Every House Needs a Balcony by Rina Frank

the meal was absolutely delicious and included a first and second course, a main course, a lettuce salad, cheeses, and a dessert; again, she was first to be served, like an honored guest. She looked at the statuette of the blue lady that had found its way to their dresser and felt herself wanted. His parents wanted to know if she was comfortablein the apartment he had found for her, and she assured them that she was. And again, they had their coffee in the corner of the living room opposite the TV and watched the news, which she didn’t understand; his father dozed on the sofa, and his mother got ready for her afternoon work.
    Afterward they went to Tibidabo, where she ate sugar-sprinkled churros, and at nine o’clock in the evening they went back to his home for dinner. She liked the fact that it was still daylight at that time of night, and that dinner was eaten then, or even at nine thirty, and it only started getting dark at ten. She pointed out that it was fun to be able to enjoy daylight until so late in the evening; in Israel it was already dark at seven, and because of the ultra-Orthodox, the government refused to advance clocks for daylight saving time.
    That evening they were joined at dinner by Ruth and Nahum Lilienblum, who were described to her on the way to the meal as his parents’ best friends and owners of Banca Catalana, the largest bank in Barcelona. Ruth was a very beautiful silver-haired woman, whose trim figure gave her a particularly young appearance. Nahum looked old for his age, slightly stooped, with wise eyes. He looked at his wife in adoration, and although they were sitting in company, it seemed that he spoke only to her and not to the others.
    Nahum told her that she was a pretty woman, and she thanked him for the compliment. He asked her if she spoke Yiddish, and appeared disappointed when she said she did not.
    â€œHow can that be?” he wondered. “Your parents are Ashkenazis, aren’t they?”
    â€œYes, but I’m a mixed Romanian,” she told Nahum. “My father is of Turkish extraction, and although he was born in Romania, his family continued to speak Ladino, not Yiddish, like my mother’s family.”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as a Jew who doesn’t speak Yiddish,” Nahum insisted.
    â€œI’m Israeli,” she told him proudly. When they were sitting in the living room, drinking coffee, Nahum told her that as a young man in a concentration camp he survived because of his ability to calculate accurately the number of items in the different piles of property belonging to victims of the gas chambers—a pile of wedding rings, a pile of chains, gold teeth, glasses.
    He told her this offhandedly, as if to say, I’m here now in spite of them, and not merely here, but as the owner of the biggest bank in Barcelona.
    â€œGod created us perfect,” said Nahum, who believed in God despite the Holocaust, looking at his wife and stroking her hand, and she watched him, fascinated. “Look at the female form—how perfect you are, except for one detail.” He turned to her.
    â€œWhat detail?” she asked, not understanding.
    â€œWhat we are missing is an eye in the tip of our finger, so that we can push a finger under the bed when something falls under it, and we can find it easily.” He demonstratedhow an eye located in a person’s fingertip could find any loss, both above and below.
    She started giggling, and Nahum watched her with his wise eyes and said, “You’re misleading, aren’t you?”
    â€œI’m misleading, why?”
    â€œBecause you’re a woman-child.”
    She fell silent, embarrassed.
    When Nahum and Ruth stood up to leave, they told her that they would surely see her in Haifa, which they visited at least three times a year because all their children had left Barcelona and settled there. They didn’t give her the customary three kisses; they already had learned