Chapter 25 Honor’s Child #4
“Well, the book fair invited me,” Jimmy began.
He said he was working with his Hebrew translator on Not an Egyptian, which would soon be published there.
Jimmy ventured to say that he’d always been a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people.
This last bit seemed to provoke or irritate the Israeli journalist more.
It was easy for the “fuckhead,” as Anat called the reporter, to find a subject that exposed James Winslow’s ignorance of Israel.
The guy asked Jimmy for his thoughts concerning the disputed origins and various usages of the phrase “from the water to the water,” or “from the river to the sea.” Jimmy had no idea what the guy was fishing for. It sounded like a setup—even to Jimmy, who was just a New Hampshire boy.
“Please ask me about my writing—if you’ve read any of my novels,” James Winslow said. “I was invited to the book fair because of my writing.”
Anat called the editor of the Israeli newspaper to complain.
“In the first place,” Anat told Jimmy, “I’d said no interviewers who haven’t read your novels—at least one of them.
This fuckhead never reads novels. What this fuckhead asked you was predicated on making you look bad.
There’s no way you can talk about ‘from the water to the water,’ or ‘from the river to the sea,’ without offending someone,” Anat said to Jimmy.
“It’s toxic—no matter who says it, or how you say it,” Gabrielle said. “It can seem anti-Semitic or anti-Palestinian,” she told Jimmy.
“From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea means the entirety of what was called Mandatory Palestine, if you’re Palestinian—or the whole of the Land of Israel, if you’re Israeli,” Matthias said, pausing.
In 1977, Matthias told them, the election manifesto of the right-wing Likud party had declared: “Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” The Israeli journalist was definitely a troublemaker.
“I get it,” was all James Winslow could say.
“You may hear it, just don’t say it. ‘From the river to the sea’ can mean they will drive us into the sea—meaning they will annihilate us,” Anat said.
In contrast to the American Colony, according to Anat, the King David Hotel was associated with “the establishment.” She meant that the King David was a symbol of “Israeliness”—it was constructed “under the British Mandate.” His only experience with the King David was the Reading Room, off the lobby.
Jimmy never understood why some of his interviews took place there.
An imposing Oriental rug was under the huge center table, often festooned with flowers.
The painted ceiling was adorned with the Star of David.
On the beige-colored walls were four menorah candelabras.
The seven-branched candles of the temple menorahs shed little light on the ominously dark room.
Squat, upholstered chairs surrounded small, marble-topped tables.
There were long curtains draping the windows.
It could have been night or day outside; you’d never know.
The dim lighting might make it a challenge to read in the Reading Room, or so Jimmy had imagined.
The room’s somber colors and the dim light made Jimmy’s interviews at the King David feel like interrogations.
Thinking of interrogations, Jimmy was wondering about the soldiers.
Young men and boys, young women and girls—their uniforms and their weapons were noticeable.
Jimmy had questions about the soldiers, but he was sensitive to Anat’s “miserable memories” of her time in the IDF.
A few times, when Anat was busy with her other publishing responsibilities, a couple of young soldiers took Jimmy through the Old City to his Hebrew translator, or the soldiers walked with him back to the Damascus Gate—from which he knew his way to the American Colony.
Jimmy had asked two women soldiers about their duties in the IDF; they sounded disappointed when they said women were mostly restricted to administrative jobs.
Anat was angry she’d been replaced by soldiers—they weren’t her idea.
Her boss, Yehudah, whom no one liked, had told Anat that the “one-armed one” had requested the soldiers.
As Anat understood, despite Esther’s opposition to Begin’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, she had the prime minister’s ear.
“But there’s no need for a writer to be escorted by soldiers in the Old City!
” Anat exclaimed to Jimmy. He’d noticed the soldiers who appeared to be on guard duty at the International Convention Center, where the book fair was.
Some of the soldiers attending the book fair events were without their rifles; Jimmy wondered if the unarmed soldiers weren’t on duty, but he didn’t want to provoke Anat by asking her about the soldiers.
Anat knew that Esther Nacht was Jimmy’s birth mother—both the former nanny and a close friend of Honor Winslow.
This was only a scandal to the terrible townspeople of Pennacook.
To everyone else, especially to James Winslow’s publishers, it was a good story.
The International Convention Center was connected by a long, outdoor corridor to a tall Hilton Hotel.
From midafternoon—through the late afternoon and into early evening—there was a wind blowing through the palm trees at the main entrance to the convention center.
In the main hall—Ussishkin Hall, where Jimmy had his onstage interview—he noted the horseshoe-shaped balcony above and surrounding the stage, and the utilitarian sturdiness of the seats.
“Typical modern architecture of the fifties—simple, humble, but above all ugly,” Anat had said.
Anat spoke of the fifties as if they’d happened centuries ago and were accordingly outdated.
A floor below the hall was the agents’ center and the exhibition areas, where the various publishers had their stalls of books.
After Jimmy’s main event at the book fair—this being his onstage interview—Jimmy’s book signing was in his Israeli publisher’s exhibition space.
To have an autographing session in the midst of his publisher’s stalls of books contributed a kind of chaos—reminiscent to Jimmy of the traffic around Jerusalem’s central bus station, across from the convention center.
The ugly modern architecture of the fifties was certainly not Anat’s only criticism of the convention center, where she declared the crimson carpeting “simply awful.”
Anat didn’t accompany Jimmy to all his events at the book fair.
She’d skipped a panel discussion Jimmy had with other authors, his onstage interview in Ussishkin Hall, and the book signing afterward.
From the convention center, there was always someone returning to the American Colony Hotel—or there were two of Esther’s soldiers.
James Winslow’s onstage interview drew a big audience, and there was a long line of readers at his book signing.
Many people brought their own copies of books to be signed—some in English or in European languages.
The bookseller was happy, but she was impatient to keep the line moving forward; a bossy, domineering woman, she stopped conversations of any duration in the signing line.
The unfamiliar Hebrew names were hard for Jimmy to spell, and some of the more complicated inscriptions readers asked for required clarification.
A young salesman for the Israeli publisher offered pencils and paper to the readers in the signing line.
“Spell your name—write out any inscriptions!” the bossy bookseller kept shouting in English and Hebrew.
Jimmy didn’t notice the blond, blue-eyed soldier until he was next in line at the book signing. The book the young soldier held out for Jimmy to sign was an English-language edition of Roommates in Vienna.
“Eissler, Siegfried Eissler—you know how to spell it,” the young soldier told Jimmy.
“And you know what the inscription should be,” Siegfried said.
He had a deep, resonant voice. Siegfried was about the age Jimmy had been when they first met, garlic press and all.
When Jimmy stood up from the signing table to hug him, the writer was aware that he was eye-level to the breast pockets of the tall soldier’s uniform.
“Hard Rain is a woman!” they shouted to each other, which is what Jimmy wrote in Siegfried’s copy of Roommates in Vienna. Jimmy was “James” to everyone in the writing world, but he wrote “Jimmy” when he signed Siegfried’s book. James Winslow knew he was still a Yimmy to Siegfried.
Fr?ulein Eissler had adopted Siegfried before his mother died—when Irmgard was in her forties.
(Of what Irmgard died, Siegfried wouldn’t say.) Because of Annelies, Siegfried was Jewish now; he lived full-time in Israel.
Siegfried said he wouldn’t go back to Austria again; Israel was his home.
Hard Rain was gone, and Siegfried didn’t mention his grandmother.
Jimmy just assumed Frau Holzinger had passed away.
“And how is Annelies?” Jimmy asked Siegfried. His fellow soldiers were standing close to him, the way young friends do. It surprised Jimmy when Siegfried leaned over him and whispered in his ear, as if Siegfried had something to say that he didn’t want his comrades-in-arms to hear.
“Annelies told me, Yimmy—I knew Esther Nacht gave birth to you, before everyone knew. The one-armed one is inside you, Yimmy!” Siegfried whispered. Why was Esther such a damn secret? James Winslow wondered. Now Jimmy was whispering to Siegfried, too.
“I don’t know if I’ll see her when I’m here, or if she wants to see me,” Jimmy whispered. “I don’t even know how she lost her arm in Lebanon!” he said to Siegfried, his voice rising.