At night, when she was introduced to Jorge, who also kissed her three times, she asked the man if she was supposed to kiss all the men in Barcelona, and he said that such was the custom, and it seemed a much nicer one to him than the limp handshake meted out by Israelis, as if they were doing you a favor. She agreed, recalling his firm handshake when they were first introduced and how impressed she had been by it.
“So why didn’t you kiss me three times when we were first introduced?” She laughed.
“Believe me, I wanted to.”
“Well, why didn’t you, then?” she insisted, laughing.
“Because you would certainly have slapped my face.”
Beyond the mandatory kisses, the two women were unable to exchange a single word. Like many Spaniards, Mercedes spoke no other language than Spanish and Catalonian. Mercedes was gorgeous and kindly and dressed in well-cut jeans, a button-up shirt, and killer heels, her taste exactly.
The man took her suitcase into the very small bedroom she would be using. Mercedes’s room was much more spacious, and the living room was very pleasant. The apartment was extremely clean, and it was only after she’d learned to say a few consecutive sentences in Spanish and stayed for lunch with them a few times that she witnessed how the efficient Mercedes came home from work at lunchtime carrying shopping, stuck a chicken in the oven, washed down the floor, and served her boyfriend, Jorge, a glass of whiskey, straight to the armchair in which he was sitting watching sports on TV. When the meal was over, Mercedes would quickly wash the dishes and tidy up the kitchen; if Jorge was feeling horny in the afternoon, she would follow him into her bedroom and emit a few moans and groans before rushing off back to work, to unlock the office from four thirty until eight thirty in the evening. She could never understand where this pleasant woman got all the energy to do so much work singlehandedly, while her boyfriend just sat there watching TV, and even to smile at him. Sometimes he’d get through half a bottle of whiskey during a single afternoon break. On such occasions, when he pushed Mercedes into their room, she would hear her moaning—but not with pleasure.
She wanted to unpack her suitcase and hang up the clothes she had brought for the next three months, but the man said that his parents were longing to meet her and had been waiting from the moment of her landing in Barcelona. She felt guilty for the time she had wasted buying glasses.
She was hungry, a hunger accumulated over three months of going without food in order to save enough money to fly to the country of her bridegroom-to-be.
The arrived at a swish apartment block, and he pulled into an underground parking garage, where he parked next to a brand-new BMW. “This is my parking space,” he explained, “and that’s my father’s car,” and when they stepped out of the car and into an elevator, she felt she as if she were in a movie.
On the tenth floor, the man opened the door, calling out “Mummy” and announcing in French that they had arrived. She was sorry now that she had stopped her French lessons at Tante Marie’s, but she understood a little, because it wasn’t unlike Romanian. They entered a square hall, with one wall covered in mirrors and green marble pedestals; the other side had two shiny wood doors with painted flowers. Next to the entrance stood a red-velvet-upholstered chair, on which the man placed his briefcase. The hall was the size of her parents’ living room.
A plump woman with ingenuous blue eyes walked toward them, smiling, and he went up to her to give her three kisses. Next, a distinguished-looking man with piercing blue eyes and a Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin came up to shake her hand. He introduced his parents, Luna and Alberto, and they remained standing, a little embarrassed, in the elegant hall. His father spoke fluent Hebrew and explained that he had learned the language when he belonged to the Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement in Bulgaria. She spoke a stilted English with the mother, but the father and the man broke out in simultaneous translation as soon as she opened her mouth.
They entered the salon, and she caught her breath. It was very large, with two separate reception areas, one with a television, where they sat most of the time, and another, for guests, with wall-to-wall red velvet furniture. Leading off the salon was a dining area, containing a long table with enough room to seat sixteen. So there would be enough room for anyone wanting to eat.
She remembered that when they’d had all the uncles and aunts over for the seder, they’d had to spill over into the neighbors’ apartment to accommodate all sixteen diners. The table was laid for a festive meal—a white tablecloth embroidered with delicate pale blue flowers and matching napkins, on which the cutlery had been laid. Each place setting consisted of a large plate under a smaller one and two kinds of drinking glasses, one for wine and one for water. A stainless steel bowl lined with a white napkin contained small slices of baguette; several other small bowls contained diced red pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onion; and there was another bowl filled with croutons.
She looked up at the crystal chandelier hanging from the dining room ceiling, at the beautiful pictures hanging in the salon, at the large ceramic figure on the parquet floor in the corner of the room, and at the elegant dishes on the dresser and wondered if her gift would appear pathetic among all this splendor. Still, she put her hand into the bag she had carried close to her heart throughout the flight and pulled out a small blue porcelain figurine, which she had bought with her sister on Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street. They had picked out the unique little piece simultaneously as soon as they laid eyes on it. The figurine was of a woman in profile, her head dropped sideways, a hand raised in doubt or pleading. Her body was soft, and her entire pose said, “Here I am, whether you want me or not.” A gentle woman, powerful, her clay eyes filled with compassion.
The figurine pleased his parents, and his mother gave it a place of honor on the dresser in the dining area. She felt wanted, and they sat down to eat their lunch. His mother sat at the head of the table, her usual place, and his father to her left, her son to her right, and she next to him.
Laura, the housemaid, brought in a large stainless steel soup tureen and laid it beside Luna at the head of the table. Luna served them all soup, first their guest, then herself, then her son and husband.
She was surprised to be served first; at home she had become accustomed to the men being served first, and only after them did the women get their food. Maybe it’s because I’m their guest, she thought, but in the evening, when the extended family arrived for dinner, she discovered that his mother made a habit of serving the women first and the men later, which she thought was an excellent arrangement.
The first course was gazpacho, and it was accompanied by a detailed explanation from Luna that this was a Spanish dish, a cold soup made from all the vegetables on the table, finely blended, with added water, vinegar, and ice cubes. The red soup looked especially refreshing to her and was eaten together with the diced vegetables on the table and the fried croutons. She watched the man to see what he was doing and did as he did, exactly as her sister, who had accompanied her to the airport, had instructed her. So as not to make a fool of herself, she was to watch everything the others did and do the same; place her napkin on her lap, take up a small amount on her spoon—not so little as to appear insulting or so much as to appear a glutton—take note of the cutlery they were using for each course, and of course, not confuse the water glasses with the wineglasses.
The soup was delicious, but when his mother asked if she wanted a second helping, she was too shy to accept. She was glad in retrospect that she hadn’t had another helping, because she was already full up after the second course, a Russian salad consisting of cooked vegetables in mayonnaise and coarsely cut pickled cucumber. Laura came around and collected the soup plates before handing the woman of the house the bowl of Russian salad, which she proceeded to serve first to her, then to herself, and finally to her son and husband.