Every Sunday after closing La Peregrina, to his wife's annoyance David disappeared, using the need to sell some leftovers as a pretext. "Your father never spends Sundays at home,"
Anita complained to her daughter. She suspected her husband enjoyed those furtive escapades and that he went away, both to be separated from her as well as to visit with his chums at the tavern.
Anita was afraid to confess to Elena the only secret she kept, her suspicion that David could be involved with Susanita. To protect her daughter from such shame, she would only insinuate her belief that, "your father has a rather close relationship" with that homosexual.
"Not that I am concerned about it" she would tell Elena, "but you know how people react here in America to such things." Her daughter laughed to herself, because she knew her father was just a friend of Susanita and thought her mother should be suspicious of Emilia and her friends instead.
And she was right. On Sundays, David went to the crummy bars where he socialized with the cream of the underworld. He thought life was hard and cruel, plagued by disappointments and he found his peace of mind talking to those that once dreamt of becoming somebody great, only to end up defeated or maligned. He would rush to Emiliaś bar, trying to find consolation in drinking and talking. Each and every Sunday afternoon, he met with Emilia, Susanita and an old transvestite from Barrio Mexico nicknamed The Duster, to discuss their miseries, aspirations and the meaning of life…
Instead of the usual exchange of ideas, one day David transformed the weekly gathering into a session of airing complaints. They compared misfortunes and argued which one of them was more persecuted and discriminated against. Would it be the Jew, the one forced to marry someone he did not love, the Prostitute, the Sodomite, or the Transvestite? The discussion centered on studying which group had gained more rights throughout civilization.
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The Jewish merchant was agile in twisting the discursive paths, employing a Talmudic style and did not allow anybody to question his monopoly of suffering. However, this time the rest of the participants had anticipated David's tricks to present himself as The Martyr and would not grant him an easy triumph. Like a modern Aristophanes in a renovated Platonic Symposium, they fought for the right to define, which was better and worst sexuality.
The discussion became such a plaintive contest, that even the Christians used Yiddish words to regret the fact they were suffering the worst tzores. "Do not worry that your marriage is a catastrophe, David," said his friend Emilia. "Life is never a rose garden; just look at me, I wanted to find a good husband and ended up a whore." "But woman, at least every night you can expect something new, while I always have to see the very Samael, king of the demons," he answered. "Besides, in this country if you repent you are immediately forgiven, even prostitution," added David.
Susanita did not miss one word of this exchange and now cut into the conversation. "The only one around here really involved with the Devil is me; there is not a fine or a penalty I could pay to 'change' and leave Max," he said, looking at David. He felt that, neither Emilia's nor David's was more difficult and more painful a predicament than his. "The most discriminated group in the world is us, homosexuals," he said. "Even men like Max," he complained, "take advantage of us girls and sooner or later leave us in the ditch."
But David would not give in. "You, Susanita, although everybody may oppose you, are free to love whomever you choose. In my case, I had to marry not allowed to choose my partner and that is the worst thing there is." "But Don David," replied Susanita, "tell me the truth.
Did you ever had any pleasure with your wife?"
Even though he wanted to, the Jewish merchant could not deny the truth. "At first I did, I must admit. She was a hot woman and somehow morbid. She liked to look at my round and firm ass and she always told me I was a good lover. However, we slowly fell apart because of the damned poverty and the ensuing fights over money," he confessed, tears in his eyes.
But everybody thought they were just crocodile tears.
When The Duster's turn came, he was ill tempered and said he did not have enough patience to discuss such sloppy themes. He had reached the kind of wisdom that only emerges after living many years and, therefore; he refused to discuss who was doing better or worse. "You are losing your time with these absurd discussions," he said. "For us, members of different minorities, modernity has made us easy prey to the Nazis and only the Communist revolution will save us. All the poor and the excluded are currently endangered; we have not benefited, at all, from the much advertised world progress," he commented.
"You David, take a good look at how things are these days," he continued. "What today is just a practice, tomorrow is going to turn into an identity."
"What do you mean?" asked David. "You are now flying too high and it is hard to follow your trend of mind."
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"It is very simple," responded The Duster. "Let us take the case of Jews. In former times they were considered to be members of a religion. Thus, whenever the anti-Semites threatened them, there was always a way out of the predicament: They only had to undergo baptism and convert and all their problems were over. Nowadays, however, the Nazis have defined the Jews as a race and, therefore, nobody may escape his condition, whether converting or marrying a Christian. Hitler has established what it takes to be a Jew and is not based on whether or not you practice the Hebraic religion. According to the Nazi chief, you are a Jew if you have three Jewish grandfathers, even if currently you do not practice Judaism."
According to The Duster, something similar was taking place with the homosexuals and the prostitutes. "Twenty years ago, a whore could pay a tax and abandon her condition. A sodomite could marry and nobody complained. A man would dress like a woman and his acts did not make him untrustworthy. Meanwhile, today these become identities that nothing can erase or remove. Do not deceive yourselves thinking we are making progress and imagining we live in more civilized nations, because we are not. "
They could not reach a consensus about whose was the worst life, but David had a final card to win the contest.
In his view, the others had been able to choose their way of living, whereas he, notwithstanding his youthful dream of becoming a rabbi, ended up as a merchant. "You do not understand how much I suffer being forced to sell shmates, when I could have been a distinguished scholar specializing in the Talmud," he said. "But since I was poor, they did not respect my wishes and nobody follows my wise counsel."
Emilia would not let him win. "Well, I chose to become a whore and ended up poor and it is me that men want advice from," she answered. "You might not imagine how many customers come to tell me their miseries, when all I want is that they finish and leave." She could not understand what good could come from becoming a rabbi, as a prerequisite for advising others about how they should live. "If after all nobody pays attention, what satisfaction may there be in giving advice?"
While David talked with his friends, Elena met Carlos at the Morazán Park, during the weekly open-air band concert. She was much more daring than her mother and her father.
She had no interest, whatsoever, in hiding her love affair. She knew this was a small country with only half a million inhabitants, but nowhere to hide. Besides, she had fallen in love madly with the beau as he fell for her. When the right chemistry exists, the bodies seem to respond to all kinds of stimuli, except reason. And the attraction between them was so strong that they could not find a way to control it. Both anxiously longed for Sunday afternoons, to meet and to look at each other, like perfect romantic dreamers without needing to say a single word. This love must have been really strong, to make them willing to confront the absolute condemnation from their respective communities. And condemnation there was, indeed. So much so, that both were left alone; their friends were not able to understand what was going on in their hearts. But their personalities 182
complemented each other in such mysterious ways, that neither the Bible nor the Talmud could separate them.
Elena and Carlos were immigrants, survivors and loners that could not find solace in tradition. They had ceased to believe in particular gods and in eternal traditions. Exile and poverty had forced them to open to the world, to the modern whirlwind that uprooted them from their hometowns and expelled them towards the new society. Neither suspected this future was about to come face to face with its worst enemy.
Events in Germany appeared quite distant from the tropics, to the point that they believed these would never affect them. "Hitler will not last much longer," Carlos said to Elena dreamily. However, according to the new racial laws, since 1935, marriages between Jews and Germans were banned in Germany. The kiss of love exchanged between them in San José could send them both to jail in Berlin. "Carlos, we must stop this madness," said Elena, although not believing her own words. "We are playing with fire."
But not only the lovers had a secret rendezvous. David and Carlos also met on Sundays, during the evening, to discuss the Talmud. Both had come to like and respect each other.
Their meetings were full of controversy, as the afternoon meetings between Carlos and David's daughter were full of love. For both of them, their discussions about the rabbinical schools were like honey for the spirit. Carlos had found a religion, that of Hillel, organized around endless debates concerning justice and morals, but open to change. David preferred the Shammai School, which maintained a rigid stance concerning law and tradition.
David had told Carlos that Hillel and Shammai were two rabbis that lived at the end of the first century before our era and at the beginning of the first century. The discussions maintained by these two wise men were transformed into two Rabbinical schools, the Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai, which continued the dialogue after the destruction of the Second Temple, that is, until the second century of our era. These debates were essential material of the Oral Law and the source of disagreements between David and Carlos.
Hillel proposed a more 'humanist' interpretation of the laws, and was more sensitive to the every day realities of his followers. David considered them too loose. The Bet Shammai School, for example, argued that a woman requesting a divorce, because her husband had disappeared and was presumed dead, but who only presented one witness, should be denied her petition. To the contrary, the Bet Hillel, aware of the suffering endured by an abandoned woman, accepted one testimony as valid and sufficient. The Bet Shammai was rigid. The man could not get a divorce unless he could discover his wife committing adultery, since the Bible says: "Because he found something indecent in her." The Bet Hillel maintained the opposite view. A man could get a divorce if he found any defect in her, including something trivial such as the wife spoiling his meal, since the Bible says:
"Because he has found something inappropriate in her."
David preferred the Shammai, in part because he had married Anita thanks to his town's rabbi, who had granted her the divorce on the bases of alleged impotency on the part of her former husband: "If Anita had not obtained the get, he reasoned, I would not have married 183
her and now I would be free. To me, divorce is not justifiable unless the woman is guilty of adultery."
For his part, Carlos considered it unfair that people had to remain tied all their lives to the person they had first married. "You, Don David, since you did not dare leave your wife, want everybody to remain tied and unhappy."
Carlos was concerned because, since there was not a rabbi in Costa Rica, David had a tremendous power over the Jewish community about the halakah 88. The man could use his known opposition to divorce to deny the moral recognition of Carlos' divorce from Yadira.
This was the reason why David was proposing to the Costa Rican Jewish Community to outlaw any gets. "We have among us a fellow Jew granting divorces helter-skelter, for money. If we let him continue, in a few years we will not have even one single couple left,"
he would explain to Carlos. "The solution is to pass a law prohibiting anybody from taking advantage of other people's marital failures."
Discussing with David, Carlos became more convinced that Judaism was something more than a people or a religion. He started to regard it as a way of thinking; even a Gentile like himself could appreciate that. "At first I believed it was crazy to get lessons from you,"
Carlos said to David. "With time I realize you are becoming more and more Jewish and stubborn," David answered, laughing.
The tutor could not help noticing that his student had become not only a religious expert, but also that now, as a good fellow Jew, he only answered to questions by means of presenting further interrogations. "If you support Shammai's position on divorce and claim that only infidelity is a legitimate reason to accept it, do you not think Anita could be accused of infidelity because of her private meetings with Don José?" asked Carlos.
David, who had adopted a strategy of looking the other way regarding his wife's love affair and feared his wife more than the Last Judgment, answered with yet another question: "And who will dare to accuse her?"
Elena's father was not convinced his student's wedding would be the best solution. "You face so many obstacles with a mixed marriage," he would tell Carlos, "that I am sure you will not be able to cope with them." "If marrying someone from your own people is a mistake, just imagine what kind of error would it be marrying somebody from a different people," he insisted.
David believed passion was something ephemeral and a bad foundation for a marriage.
"Even though shiduchs like mine may be a disaster, the truth is they last longer than those based on passionate love," he said, challenging Carlos. "In my opinion, it would be better if Elena marries someone from her own people, even if she does not love him," continued David. With Carlos, he adopted a completely different stance to the one he had maintained just a few hours earlier, at Emiliaś bar.
88 Religious Law
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But Carlos would not be intimidated. "I cannot understand how you managed to have intimate relations with a woman you just met at your wedding night. If I had to go to bed with someone I had been introduced the day of the wedding, I would feel like the most miserable man in the entire world," he bluntly asserted. To the young lover, if passion was a bad counselor for marriage, as David claimed, it was even worse to let others make the selection for you.
"If, as you claim, physical attraction is ephemeral, then would it not be better to enjoy it while it lasts, rather than never experience it?" Carlos could not stop now: "Besides, how is it that you defended Samuel when he chose to fall in love with another man and now you want to prevent your daughter from doing something similar?"
"But, don't you realize,‖ replied David mockingly, ―that he fell in love with a Jew and not with a Christian? The truth is, Carlos, there is a fellow Jew chasing my daughter and, if I have the opportunity, I would rather marry her with him than with you."
"Who is he?" Carlos asked immediately, suddenly possessed by jealousy. "It is Adolfo, the brother of the Israelite Center's President," proudly replied Elena's father. "This suitor is a lovely thing, although not intelligent at all. But at least he is a Jew and that would save me from a major scandal."
"You are a rogue!" popped up Carlos. "You are looking after a moneyed man and you do not care if your daughter will be happy with him. Remember there exists a curse against those who pursue material goods only."
David answered promptly: "If that was the only thing I wanted for her, then I would choose you; you are wealthier than King Salomon. Besides, if having money is a malediction, then I want to be cursed one hundred times. I have had enough of poverty!"
Don Carlos was flabbergasted by such an insult. Also, the Talmud forbids that you curse yourself. "Don David, you will be punished for such a loose tongue!" he said, reproachfully. "You are not only going to make your daughter unhappy, but you will end up poorer than a rat yourself!" warned Carlos.
Their discussions about love continued until late at night.
Anita was furious waiting for her husband, got ill tempered and ready to make him pay for leaving her alone during the day. "Well, it was time His Majesty King David decided to come home!" her fury disguised in irony. He said nothing and she continued: "You spent all day with Carlos studying the Talmud, while Yadira attends the Nazi meetings. What an excellent company you have found for yourself! Whores and sodomites during the day and Nazis and Germans in the evening! No wonder this home is all topsy-turvy; no one seems to know what to do with his or her life. You have provoked this chaos with your adventures 185
in this country's underworld. In Poland we would have already imposed a herem89 on you for licentiousness and for living with heretics."
Her opposition to her daughter's love affair was not based on religious reasons, since she did not care too much for these, but were rooted on ideological and social class matters.
"No rich man will divorce to marry a poor woman like Elena, much less a Nazi," she said.
David, just to spite her, now proceeded to defend the lovebirds he had attacked earlier. "If Carlos studies the Talmud because of his love for Elena, that is much more than what you have done for me during all these years," he recriminated.
" Oy Vey!" said the woman. "Now you are going to tell me that supporting you in Poland, while you wasted your time with your friends in the Synagogue, did not mean anything?"
They could not agree, although both realized that in this tropical country things were more
"modern," and that the little love worm had been let loose, invading traditional homes and taking possession of the Jewish hearts. "In Długosiodło," insisted Anita, "nobody had ever married because they were in love. The only one that did it, namely Samuel, ended up with a bullet in his head."
"Perhaps you are right," said David, "but nobody died with such a broad and happy smile."
89 The hardest punishment, implicating the expulsion from the community 186
XXI
A deceived soul is a tremendous enemy. When we find out our loved one is dating someone else behind our backs, repeating the promises previously offered just to us, we are capable of wrongdoings. Our ego is a small elf, an intolerant dictator that refuses to admit any competition. Yadira felt destroyed to the marrow. That night she dreamt with Max; he seemed much more handsome than ever and was wearing a new suit. Although she did not believe in Freud or in psychoanalysis, Yadira realized the suit represented her rival. While her head at any moment now, apparently was about to burst, she made a decision: "That miserable will not treat me like an old rag!"
By morning she had her revenge prepared. She got in touch with her father, to ask him a small favor:
"Daddy, can you get me an appointment with William Hornibrook, the Minister of the American Legation?"
"Of course I can, honey. Why? Have you perhaps changed sides?" he inquired mockingly.
"You only visit the German Legation, what the hell are you going to do with the gringos now?"
"Everything goes in war and in love," she quickly responded. "Besides, I didn't change sides."
Don José would try, without results, to find out her reasons. His daughter remained unmoved: "I will talk about the war. What else is there?" She knew that, because some German businesses were boycotting El Diario de Costa Rica, the Americans had decided to finance it. This newspaper was certainly anti-Semitic, but also pro-American; it was one of those contradictions typical of a tropical country. If the Americans could negotiate with the anti-Semites, why couldn't she?
If the request sounded strange to her father, it was astonishing to the diplomat. Hornibrook was well aware this woman sympathized with the Nazi Party of Costa Rica and he also knew she was the main instigator in the anti-Jewish campaign. Besides, he had gotten news about her special relationship with Max Gerffin, a probable enemy of his country. Yadira visited the American Legation two days later.
"Mr Minister, thank you for receiving me. I know you are a busy man. I will try to be succinct," the visitor said as she accepted a chair.
"It is my pleasure to have you here, dear lady. What can I do for you?" the diplomat asked.
"Look, Don William, I am really worried. You know very well that I have worked to have our Costa Rican laws duly respected, and to put a stop to the current free immigration ordinance. However, above all I am a "Tica"90. I am afraid our government will not be firm enough to resist the pressures from foreign powers. You know the German Minister, Otto Reinebeck, has his offices in Guatemala and his delegate in Costa Rica is Max Gerffin, who also works and cooperates with our government in infrastructure matters. Although he is a friend of mine, I have reliable reports that some Pepe Flores is passing state secrets to him,"
90 Costa Rican
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said Yadira. She stopped at this point and looked at the Minister's face, as if to assess the impact of her words.
"What kind of evidence do you have?" asked the diplomat from his leather chair, disturbed and surprised.
"I am aware Germany already knows the official position Costa Rica will adopt during the Conference in Havana, the one you are helping to organize. I also know that Minister Reinebeck is preparing a coup d`état here, to bring down a government that, in his view, is just "a puppet" of the United States. If all this I am telling you was not true, then how could I know your government will propose in Havana an inter-American treatise against Nazism, based on the principle of not accepting the transfer of the colonies belonging to European countries invaded by Germany?" asked the woman with an enigmatic smile.
Hornibrook was speechless. The information she mentioned was absolutely top secret. Pepe knew the strategy the United States would pursue in Havana, but not the specific details of the treatise his country will propose. As the official representative of Washington, Hornibrook had been secretly working with the Calderón administration, trying to convince it to participate in a wide international anti-Fascist front. The Roosevelt administration realized the avowed neutrality of the United States was untenable. If, for some reason, his country entered the European war, the Panama Canal and therefore Costa Rica, acquired a major strategic relevance. A neutral or a pro-Nazi Costa Rican government would be unacceptable for his country.
To prevent it, the American Minister had signed several contracts of reciprocal help and had also promoted negotiations to finally settle the boundaries between Costa Rica and Panama. He had also increased the Costa Rican coffee quotas in the American market and made promises to provide military assistance. However, this woman was now telling him something he suspected: The Germans were plotting to sabotage the plans to have Costa Rica on the side of the allies, by means of a coup d`état.
Hornibrook tried everything in his hands, to keep the situation under control.
"Dona Yadira, what you are telling me is extremely serious. If it is true that a coup d`état is being planned and that there are German spies inside the Costa Rican government, then we need proof of it. Please excuse my daring, but you have been very close to the German policies and now you are not anymore. Why should I trust you?" He asked the key question. As he spoke he looked at Yadiraś hands, clamped down and firm.
"You see, Don William, I will be crystal clear with you. The Calderón administration has approved the expulsion of the Jews. For that, I tell you frankly, I requested Max's and the German Legation's support. But now they want more. They want to bring down Calderón, because of international affairs not of my incumbency. If I am to be consequential with my beliefs, why am I going to support a coup against Doctor Calderón, after he has solved our Jewish "problem"? I want these people out and that is all. However, you have also made contradictory decisions. I know you have decided to finance El Diario de Costa Rica
because, even though Don Otilio supports the expulsion of the Jews, nonetheless he is an 188
ally of England. Is it not as paradoxical as what I am doing now? We always put our interests first, is that not right?" added Yadira. She then looked at the picture of the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hanging on the wall behind Minister Hornibrook.
"I need proof," said the Minister.
"Let us say I will get them for you; and let us say you believe there is a German spy in the Costa Rican government. And let us also say that you know this spy is preparing a coup.
And finally, let us say your country decides this spy must disappear" she said.
When Mrs. Sanchez de Dönning left his office, Hornibrook mopped the sweat on his forehead. He immediately called his Vice Consul Zweig, giving him urgent orders: "Find everything you can about Max Gerffin and Yadira de Dönning." The Minister was worried because Pepe, his secret agent, was also passing confidential information to Germans, trying to make them believe they had access to Washington's plans. However, what the woman had revealed could not come from Pepe, since that kind of information was not in his hands. "Someone else," he thought, "is obtaining key information inside the Costa Rican government." He immediately sent a long cable to the US Secretary of State:
The German propaganda here has been effective and is taking root. Currently, the Americans are somehow favorites, but the fluctuating Latino temperament may change in a one day. The Germans have successfully spread the message that Hitler will surely win the war and this has weakened our diplomatic stance. .. I have the unpleasant feeling that something sinister is going on in Latin America; a breeze, a wind, a return to the anti-imperialist vision that prevailed in these countries during the Republican period. I am convinced this is due to the belief, among numerous sectors, that Germany might win and that it is the only market for the Costa Rican coffee. And, unfortunately, they also believe the United States is not well prepared to defend the Western Hemisphere from an external aggression... the possibility of an actual overthrow of the current government, by León Cortés and his German followers, is something that, in my opinion, must always be kept in mind by the Department.
The corroboration of Yadiraś words did not take long to reach the American Minister. On June 27, 1940, Otto Reinebeck, Extraordinary Envoy and Reich