American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [12]
Go away, she said, to the bugs, to the shadows, to the empty tent.
The letter was addressed to “The Wardrobe Girl.” There was no postmark—it had been slipped into her pocket like a reverse theft—and the handwriting was firm and clear, with a slight leftward slant. It was dated June 5, 1923.
Dear Miss Wardrobe Girl,
You probably have no notion of my existence, but I see you every day. And you see me. I am one of the Israelites.
I believe you took some notice of me yesterday when you handed me my loincloth. I have green eyes. Forgive me if I am mistaken. And please forgive my forwardness.
I long to speak to you. Will you meet me outside the gates of the city tomorrow morning at sunrise? I know you must wake up early, as we all do.
With Anticipation and Respect,
Solomon Eckstein
Pearl was eighteen years old and had never been in love. She’d had a sweetheart, a young man from the neighborhood who had an instinctive gift for the piano, but he didn’t support her desire to have a career, and so they had parted ways amicably when he left for college and she went on to finish high school and follow her dream. She felt some sadness about the boy from time to time, when she sat alone in her parents’ yellow kitchen late at night or when she saw a mother and child holding hands and felt a strange shiver of disappointment pressing against her ribs.
Mostly, however, she was too busy with work to think about men, and if she’d really thought about it she would have said that anyway she adored her job. This was accurate, but what she later came to realize was that she had gravitated to the line of work she was in, in large part because it continually held forth the promise of true love.
She walked to the gates at dawn. She passed rows of tents, storerooms, two huge mess tents, and an emergency hospital. Children were heading toward the large school tent. To the north, under a still twinkling sky, trainers and herders were starting their day of tending to more than two thousand animals. The entire city was waking up, and Pearl felt the military purposefulness of people gathered for a common goal. As the last shreds of night were brushed away and a pink light lifted over the desert in waves, she breathed in deeply and stepped under the three-hundred-foot-high gate of the temple of Ramses II.
When she emerged, it occurred to her that she had no idea who she was waiting for. She had tried to remember a face with green eyes, but she had no memory of one. She stood in front of the exterior of the massive gate, which was sculpted with seated Egyptians and large horses and faintly anachronistic-looking wheels. Ahead of her stretched an enormous avenue of sand lined with twenty-four sphinxes. She looked tiny standing before the gate, like a plastic figurine from an aquarium or a dollhouse tossed onto a piece of human-sized furniture. It was cold. The sand began to blow around, covering her shoelaces and collecting in the folds of her socks and skirt and wool coat. She wore a pale blue scarf around her neck and now she took it off and tied it around her head. She felt ridiculous, but after a while she lost herself in the majesty of the double row of sphinxes, and beyond them, the distant unfixable line of the sea.
A man approached her. She didn’t recognize him, but she was not disappointed. He was tall and wide-shouldered, with dark wavy hair. He was squinting against the blowing sand.
Mr. Eckstein? Pearl said.
No, no, he said quickly. I’m his friend. I met him on the train out here. My name is Joe. He held out his hand and they shook hands.
I don’t understand, she said.
Solomon couldn’t come. He’s been injured. He was helping overnight with the animals and something happened. Something with a horse. He