Chapter 25 Honor’s Child #2
As it turned out, his connecting flight to Tel Aviv was from Frankfurt.
A layover in Germany wasn’t nostalgic. In April 1981, when Jimmy went to Jerusalem, he was marginally aware of the trouble in Lebanon.
He knew the Lebanese Civil War was ongoing.
He’d heard there were PLO bases and Syrian forces in Lebanon.
“A war with Lebanon is coming,” Matthias said.
“The Golan Heights will forever be a problem” Gabrielle had added.
In early April Jimmy rode in the car with Matthias from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Jimmy was embarrassed that he didn’t know where the Golan was in relation to Lebanon and Syria.
This set Matthias off on the subject of what Prime Minister Begin might do about the Syrian forces in Lebanon.
Jimmy couldn’t contribute to this conversation in any meaningful way.
He just lamely commented that the book fair started on April 7.
What James Winslow wanted to say was that he didn’t know who he was.
He might be Honor’s child, but he didn’t feel like a Winslow.
If he wasn’t Jewish, who was he? He couldn’t even imagine how it felt to be a Jew.
When he arrived at the American Colony Hotel, Jimmy said nothing about not knowing who he was to Matthias and Gabrielle.
Those two Jews knew James Winslow well, but they knew his writing best.
The American Colony was like a European hotel.
It had a Swedish sauna, which Jimmy went to in the late afternoon.
There were two swimming pools. The bougainvillea was climbing the walls all around.
There is no spring to speak of in New Hampshire, but spring comes early to Jerusalem.
Jimmy was late joining his European publishers for dinner.
He didn’t know if they were in the main dining room of the hotel or on the patio with the fountain.
Jimmy knew they must have started with some wine, because Gabrielle’s laughter led him to them.
She had a lighthearted laugh when she’d had a glass or two of wine.
It wasn’t the first time his European Jewish publishers were laughing about Jimmy’s Israeli publisher.
He’d not met Yehuda; now Jimmy learned he wouldn’t meet him.
Yehuda was famous for his remoteness; he kept his distance from his authors who weren’t Israelis.
He had been known to delegate an editorial assistant to deal with his foreign authors.
Matthias had assured Jimmy it was a good house with a good list of authors.
Even so, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Matthias had heard the house was facing a buyout from a bigger, better publishing house.
Gabrielle told Jimmy that Yehuda had a standoffish relationship with the Jerusalem book fair.
“Yehuda believes the book fair should bear the burden of hosting their international writers. Maybe Yehuda thinks God forbids Israeli publishers from hosting their foreign authors,” Gabrielle said, in her serene way.
No one had met Anat, the editorial assistant.
“I’m sure she’s good. Yehuda delegates everything to his editorial assistants—he picks good ones,” Matthias said.
A German-born Jew, Matthias was more interested in James Winslow’s Hebrew translator—a very good one.
Yaakov Himmelman had translated Roommates in Vienna, and now he was translating Not an Egyptian.
There was a lot of German in those two Vienna novels, and Yaakov knew German.
Matthias thought Jimmy should know that Yaakov was an Austrian-born Jew who’d been a prisoner at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria.
At first the prisoners were all men—Germans and Austrians—and then, during the second half of the war, Mauthausen had women prisoners, too.
Mauthausen was a forced-labor camp; the gas chamber wasn’t used until 1942.
The prisoners at Mauthausen were forced to work in the granite quarries, Matthias told Jimmy, and the Hebrew translator had once carried stones on what were called the “stairs of death.” Often men collapsed under the weight of these heavy stones, crushing the prisoners who followed them up from the quarry.
The U.S. Army had liberated Mauthausen in 1945, when Yaakov Himmelman was thirty-two.
His American liberators were the reason he had wanted to learn English.
Gabrielle had calmly done the math. Yaakov Himmelman would be sixty-eight now.
“But back to Anat, James—she’s the one overseeing Himmelman’s translation of Not an Egyptian,” Gabrielle said.
She’d talked to Anat on the phone; the assistant’s English was better than Yehuda’s.
Gabrielle found much to admire in Anat’s “outspokenness”—about the army and Israeli society.
Anat had recently finished her military service; she had “miserable memories” of that time, Gabrielle told them.
“It is not uncommon to have ‘miserable memories’ of that time in one’s life,” Matthias said, in his dour way.
Gabrielle was more measured than Matthias; yet she could also be more exact.
Gabrielle told them that Anat had served as a journalist in the army; she’d participated in basic training, in guarding missions, in kitchen duties.
Anat told Gabrielle that she’d had “an excellent position with much freedom”; yet Anat had described the environment in the army, and in Israeli society, as “sexist, militarist, and brutal.” Gabrielle saved for last what Anat had said about “today’s secular society”—how it was “slipping away.” All this made Jimmy happy to meet Anat; to a forty-year-old, Anat sounded young and rebellious.
Where Jimmy walked with Anat, from the American Colony Hotel to the Old City, he liked best the chaotic food places on The Prophets Street—nearest to the Damascus Gate, where they entered the Old City Wall into the Muslim Quarter.
The rest of the twenty-minute walk was easy but unmemorable.
The American Colony itself was more memorable.
In the late nineteenth century, an American Christian family had founded it.
They were joined by Swedes from the U.S.
and Sweden. The hotel had the reputation of being politically neutral; Jews and Arabs could comfortably meet there.
Jimmy would remember the patios—the one with the gazebo, and the better one with the fountain.
The ceramic-topped tables were Armenian.
Although James Winslow was just a beer drinker, he would remember the wine cellar with the see-through iron doors—off the main dining room with its white tablecloths.
One of the round tables for four was perfect for Jimmy and his two favorite European publishers.
Every morning those European Jews and Jimmy hoped that Anat would join them for breakfast. She never did; she either skipped breakfast or had already eaten when she showed up to take Jimmy to his Hebrew translator in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.
In Anat’s opinion, the American Colony was “more cool”—even “more super cool”—than the King David Hotel.
It was definitely “more international,” Anat had said.
She often joined Jimmy and his European Jewish publishers in the evenings in the cellar bar of the American Colony, which was very popular at night.
It was downstairs from the main dining room and the patio with the fountain.
The curved arc of the bar’s low ceiling reminded you that you were in a cellar.
There were cozy, connected nooks with comfy furniture.
Jimmy loved his morning walks with Anat through the Damascus Gate into the Muslim Quarter.
Anat explained that they could have gone more directly past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter, on their way to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.
They could stay on Khan Ez-Zeit—rather than staying on El Wad, the road from the Damascus Gate to the Via Dolorosa.
But Anat wanted Jimmy to see the Christian pilgrims following the Way of Sorrows, where Christ carried the cross to be crucified.
Besides, Khan Ez-Zeit was the main market street of the Old City.
Jimmy could tell Anat was impatient to pass by the more aggressive sellers in their bazaars; the aggressive ones resembled hawkers.
It was also clear to Anat that Jimmy was a fellow nonbeliever; they both enjoyed seeing the zealousness of the Christian tourists, kneeling (even weeping) at the Fifth Station of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa.
There were more cats in evidence on the main market street, Khan Ez-Zeit—as if the cats were disturbed by the praying (sometimes wailing) Christian pilgrims. It took no time to pass from the Muslim to the Christian Quarter, by either route.
They always ended up where the worshipful Christians were going—where Christ ended up, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Even in the morning, there was a line of Christians waiting their turn to kneel (or pray, or wail) at Christ’s tomb.
Jimmy admitted to Anat that he was curious to see the tomb.
“Maybe one afternoon, when we’re walking back,” Anat said.
Yet after the first three days of wending their labyrinthine way through the Old City—the Muslim Quarter, to the Christian Quarter, to the Jewish Quarter, and back again—even Jimmy knew there were usually more Christian tourists in line in the afternoons.