Copyright © 2013 Clemency Burton-Hill

The right of Clemency Burton-Hill to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

‘A Change is Gonna Come’ lyrics © 1963 Sam Cooke

First published as an Ebook in 2013 by Headline Review

An imprint of Headline Publishing Group in 2013

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 0 7553 8632 1

Cover photographs © Philippe Levy-Stab/Corbis (Central Park) and Oredia/Alamy, Superstock (woman). Author photograph © Robert Hill

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About the Author

Clemency Burton-Hill was born and raised in London and moved to New York in 2009. She is a television and radio broadcaster, and presents the Breakfast show on BBC Radio 3. As a journalist, she has written about culture and current affairs for leading publications on both sides of the Atlantic. All The Things You Are is her second novel.

Praise for Clemency Burton-Hill

‘Compulsively readable’ Marie Claire

‘A romantic guilty pleasure to replace your dose of Strictly’ Company magazine

‘An authentic and involving first novel’  Woman & Home magazine

‘Classy – already dubbed a modern twist in Daphne du Maurier’  Red magazine

‘It’s the modern day dilemma. You finally find love, only for someone to offer you a job – far away from your new boyfriend. Lara is settled, London-based actress who suddenly gets offered her big break in America. A dazzling romance’ Now magazine

Also by Clemency Burton-Hill and available from Headline Review

The Other Side of the Stars

About the Book

When New York journalist Natasha Bernstein loses her job and discovers her fiancé has been keeping a dark secret, her world collapses. Turning to her family, she takes inspiration from her formidable grandmother Esther, who runs a community centre in downtown Manhattan. As she starts to rebuild her life, Natasha’s friendship with Rafi – the enigmatic architect working on Esther’s centre – restores her sense of wonder at the world and her faith in who she is. But when Rafi and Natasha take a trip to Jerusalem, they are plunged into a story far deeper than their own. Here, questions of family and loyalty mean more than life itself, and they must ask themselves what they are ultimately prepared to fight for. In a divided world, is it history or love that makes us who we are?

To the memory of my great-grandparents,
Abraham and Sarah, who left everything behind.

Once the realization is accepted that, even between the closest human beings, infinite distances can still exist, a wonderful side-by-side living can emerge, if they succeed in loving the distance between them, which makes it possible for one to see the other whole against the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Part One

ONE

September

There was usually one, she had learned over the years. Taking a sip of water from the glass on the lectern, Esther Goldfaden scanned the auditorium to better study the face of the person who had just spoken. It turned out to be a young woman, dark-haired and intelligent-looking; somewhere around the age of her grand-daughters, she guessed. The woman was still holding the microphone in her hand, close to her mouth, as if poised to come back on whatever answer Esther should give. A steward hovered anxiously on the aisle nearby: there were a number of other raised hands in the lecture theatre.

Esther carefully set the water glass back down and smiled at her interlocutor. ‘Thank you for your thoughtful question. It’s certainly a very interesting one, and a complex one …’

Earlier, in the cab down to Battery Park, she’d thought that perhaps she wouldn’t do these kinds of events much more. People must surely have got tired of her story; she knew she had. But this museum was a wonderful organization: not only a resource for academics but a place to which interested people might come, learn and reflect. She liked and respected its director, a bright, perceptive woman named Maggie Adler whose temperament, Esther felt, had the capacity to make people feel more optimistic about humanity, not less. Esther invariably enjoyed the experience of speaking here. Today, though, she was unusually tired, and had found the session draining.

And now, this question. Why have you never been?

‘Mine is a very personal response,’ she said, ever so slightly adjusting her chair on the stage. ‘I understand that others feel differently, and I deeply respect their positions, as I hope they respect mine. But you must also understand that for me, my homeland was the village of Zholkva, near Lvov, in eastern Galicia, until it was here in the United States. I had never once set foot in the Middle East. Israel was not my home, it never was. It was not a political stance I took, deciding that I had no need to visit. It was purely a personal one.’

She nodded over at the steward, as if to say: next question.

‘But I read an interview you gave a few years ago in which your decision not to go did seem political,’ the woman countered. She was holding a Dictaphone in her other hand, Esther noticed for the first time. ‘In which you expressed what sounded like pretty strong views about Israel that some of your fellow survivors might reasonably see as objectionable. So I guess I’m just trying to get to the bottom of whether there is any … any causal connection between your experiences during the Holocaust and how you got to your position on Israel today?’

Esther maintained her smile.

‘First of all, I should just like to clarify: I have no “position” on Israel today. Choosing not to live in a place, or even not visiting it, does not equate to a position, not as I understand it.’ She was buying time as she steeled herself, gearing up for the phrases she had rehearsed so many times. It wasn’t that the sentiments were not genuine or hers, they absolutely were. But in such moments she often found it easier to cling to the lifeboat-like words of a familiar script rather than access the emotions themselves, lurking so many fathoms below. ‘I hardly need to restate my belief that it would be facile, not to mention perilous, to compare Hitler’s Holocaust to any other inhumanity man has inflicted on man. But I have also always held that my experiences during the war, what happened to my family, were tragedies specifically personal to me. I have never thought it appropriate to use those experiences to make any wider point.’ She cleared her throat. Why did she feel so fragile today? ‘Nevertheless it is also true that the experiences of my life have made me aware of the suffering of others, many of whom are being denied their fundamental rights all over the world. And I have always believed, as deeply as I believe anything, that any argument about human rights becomes discredited unless those rights are to be extended to every human being everywhere.’

‘So you are saying that Israel doesn’t extend those rights?’ Triumph had crept into the woman’s voice.

Edging towards exasperation, Esther held up a hand. ‘Please! I am not saying anything of the sort. I am no expert on Israeli policy today. I can tell you a lot about the bureaucratic hurdles facing homeless and disenfranchised New Yorkers, if you are interested in that?’

There was a ripple of laughter, which pleased her: she was always keen to remind audiences that her life’s work and focus was down at the community centre on West Street, not really in lecture theatres like this one.

The female journalist continued undeterred.

‘But in the same interview you said, and I quote, that the Israel-Palestine conflict “is the greatest moral issue of our age”.’

Esther inclined her head. ‘Did I? Well, I am sure it is. And I believe, as I am sure many people here in this room believe, not as a Jewish woman but merely as a rational human being, that it would be a tragedy, a tragedy, were Israel’s treatment of others to fatally undermine the moral foundations of its own existence. Not to mention its own long-term security interests.’ A smatter of applause broke out in pockets of the audience. ‘And as I have always maintained whenever I am asked about this most difficult topic, I am deeply wary of any attempt to make causal links or comparisons between the systematic annihilation of European Jewry by Hitler and the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians today. One must never be posited as justification for the other; nor can they possibly be compared.’

Over more applause, Esther glanced reassuringly at Maggie, as if to assuage any concern at the direction the Q&A had taken. She nodded again at the steward and indicated with her forefinger a man seated towards the middle of the auditorium, who had patiently kept his hand up during this whole exchange. ‘And now I think we really must move on!’

But still the bespectacled woman had not relinquished the microphone. She said, ‘And what about Emanuel?’

Esther squinted at her.

Her soul.

It took her a moment to regain her composure. She swallowed, heaved his name from her heart onto her lips. When it came out, it was almost a whisper. ‘Emanuel. What about him?’

How they loved to bring it back to him, these audiences. Beyond the fact of her being a survivor, and the widow of a celebrated playwright, Esther Goldfaden, neé Loew, was also a figure of fascination at such memorial centres as this because of the letter that had been discovered at Buchenwald in 1945. The original was in the archives at Yad Vashem, along with so many other diaries, letters, small correspondences; the evidence in ink and paper of humans still clinging to the possibility of their lives – humans who mostly had not survived. But there on that frayed and tattered sheet, by now almost translucent, was Esther Loew’s confident nineteen-year-old Yiddish hand: faint and illegible in places, but thrillingly alive. Many American holocaust museums had facsimile copies, like the one in the glass case upstairs. Usually, it was the thing people most wanted to talk to her about.

And most of the time she didn’t mind. Sometimes, on days when she was feeling stronger than today, Esther would even paint for them a picture: of how she and the cobbler’s son from a neighbouring village had met each other just once, teenagers, at a winter dance in Lvov during the war. And how they had not known each other’s names; but had known something else. ‘No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved,’ she would tell her rapt audience, quoting one of her favourite Shakespearean characters, before going on to explain how, almost a year later, as she ran to the neighbouring village to get her father’s boots repaired because their own cobbler was sick, she had collided with the boy once again and he had said her name.

She would tell them how, after the Nazis broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1941 to take Lvov, their villages had both been subsumed into the ghetto that winter. And how for a while, despite the whispers about the horrors happening outside the ghetto walls, her time there had been in its way a miraculous thing. Because it was there in the ghetto, that freezing winter, that she and Emanuel had answered each other’s souls: two young people twining together as they made love and plans; plans for tomorrow and plans for the future. Plans for such simple happinesses: children, music, food, books. Each other. After this was all over. One day.

And Esther would describe to audiences that last evening in the ghetto, before the Gestapo arrived. ‘We met, we made love, and then we ate a last meal at our favourite café: a traditional Galitzianer sweet kugel with lokshen. I can still taste it to this day. We had a plan: he was going to go underground that same night, into the forest with some friends of his, to join the resistance movement slightly further east. And I was going to escape with my family. My father had these government contacts, or thought he did; there was a neighbour enlisted to help us escape in the middle of the night. Emanuel and I knew we would meet again somehow. We made our plan. It was simply unthinkable we should not see each other again.’ It was all unthinkable, of course, everything that had happened next. Often her audiences already knew the outline of her biography, and she need not say the words. My family and I fled our house in the middle of the night, leaving everything, all our possessions. We thought we would return, of course we would return, but we were taken at the border. My father had been betrayed by his contacts. He was shot dead in front of our eyes. And then my mother, my brother, my sister and I were sent to Belzec, and from there the Janowska camp, and from there I went to Buchenwald … And of all of us, I was the only one to survive.

Sometimes, if it felt appropriate, if her heart could bear it, she would go on to tell them how she had later found out that she and Emanuel had missed each other in Janowska – he too had been betrayed by those he trusted – by days; she already on a transport to Buchenwald by the time her love walked through those same gates. Or how, many years later, with her husband Max’s help, she had discovered that her darkest terror had been realized: not that Emanuel had perished – for that much she already knew. But that he had also been interred at Buchenwald, for seven months and twenty-two days during the period that she was also there. That they had been in that same place without ever once passing – for they would surely have known each other if they did, even with the bare skulls and the lifeless eyes, the jutting bones and the tattooed limbs. That, finally, was the most unbearable thought of all: that he had been there. Emanuel had died, they discovered, in the Buchenwald gas chamber in the springtime of 1945, just three days before the camp – and she – were liberated. April indeed the cruellest month.

That he had been there.

Today, in her vulnerable state, Esther had deliberately avoided mentioning his name in her talk. But now, thanks to this persistent woman, here he was in the room again anyway; the very core of her life: beautiful and freckled and nineteen and smelling of boot-polish, and saying her name … How had he ever discovered her name?

The woman cleared her throat. ‘I mean, if you had known, for certain, say, that Emanuel had survived and made it to Israel, would that have changed your mind? Would you have gone then?’

There was a rumble of disapproval around the auditorium now. ‘I really don’t see how that is relevant!’ a man called out. ‘It might be polite at this point to let someone else ask a question!’

Esther smiled at her protector, but held up a hand. Another thing she had come to understand was that, while some people would always dislike or resent or find distasteful or inexplicable her opinions – she had even been called a ‘self-hating Jew’ on a few memorable occasions – most of the audiences she addressed at places like this were fiercely protective of her. As if simply by dint of surviving what they felt was un-survivable, she had impunity to think or behave in any way she liked afterwards. Max had treated her that way too: Esther had had to be vigilant not to become spoiled under his tender and sometimes over-indulgent watch.

She leaned forward and found the female journalist’s eyes. ‘What is your name, my dear?’

The woman seemed taken aback. ‘My name? Uh, Anna Mayer.’

‘Tell me, Anna, have you ever done anything truly mad for love?’

‘Uh … I … I don’t—’

‘Well, I haven’t,’ Esther confided, ‘not truly mad, not mad enough, because after 1942 I never again had the opportunity. But trust me, if I thought Emanuel had survived, if I thought there was any hope of him being there, I would walk to Israel tomorrow to find him. Then again, I would walk to the moon to find him.’ She looked up. ‘Okay. I mean it. Next question, please.’

* * *

At the back of the auditorium, Natasha Bernstein was watching her indefatigable grandmother with a mixture of emotions. Pride, of course, and the deepest admiration. But also a reminder of how strange it was. To be here among people who hung on Esther’s every word, who had been all the way to Israel or Galicia to study her papers and her correspondence from the war, and who had written articles and academic pieces about her experience, was to be powerfully reminded that Esther was so much more than just their grandma. It was easy to forget that sometimes.

And there she was, moving brightly through the crowd behind her chrome walker: chatting to well-wishers, signing things, even posing for a photograph with an elderly woman, perhaps another survivor, who was accompanied by what looked like members of three more generations of her family. Esther, Natasha thought, as she watched these strangers bask in her grandmother’s magic, was so like her sister Rachel: a dispenser of light, to whom others must helplessly gravitate. She noticed her grandmother heading towards the journalist who had interrogated her so relentlessly earlier, and then, after a brief chat, leading the woman right towards the door where Natasha was standing.

‘Tash, sweetie, I wanted you to meet Anna Mayer from the Journal.’

Natasha realized she knew the byline. If the grand-daughter in her had felt infuriated by Anna Mayer’s approach during the question time, the reporter in her had to admit a grudging respect; she was pretty sure she would not have been so tenacious. ‘This is my eldest grand-daughter Natasha. She’s also a journalist.’ Esther beamed. ‘At the Times, no less.’

Anna Mayer’s brown eyes sharpened. ‘Oh really? How long have you been at the Times?’

‘Three years, almost.’

‘What’s your beat?’

‘She writes the most wonderful human interest stories,’ Esther cut in. ‘Really interesting things about the political or economic situation but with human beings at their heart.’

Anna smiled tightly at Natasha. ‘Oh. You too?’

Ordinarily this exchange would have sent up in Natasha a flare of anxiety: unlike Esther she did not move so easily towards her rivals. But not today. Her fingers in her jacket pocket closed around her phone; she longed to pull it out and read again the text that had arrived from her editor John Deegan a short while ago.

Nothing confirmed yet but looks like yr story might front. Hang tight. JD.

Today, then, with a front-page story in the offing, she was immune.

‘That’s right,’ she nodded. ‘Me too.’ She held out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you, Anna. That was a great question you asked.’

‘Try nine questions,’ Esther corrected with a smile. From her pocketbook, she handed Anna Mayer a card. ‘That’s our centre. It’s up on West Street. If you’d like to talk further about anything, Anna, please come and see us for coffee anytime. I’d be delighted to show you around.’

Outside on the sidewalk, evening had arrived. The sun was sinking lazily over the river, catching the light on a gazillion glass windows and casting downtown in shades of rose and gold. It was beautiful: New York at its storybook finest. Natasha helped her grandmother to the corner to wait for a cab.

‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’

‘Did what?’ Esther was all innocence.

‘Just completely disarmed that woman. Moved towards her, drew her in, neutralized her. Just like that.’

Esther smiled. ‘I simply asked her for a cup of coffee. We’ll see if she calls.’

‘I think she’ll call.’

From the direction of the ferry terminal a cab appeared, its light illuminated. Natasha flagged him down. Then embraced her grandmother. ‘I love you. Well done today. I was so proud of you. That can’t have been easy.’

Esther held up her papery cheek for a kiss. ‘Thanks for coming, sweetie. You sure I can’t drop you over on Kenmare?’

Natasha shook her head. ‘I’ll walk. It’s such a beautiful evening.’

‘Well then, I’ll see you at Rosh Hashana on Friday, won’t I?’

‘Of course.’ Natasha helped Esther into the back seat and shut the cab door as Esther gave the driver her West 12th Street address.

Just as the car was about to drive off, Natasha called to her through the open window.

‘Oh, and Bubbe?’

‘Yes, my darling?’

‘Don’t forget to buy the paper tomorrow …’