Authors: Nathan Erez
“How could a member of such an illustrious family turn out to be so unsavory a character?” Elijah asked. Mei-Ling had a ready answer, and defended Madame Sassoon to the fullest.
“For many years Madame Sassoon worked as the assistant of the previous Madame. When the previous Madame died at a ripe old age, Madame Sassoon naturally inherited the position from her. There is universal agreement about her wonderful business acumen, with which she transformed brothel into the most lavish one in Hong Kong, if not the entire East. In her old age, she expanded into other lines of work, by taking advantage of all the contacts she had made over the years; she eventually became one of the richest people in Hong Kong.” Turning to Elijah, she suggested, “Let’s go in and take a look.”
Disconcerted by the very thought, Elijah launched a defensive attack: “I don’t suppose I can expect any more from a city that erects statues to bankers rather than to generals.” His scorn was quite transparent.
“Oh, don’t be so high and mighty,” said Mei-Ling. ‘In her last years, the rabbis here also were willing to accept Madame Sassoon’s money. Not surprisingly, she was not particularly close to the Jewish community, and there was a mutual distance between them.”
“I would have expected as much,” said Elijah drily.
Mei-Ling continued. “In her old age, when she had become queen of the local nightlife, it was impossible to ignore her. But credit where credit is due: she bore no grudge against the local rabbis and she used her extensive list of contacts to help many people overcome all types of bureaucratic and other obstacles. Would you like to meet her granddaughter, Lynne Sassoon?”
Given Elijah’s fascination with Jewish history, Mei-Ling had pushed just the right button in arousing his curiosity about a member of the Sassoon family, and he decided, despite his misgivings, to go in. Never in his wildest dreams, could he have imagined what he would see upon entering the building, but the one thing he noticed immediately was that whatever was there had no connection whatsoever to Judaism. Behind a massive glass window sat twenty-five to thirty women in three groups. They were dressed like members of a beauty pageant, each with a diagonal sash upon which was printed a number. Clients were evidently required to “order” them by that number. They all wore high-heeled shoes and their bare legs were stretched out in front of them. As to what they wore underneath their sashes, let us say that whatever it was would barely have excluded them from a nudist beach. Elijah was dumbstruck by what he saw, and was literally speechless for quite a few minutes. After this assault on his vision, the next attack was on his hearing. He had assumed at first that the glass was a one-way mirror, allowing the men to see and pick out the woman of their choice, but preventing the women from seeing the men making their selection by number. It seemed so inhuman and depraved!
That illusion, too, was shattered, when he started to hear various voices calling out from beyond the glass, at first individually, but then in unison, “Madame, Madame, Madame, Madame.” The women were all trying to outdo each other in attracting Mei-Ling’s attention, each of them wanting to be the object of selection. The women clearly assumed that Elijah and Mei-Ling were a couple, which meant, of course, that they should appeal to the wife. Elijah was glued to the spot and totally unable to look at any one of the women. The only association to come to mind was when, as a third grader, his class had visited a turkey farm. The teacher had told the class that these were highly educated turkeys. To prove her point, she had yelled to the turkeys, “In which Hebrew month is the festival of Purim?” The turkeys had all gobbled back with what one might - by a very long stretch of the imagination - construe to be the word “
Adar
.”
Eventually Mei-Ling took pity on the poor man and said to him softly, “Dr. Shemtov, please come with me.” Even though he felt as if his legs had turned to lead, he somehow managed to drag himself behind her.
He was brought into a large and well-lit office, which looked no different from offices of countless businesses throughout the world, totally sterile and utilitarian. An office is an office regardless of what business it represents, he thought to himself.
Seated behind a desk, Lynne Sassoon looked like one of a number of variations of Oriental women and quite unlike any of the Iraqi Jewish women of Elijah’s acquaintance in Israel. He assumed she must be of mixed parentage. She smiled and was about to greet Elijah when, as he looked around the room, his eyes fell on an open door which led to a conference room; in the conference room, four men sat talking. While he could not hear what they were saying, one thing was clear: the man facing him was the Chinese or Korean man he had met at the Luzzato Institute. This time, there was no doubt about it! Elijah could not take his eyes off him. He was vaguely aware of Lynne addressing him, but couldn’t concentrate enough to hear what she was saying. For all he knew, she could be listing the various types of massage and other “services” on offer by the establishment. He was very keen to ask her about her ancestry and hoped to be able to trace it as far back as possible, even to the time when Babylon - now Iraq - was the spiritual center of the Jewish people.
Just then, from behind, two men dressed in black, with black neckties, entered the room and took up positions behind Elijah. They had entered so silently that Elijah was not even aware of their presence. However, Lynne’s evident confusion made it clear to Elijah that something must have happened. Before he had managed to react, the Chinese or Korean man burst into the room with a gun in his hand, and fired. At first, Elijah thought the gun had been aimed at him, but when he heard what sounded like the angry growl of a hungry leopard behind him, he turned around and saw one of the two men falling down bleeding, while the other drew his gun and managed to shoot the Luzatto Institute man in the chest. Even in the throes of death, the Chinese or Korean man motioned to Elijah to run into the inner rooms of the brothel. One of the men who had been sitting in the conference room followed him. Without thinking consciously about what he was doing, Elijah ran in the direction he was shown, followed by Lynne Sassoon and Mei-Ling. He lost the man who was in front of him at a bend, and started running even faster.
Totally lost, he wandered into a room where a very portly westerner, completely covered with lather, was being mounted by a slim young woman, who was sliding all over him. The excessive heat, the fact that the Oriental man who had evidently been shot was the one he had seen in Israel, as well as all the things he had seen since entering the building, left him utterly disoriented, to the extent that he became dizzy and saw black circles dancing before his eyes. He rushed out of the room and kept running until he was brought to a halt by stumbling over a body lying on the floor. He had evidently come full circle and was again in Lynne’s office. He fell on top of the Chinese man, who was bleeding profusely from his wounds.
“Luzatto!” screamed Elijah, his face almost touching that of the mortally wounded man. The man was clearly breathing his last breath. Elijah tried to stand up, but kept toppling over. Suddenly he felt an outstretched hand pulling him. It was the one of the men he had seen earlier in Lynne’s office.
“Hurry! Come with me! You are in great danger!”
The man grabbed Elijah’s jacket and dragged him into a small room, occupied by a woman. Throwing the woman out of the room and sending her to the manager, he grabbed a container and shook it before spraying Elijah from head to toe with a white foamy substance, making it impossible to identify him.
“What the hell is going on?” Elijah shouted, using the most vulgar language he could muster.
“Mister, they wanted to kill you. Kim tried to protect you, and paid for it with his life.”
“Who is Kim? Is he the man I met in Israel?”
“Yes, he was sent to protect you.”
“To protect me from whom?”
“From the White Lotus gang.”
“And who are these ‘White Lotus’ guys anyway? What on earth would they want from me?” The questions kept tumbling out.
“They are what you would call the Chinese Mafia.”
“But why would the Chinese Mafia care about me? Orna is never going to believe this!”
“They believe that you bought the manuscript for your wealthy employer, and decided to take you hostage so as to blackmail him.”
It all began to sink in, although Elijah was still not quite sure what was really happening. “So how much could I possibly be worth to him?” he asked.
“To him, you are not worth a thing. He is interested only in the manuscript. Kim loved that manuscript, and was willing to forfeit his life to protect it. We’ll hide out for a while and then we’ll take you to a safe house. There is no way we can go back to your hotel, because I’m sure they’re there waiting for you.”
“What will happen to Kim? I think he’s still alive.”
“There’s nothing we can do about him. His lungs are filling up with blood so fast that he will be dead by the time we get him to a hospital.”
Elijah remained frozen in place, with the foam all over him. He was afraid even to breathe.
Finally, at 2:00 am, Lynne came in and said to him, “We can take you now. You will be going to Batzri.”
They left by a little-used side entrance. He never saw Mei-Ling again. They entered a small black car which had been waiting for them, and the driver took them, following a circuitous route with many detours, to a house at the edge of the city.
A smiling, cheerful man who looked surprisingly like an old Yemenite that Elijah knew in the Israeli town of Rosh Ha’ayin, opened the door. The man appeared to be very alert, and in spite of the late hour he acted as if he had been anticipating visitors.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” said the man, holding out his hand. Elijah automatically shook the outstretched hand.
“I’m Rabbi Solomon Batzri,” the man introduced himself. Elijah had heard the name Batzri at Mr. Wang’s home, but had no way of knowing if this was the same man, or a descendant. Wang had described the other Rabbi Batzri as an old man many decades earlier, and he was no doubt dead by now.
“It’s a pleasure. I’m Elijah,” he replied mechanically. He was totally numb after all he had gone through that night.
“Here you can feel totally secure. Please take a seat. Would you like clothes that are not quite so wet?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” replied Elijah, and he realized that this answer guaranteed him lower back pain for weeks to come. “Could you possibly explain to me what is happening here?”
“Yes, I can. I am the grandson of Rabbi Judah Batzri, who was a friend of Madame Rachel Sassoon. When Lynne contacted me an hour ago to host you in my home, I was more than delighted that I could be of service. In order for you to understand why you’re being hunted and how much money is involved, let me tell you a little about my grandfather and Lynne’s grandmother.
“In spite of my grandfather’s name, which would seem to imply that his family hailed from Batzra in Iraq, he was actually of Yemenite origin. There are those who say that my grandfather’s father did not leave his home voluntarily, but was forced to do so after having been excommunicated by the noted rabbi, Rabbi Joseph David HayyimAzulai, who was the author of the
Ben Ish Chai
series. He appears to have been excommunicated for teaching Kabbalah to those who were unworthy of learning it. According to the letter of excommunication, he had no part in the people of Israel or in the city of Jerusalem. He was forbidden – as were the next three generations succeeding him - to set foot in Jerusalem. My grandfather was of the first generation to which this edict did not apply. He lived in Palestine in abject poverty, and became a friend of the Kabbalist Rabbi David Moreno, who took him under his wing. My grandfather had wealthy relatives here in the East, and even though the news that he was seriously involved in Kabbalah greatly disturbed them, they invited him to move here so he would be able to spend his last days in comfort. In order for him not to feel that he was living off charity, he was put in charge of the ‘
Genizah
’, the old book repository, and it was there that he met Madame Sassoon.”
“I understand,” said Elijah, all the while understanding absolutely nothing at all. If anything, the only detail he did understand was that the more time elapsed, the more deeply involved he was becoming - and he saw no way he could extricate himself from the mess he was in.
“My grandfather was always considered to be something of a strange bird and he kept to himself. Here, too, rumors were rife with regard to his study of the Kabbalah and that made people wary. Once, when I was small, I heard him repeating a series of Hebrew words and verses, like a mantra, and I could see that he was in ecstasy. I was too young to understand what he was doing, and if anything, I was scared. I finally mustered the courage to ask him what he was doing. He told me that he was trying to recall a child of my age, the son of David Moreno, who had disappeared or been kidnapped. His dealings and meetings with Madame Sassoon were strange and evoked all kinds of questions. However, because of their advanced ages and public status, no one said a word. It was Madame Sassoon who supported him in his old age, and it was she who insisted on being the one to organize his funeral service and choice of headstone. It was she, too, who executed his will, which was not a difficult thing to do, considering that he owned almost nothing. Madame Sassoon continued to have an interest in Judaism even after my grandfather’s death and, rumor has it, she even hired private tutors to teach her Judaism and mathematics. She died about three years after he did. Since her only daughter had severed all ties with her and the rest of her family had not been especially fond of her during her lifetime, the Hong Kong Jewish community was not surprised to learn, when her will was read, that she had left the brothel to her daughter, while the rest of her estate, which included real estate, stores, shares and a great deal of money, was to be used for the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem, no more, no less. The Jewish community in Jerusalem was appointed to oversee this.