulled out a small blue porcelain figurine, which she had bought with her sister on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street. They had picked out the unique little piece simultaneously as soon as they laid eyes on it. The figurine was of a woman in profile, her head dropped sideways, a hand raised in doubt or pleading. Her body was soft, and her entire pose said, “Here I am, whether you want me or not.” A gentle woman, powerful, her clay eyes filled with compassion.

The figurine pleased his parents, and his mother gave it a place of honor on the dresser in the dining area. She felt wanted, and they sat down to eat their lunch. His mother sat at the head of the table, her usual place, and his father to her left, her son to her right, and she next to him.

Laura, the housemaid, brought in a large stainless steel
soup tureen and laid it beside Luna at the head of the table. Luna served them all soup, first their guest, then herself, then her son and husband.

She was surprised to be served first; at home she had become accustomed to the men being served first, and only after them did the women get their food. Maybe it's because I'm their guest, she thought, but in the evening, when the extended family arrived for dinner, she discovered that his mother made a habit of serving the women first and the men later, which she thought was an excellent arrangement.

The first course was gazpacho, and it was accompanied by a detailed explanation from Luna that this was a Spanish dish, a cold soup made from all the vegetables on the table, finely blended, with added water, vinegar, and ice cubes. The red soup looked especially refreshing to her and was eaten together with the diced vegetables on the table and the fried croutons. She watched the man to see what he was doing and did as he did, exactly as her sister, who had accompanied her to the airport, had instructed her. So as not to make a fool of herself, she was to watch everything the others did and do the same; place her napkin on her lap, take up a small amount on her spoon—not so little as to appear insulting or so much as to appear a glutton—take note of the cutlery they were using for each course, and of course, not confuse the water glasses with the wineglasses.

The soup was delicious, but when his mother asked if she wanted a second helping, she was too shy to accept. She was
glad in retrospect that she hadn't had another helping, because she was already full up after the second course, a Russian salad consisting of cooked vegetables in mayonnaise and coarsely cut pickled cucumber. Laura came around and collected the soup plates before handing the woman of the house the bowl of Russian salad, which she proceeded to serve first to her, then to herself, and finally to her son and husband.

The salad was tastier than the dish her mother made at home from cooked vegetables left over from the chicken soup. Here, obviously, the vegetables had been cooked especially for the salad.

“Is this a Spanish salad?” she wondered, and Luna explained that she cooked an eclectic variety of dishes from recipes she had picked up over the years. “The salad is a recipe I got from Ruth, my friend,” she said, “and I always make my own mayonnaise.” She didn't understand how you could make your own mayonnaise, rather than buy it in the grocer's shop.

The mayonnaise salad she ate with the small slices of baguette was so delicious that she was no longer annoyed at not being allowed to live with the man in a separate apartment.

Without asking, his father poured her a glass of wine, and they all said, “L'chaim.” The man asked her if she liked the wine, and she said, “Very much,” although she had no idea how to tell if a wine was good or not.

And again, Laura came in to collect the salad-soiled plates, and she didn't know if she should get up to help; as
the man didn't stand up, she didn't either. She thought later that she should have helped, and at dinner she did stand up to clear the table in spite of the housemaid, which in retrospect salvaged her reputation in his parents' eyes.

Luna saved a portion of everything she had served for Laura, who ate her meal in the kitchen.

And again, Laura came in with a long stainless steel carving dish containing tender veal, which his father carved and his mother served out. Two small bowls, one with peas and the other with potatoes and onions, arrived alongside. The man piled her plate with generous portions of everything, as if suspecting that she was too shy to help herself; the veal was the most delicious meat she had ever eaten in her life.

She made a point of chewing everything carefully, as per her sister's instructions, and most important—but really most important—not to forget to eat with her mouth closed. With every bite, she repeated over and over not to forget to keep her mouth closed. It's very difficult to chew with your mouth closed. She didn't say a word, worried that if she opened her mouth, she would forget to close it again when she was chewing. In any case, she was quite shy about saying anything, so she sat there, meekly listening to those who were wiser than she. This too was in accordance with her older sister's orders to avoid making embarrassing gaffes in the home of a bourgeois family abroad, one of the pillars of the Barcelona Jewish community.

“Would you like to have some more garlic?” His mother interrupted her closed-mouth drill.

“No, why?” she said uneasily.

“Because I don't cook with garlic. Alberto doesn't like it, but I know that Romanians eat a lot of garlic.”

“Bulgarians, too,” added his father. “It's just that I hate garlic.”

“Does your mother cook with garlic?” Luna asked.

“Yes, a lot of garlic,” she said. “My mother starts her morning with three cloves of garlic. For her blood pressure.”

“It's healthy, garlic,” said Luna, “and really good against high blood pressure. I, personally, like garlic.” Later, with time, she taught Luna how to introduce garlic surreptitiously into her cooking without her husband noticing it; after all, good meat really does need to be cooked with some added garlic.

“Alberto has diabetes, so nothing we eat contains sugar….” His mother continued to share the family secrets with her.

As they finished eating the main course, they discussed the falling prices of gold ingots and agreed the time was not right for selling off those they had; she listened in silence, concentrating on the French and on his father's Hebrew translation and her man's translation into English; each sentence, as it was uttered, was translated simultaneously especially for her. After Laura had cleared away the dishes, and she had almost
messed up by rising from the table—they had been seated for forty minutes and eaten three courses—Laura returned with a bowl of lettuce salad and fresh plates for everyone. She thought that Laura might have forgotten to serve the lettuce with the meat and now brought it to table, having just remembered. But it seemed that an experienced housemaid like Laura would never forget to serve something on time. Luna, who noticed her confusion, explained that in Paris they eat the lettuce salad after the main course, to ensure proper digestion. She took a little lettuce, which, of course was very tasty, but she was too shy to ask Luna about the dressing, which so enhanced the lettuce; and when the salad bowl had been removed and she was sure that this time they really had finished their meal, Laura returned with a wooden board on which pieces of every kind of cheese known to man were arranged. Various kinds of hard cheeses, Camembert, Brie, goat cheeses, every type of cheese except the regular yellow cheese she was used to at home. By this time she really had had enough and didn't even try any of the cheeses; she had had enough to eat to last her for the next two years. And this was before she even knew that there was still a dessert course to follow and that coffee and cake were yet to be served, and before she know that the entire process would be repeated in the evening—a meal that would last for over an hour, or if they were entertaining guests, two hours—with first courses, second courses, main courses, lettuce salad, cheeses, fruit, followed by coffee and cake. She had never in her entire life
eaten so much in a single meal, with every course being a delicacy. And twice a day, even.