Free The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler Page A

a literary circle there; about the British, the Arabs, the price of eggs, the growing violence … None of which dissuaded her from encouraging Ida Pearl to move there. Why should you and Elka sit alone in Montreal like two dogs that have lost their master? she asked at the end of each letter. You can starve here as well as there. Your loving sister, Sonya .
    Sonya’s letters always found their way to the garbage within ten minutes of entering the Krakauer household, but the foul mood they invoked in Ida Pearl persisted well into the evening and following day. The most recent letter, however, deviated from all those that had preceded it in that there was actually something of interest in it. A woman had turned up on Sonya’s doorstep in Tel Aviv claiming to be their paternal cousin Lily.
    She wasn’t their cousin, Sonya wrote to Ida. She bore no resemblance at all to the Lily that Sonya remembered, a brash and freckled little girl who used to visit from Antwerp every summer. I know people change , Sonya wrote. And G-d knows what she’s been through would change anyone. But such a change? So extreme? Could an experience change a person so much that there was no hint left of the person she’d once been? Sonya wondered.
    She didn’t know. How could she know, never having been exposed to such an extreme of human experience? This alone gave Sonya pause, made her invite the young woman into her home.
    Was it possible, then? Sonya wondered as she made tea, prepared the platter of cake. But when they started to talk, she knew that it wasn’t. The girl was an imposter, a thief. Maybe worse. She didn’t even know the names of her own family, her beloved parents, brothers … all of whom I now fear are lost , Sonya wrote.
    She confronted the girl with her lie, expecting a confession, a plea for mercy that Sonya fully intended to extend. She’s still a living soul, after all, a living, breathing, Jewish soul that managed to escape an inferno the likes of which you and I cannot understand. I would never expose her, never turn her in, and was prepared to reassure her completely . But the young woman didn’t flinch, didn’t ask for reassurance. Confronted with her lie, she maintained it, maintained with perfect calm that she was Lily, despite not knowing any fact of her own past.
    This is what confused me , Sonya wrote. Why the pretence? “I won’t expose you,” I promised. But neither would I take her in. “It’s not like we’re family,” I told her .
    “We are family,” she said. Then she related a dream in which she was running through a town, fleeing for her life. She came to a door. It was a heavy wooden door the colour of stone. She described it to me, its colour and markings, the scratched indentation to the left of the keyhole. It was the door of our childhood home in Krakow .
    It wouldn’t open to her no matter how hard she pushed. She threw herself against it—her life depended on its opening—but the full weight of her was as insubstantial as a pebble bouncing off its surface. That’s what she told me. She leaned against it, resting more than pushing now, knowing these were the last moments of her life. She leaned her cheek against it, the flat palm of her hand. It opened easily then—into peace: a leafy courtyard, clucking chicks, strains of piano trickling through an open window .
    Our own courtyard , Sonya wrote. She was describing to me the courtyard of our childhood, this imposter who looked nothing like Lily, yet knew the summers of her childhood, this stranger who had never stepped foot in our home but could bring it back to me with such force that I lost myself in it. I lost the present moment of my life to a summer afternoon heavy with the scent of ripening apricots, the sound of Mama’s voice mingling with the notes of Mrs. Gamulka’s piano. Do you remember those afternoons?
    Ida did.
    I don’t know how long I rested there in the dappled shade of that courtyard—such a deep, contented rest.