The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (36 page)
“I'm sure her companion could help her.”
Anna wasn't sure she heard him clearly. “Her companion?”
“She said she travels with a companion. She said that your grandfather never went anywhere with her, so she goes with a companion. She's been doing that for fifty years.”
“My grandmother doesn't travel with a companion.” And then, in an instant, everything that Anna had observed in the past twenty-four hours realigned and fell into place. “I have to go. Can I call you back?”
He sounded alarmed. “How do I know you'll call me back?”
“Trust me!” she said and then, just before snapping shut the phone, she gave him her cell number.
Anna ran up the stairs and into the great hall of the terminal. She stopped to get her bearings, then hurried across the building until she came to a large sign that gave the aisle information for each airline. Disconnected thoughts shot through her mind: the fluctuating importance of Marvin Feld; Goldie's refusal to hear anything at all about Henry Nakamura; her lack of interest in what happened to the Japanese prints. Had the entire journey been a ruse to shake Anna out of her torpor? Perhaps. Mostly, though, Anna thought of the seriousness with which Henry had addressed her the day before. If he were really so tangential to Goldie's life, why had he focused on Anna with such paternal warmth and care?
Above her, the sign said
EMIRATES: AISLE 14.
Twelve aisles lay between Anna and her grandmother. She turned and ran, her backpack flapping against her leg.
At Aisle 14, Heidi stood alone in front of the ticket desk, counting through a tower of passports stacked on the counter in front of her. “Hey,” Anna said, breathless from running. “My grandmother left her phone in the car.”
Heidi raised her fingers to hold Anna back. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. There!” she said, then turned with a look of satisfaction on her face. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”
“My grandmother, Goldie Rosenthal. She left her phone in the car. I brought it to her.”
“Do you want me to give it to her or do you want to see her yourself? She's waiting over in the restaurant area. We're going to go through security in a few minutes, and then we'll head to the Emirates Lounge.”
Anna asked, “Did her friend check in already?”
“Oh, sure. They checked in together.”
“I'll walk over there with you.”
Heidi picked up the passports, slid them into a carry-on bag, then led Anna across the terminal, slipping into tour guide mode as she pointed out the defining architectural features of the building.
Anna was having a hard time focusing. As they approached the concession area, she found herself hanging back. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I'm thinking I'll just get a look at her. If she seems happy and settled, I won't bother her again and you can take her the phone.”
“I understand completely,” Heidi said. “Oh, there they are! They insisted on wheelchairs. Very smart. Why wear yourself out at the airport?”
But Anna wasn't listening. There, alone at a table, Goldie Rosenthal sat with her companion. He was wearing his beret this morning, but not his sunglasses. He was dunking teabags into a pair of Styrofoam cups, while Goldie apparently offered the running commentary that she had given her granddaughter every day for the past two weeks. He nodded, half listening and half doing as he liked. Anyone passing by might have assumed they had been married for decades. Anna thought of all the summers Goldie had spent in Rome. The trips to Morocco. Lithuania. Machu Picchu. Japan. Safari after safari. For how many years had Goldie regaled the family with accounts of her solo adventures? Thirty? Forty? Fifty years? Even after Saul died, she kept it up, always claiming that she maintained her sanity by taking time alone. In all those years of telling her story, and for the entire drive with Anna across the continent, she had never slipped.
The companion pulled the teabags from the steaming cups and set them on a napkin. Then he secured the plastic tops.
We all have a chance to be happy here,
Anna thought.
Heidi mused, “Don't you just want that for yourself?”
Anna said, “Of course.”
Henry Nakamura tipped his head to the side, smiled, and offered tea to his beloved.
T
his is a work of fiction, though much is based on actual events and people. It is true that San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden was designed and maintained by the Hagiwara family, American citizens of Japanese descent who were forced to leave their home and live in an internment camp after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I was moved by their experience, but the story of the Nakamura family in this novel grew from my imagination. Likewise, though I mined many details from the history of my own Jewish American family in writing this book, Goldie and Anna are purely my own creations. I feel deeply grateful to my Sachs, Gold, and Goodman relatives for sharing their stories with me.
Several years ago, on a visit to the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, I happened to see a book of prints by the artists Ando Hiroshige and Utagawa Kunisada II, which affected me so deeply that for months afterward I couldn't get it out of my mind. In part to satisfy my own fascination with these pictures, I used them as seeds for the story that eventually evolved into this book. Happily for me, the Cameron was wholly supportive of my efforts; I'm particularly appreciative of Holly Tripman, the registrar, who later indulged my curiosity by pulling the collection out of storage and allowing me to spend an entire morning examining it.
In order to give an accurate account of the medical issues addressed in this book, I relied on the guidance of several physicians. Thanks to Dr. Walt Laughlin, Dr. Robert Rotche, and Dr. Michael Moulton, who gracefully adapted their professional expertise to the service of fictional accuracy and plot development, for which, I am quite sure, medical school never trained them. Thanks, too, to Louisa Canady, a specialist in Japanese koi, who helped me to better understand the spawning habits of these fish.
I'm grateful to Judy Goldman, George Bishop, Diane Sachs, Ira Sachs, Jr., and Todd Berliner for reading early drafts of this manuscript and commenting on it so perceptively. Karen Bender, Rebecca Lee, Clyde Edgerton, Robert Siegel, Sarah Messer, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Celia Rivenbark, David Gessner, and Nina de Gramont provide the understanding and support that makes living in Wilmington, North Carolina, a source of comfort and creative inspiration for a writer. My agent, Douglas Stewart, has, as always, been a warm and wise guide through the serpentine paths of publishing, while my editor, Emily Krump, offered just the right insight at just the right moments. My family, including Rose Sachs, Ira Sachs, Sr., Lynne Sachs, Mark Street, Boris Torres, and all the Namerows, Berliners, Smiths, and Vidulichs are a constant source of inspiration, support, and good cheer. And, finally, thanks to Jesse and Sam Berliner-Sachs for all their love, which keeps me going.
Meet Dana Sachs
© Cornel Faddoul
D
ANA
S
ACHS'S
writing has appeared in
National Geographic
, the
Boston Globe
, and other publications. She is the author of
The House on Dream Street
,
The Life We Were Given
, and
If You Lived Here
(a novel) and she lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
A Conversation with Dana Sachs
Many authors have quirky or distinct writing rituals. What is your writing process like? As someone who has written both fiction and nonfiction, do you find your process changes based on the book? How so?
Some writers insist that you have to write for a specific number of hours every day. I've never been able to do that. Especially since I've had children, I have to write whenever I get the chance. I don't want to sound like some Supermom, though. My kids are in school all day now, so if I can't find the time to write during their school day, I don't have anyone to blame but myself. As for the differences between fiction and nonfiction, yes, the differences are significant. But, at heart, I'm a storyteller. The main challenge is finding a way to tell that particular story.
Writing experts often advise people to “write what they know.” In writing
The Secret of the Nightingale Palace,
did you follow this rule? How did you follow this rule, and how did you break away from it?
I can best answer this question by describing the process through which I created the character of Goldie. When I began the novel, I wanted to model Goldie on my paternal grandmother, Rose. In the finished book, the similarities between the two are clear: they both come from large, poor Southern Jewish families; they both married twice and, through shrewdness and hard work, became successful in business; they both developed a devotion to fashion and, from an early age, exhibited an innate sense of style. However, Goldie's story is, ultimately, very different from that of Rose, who never lived in San Francisco, never married the heir of a prominent family, and never (to my knowledge, at least!) fell in love with the “wrong” guy. Goldie's character and story changed with the evolution of the novel. Fiction creates its own demands, which are often unexpected, and I had to address those demands with my imagination, not from real life. In the end, Goldie still has a lot of Rose in her, but they're very different people.
In the cases where you were writing about something new, how did you go about researching those subjects?
As a former journalist, I love research. I had great fun, for example, figuring out popular salad dressings from the 1940s. Any history lover could, like me, lose hours reading about the mustard gas disaster that took place during World War II in the Italian port city of Bari, but a fiction writer gets to call those absorbing hours “working.” Sometimes, though, our research comes in the form of simply experiencing life, which can be mysterious, intriguing, unsettling, and, occasionally, very painful. When I first began
The Secret of the Nightingale Palace
, a dear friend of mine was dying of cancer. She had always been a deeply engaging, charming person, but at the very end of her life she became angry, lashing out at the people who loved her best. The anger was shocking, and heartbreaking, because she had come to the end of her life and there was no way to resolve her anger or ease the pain it caused before she passed way. Though that experience for me was nothing like “research,” it did inform my thinking as I tried to describe Ford's deterioration from leukemia and the ways in which Anna was left with emotions she couldn't resolve and questions she couldn't answer.
The historical portions of the book include accurate details about life in San Francisco leading up to the Second World War. Were there any interesting details that you wanted to include, but couldn't fit into the story?
Oh, many! Here's one I love. When Henry Nakamura tells Anna about his time in the internment camps during World War II, he describes the jewelry that his sister, Mayumi, made out of tiny shells that she found by digging in the dirt behind their barracks. I would have liked to describe in greater detail the artwork that Japanese internees created, because the items themselves are extraordinaryâmodel ships and trains, tiny carved wooden birds, delicate embroidery, to name just a few. The art also serves as a testament to the ways in which humans find relief from suffering. For online pictures, see “The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942â1946,” a 2010 exhibition at Smithsonian: http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2010/gaman/.
Anna and Goldie bond over their shared love of art and aesthetics. Which artists or works of art inspire you?
At one point in the novel, Anna considers the difference between herself and Ford when it comes to art. She values work that touches her emotionally, while he always tried to understand it intellectually. I'm a little Anna and a little Ford. I like to understand, for example, why critics value a piece of art, but that won't mean I'm inspired by it. As a fiction writer, I'm drawn to art that hints at worlds, relationships, and conflicts that exist beyond the work itself. Japanese printmakers do that. So does Vermeer. Joseph Cornell does it, too. The contents of his boxes remind me of precious objects collected by mysterious people over many, many years. I can't think of any better description for his artwork than “novelistic.”
What are you reading right now? Are there any books or authors that you continue to go back to?
I keep returning to the great storytellers, like Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James. Their worlds seem so real, their characters so human, despite the fact that they inhabit societies and centuries very different from my own. Other writers I deeply admire are Somerset Maugham, Barbara Pym, Nancy Mitford, Raymond Chandler, and Flannery O'Connor. And, yes, of course, I love many contemporary writers, too, including Kiran Desai, Alice Munro, Alan Bennett, David Mitchell, Ann Patchett, Haruki Murakami, Rohinton Mistry, Toni Morrison, and Julian Barnes.