The Righteous Gentile
by Philip Graubart
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
As soon as I stuffed the phone in my pocket, I felt a weird presence near my arm, like the lightest touch of static electricity. I looked up and, on my right, fronting the beach was a monument to the 18 teenagers killed in a terrorist attack on The Dolphin, a Tel Aviv disco and nightclub. Jet lag in Israel does weird things to you; I considered the daft possibility that I was somehow communing with the ghosts of dead teenage victims.
I nearly jumped in panic when I felt an actual touch on my left arm. But it wasn’t a ghost. It was the young woman I’d seen at my grandfather’s party.
She grinned at my brief moment of panic, revealing a slight space between her teeth, the cliched flaw in otherwise perfect features: thick, curly hair, black as midnight, bronze skin, shapely legs, shiny green eyes. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, in perfect, only slightly accented English. “Hey, your grandfather. He’s got some stories.” She held out her hand. “My name is Heidi,” she said.
“Heidi? That’s an Israeli name?”
She shrugged. “It’s a name. Listen, I’m not sure if you know, but your grandfather and my grandmother have become great friends.” Her green eyes seem to tinkle at the word “friends.”
“Oh?” I said. “You mean...?”
“I’ll leave it to your imagination.”
She was evidently going my way, so we walked south together, along the beach on Hayarkon Street. The potential for romance hit me right away. The notion was, of course, premature. Less than a month ago, my reporter girlfriend of five years had found a “deeper, more stable guy.”
That stinging heartache was at least a partial cause of my urgent desire to change my life, to leave baseball for Judaism, to tell stories that mattered more than how some score affected the playoff picture. But something about Heidi’s scent, her black Yemenite hair, her accent, her consistently mocking tone, the gap in her front teeth, drew me. It was the proverbial “chemistry,” as if we were characters in a romantic comedy. Also, I discovered, as the wind blew sand at our feet, she was a government lawyer, and she promised to get me an interview with the Minister of Justice.
I peppered Heidi with questions as we slowly made our way toward Jaffa. Her grandmother, she told me, like my grandfather, suffered through World War II, barely making it out alive. She was the only survivor in her family. Unlike my grandfather, she’d moved to Israel from a refugee camp in 1949 as an eleven-year-old orphan. “Then she found a husband, built a Jewish home.”
“Happy ending?” I said.
“Not really.” She leaned in a little closer to my shoulder. A cool summer wind blew in our faces. I fought the urge to put my arm around her. “It seemed that way, sure. Her husband became a successful lawyer. She wrote a series of children’s books; one of them actually got published. She lived through wars, like all of us. She only had one child: my mother. But my mother gave her four grandchildren.”
“Four?” I asked. I had seen only three at the party; two boys in uniform and Heidi.
“My oldest brother,” she said. “He died in the army. A terrorist drove a bus into a crowd of young officers celebrating their graduation. He was the only one who was killed. And it wasn’t quick and painless. He was conscious and in excruciating pain in the hospital for three days before he died. We all watched him go. It was a blessing, finally. My parents couldn’t stand living here after that. They’re in London. My grandmother is like a mother to me. My only parent.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. She’d slowed down, faced me. Was I supposed to hold her? When it came to new romance, I was out of practice.
“It’s an Israeli story,” she said, smiling sadly. “Or maybe we could say a Jewish story? Like your grandfather and that little girl. A Jewish story.”
“A Jewish story,” I repeated. Her hair, I thought to myself. That scent. “About that little girl,” I said. “I’m not sure...”
“My apartment is over there,” she said, pointing across the street. “Come upstairs with me. Have a drink. I’ll tell you some more Jewish stories.”
It turned out I wasn’t too badly out of practice.
* * *
First thing the next morning, I walked from Heidi’s place to my grandfather’s. “How’s the hangover?” I teased, when he opened the door.
“Please,” he grinned, ushering me in. “One shot of vodka, I drank. Okay, maybe two. Every ninety years I allow myself an extra glass of vodka.”
We settled into his living room. Plump beige pillows, two couches and a love seat. In the kitchen, an airfryer/toaster, enormous microwave, and a slick silver espresso machine. Nothing like my memories of his place in Kansas City. And, of course, there was the picture window view of the Mediterranean Sea complete with bikini-clad young women frolicking on the beach. I started to see the advantages of Tel Aviv.
“I thought maybe you’d had a little too much when you told your story,” I said. He’d made us both double espressos and I was sipping mine, marvelling how it was possibly the best coffee drink I’d ever had.
“Oh, no,” he said, pouring piles of sugar into his tiny espresso cup. “I told the story before the schnapps.” He pointed to his scaly head. “I wanted to keep clear up here.”
“But, Grandpa, you told it wrong.”
He sipped and smiled. He seemed to smile much more than I remembered from when I was a kid. Something about Israel? Something about the coffee? Something about seeing me? “Wrong?” he said.
I tilted my head. Was my grandpa screwing with me? “Maybe I heard wrong,” I said. “Tell it again.”
He did. The village gets word that the Nazis are coming.
“Nazis or Iron Cross?” I interrupted.
He shrugged, rubbed his chin. “Nazis, I think. Or, no, Iron Cross.” He shrugged. “It makes a difference?”
“No, no, please continue.”
They run to the forest. Mom hides with the baby, Papa with him. A village girl shows up. Six years old. Blond. Blue eyes. A young shiksa. She runs to the Nazis. Yells at them. Points in the opposite direction.
“No she didn’t!”
He sipped his coffee. “Nathan, you are okay?”
“Yes, yes, it’s just that’s not how you... well, continue.”
The little girl, she not only points them in the wrong direction, she runs with them, she tells them she’ll show them exactly where the Jews are hiding. She risked her life—.
“Stop! Stop,” I said.
He looked me over carefully, like a doctor seeking the disease. “It is maybe jet lag?” my grandfather said. “Or, perhaps you caught a cold on the airplane. You know these viruses and air travel. I should make you tea, not coffee.”
“Grandpa, that’s not how you told the story! The girl, the blonde, the little shiksa, she’s... That’s not the right story.”
He slurped a tiny sip. “Nathan, I should think I know the story. It is my story, after all.”
* * *
“Why does he keep doing that?” I was yelling at my mother. It was midnight in Kansas City; I’d woken her up, panicked her with a call from Israel in the middle of the night. “The girl was a devil, not an angel. The way he tells the story now, it changes everything.”
She yawned, a loud and long sound, as if her fatigue with me reached her innards, her bones. “Nathan,” she said, “I don’t remember you paying such great attention to your grandfather. You would squirm, shut your eyes, read a comic book, switch on the TV. Maybe you’re just remembering it wrong.”
‘No, no, Mom! I listened once. At least once. Anyway, don’t you remember it my way? The girl didn’t save them. She turned them in. Isn’t that what you remember?”
Another yawn. Several yawns in one breath, like a yodeler. “To tell you the truth, it’s past midnight here. I’m not sure I remember anything. I’m sore all over, you know.”
“Pickleball,” I said.
“Pickleball.”
* * *
“That’s so interesting,” Heidi told me.
We were eating breakfast on her balcony. the fresh rolls and instant coffee I’d purchased on my jet lagged 5:00 a.m. stroll through Jaffa. Two nights together, and it was almost like I was in love.
“For some reason,” Heidi said, “here in Israel, he feels a need to make a hero of that girl. In America, she’s the villain but, here, she’s a righteous gentile. I have a theory as to why but, first, let me ask you a question. Why does it matter so much? To you, not to your grandfather?”
I sipped the instant coffee. It was surprisingly delicious. I wondered why Americans had stopped drinking instant coffee. “It’s just that... I don’t know. It’s sort of my family’s story. I never really paid attention to it — I’m just now realizing what an amazing story it is — but it was ours. It’s like suddenly finding out that someone was adopted. Like he’s not my real grandfather.”
“Oh, Nathan, come on. You’re exaggerating.”
I looked at her closely. Were we arguing? I didn’t think so. I nodded.
“Can I give you some advice? Spend more time with him on this trip. Extend your stay.” She smiled. “Of course, I have my own selfish reasons for this suggestion. But really. Forget the Minister of Justice. Our judicial crisis. You can write that story from America. Tell your grandfather’s story. Ask him to tell it again, but this time don’t interrupt. Convince him that you really want to hear it.”
I stared at her. My lover for only two nights, now advising me as if we were married. And she was right. Was this love? “That’s... so wise,” I said.
She grinned, revealing the gap in her teeth.
As I walked to my grandfather’s flat, I realized I forgot to ask Heidi her theory for why my grandfather switched the story in Israel. Oh well, I thought. I’ll extend my stay, as she suggested. There will be plenty of time to share theories and stories and theories about stories.
As it happened, there was no time left for hearing stories from my grandfather. He didn’t answer the ring, and then the knocks on the door. I used my key. He was in bed, a sly grin on his face. I gently shook him and immediately felt the creepy coolness of his skin. He’d died in his sleep, two days past his 90th birthday.
My mother didn’t come to the funeral. I didn’t scold her. It was none of my business. Anyway, the custom in Israel was to bury the body as soon as possible. Heidi and her grandmother urged me to follow the local practice, so we held the funeral that very day. My mother couldn’t have made it on time.
The only mourners at Jerusalem’s crowded urban cemetery were the same folks who’d celebrated his 90th birthday three days before. I represented the family. As the white-shrouded corpse was lowered into the grave, the young, black-bearded rabbi handed me a laminated card and whispered, “Kaddish.”
But I couldn’t read Hebrew. He quickly flipped the card over, and I struggled through the meaningless transliterated words, allowing myself to be corrected every five seconds. When I finished, I was astonished to feel tears on my cheek. The rabbi gently patted my shoulder.
Heidi had arranged a mourner’s meal at my grandfather’s apartment. Pita, hard-boiled eggs, oranges. Round things, Heidi explained, traditional for Jewish Yemenite mourners. I sat on a low cushion, blinking away tears that confounded me. I really didn’t know my grandfather all that well. Why was I crying?
Heidi’s grandmother Miriam urged me to tell a few stories about him. But I was exhausted, numb, in shock and empty. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Well, I’ll talk,” Miriam said, her voice firm and high, like an accomplished singer. “You’ll think and I’ll talk.” She was addressing the small crowd, but she looked at me. “You see, Nathan. I was that little girl.”
I blinked, shook my head. “What little girl?” I asked, though, of course, I knew.
“I rescued your grandfather,” she said. “I pointed the Nazi soldiers in the wrong direction. They would have found him. Murdered him. I saved his life.”
I stared at her. Yellow colored hair, but at age 87, any color on the top of her head came from a box. Did her eyes emit a blueish tinge? They looked gray to me. And the shiksa in the story was Christian, Hungarian. “But you’re—?”
“Jewish?” she said, smiling sadly. “Israeli? Yes. I came as an orphan and my kibbutz family adopted me. But I always told the truth about who I was, where I came from. When I turned 18, I became an Israeli citizen through the Righteous Gentile Act. I took the name Miriam instead of Helena. Your grandfather testified on my behalf. I wouldn’t have been accepted as a citizen without him.”
“My grandfather?” I thought for a moment. “When you were eighteen, he was, what, 23? You stayed in touch?”
“Of course, we stayed in touch. I saved his life. You knew none of this?”
I shook my head.
“We wrote letters to each other, at least once a month. Sometimes more. He wrote me about mattresses, his passion, then his business. And your grandmother; he said she had such beautiful brown eyes. Later he sent me money. The checks increased as he became more and more successful. I was able to send my daughter and granddaughter to university in England. We took vacations, Europe, South America, Disneyland, once to Kansas City — before you were born.
“And when he moved here? Well, I was alone. So was he.” She grinned, glanced at Heidi, then winked at me, a gesture that struck me as, at the same time, both cute and ghastly. She had been sleeping with my grandfather. And enjoying it.
“He sent you money?” I asked. For some reason, that was the detail that hit me. I’d heard of my grandfather supporting cousins in Hungary, Russia and Israel. He bragged about these contributions in the long, rambling storytelling speeches he gave every year at our Passover seders. But he never mentioned a righteous gentile. At least I don’t think he did. Did I block out so much? I thought of the money for one simple reason: despite his obvious wealth, he never sent me a single check.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Philip Graubart
