Goran Bregović–Underground Tango
My fascination with diamonds begins with my very own heart-shaped diamond…or so I thought it was a diamond.
When my husband and I married, we had very little money, not more than a few hundred dollars. I was studying on a full scholarship at New York University for my
Ph. D. in Comparative Literature, and my doctor-husband was doing research at Yale Medical School. When I unexpectedly got pregnant, my husband decided to go into private practice in New York City. But in order to begin and pay for his new office, he had to take a series of unusual jobs – “moonlighting,” he called it.
One of these jobs was to go to Riker’s Island prison once a month, where he would examine and treat inmates for a weekend. At night he’d sleep in the clinic in case there was an emergency. My husband found this quite amusing. When he would call me to say good night, he delighted me with stories about his patients and their crimes and the three bodyguards protecting him. He was especially fascinated about the concert violinist who killed his unfaithful wife and the lawyer who sold non-existing houses on a make-believe island in Polynesia.
When my husband wasn’t moonlighting, he was diligently trying to build up his private practice. Not an easy task in New York City. One bright winter morning, a gentleman came to see him.
“Doctor, I’m sick. I fear I may have to be admitted in the hospital. But I have no insurance, no money.”
It was my husband’s first month in practice and already the bills were piling up on his new desk. But my husband is a good man and felt sympathy for the jaundiced patient before him.
“Sit down,” my husband said.
“Do you have a wife?” the patient asked in a Russian accent.
“Yes.”
“Did you give her a diamond ring when you got married?”
“Diamond? I barely had enough money to buy a gold wedding band.”
The Russian took out of his pocket a huge, heart-shaped ring of at least twenty-five carats that shined brillantly blue.
“What is it?” my husband asked.
“Payment. I believe enough.”
My husband would have preferred a hundred dollar bill so he could pay one of the invoices glaring at him.
When he came home and told me about his day, he took from his pocket a small, black case and put a ring on my finger. “Do you like it?”
“It’s quite big,” I said, examining the many facets. “Is it a diamond?” I was very young and jewels were not part of my bibliography or life-style.
“I prefer my gold band,” I confessed, and turned my attention elsewhere. After dinner, I put the velvet case into an old shoebox. There it stayed for twenty years.
Time passed. Without realizing, I became a little older.
One day, as I was rummaging through the shoebox for a pair of earrings, I found my husband’s gift.
“Oh my God,” I marveled as I brought it to the light. “What is this?”
I had forgotten about the treasure after all the years.
“What if it’s a real diamond?”
The next day I took it to my friend’s father, a jeweler.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“How did you get this?”
I got so excited. Maybe it’s a real diamond!
“An aqua marine,” he diagnosed after analyzing it in several machines. “Very fine. That’s why it’s so dark. The facets are cut like a diamond’s.”
“What should I do with it? I can’t wear it on my finger. Not when I ride the subways of New York.”
And together, he and I redesigned the ring into a pendant. He encircled the blue heart shaped jewel with twenty-six fine white diamonds. It looked so much like the Hope diamond that I shivered. Would it bring me good luck or bad luck?
I went home and put the black velvet case back into its shoebox and there it stayed for another decade until I took it out and shared it with Mica.
“One day,” I told my character, “when you’re ready, I will give you this Gift of Diamonds.”
