I went for my lesson on the day I was to visit Madame Halevy, but as usual I wasn’t prepared.
“I notice you don’t study,” Mr. Lieber said to me. “If you did it might change things.”
“I’m a bad student.”
Lieber shook his head. “You’re a disinterested student.”
I presented Mr. Lieber with the bottle of rum I’d taken from the store, and asked if I might skip my lessons from now on. I would instead stop by, say hello, then be on my way, ready to wander into the mountains with my sketchpad or, something I failed to mention, sit in Madame Halevy’s dining room and listen to her stories.
“And what do I tell your father?” Mr. Lieber asked me.
“Tell him I’m a work in progress,” I suggested.
“Is there anything you care about?” he asked me.
It was a difficult question, but I knew the answer. I cared about light, color, bone structure, the movement of the leaves on the lime trees, the luminous scales of fish in the harbor. I did not know how to explain this, so I said, “There is. But not it’s in any book.”
“At least you’re honest,” he said to me.
We shook hands, he accepted the rum, and then I went to Madame Halevy’s. The more she refused to tell me the story of Jestine’s daughter, the more I wanted to hear it. I think I was obsessed. I loved Jestine and could not stand to think of her in pain. It was if the mystery of the world would be revealed to me once I understood what had happened to this girl.
The maid had prepared a mango pastry that was syrupy and brought flies to it. “Here’s our little guest,” she said when I walked through the door. I was as tall as she, so I laughed. I had inherited my father’s height and was the tallest fellow in my classroom, as well as the laziest when it came to my studies.
I went to sit at the dining room table. The lace runner, from Burgundy, was set over the gleaming mahogany. I saw now it was frayed, thin as tissue. Upon inspection, I realized the silverware was twisted and very old, brought from France two generations ago. Some of it had turned black due to the salt air. Everything that had been new and beautiful was ancient now. The island’s weather was not good for preserving delicate things.
Madame Halevy came in to greet me. “Your mother has a message for me?”
“She does indeed.” I still wasn’t sure of what my response would be.
Madame seemed to like the pastry her maid had concocted; she dug right in, so I pretended to eat to be polite. Mostly I pushed the crust around my plate. The pastry was pale and flakey, the color of damp sand. I decided to give Madame Halevy the message constructed by my sister. “My mother sends you her best wishes and asks that you forgive her all of her transgressions.”
“Does she?” Madame Halevy said thoughtfully. Her eyes were bright beneath the white film that covered them. I could see the intelligence in her expression. I didn’t think for a minute that she believed me. “How is your sister Hannah?” she asked. She was cagey at all times.
“Fine.” I nodded. “Ready to get married.”
I wasn’t certain if I should speak of this or not, so I concentrated on my tea. The china was from Paris, gold and white, bone thin. I added sugar, and then, as people on our island did, a dash of molasses. It made a very sweet and delicious mixture.
“Married properly in the synagogue?” Madame Halevy asked.
“That is her wish,” I said.
“What your parents did tore apart the community. We are too few, and we as a people have suffered at the hands of too many to fight among ourselves like chickens.”
I remembered something Jestine had told me. “My mother used to kill chickens on Fridays when she was a girl. She said she enjoyed it.”
Madame Halevy laughed grimly. “I’m not surprised. Enough for today. I will take your sister’s wish into consideration.”
“What about Jestine’s daughter?” She seemed to have forgotten her promise to tell me the story.
“Tell your mother I accept her apology. I invite her and your father for dinner next Friday night. Hannah can come with them. We’ll all go to services first. Come back after that happens and I’ll tell you the story.”
In order to hear the end of the story I had to accomplish a task I thought might be impossible. I had to convince people who hadn’t spoken to each other in over ten years to take up polite conversation across the dinner table. It felt like a Herculean task. I thought about my father praying in the garden, alone. He was a good man, and sometimes he went past the synagogue at night and prayed at the doorstep. I wondered if my mother had placed some sort of spell on him that bound him to her. If I ever pledged myself to a woman she would need to have a kind and open heart and understand there was another way of seeing the world beyond the rules we had been taught.