Chapter 25 Honor’s Child #6
This was what Esther had been protecting him from, James Winslow realized—this eternal conflict, this everlasting hatred.
When Nour turned away from Jimmy, she wasn’t smiling.
Omar was still beaming when he called out, getting the James right the first time.
The five-year-old pointed at Jimmy—the way Omar had pointed at the stone Yaakov might have carried with him from those stairs of death at Mauthausen.
After what she said at the Damascus Gate, Nour wouldn’t speak to Jimmy.
She stayed out of the kitchen when Yaakov and Jimmy were at work on the translation.
For the most part, Omar stayed close to his mom.
When Omar ventured into the kitchen alone, it was usually when Yaakov went to the bathroom and Omar had an object for Jimmy to name.
James Winslow would remember one such object, a framed, black-and-white photo of Yaakov in his early twenties—before Mauthausen.
The older couple must have been Yaakov’s parents; the two girls were Yaakov’s younger sisters.
Jimmy knew their stories; they died in other concentration camps, not Mauthausen.
The children died at Dachau, the parents at Auschwitz—or the other way around.
It pained Anat that Jimmy couldn’t keep straight who died where.
“Family,” Jimmy said, and Omar repeated the family word.
Nour must have heard the word, because she quickly came to take the family photo and put it back—perhaps on the night table at Yaakov’s bedside, where a photo of such tragic magnitude belonged.
(Or so James Winslow believed; he was just guessing where Yaakov kept that family photo.)
There was one last book signing, in a chain bookstore on Jaffa Street, a Steimatzky’s—or this was what Jimmy thought Anat had said.
Anat wasn’t with him. The one-armed one had arranged for a couple of soldiers to see he got safely back to the American Colony.
The bookstore had his backlist titles, in Hebrew and English—even The Dickens Man was there—although James Winslow was mostly signing copies of Roommates in Vienna.
The aisles between the bookshelves were as labyrinthine as the snakelike signing line.
Jimmy knew this was his last chance to see Esther, if she chose to show up.
Wasn’t Esther’s hiddenness of biblical proportions?
Wouldn’t Esther keep moving to the end of the signing line?
Didn’t it suit the one-armed one to be incognito—to be the last in line?
Jimmy was resigned to not seeing her, but he still hoped he would—if only to thank her for looking after him and his mom.
If only to hug her, James Winslow was thinking—provided someone as elusive as Esther would allow herself to be hugged.
Although she was seventy-six, Jimmy had expected Esther to be as invincible as her story.
As always, Jimmy noticed the soldiers. Were soldiers inclined to take up the end of a line?
Jimmy wondered. It struck him there was no one left in the line who wasn’t a young soldier.
Who knew soldiers were big readers? James Winslow was thinking.
Jimmy imagined Esther would still be tall and thin, but her hair was white, Jimmy knew, remembering how her white hair stood out in the photo of her with Prime Minister Begin.
Jimmy saw soldiers who were tall and thin—some of the young women included. Up close, Esther’s white hair indeed stood out, but Jimmy didn’t see her until she was the next in line. The one-armed one was accompanied by two very tall girl soldiers.
“These two will take you to the American Colony,” Jimmy’s birth mom said.
One of the young women was clinging to Esther’s remaining left arm.
The other tall soldier kept her distance from Esther’s missing right arm.
When he saw the stump, Jimmy instantly felt a sharp pain in his right arm.
He’d been bent over the signing table, autographing a book for one of the young male soldiers, when Esther was suddenly the next in line—she just stood there when the pain made Jimmy drop his signing pen.
The tall girl soldier who’d been hanging on to Esther spoke to Jimmy first. “It happened to me when I saw it—the pain goes away,” she told him. The other young woman, who stood apart from Esther’s stump, spoke next.
“I feel the pain every time I see it—the pain just subsides,” she said.
“Just don’t think the pain you feel is genetic, Jimmy,” Esther told him, laughing at herself—thus inviting the young soldiers to laugh along with her. Even Jimmy laughed a little, although the pain in his right arm was no joke.
Esther was wearing faded blue jeans with an untucked red polo shirt.
Jimmy saw the long fingers of her left hand lift the bottom hem of her shirt.
Even at her age, the one-armed one had a flat stomach.
The last two lines of the Jane Eyre quotation were above the waistband of her blue jeans, below her belly button—both the more I will and the respect myself.
“I’ll bet you’ve read Charlotte Bronte, haven’t you?” Esther asked him.
Jimmy knew Esther’s story better than he could remember Jane’s.
When he stood up from the signing table to give Esther a hug, she hugged him so hard (with one arm) that he thought he broke his nose against her breastbone.
Jimmy knew firsthand that there would never be a bra for Esther.
“It’s like Annelies said—you just are Jewish.
You’re a Jew, Jimmy,” Esther whispered in his ear.
“You feel the pain because you’re Jewish. ”
Later, when he was signing books for a whole gang of girl soldiers, the one-armed one stood behind him—her left hand on his right shoulder. Jimmy was relieved she’d not shown him the rest of the Jane Eyre quotation.
When Esther leaned over him, to whisper in his ear, he could feel her strong left hand—her long fingers digging into his right arm, which was still hurting.
“You know how long I waited to catch up on being Jewish,” she whispered.
“Please wait to be a Jew until your two moms are dead, Jimmy. But what about your daughter?” Esther asked him.
“If somebody loves you—if there’s anyone you love—just be a Winslow, Jimmy,” Esther told him.
“Remember how the townspeople of Pennacook hate your family, Jimmy—just for being Winslows! Isn’t their hatred enough?
Don’t you relish their hatred?” the one-armed one asked him. His signing hand was throbbing.
When the last soldier’s book was signed, there were some boy soldiers standing there.
Jimmy realized the young men weren’t just hanging around because of the young women.
No less than the girls, the boy soldiers were enthralled by Esther.
All Jimmy could think of was the three-year-old girl who’d been left at the orphanage—her mother murdered by anti-Semites.
Here is Queen Esther with her devotees, Jimmy was thinking, when Esther whispered once more in his ear.
“Just be a Winslow, Jimmy,” she repeated.
That was when the photojournalist, a young man who’d all the while been taking photos, asked Jimmy to tell him Esther’s name.
The young man spoke English with a German accent.
He was an Israeli correspondent, a German photojournalist; he was covering the Jerusalem book fair for a German newspaper, as he explained to Jimmy and to Esther.
“You don’t need to know my name, young man,” Esther told him. Then the one-armed one repeated herself in German.
“But the resemblance between you and your son is so striking. If my newspaper wants to use one of my shots of the two of you, I’ll need to know your name—it won’t suffice for me to say you’re the author’s mother,” the young photojournalist said, speaking both to Esther and to Jimmy.
From the uncertain way James Winslow and Esther Nacht stared at each other—as if they’d just now noticed the resemblance between them—the photojournalist imagined he’d made an embarrassing mistake.
“Es tut mir leid,” the young German said to Esther.
(“I’m sorry,” he’d said.) “I shouldn’t have presumed you were James Winslow’s mother,” the young photographer said.
James Winslow was, as he often was, speechless.
Had he told the story so many times that he was tired of telling it, or was Jimmy just relishing the hatred of the townspeople of Pennacook?
“Young man,” Esther said, taking the photojournalist’s right wrist in her unshakeable grip, “James Winslow’s mother is a dear friend of mine.
” Then she released the young German. “This precious boy is Honor’s child,” Esther said, no less fiercely seizing the wrist of Jimmy’s writing hand, like she’d never let him go.
They watched the photographer gather up his gear—he took no more pictures of Jimmy with his birth mom.
Jimmy couldn’t feel his fingers; he believed the blood had stopped circulating to his right hand.
At last, James Winslow knew who he was. Forbidden to be a soldier, he’d not been born to die in a misbegotten war.
Jimmy knew he was Honor’s child—a daydreaming, woebegone boy with a brave Jewish girl inside him.
His right wrist would be bruised by how tightly Esther took hold of him, before she let him go.
This was when the New Hampshire boy knew he had the heart of the Winslows’ last orphan.
The Jewish one was the best one. James Winslow would forever be an ally of Queen Esther.