Pale of Settlement

Lila’s Story

Israel 1997 In my memory, my grandmother is framed by flowers. Head-high stalks of gladioli, a backdrop of hibiscus, anemones at her feet. My grandmother is smiling, cheek to bloom. Here are the flowers still: tricolor lantana bordering the sidewalk, vermilion bougainvillea overhanging the second-story stairs. Here are photographs, a pile of black-and-white snapshots taken in the 1940s, not long after my grandparents arrived in Palestine. I flip through them liketarotcards,laythemfaceuponmyhotelroombed.Hereismy grandmotherinafullskirtandblouseandwalkingshoes,kneeling in the Carmel woods called Little Switzerland. Here she is, arms linked with her two sons, posing on the beach. She is beautiful, or almost, cat-eyed and slim, with an aquiline nose and prematurely whitehair.Heresheisleaningagainstarailingbythesea.Herhair isblowingacrossherfaceandsheissquintingjustabit.Theseabehind her is flecked with white. The camera has caught that fleeting moment that precedes the self-consciousness of a smile, and that, I look everywhere for grandmothers and find none. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Lila’s Story 36 l i l a’ s s t o r y ~ 37 with that slight squint and windblown hair, makes her look contemplativeandalittlereckless ,bothvulnerableandbrave.Isweep the photographs back into a pile, leaving this one on the top. Palestine 1939 Lila knows it isn’t true the world is round. The ship from Trieste pitched forward and fell right off the edge. The gulls wheeled up offthedeckandscreamedintothewind.HereinHaifa,itisprimitive , dusty, dirty, hot. It is the Orient, the Levant, the Near East but not nearly near enough. The road they live on is unpaved. Only cold water from the tap. Lila boils the drinking water, scrubs the fruit and vegetables with soap, makes sure to toast the bread. She pores over the notebook her cook gave her when they left, recipes handwritten in a slanting German scrawl. She cooks in the heat of the afternoon while Josef takes his nap—the kind of food they’re used to, too heavy for this climate—Wiener schnitzel, potato salad, a chocolate roulade. It is just so uncivilized, she writes to her sister in a letter she will never read. Everyone wears khaki shirts and shorts—even the girls! You see women squatting by the roadside, breaking paving stones, while Herr Doktor Professor drives a bus. EvenJosefhashadtotakeworksellingcurtainsdoortodoor.There arefedayeenandjackalsinthehills.Atnight,thejackalscomedown into the wadi behind our house; you can hear them howling at the moon. Lila’s Story Everything was so difficult for me then. The boys ran wild; I wasn’t used to doing everything myself. Back home, you understand, I 38 ~ l i l a’ s s t o r y had my cook and nanny, my parents and my sister close to me. So I thought I would be happier living on a kibbutz. I would do any work they wanted me to do—picking oranges at dawn, or weeding in the fields—in exchange for the communal kitchen and dining hall, the children’s quarters, the company of friends. We went to visitDeganyaandIwassoenthusiastic,Icouldn’tstoptalkingabout it for days. But your grandfather said no. We are not socialists or Bolsheviks, he said. It is not what we are used to. It is not our way. And, of course, he was right. Merkaz BackinHaifaforthefirsttimesinceherdeath,Iretracemygrandmother ’s steps. I’ve been coming here since I was a child, and it’s a child’s universe I know: the shady playground in the Gan Ha’em; PanoramaStreetwithitspicture-postcardview;theshortcut,slippery with dead pine needles, around the back of my grandparents’ old flat. I walk up Hanassi toward the town center, the merkaz, the way my grandmother did each day: past the Delek station on the corner, past the soldiers smoking outside the barracks gate, past the Dan Carmel and Panorama hotels, past Goldman’s art gallery, an indoor mall, the entrance to the Carmelit. I pass an ice-cream shop, a pizza parlor, branches of the banks Leumi and Hapoalim. Here at the corner there used to be a handbag shop, dim and pungent with the smell of leather hides. Next door, now gone as well, there was a toy store stacked with dolls in cardboard boxes crinkly with cellophane. Across the street, Mr. Schaeffer’s market is still there, although someone else in a white apron is standing by the door. Here, around the corner, is Steimatsky’s, the Englishlanguage bookstore, and here’s the newsstand where my grand- l i l a’ s s t o r y ~ 39 mother bought me treats—I remember the...