We giggled at his audacity, but entered into the spirit of the comedy and, taking each other by the arm, swept grandly into the ballroom. Jo Solomon was impressed. Petrossian had understood his mentality very quickly. Jo the Ugly bowed to my mother.
“I am delighted you could receive me, madame. This is a very fantastical room. What a great palace you have here! I am Joseph Solomon, madame, and I have a packet which I was instructed by my late father to hand to you and you alone.”
Sara paled considerably. “Your late father?”
“Yes, madame. Suleman of Damascus, as you once knew him. He never ceased to speak of your family’s generosity.”
My mother sat down on the sofa and demanded some water. She looked at Jo the Ugly carefully. It was obvious that his presence angered her.
“I am sorry to hear that Suleman has passed away. You look nothing like him.”
Jo the Ugly handed the packet to my mother.
“He never stopped reminding me of that, madame.”
She moved to the seat near the window as I gave Jo the sickliest smile I could manage. He smiled back and at that moment I really felt ill. His mouth was maggot-infested. All his front teeth were stained a strange brownish-yellow and every single one had decayed at the edges. This was inhuman. I was relieved when Salman walked in, on Uncle Memed’s recommendation, to see this person for himself, as he later told me. I excused myself and went and sat with my mother at the other end of the room.
She had her back to Jo the Ugly and Salman and was weeping in silence. I put my arms around her. Silently, she handed me the letter she had just finished reading.
My dearest Sara,
Our capacity for self-deception is infinite and I have suffered all my life as a result. This is a letter of explanation, Sara. I will write the truth. It is futile for a dying man to do otherwise.
For the last six months I have been slowly dying. The doctors have no cure because they have no idea what beast is devouring my insides. It’s too late to regret that I became a painter rather than a physician. Who knows? I might have cured myself. Perhaps what is eating me is my own remorse, which has never left me since that fateful morning I boarded a ship destined for Liverpool and New York.
By the time you receive this letter I will be dead and buried. It is now over thirty years since I left Istanbul. Do you remember what you said to me that morning when I told you how desolate I felt? You gave me a cold, deadly smile and said: “You leave me with a broken heart, but a heavy purse, Suleman. I am sure one will take care of the other.” I never forgot those words. How could you be so vicious, Sara? And so accurate.
Your father was generous. You were angry. I knew you wanted me to say that if there was a danger of our children being born with an ailment then we would not have any, but I was frightened that you might grow to resent me later and become bitter because I had prevented you from becoming a mother. This last sentence occurred to me only now, Sara. It’s not the truth. Once you acquire the habit of speaking untruths, it is difficult to do otherwise, even for a dying man, but I am determined to break the habit here and now.
After all these years I still find it difficult to accept that I was so easily swayed by your father’s generosity. You accused me of cowardice and treachery for betraying the love you had so freely given me. You were not wrong.
I do not believe your parents invented the story of the disease to stop our marriage. My own father confirmed that it was a serious problem, though my mother was equally insistent that there was nothing definite and that many marriages had resulted in children who were fine. She accepted, however, that it was a risk.
It is no consolation to either of us now, but I want you to know that all my life I have regretted leaving Istanbul. I wish I had taken the risk, Sara. I wish. I wish. Your Uncle Sifrah tells me you have a beautiful daughter. That makes me especially happy. I have not had the same luck. I know what you’re thinking. Ugliness produces ugliness, in character as well as features. As you will have noticed, the bearer of this letter may have some qualities, but he is certainly not pleasing to the eye. He takes after his mother’s brothers who are shysters and rogues, growing rich by robbing their own people.
In Damascus and Istanbul we tended to help each other. Not in this hell. When I first arrived here with “a broken heart, but a heavy purse”, I was recommended to stay with a family of Polish Jews who had escaped here ten years ago from the pogroms against their people. I took the kindness I was shown by this family at face value. They were very nice to me as they attempted to relieve me of the heavy purse and soothe my wounded heart. They pressured me into marrying their oldest daughter, Tamara, and once I had succumbed (it was convenience, desperation and loneliness, Sara, nothing more; it never affected my love for you) I found that my purse was getting lighter by the day. I hired a studio and started painting portraits. Slowly my fame spread and when Mr Rockefeller asked me to paint him, I realised I would be comfortable for the rest of my life. But what good is material comfort, Sara, when one’s emotional and spiritual cupboard is bare?
All the time I was suffering at the thought of having lost you, I wished you nothing but happiness. My own pleasures were casual, usually in my studio with some of the women who liked to pose for me. I found the lure of young flesh irresistible.
I had to find a different venue when my wife and her brothers burst in one day and surprised me with a woman. They did not harm me, but they marked the poor girl for life by carving her left cheek with a knife. I remember thinking of you after that incident and wondering what you would think if you could see how low I had sunk.
I write you all this so you know that life has punished me enough for the mistake I made thirty years ago. In this packet you will find the sketches I did of you in Istanbul and which I always treasured and used to inspect in secret to ease the misery and remember our time together. It was short, but it was the happiest period of my life. Remember that day in your father’s library when you found the story of the Prophet Bilan and the Moabites and we laughed and laughed? That is another thing that disappeared from my life. Laughter.
I am also sending you a tiny oil portrait I painted of you from memory. Your child or grandchildren might like it as a memento. They are my last gifts to you, Sara. I hope you will forgive me.
Suleman
I looked at the sketches and the oil portrait of my mother. The sketches were very lively, with a lot of movement and one of them showed a bare breast. The miniature portrait was painted on a deep crimson background and my mother’s eyes were very sad. It must have been the last time he saw her and the memory stayed with him.
“Leave them with me, child. You can have them after I’ve gone. Poor Suleman! Trapped for eternity. I do feel sorry for him and sad, but he wrecked his own life and mine.”
“You had me, Mother Sara. Me! Was that nothing?”
She clung to me in an emotional embrace. “You have been everything, child. Everything. Without you I, too, might have been dead by now. We must never tell these people that you are his daughter. The thought of your being related to that fat boy makes me feel ill.”
“He might still end up in our family. Memed, Salman and, I now see, the Baron are going to do their best to marry him off to one of Uncle Kemal’s daughters!”
My mother’s laughter was uncontrolled. She could not contain herself. I gave her some water and we joined the other group.
“Monsieur Jo, I thank you for bringing me such an important packet all the way from New York. Have you a photograph of your mother and the rest of your family?”