The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado

Author:Lucette Lagnado
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 14

The Missing Birthday

It was in Paris that my birthday almost disappeared.

We had been there several months, stuck in the Violet Hotel. Fear for my brothers’ safety finally clinched the decision: my father had chosen America. But that in no way guaranteed we would be able to go. Our application was winding its way through the mazelike bureaucracy of global refugee resettlement agencies, and we still hadn’t unpacked.

My father now occasionally ventured to Montmartre, where an outdoor fair, complete with barkers and games of chance, restored his good humor. His passion for gambling found an improbable outlet amid the small kiosks where for less than a franc and the spin of a wheel of fortune, it was possible to vie for watches, dishes, pocketknives, transistor radios, even jewelry, which I eyed longingly, since all I possessed was the pair of earrings I’d found inside the chocolate Easter egg. The fair became Dad’s daily destination, after morning prayers and before joining the sad sacks who gathered at noon at a nearby soup kitchen.

The Cojasor had set up an elaborate system of meals for the waves of immigrants from the Levant. A communal cafeteria on the rue Richer, a block from our hotel, served hot, nutritious meals that adhered to the strictest Jewish dietary laws, all for a nominal fee. Once a day, around noon, elegant socialites from the sixteenth arrondissement descended on a mission to help feed the poor and destitute, which now included my family.

At Le Richer, as we called it, meals were freshly prepared and plentiful—almost too plentiful. Every few minutes, bejeweled volunteers came to our table, offering to ladle more food on our plates from the large tureens they carted up and down the aisle. They seemed more than willing to offer us extra helpings of dishes that tasted foreign and delicious—especially the charcuterie they served once a week with bread and mustard. I’d never tasted cold cuts in Cairo, where the lone kosher purveyor had packed up and moved before my family left.

I found the thin slices of salami and turkey Le Richer offered us intensely exotic, unlike any food I’d ever eaten.

An elderly countess—at least, that is what César said she was—gold bracelets dripping from her arms, precious stones adorning the fingers of each hand, would approach us and always ask the same question, in the high, squeaky aristocratic voice that my oldest brother loved to imitate: “Beaucoup ou un peu?”—A lot or a little?

If we shyly nodded beaucoup, she heaped our plates with mountainous portions of meat, rice, vegetables, and potatoes, and if we said “Un peu,” she still tried to fill our plates to the brim, so that it really didn’t matter how we answered her. We were encouraged to take food home; among the few amenities of the Violet Hotel was a small kitchenette with a rechaud, an electric burner where it was possible to recycle leftovers and have them for our supper.

Though the volunteers behaved graciously and made sure no one went hungry, most of us still found Le Richer impossibly bleak.

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