Sharon’s skepticism evaporates when she puts it on. The fabric, cut on the bias, hugs her slim body; the skirt flares out at her ankles. Rachelle throws a sheer shawl over the dress, the front of the airy fabric resting against Sharon’s throat, the long ends trailing in the back.
“This is too beautiful.” Sharon passes her hand over the soft fabric. Only the French can make the simplest cotton-and-silk blend look so expensive.
Rachelle hands her a pair of high-heeled sandals, and while Sharon tries swirling around the room in them, Rachelle examines her with pride.
“I have topaz earrings,” Sharon says. It’s a pair Alon bought her for her nineteenth birthday. She hasn’t worn them since she and Alon attended his cousin’s wedding last December. Eleven months later, that seems like a lifetime ago. Wearing the earrings, she’ll feel Alon’s comforting presence throughout the evening.
* * *
Late Saturday afternoon, she steps out of Rachelle’s building. Her hair, pressed on Rachelle’s ironing board as if it were a skirt, fans behind her like a sheet of dark silk.
Danny lets out a low whistle. “You’re looking sensational.” He opens the car door for her with a flourish. Not for the first time, Sharon wonders where he acquired his European manners—surely not on the kibbutz, where equality of the sexes means the elimination of male chivalry.
Minutes later, they are on the scenic drive that winds along the Atlantic coast, rising over cliffs and dipping back again close to sea level.
“Tell me about Félix Amiot,” Sharon says. “What happened between the time he built airplanes and the time he switched to ships?”
“Here is my take: Imagine World War Two. The man has huge aeronautical factories employing tens of thousands of people. He can continue to retain them under a contract from the Nazis, or he can shut down and watch his men get taken by force by the Vichy government, which had committed to supplying Germany with half a million French laborers.”
Sharon mulls over the moral dilemma. A tough one.
Danny goes on. “That’s why, decades later, his employees call him ‘Papa Amiot.’ He’s extremely loyal to them, and they adore him in return.”
“Presumably, decades later, those are not the same employees, but it is still the same man,” she retorts, thinking of Rachelle’s hatred of him. “With your logic, can we assume that Amiot’s dedication to building our Saars is more out of his concern for the employees in Cherbourg than his interest in helping Israel?”
“He’s the type of innovator who is fascinated by the engineering challenges that our Saars present. Besides, he does a lot more for us than his duty calls for.”
“Let’s see. Giving the Israeli mission two apartment buildings to house the staff? It’s part of his cost of doing business.” Sharon is emphatic. “What’s more obvious is that twelve hundred Cherbourgeois are employed in CMN. You told me that he defused the Saar Six diplomatic crisis out of economic concern. That means that he would have done the same had Egypt been his customer.”
“Egypt didn’t contract with CMN. We did.”
Sharon recalls their previous conversation and Danny’s pragmatic view of facts on the ground—or in the sea, for that matter. Is it his training as an officer or his mindset that made him choose, as he put it, not to let the past cripple his perception of the present or alter his vision of the future?
She is guilty of not letting go of the past—and she does not want to. It defines who she is: a woman seeking to know her roots, to understand who she is as the mysterious Judith Katz’s daughter.
At a sign reading fermanville, Danny veers onto a dirt path. Sharon takes an instant liking to the modest fort perched on a low cliff that drops into the English Channel. Farther up, in the undulating green pasture, sheep are grazing.
“Nice, eh?” Danny asks. “Couldn’t be farther away from Israel.”
She knows that he’s not referring to the bright blue of the water or the pastoral scene on the knoll above but to the tranquility that lies before them. There is beauty in their homeland, but also daily chaos, existential anxiety, and emotional turmoil. Sharon looks at the sun still hanging in the sky, flushing the world with color. If only she could share this scenery with the Golans to ease their anguish.
The fort is only two stories high, its modest stone façade far less imposing than the buttressed fortresses she’s seen along the shores of Normandy. Blooming pink rosebushes, likely delivered from a greenhouse for the occasion, flank the double wooden doors. They soften the high walls that extend on both sides, punctuated by twin towers, one at each end.
When the car stops in the circular gravel driveway, a valet opens Sharon’s door and extends a white-gloved hand. She readjusts the blue wool cape Rachelle insisted she take against the chill and steps out, gathering the hem of her gown. The borrowed velvet string pouch dangles from her wrist.
On the other side of the car, Danny pinches the crease in his pants and puts on his white officer’s peaked cap. Familiar as Sharon is with the uniform, she can’t help but admire it. It has elegance and authority, especially on the tall Danny.
A butler shows them into a reception hall with bare terra-cotta floors and Moorish-style furniture. The ruggedly carved dark pieces are so different from the gilded fine antiques Sharon saw in Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs. She likes this sparse décor—a few well-placed couches upholstered in striped brocade, some brass side tables, wrought-iron torchères on the walls, and a single silver bas-relief chest beneath an ocher-colored antique tapestry that features a hunting scene. The masculine choices tell Sharon that this home has no lady of the house.
The style seems to match Félix Amiot, who disengages from a group of dignitaries and walks toward them, smiling. A red handkerchief tucked into his suit’s breast pocket adds panache. As he shakes Danny’s hand, the industrialist’s other hand cuffs his shoulder. Then he turns smiling gray eyes toward Sharon.
“Meet Sharon Bloomenthal, our team’s assistant for special projects,” Danny says.
“Enchanté.” To Sharon’s surprise, Amiot brings her hand to his lips. She lets out a short, embarrassed laugh and wonders whether she’s supposed to curtsy. Despite his formality, there is something warm about the man.
He signals to a passing waiter carrying a tray of fluted champagne glasses, takes three, and hands one to her and one to Danny. He lifts his own and says in English, “As we say here, L’chaim.”
She is even more curious about the paradox of this congenial man. Isn’t Amiot risking the ire of his government by continuing to build boats for Israel? Or has he convinced the powers that be that after the recent nationwide civil unrest, it is in the government’s best interests to see to the welfare of this town by keeping its people employed?
“L’chaim,” she responds, then adds in French, “Coincidentally, we say the same word in Israel.”
He bursts out laughing. “You speak French? How refreshing! So tell me, what project did you work on today?”
“Today?” She giggles at his specific interest. “Would you like to hear about the dozens of cups of coffee I’ve prepared or about the written mechanical instructions I translated from French to Hebrew for our crew?”
“Sure. And yesterday?”
She laughs again. “I helped the designers with some drafting.”
“Ah, drafting!” Amiot seems to be in no rush to entertain his other guests. “When holding a pen to paper, that’s when the best ideas flow. That’s when I discover solutions that can’t be imagined when lounging around a conference table.”
Sharon smiles politely. Her host is too important and too rich to be interested in chatting with her. She’s relieved when Yaniv and Kadmon approach to shake his hand. They loop Danny into their conversation, and she starts to glide away.
But Amiot half turns toward her. “Tell me later what you think of my mouton salé.”
Mouton salé? It means “salted lamb.” A dish or a wine? Or is it a new boat design? She wishes Rina and Naomi were here to explain, but they’ll arrive later. After baby Daphna goes to sleep, Pazit will watch her, relieving both mothers. Sharon selects a miniature quiche from the tray of a passing waiter and steps through the back glass doors to the courtyard. In the small fort, stringy vines, now leafless and dry, cling to the walls in areas protected from the wind. She would have liked to climb up the boulders to the ramparts and imagine what a scout in the old days would have seen when all he had was a spyglass.
The architect, she thinks, could have added coned tops to the short corner towers, giving the battlements more power, but he resisted the grandiosity.
