Lucena by Mois Benarroch Read Free Book Online Page B

would call his father, frightened and in response to his father’s questioning Samuel would tell him candidly: “Grandma sees too many soap operas. She made it all up.”
    But that had been some time ago. He had hardly seen her in the last two years. Only at High Holidays when they went to see her after leaving synagogue.
    She was a bit deaf and didn’t want to leave the house. She was ninety some.
    “Samuelito, how are you? Nobody ever comes to see me anymore. Not even you, with your models.”
    “I came to ask you something.”
    “Did you bring me magazines?”
    “Who was Abraham Benzima who disappeared in Brazil?”
    “Your cousin Abramito?”
    “No, not him. Abraham Benzimra from 1870 or something like that. So you remember him?” and he repeated, shouting the Word “BRAZIL.”
    “He who left and never returned. Abraham Benzimra, your grandfather’s grandfather. What can I say about him? He left and never returned. He was a real bastard. That’s what my grandmother said. Somebody said they had seen him on the Amazon and that he had married some girls there. So she spent her life abandoned. But who knows? It could be that whoever said that was envious that my grandmother was rich, from the large quantity of money that Abraham Benzimra brought from Brazil. He built many buildings in Tetuán and left her a lot of money. They say it was all envy and that the man had died. Others said he was swindler and he ran away with non-Jewish women. These days everybody marries non-Jews, like your models,” she said laughingly.
    “Yes, yes,” answered Samuel.
    “Did you bring me a magazine? I hope you‘re not still in the mafia,” she laughed again.
    “No, I finally paid my debts.”
    “Here, here take some money,” she said, surprising him as she handed him five thousand pesetas she had in her bag.
    “Grandma, can dead people talk?”
    “Yes, I, at my age I can talk,” she answered smiling as her false teeth moved around.
    “Dead people can also do it. They appear in one’s dreams. Have you seen Abraham Benzimra in your dreams?”
    “It wasn’t a dream grandma, I was just with him like I am here with you now.”
    “That’s a sign he is alive. Nobody has seen him dead so maybe he’s alive.”
    “That’s foolish grandma, he would be one hundred fifty years old by now.”
    “We have heard about stranger things than that happening.”
    “He says he’s a thousand years old.”
    “You see? What else does he say?”
    “To tell the truth, I didn’t understand anything. He told me a bunch of things about the Spaniards and the Stone Age from five hundred years ago. He said he was born in Lucena.”
    “They say our family came from Lucena.”
    “From that little town?”
    “At one time it was a large city, and the Jews there were in the majority.”
    “He didn’t stop talking about a bunch of confusing things and he seems insane.”
    She thought for a while, making signs that he should not bother her. Then she said:
    “Ask him what was on the handkerchief that he left his wife the last time he left for Brazil. A stranger could not know that.”
    RUSSIAN

A SHORT STORY OF SAMUEL MURCIANO
    I went in to the record store at ten in the morning, something I do frequently, and I began talking with the salesman about the future of Tejano music in Israel after two thousand years of exile. Then a Russian with a strong accent came in looking for the latest cd by the Tremeloes. The odor of cognac emanated from eight meters away.
    “Those are extraordinary,” and he grabbed three cds. Later the salesman told me he was a good client, insinuating that I was not, that I had only come to talk and finally expecting that the cds that I wanted would have been discounted so as to pay a quarter of the price, or, I would order the by mail from the United States for half price.
    “Whoever counts on you will go broke,” he was saying.
    Of course he was right but I never understood how he could expect me to buy something