People of the Book

Hanna closes the report about the clasps and wonders where they could have gone. She visits the museum curator, who looks into Mittl, a bookbinder who was frequently used by the museum. After the Haggadah, he was not paid for his service and was never given work again. The curator agrees to look into Mittl and then invites Hanna out for a night on the town.

Hanna takes a plane to Boston, where she visits her mother in the block of hospitals that make up part of the city center. Her mother is giving a talk on giant brain aneurysms, taking down any opponents of her process, many of whom are middle-aged, balding male colleagues. She clearly has many admirers, and at the end the applause is “like the sound at a rock arena” (137). Hanna meets with her mother for tea, noticing her mother’s disappointment that she showed up. She asks her about Alia’s brain scans, and her mother quite brutally proclaims the child a lost cause. She denounces Hanna’s work, tells her that she doesn’t understand life because she isn’t a doctor, and then the two have a contentious tea.