RICHARD CALCULATED THAT IT WAS STILL too early to phone his father, although the old man woke at dawn and waited impatiently for his call. On Sundays they always had lunch together at a restaurant his father chose, because if it depended on Richard they would always have gone to the same place. “At least this time I’ll have something different to tell you, Dad,” murmured Richard, realizing how interested his father would be to hear about Evelyn Ortega, since he was always concerned about immigrants and refugees.
Joseph Bowmaster, by now very elderly but still completely lucid, had been an actor. He was born in Germany to a Jewish family with a tradition as antiquarians and art collectors that could be traced back as far as the Renaissance. They were refined, cultured people, but the fortune they had amassed was lost during the First World War. In the second half of the thirties, when Hitler appeared unstoppable, his parents sent Joseph to France on the pretext that he was making a close study of the Impressionists, but in fact to get him away from the imminent Nazi danger. They meanwhile made plans to emigrate illegally to Palestine, at that time controlled by Great Britain. To placate the Arabs, the British limited the immigration of Jews to the territory, but nothing could stop the most desperate.
Joseph stayed on in France but devoted himself to the theater rather than studying art. He had a natural talent for acting and for languages. As well as German, he was fluent in French and set himself to studying English. He was so successful that he could soon imitate several accents, from Cockney to BBC pronunciation. In 1940, when the Nazis invaded France and occupied Paris, he managed to escape to Spain, and from there to Portugal. For the rest of his life he would remember the kindness of those people who, at great risk to themselves, helped him in this odyssey. Richard grew up listening to the story of his father’s wartime escape, and with the idea etched on his mind that to help the persecuted is an inescapable duty. As soon as he was old enough, his father took him to France to visit two families that had kept him hidden from the Nazis, and to Spain to thank those who helped him survive and to cross into Portugal.
By 1940, Lisbon had become the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of European Jews desperate to obtain documents to reach the United States, South America, or Palestine. While awaiting his opportunity, Joseph stayed in the old quarter of the city, a maze of narrow streets and mysterious houses, in a boardinghouse fragrant with jasmine and oranges. There he fell in love with Cloe, the owner’s daughter, who was three years older than him, a post office employee by day and a fado singer by night. She was a dark beauty with a tragic expression befitting the sad songs she sang. Joseph lacked the courage to tell his parents he was in love with a Gentile, until they emigrated together, first to London, where they lived for two years, and then New York. By this time war was raging furiously in Europe, and Joseph’s parents, precariously settled in Palestine, had no objection to their new daughter-in-law. All that was important was for their son to be safe from the genocide the Germans were perpetrating.
In New York, Joseph changed his surname to Bowmaster, which sounded English through and through, and thanks to his feigned aristocratic accent found parts in Shakespeare plays for the next forty years. Cloe on the other hand never learned English properly and had no success there with her country’s plaintive fados. However, instead of being plunged into despair by her failure as an artist, she began to study fashion and became the family’s breadwinner, because the amount Joseph earned in the theater never stretched to the end of the month. The divalike woman Joseph had met in Lisbon turned out to possess a great practical sense and a capacity for hard work. She was also unswervingly loyal, devoting herself fully to her husband and Richard, their only child. Richard grew up spoiled like a prince in a modest apartment in the Bronx, shielded from the world by his parents’ love.
Richard turned out to be as good-looking as Joseph, though not as tall and lacking the actor’s extravagant temperament; rather, he was more melancholic, like his mother. Busy with their own lives, his parents loved him without smothering him, treating him with mild neglect, as was common in those days before children became projects. This suited Richard, because they left him in peace with his books, and no one demanded much of him beyond getting good marks at school, behaving properly, and being considerate. He spent more time with his father than with his mother, because Joseph had a flexible schedule, whereas Cloe was a partner in a women’s clothing store and habitually stayed there sewing until late at night. Joseph took his son with him on his errands of mercy, as Cloe called them. They went to hand out food and clothing donated by the churches and synagogues to the poorest families in the Bronx, both Jewish and Christian. “You never ask people in need who they are or where they’ve come from, Richard. We’re all the same in misfortune,” Joseph would preach to his son. Twenty years later he proved this by confronting the police on the streets of New York to defend undocumented immigrants who had been rounded up in raids.
Whenever he recalled his happy childhood, Richard asked himself why he had not lived up to what he was taught as a child, following the example he was given, and instead failed as both a husband and a father.
During the night, with his defenses lowered, his demons had come and clawed at him. Years before, he had tried to keep them in a sealed compartment of his memory, but eventually gave this up because his angels disappeared along with them. Later, he learned to cherish even his most painful memories: without them it would have been as if he had never been young, or loved, or a father. If the price he had to pay for this was more suffering, then so be it. Sometimes the demons won the fight against the angels, and the result was a paralyzing migraine, which was also part of the price. He carried with him the heavy debt of the mistakes he had made, a debt he had shared with no one. But now, in the winter of 2016, circumstances were finally forcing him to open his heart. The slow exorcism of his past began on that night sprawled on the floor between two women and a ridiculous dog, while outside a snowy Brooklyn slept.
“COME ON, LADIES, WAKE UP!” he cried, clapping his hands.
Lucia opened her eyes. It also took her a while to figure out where she was.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Time to get going.”
“It’s still dark! Coffee first. I can’t think without caffeine. It’s like the North Pole in here, Richard. For the love of God, turn the heating up, don’t be so stingy. Where’s the bathroom?”