Brown Scarf Blues by Mois Benarroch Page A

that. And one day he showed up on her doorstep and told her. It seems she’d had no idea and said she was sorry but she didn’t share those feelings, that she felt nothing for him in fact. After that he shut down even more and went entire days without saying a word. He would listen to his classes, he would record them and then relisten to them on his Walkman on the train or while walking in the woods. I haven’t heard from him in years and if not for what happened to him I might have forgotten him by now. But despite everything, his friendship helped me very much. I think even his silence had a special aura that gave you the sense of not being alone in the world. At the time, I felt very lonely in Paris and he lessened that loneliness whenever he came to the seminars. Now I do want to read his books. It’s the next thing I’m going to do.

1966
    I thought he was a special child, of course they were all special but the special thing in him was different, it was something that seemed to tell you he was right, as if his face was saying, “Yes, I know these things.” He cried easily, which is why I did not go to say goodbye to him, I thought he would take it very badly. I said goodbye to his mother, and to his elder sister who was at home, and I could have waited a few minutes for him to come back but I preferred to leave. I went to Belgium. I returned once and went to their house, and the wife, his mother, invited me to have some tea and I felt like a lady, it was something that had never happened before, now that I was back from Belgium it was like I was someone else, I acted differently and dressed better, I was no longer the nana, no longer the servant, no longer the fátima, that’s what they called us, and though he kept calling me Fátima, I was not the fátima anymore. That day he was, indeed, there and he had changed very much, he was three years older and I wasn’t sure whether he recognized me, his mother said to him, “Don’t you remember Fátima?” And he did not answer, he ate one of the cookies that were on the table, some very good sugar cookies, like the ones I had learned to make in the señora ’s house and that now I made for my husband and my two children. For a moment, I felt he was about to stand up and come to give me a kiss, but he sat back down and then he left. I still loved him a lot, more than I loved the rest of the family since he was the only one who returned my affection, he would always hug me when I felt sad, he did that all the time before he turned two, like he could sense it, and he could also be happy with me when I was happy. Then I took out the gift I had brought them from Belgium, which today might seem silly, but in those days it was quite a gift, it was a box of chocolates, maybe Leonidas, maybe a more artisanal brand, I don’t recall, and he threw himself on them as if that was his way of thanking me for all the years past. He didn’t write, I don’t remember him as one of those children who write stories at age five, I never saw him write, and he never said anything about liking stories more than the other children did. What I do recall is that when he was one of the top students in his class they would give him a couple of books as a prize, they were in French and were color-illustrated adventures, very pretty, and then he was very happy with those books, they were his trophy, his way of being appreciated in the world. Maybe that’s why he became a writer. Ever since then—since 1970, I think—I have not seen him. I would like very much to see him again, but I doubt he remembers me or my last name. I don’t think they even knew our last names, to them we were all fátimas.

1976
    I arrived in Jerusalem on a one-year program for Jewish students. To learn Hebrew and maybe study in Israel. Everyone saw it as a year off from their family and a time to reflect, but for me it was a way to get past the accident I’d had five years earlier. I saw him on the bus almost