The Japanese Lover (16 page)

“So I see. With my father's money?”

Alma had not noticed that particular detail. Her first step toward independence was to obtain a diploma of some kind or other. Her vocation was yet to be defined.

“Your mama is determined to find me a husband. I don't have the courage to tell her I'm going to marry Ichimei.”

“Why don't you wake up, Alma? It's been ten years since Ichimei disappeared from your life.”

“Eight, not ten.”

“Get him out of your head. Even in the unlikely event that he should reappear and still be interested in you, you know very well you can't marry him.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Because he's from another race, another social class, another culture, another religion, another economic level. Do you need any more reasons?”

“Well then, I'll be an old maid. What about you, do you have a girlfriend, Nat?”

“No, but if I do, you'll be the first to know.”

“That's good. We could pretend we're a couple.”

“Why?”

“To put off any idiot who comes near me.”

His cousin had changed a lot in recent months. She was no longer a schoolgirl in white socks, but although her new clothes made her look like an elegant grown-up woman, Nathaniel knew her too well to be taken in by the cigarettes, the navy-blue suit, or the hat, gloves, and cherry-colored shoes. Alma was still the spoiled little child who clung to him, frightened by the crowds and the noise in New York, and only let go once they had reached her hotel room. “Stay and sleep with me, Nat,” she begged him, with that terrified look she used to have in the wardrobe of sorrows, but he had lost his innocence and sleeping with her now meant something different. The following day they caught the train to Boston, hauling her mound of luggage with them.

Alma imagined that the Boston college would be like a freer version of her secondary schooling, which she had completed with ease. She was eager to show off her new wardrobe, lead a bohemian existence in the city cafés and bars with Nathaniel, and attend a few classes in her spare time so as not to disappoint her aunt and uncle. She soon discovered that nobody looked at her, that there were hundreds of girls more sophisticated than she was, that her cousin always came up with an excuse not to meet, and that she was poorly prepared for her studies. She found herself sharing a room with a plump girl from Virginia, who whenever the occasion arose presented her proof from the Bible that the white race was superior. Blacks, Orientals, and redskins descended from monkeys; Adam and Eve were white; Jesus might have been American, although she wasn't sure about that. While she didn't approve of the way Hitler had behaved, she said, one had to admit he wasn't wrong when it came to the Jews: they were a condemned race, because they had killed Jesus. Alma asked to be moved. This took two weeks to arrange, and her new roommate turned out to suffer from a whole host of manias and phobias but at least wasn't anti-Semitic.

For the first three months, Alma felt lost, incapable of organizing even the simplest things in her life such as food, laundry, transportation, or her college schedule; previously it had been her governesses and then her selfless aunt Lillian who had seen to that kind of thing. She had never made her bed or ironed a blouse: that was what the domestic staff was for; nor had she ever had to keep within a budget, since in the Belasco home it was rude to talk about money. She was taken aback when Nathaniel explained her allowance did not include restaurants, tearooms, manicures, hairdressers, or masseuses. Once a week he appeared, notebook and pencil in hand, to teach her to keep a record of what she had spent. She always promised him she would improve, but the next week she was always in debt again. She felt foreign in this stuck-up, proud city; her fellow college students shunned her, and boys ignored her, but she never mentioned any of this in letters to her aunt and uncle, and whenever Nathaniel suggested she return home she would insist that anything was better than having to face the humiliation of returning to Sea Cliff with her tail between her legs. Just as she had once done in the wardrobe, she would shut herself in the bathroom and turn on the shower so that the noise would cover the swear words she shouted to curse her misfortune.

In November the whole weight of winter fell on Boston. Alma had spent the first seven years of her life in Warsaw but did not remember its climate; nothing had prepared her for what she had to endure over the following months. Lashed by hail, blizzards, and snow, the city lost all color; the light faded, and everything became gray and white. Life went on indoors, with people shivering as close as possible to the radiators. However many clothes Alma put on, the cold chapped her skin and got into her bones whenever she set foot outside. Her hands and feet swelled with chilblains; her coughs and colds seemed never ending. She had to summon all her willpower to get out of bed in the morning, wrap herself up like an Inuit, and face the freezing weather to cross from one college building to the next, hugging the walls so that the wind would not bowl her over, dragging her feet across the ice. The streets became impassable; most mornings the cars were covered with a mountain of snow that their owners had to attack with picks and shovels; everybody went around buried in wool and furs; and the children, pets, and birds all disappeared.

But then, just when Alma had finally accepted defeat and had admitted to Nathaniel that she was ready to call her aunt and uncle and beg them to rescue her from this freezer, she met Vera Neumann. Vera was an artist and businesswoman who had made her art accessible to ordinary people in the form of scarves, sheets, tablecloths, tableware, clothing—anything that could be painted or printed on. She had registered her brand name in 1942, and within a few years had created a market. Alma vaguely recalled that her aunt Lillian competed with her friends to be the first each season to show off Vera's new designs for scarves and dresses, but she knew nothing about the artist herself. She went to her talk on impulse, to escape the cold between two classes, and found herself at the back of a packed room whose walls were lined with painted fabrics. All the colors that had fled the Boston winter were captured there—bold, whimsical, fantastic.

The audience greeted the speaker with a standing ovation that reminded Alma yet again of how ignorant she was. She had no idea that the woman who designed her aunt Lillian's scarves was a celebrity. Vera Neumann was not an imposing figure—she was barely five feet tall, and very shy, hiding behind a pair of enormous glasses with dark frames that covered half her face—but as soon as she opened her mouth no one could doubt she was a giant. Alma could barely see her up on the platform, but she felt her stomach flutter when the artist spoke and knew with complete certainty that this was a decisive moment for her. In an hour and a quarter this eccentric, tiny woman roused her audience with stories from her tireless journeying to source her various collections: India, China, Guatemala, Iceland, Italy, and seemingly everywhere else on the planet. A feminist, she spoke of her philosophy, of the techniques she employed, of selling and marketing her products, of the obstacles she had encountered along the way.

That same night, Alma called Nathaniel to announce her future in great gusts of enthusiasm: she was going to follow in Vera's footsteps.

“Whose footsteps?”

“The woman who designed your parents' sheets and tablecloths, Nat. I've no intention of going on with classes that are of no use to me. I've decided to study design and painting at the university. I'm going to attend Vera's workshops and then travel the world the way she has.”

A few months later, Nathaniel completed his law studies and returned to California. In spite of pressure from her aunt Lillian, Alma refused to go back to California with him. She endured four winters in Boston without complaining ever again about the climate, spending her whole time drawing and painting. Not having Ichimei's facility for sketching or Vera's boldness with color, she set herself to supplement talent with good taste. She already had a clear idea of the direction she wanted to take. Her designs would be more refined than Vera's, because she did not intend to satisfy popular taste and create a brand, but to create for pleasure. The possibility of earning a living never occurred to her. She wasn't interested in scarves for ten dollars, or sheets and napkins sold wholesale; she would only design and print certain items of clothing, all of them in top-quality silk, and would add her signature to each one. Her work would be so exclusive and expensive that her aunt Lillian's friends would kill to have it. During those four years she overcame the paralysis that this imposing city had produced in her; she learned to get around, to drink cocktails without completely losing her head, and to make friends. She came to feel like such a Bostonian that whenever she vacationed in California it seemed to her as if she were in a backward country on some other continent. She also won admirers on the dance floor, where the frantic practicing she had done with Ichimei in her childhood served her well. She had her first unceremonious sexual encounter, behind some bushes at a picnic, which served to satisfy her curiosity as well as her complex at still being a virgin over the age of twenty. Later on she had two or three similarly unremarkable experiences with different young men, which confirmed her decision to wait for Ichimei.

T
wo weeks before she graduated, Alma called Nathaniel in San Francisco to organize the details of the Belascos' trip to Boston. She was the first woman in the family to obtain a university degree, and the fact that it was in the relatively obscure disciplines of design and art history did not detract from its merit. Even Martha and Sarah were planning to attend the ceremony, partly because they were counting on going on to New York on a shopping spree, but her uncle Isaac would be absent, as his cardiologist had forbidden him to fly. Isaac was ready to disobey him, as Alma was more deeply rooted in his affections than his own daughters, but Lillian would not hear of it. In her conversation with Nathaniel, Alma commented in passing that for several days she'd had the impression she was being spied on. She said she was sure it wasn't important, that it was merely her hyperactive imagination because she was nervous about her finals, but Nathaniel insisted on hearing the details. A couple of anonymous phone calls when somebody—a masculine voice with a foreign accent—asked if she was there and then hung up; the awkward feeling that she was being watched and followed; a man had been making inquiries about her among her friends, and from the description they gave, it seemed he was the same person she had seen several times in recent days in class, in corridors, in the street. With his suspicious legal mind, Nathaniel advised her to write to the college security office as a precaution: if anything happened, there would be evidence of her concern. He also told her not to go out alone at night. Alma paid him no attention.

It was the time of year when the students held wild farewell parties at the university. Thanks to the music, alcohol, and dancing, Alma forgot about the sinister shadow she had imagined, until the Friday before her graduation. She had spent most of the night in a mad whirl, drinking too much and keeping herself on her feet thanks to cocaine—neither of which did her much good. At three in the morning, a rowdy group of students in a convertible dropped her off outside her dorm. Stumbling, disheveled, and carrying her shoes in one hand, Alma rummaged for the key in her handbag but, before she could find it, fell to her knees and brought up the entire contents of her stomach. The dry retching went on for several minutes, while tears coursed down her cheeks. Eventually she tried to get to her feet, covered in sweat and with her stomach heaving. She was shivering and groaning in despair. All of a sudden a pair of rough hands clamped on her arms, and she could feel herself being lifted and held upright.

“Alma Mendel, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

She did not recognize the voice from the telephone. She doubled up as another wave of nausea hit her, but the claws only dug deeper.

“Let me go, let me go!” she moaned, kicking and screaming.

A slap to the face sobered her up momentarily, and she glimpsed the outline of a man, a dark face slashed with lines that looked like scars, a shaven head. For some strange reason she felt an enormous sense of relief. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the ghastliness of her drunken state and the danger of being in the iron grip of a stranger who had just slapped her.

At seven that Saturday morning, Alma awoke to find herself wrapped in a rough, scratchy blanket on the backseat of a car. She smelled of vomit, urine, cigarettes, and alcohol. She had no idea where she was and couldn't remember a thing about what had happened the night before. She sat up and tried to rearrange her clothes but discovered she had lost her dress and petticoat: she was in her bra, underpants, and garter belt. Her stockings were full of holes, and she had no shoes on. Merciless bells were ringing inside her head; she was cold, her mouth was parched, and she was very afraid. She lay down again and curled up in a ball, moaning and calling out to Nathaniel.

Moments later, she felt somebody shaking her. Opening her eyes with great difficulty, she tried to focus and eventually made out the silhouette of a man who had opened the car door and was leaning over her.

“Coffee and aspirin. That will help a bit,” he said, handing her a paper cup and two pills.

“Leave me, I have to go,” she said thickly, trying to sit up.

“You can't go anywhere like that. Your family will be here in a few hours. Your graduation ceremony is tomorrow. Drink the coffee. And in case you're wondering, I'm your brother, Samuel.”

This was the resurrection of Samuel Mendel, eleven years after he had died in the north of France.

After the war, Isaac Belasco had received convincing proof of the fate that had befallen Alma's parents in a Nazi death camp near the town of Treblinka in northeastern Poland. Unlike the Americans elsewhere, the Russians did not document the camp's liberation, and officially little was known of what had happened in that hell, but the Jewish Agency calculated that 840,000 people had perished there between July 1942 and October 1943, 800,000 of whom were Jews. As for Samuel Mendel, Isaac established that his plane was shot down in the occupied zone of France, and according to the British war records, there were no survivors. By then Alma had heard nothing about her family for several years and assumed they were dead long before her uncle confirmed it. When she was told, Alma did not weep for them, as might have been expected, because during that time she had learned to control her feelings to such an extent she had lost the ability to express them. Isaac and Lillian thought it necessary to bring closure to this tragedy and took Alma with them to Europe. In the French village where Samuel's plane was shot down, they put up a memorial plaque with his name and the dates of his birth and death. They did not obtain permission to visit Poland, which was then under Soviet control; Alma was to make that pilgrimage many years later. The war had finished four years earlier, but Europe was still in ruins, and huge groups of people were still wandering around in search of a homeland. Alma concluded that her entire lifetime would not be enough to pay for the privilege of being her family's only survivor.