RECAP:
In Part 2, Emilia Gordon’s Israeli publisher Shlomo Pinsker rushed to her care home in response to receiving the letter in which she identified herself as the formerly young author of the stories sensationally (and apparently not quite posthumously) published under the title HER LONDON WAR. He found a very old, very alert lady who greeted him by saying ‘it’s not about the money’. But maybe it was?
The Emilia Gordon facing her two youthful visitors – her publisher Pinsker and the care home director Brenner – was a compact bundle of robust energy. She was a dignified representative of the generation of women who did not believe in frailty, even if they had to lean on a walking stick or a walking frame or even sit in a wheelchair. Emilia had all these mobility paraphernalia neatly aligned along the wall of her very spacious room with a generous view of the sea. Unlike Hemingway’s old man, this old woman’s eyes were not the colour of the sea. She had dark eyes, a modest halo of tight white curls, and a slight bald patch you could only see if you were standing directly above her head. Both men kept a respectful distance as Emilia remained seated in her red leather wingchair, looking tiny but nevertheless imposing.
Pinsker spoke first:
‘But if you are the author, you should get paid. All your publishers thought you were dead. They are very sorry. I mean, they are not sorry you are not dead, they just…’
Emilia looked at the sad man who was clearly too lost in his own life to understand what, or who, he was dealing with in this funny situation. She laughed.
‘If?’
‘Well… I’m afraid we need some evidence that you are indeed the same person who wrote these stories.’
‘Is an old person always the same as their much younger version?’
‘Officially, yes.’
‘Would you like to see my identity card?’
Emilia was still laughing, a hearty, throaty laugh of someone who may or may not have been a heavy smoker, and her publisher was now blushing.
Brenner stepped in.
‘Emilia Gordon has been our resident for the last ten years. She was an elderly widow when she first moved in, and she did not have an identity card. Or a passport. But this was never a problem.’
He didn’t add that Ms Gordon had a very healthy bank balance. She had told him that this was due to her widow’s pension from the British Army, and they had left it at that.
Pinsker was a little stumped. He had expected a straightforward conversation about Emilia’s royalties, and an insight into her life story. Instead, he found himself doubting her identity, and maybe her sanity. Or his own.
‘I would like to speak to Mr Pinsker alone. Please leave us,’ she nodded regally in Brenner’s direction. Brenner closed the door behind him, softly but reluctantly. Sorry: reluctantly and not softly enough.
‘Now, sit down,’ she said to Pinsker. ‘Right here, next to me.’ She pointed at a second red leather wing chair.
They sat in silence, facing the sea.
‘Better than London, don’t you agree?’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘Never??’
‘Never. I’m a little afraid of flying. I avoid travel unless it’s absolutely necessary. But my office in Tel Aviv is on the beach, so we have something in common, you and I.’
You and I have absolutely nothing in common, thought Emilia. And: What a peculiar young man. He reminds me of someone.
‘You remind me of someone,’ she sighed.
Pinsker was flattered. ‘Who?’
‘I really can’t remember. My dead husband, perhaps.’ She laughed, again, startling Pinsker who was in an earnest mood.
‘I’m not sure how to proceed now. All your publishers are anxiously waiting for me to confirm your story and to let them know how you would like us all to handle the publicity. And your royalties.’
‘Let’s start with my story. What would you like to know?’
Pinsker had a list of questions compiled for him by Emilia’s London publisher. It occurred to him that anyone who had a copy of the book and had read both the author’s bio and the detailed introduction (written by editor Tara Troubador herself) could easily pretend to have all the answers. In other words, any old lady could say, convincingly, I am the Emilia Gordon who wrote these stories and it would be very difficult to prove her wrong.
So he decided on a different, less factual approach.
‘Emilia. May I call you Emilia?’
‘And what shall I call you?’
‘Shlomo.’
Again she laughed. ‘In that case, please call me Miss Gordon. It makes me feel a little younger.’
‘Miss Gordon… I wonder… what was it like to write those stories during the Blitz? Our writers here often write about wars, but they write between the wars. Not during.
‘It wasn’t easy,’ Emilia said. ‘But I didn’t have much else to do, you know. And I heard so many stories from people, I just had to write them down. But then… ‘
She stared at the sea, now turning darker under a pink sky.
‘Then I couldn’t go on writing. When the war ended, I stopped being a writer. If I ever was one.’
‘Hm.’ Pinsker jumped up and now stood in front of the window, blocking the old lady’s beloved view. ‘Don’t you think Anne Frank would have become a writer, if she had survived?’
‘Who?’
‘Anne Frank.’
‘Ah yes. Never read her. But she wrote a diary, didn’t she? About herself. I never wrote about myself. I just listened to people and wrote down what they told me, so I wouldn’t forget. Like a reporter. You know… Most of those people… I didn’t even like them. But I thought, what if they’re killed tomorrow, or me. Obliterated by a Nazi bomb. Someone should know who they were. In case we all disappear. Do you ever think about death, Mr Pinsker? Between the wars?’
Shlomo Pinsker (unlike his daredevil twin brother) thought about death a great deal. Walking home from kindergarten with his father one very hot August day (Shlomo on the left and his brother always on his father’s right), he had asked: ‘What happens after we die?’ ‘Nothing,’ his father had replied, aggressively. He said almost everything aggressively, so not singling out the subject of death for a change in tone felt soothing, in a way. Two months later, Pinsker senior was sipping a cold orange juice in his favourite Café Frish on the corner of Dizengoff and Frishman when a bomb hidden under one of the rickety chairs exploded and left, indeed, nothing of the man whose two sons would grow up with a big hole in their hearts.
He didn’t answer Emilia’s question but countered with his own:
‘Do you, Miss Gordon?’
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