by Maisie Mosco
Malka appeared in a doorway at the end of the lobby, clapped her hand to her cheek and shrieked. “Ghosts from the past I’m seeing!” She rushed to greet Sarah whilst Chaim helped to bring in the Sandbergs’ baggage. “Worn out you look from the journey. You were seasick? Me, I was green before the boat moved. Give me your little one to hold while you take off your things. She wasn’t born yet when we left Dvinsk! And your youngest boy was still in his cradle.” She snatched Esther from Sarah’s arms. “Come here to your auntie, darling.”
“Mamma!” the child screamed.
Malka stifled the cry with a flurry of kisses. “Hang your shawl on the stair rail, Sarah. On top of my Cousin Chavah’s. You remember Chavah and her husband Ezra? They’re going to New York and who’re they staying with till they’ll get on a boat at Liverpool? Us, who else?”
Sarah exchanged a glance with Abraham. His warning that the Berkowitzes might have other guests had proved correct. She watched Chaim shove one of their boxes against the wall with his big foot, so nobody would trip over it in the narrow lobby, and hoped it was not the one containing her china.
“So let’s feed these old friends, Malka, come on!”
Chaim boomed. “You’ve forgotten how hungry we were the night we arrived?”
“We were still hungry after we’d eaten,” Malka reminisced. “Such a mean person that uncle of yours is.”
“But we only had ourselves to worry about then. Twin girls we’ve got now,” Chaim told the Sandbergs.
“Wait till you see them!” He led the way into the living room.
Malka watched Sammy limp ahead of her. “He’s had an accident, Sarah?”
Sarah’s expression tightened. “A permanent one.”
David clutched Sammy’s hand and pulled him into the room so he would not hear them talking about him.
“Malka!” Chaim hollered. “First the food, you’ll gossip later.”
How can we accept their hospitality? Sarah thought as she followed Malka in. Chaim called us old friends, but we’re only acquaintances, he just said it to stop us feeling embarrassed. The living room was also the kitchen and her pride dissipated in its steamy warmth. The meal had just been put on the table and the huge tureen of borsht, with thick slices of beetroot swimming in the pink liquid, seemed a vision of home. Tears stung her eyelids as she felt a strange emotion pulling her two ways. Russia was still home, but she never wanted to see it again. She looked at Abraham and saw that his eyes were wet, too.
For a moment there was silence in the little room, even the children’s tongues were stilled by the charged atmosphere. Then Malka began briskly ladling the borscht into dishes, her blue-kerchiefed head bobbing up and down as she counted to see how many were required. “An extra plateful for our landsleit we’ll always manage to find.”
Chaim shooed four youngsters from the two chairs they were occupying, to make room for Sarah and Abraham at the table. “We know how you feel, we’ve been through it ourselves,” he said spooning helpings of mashed potato into the bowls of soup which Malka put before them, his movements erratic as he strove to hide his emotion. “So what can you do?” he added with a shrug.
“Eat already,” Malka instructed.
“How’s by you, Chavah?” Sarah asked the pretty young woman seated opposite her. Like Malka, Chavah was fair and well-rounded. Sarah was always conscious of her own sallow plainness when in the company of women like these.
“How can a person be?” Chavah replied playing with the frayed cuff of her blouse. “It wasn’t enough we had to retch all the way to England in the herring boat.” She cast a resentful glance at her blue-jowled husband. “Now in a banana boat, or whatever it will be, we have to go where my Ezra thinks the streets are paved with gold.”
Sarah smiled her sympathy. From what she’d heard about England it would be good enough for her, gold-paved streets were not what she’d come for. Her sons had begun eating without saying the blessing which always preceded it and Abraham had not noticed the omission. “The prayer, boys!” she scolded them. “What will Mr. Berkowitz think of you?”
David and Sammy put down their spoons guiltily and gabbled the words off.
Chaim sucked in a morsel of pink potato which had strayed to his moustache. “To see a good hot meal again, it’s affected their memories,” he chuckled tolerantly. “And no more with the Mr. Berkowitz, they can call me Uncle. So I wasn’t their Uncle in Dvinsk, it’s different now.”
Sarah watched him tear some hunks of black bread from the loaf at his elbow and toss a couple to David and Sammy. Bread had not been served that way in her home. Different it certainly was.
Esther, and Isiah, the youngest of Chavah’s three boys, were seated on their mother’s laps. The rest of the children had camped on the floor with their dishes of borscht and Malka had to step gingerly when she went between table and hearth to replenish the supply of food from the bubbling black cauldrons on the hob.
“You’ll have a fall, be careful!” Chaim warned her as she almost stumbled over David’s legs.
Malka laughed and mopped the beads of sweat from her face with a corner of her apron. “A worse one I should never have!”
She was easy-going to a high degree, which Sarah did not fail to note as she observed the chaos around her. A matted hairbrush with a comb stabbed into it lay on the sideboard, next to a heap of socks and a basin of chicken fat. A saucepan and some shirts awaiting the smoothing iron kept them company and the iron was sitting on the mantelpiece with a couple of lemons, a string of amber beads and Chaim’s Sabbath hat.
Despite her fatigue, Sarah itched to put the cluttered room to rights and remove the dust which was everywhere. But it was ungrateful to notice these things, she chided herself. A warm heart counted for more than a broom in the hand. Esther was lolling against her, too exhausted to eat, but the question of where the Sandbergs might sleep had not yet been raised. How unreal it all seemed, sitting around the table with people who had never crossed the threshold of her home in Dvinsk, or she theirs. In a house that bore no resemblance to any she had been in before. What strange situations being Jewish can get you into, she thought dryly. One day you were a little girl, skating on a frozen river in Russia, and the next you were in England, homeless, with your own little girl on your knee. Except that it wasn’t quite like that, but thinking of it that way helped you to blot out all the terrible things that had happened in between. Esther was almost asleep. Why didn’t Abraham ask if they could stay the night? She waited for him to do so, knowing that he would not. He always left things to her.
“Esther can’t keep her eyes open,” she said to Malka not wanting to make a more direct approach.
“So you’ll put her to bed,” Malka replied as if it was not a problem. “She’ll sleep with my girls, they’ve had company before.” She rose from the table and went to light the gas mantle in the lobby.
Sarah had to steel herself against the sudden change of temperature when she left the cosy kitchen and followed Malka upstairs. Her sleeve brushed against the shiny, brown wall and came away damp. She had thought the shine was lacquer, but now realised it was moisture seeping through from the brick. The feeling of unreality assailed her again. What was she doing here? Carrying Esther up this creaking staircase? Her house in Dvinsk had not had stairs and the wood stove which heated her living room had spread its warmth everywhere, finding its comforting way through the curtains which served as doors for the bedrooms. How like a dream this was. But wasn’t coming to England a dream? A dream come true.
Malka led her into a tiny room and Esther was soon tucked up in the bed which filled it, her head at the foot to leave space for the Berkowitz children at the other end.
The treacherous gloss adorned the walls here, too, and Malka shrugged resignedly when she saw Sarah touch it. “A palace it isn’t, Sarah. But your daughter could have worse places to sleep in.”
“Worse places she’s already slept in, haven’t we all?” Sarah said as they returned downstairs.
The overcrowded quarters on the boat had reeked of vomit and urine and the train compartments on the journey from Russia to Germany had been little better. More than anything else, she longed to peel off the crumpled garments she had worn since leaving Dvinsk and scrub herself clean again.
“A hot bath will make you feel better,” Malka said reading her thoughts. “You can bathe the children tomorrow, they don’t feel the dirt like we do and it’d take all night to heat enough water for the whole family. For you and Abie, we’ll boil some up now, by bedtime it’ll be ready.” Everyone except Sarah called Abraham “Abie.”
She opened the door of the parlour, which was unfurnished, and Sarah caught a glimpse of reddish lincrusta walls and muddy-looking tiles surrounding the hearth. Some bedding was spread out on the bare boards and a jumble of clothing lay in a heap beside a wicker skip.
“Here’s where you and your family’ll sleep after Chavah and Ezra have left,” Malka said in her matter-of-fact way. “Tomorrow they’re going.” She laughed good-naturedly, standing with her hands on her plump hips. “Who knows, Sarah? Perhaps the day will come when nobody will need my parlour to sleep in anymore, then I’ll be able to put some furniture in it!”
When they went into the kitchen, the men were debating a passage from the Talmud.
“They’re busy with their favourite pastime,” Chavah complained from a chair by the fire.
“Wasn’t it the same at home?” Sarah smiled. The earnest group around the table was a familiar scene.
Ezra sat with his bony fingers clasped beneath his chin. “Come then, said the fox,” he quoted thoughtfully, as if the words had a deeper significance than was immediately apparent. “And live with me on dry land.”
Abraham stared into space as he considered the next line. “But the fishes laughed.”
Chaim was contemplating the pin with which he had been picking his teeth. “So why did the fishes laugh?”
“According to Rabbi Akiba—”
“I know, Ezra, what is according to Rabbi Akiba. But what is according to you and Abie?”
Malka cut the discussion short. “Later they’ll tell you. Right now, I need you to reach down the big boiling pot from the shelf and fill it with water.”
“Abraham will do it,” Sarah offered. “Why should Chaim have to get our bath ready?”
“In my house the guests don’t lift a finger.”
“I’ve had a holiday here,” Chavah laughed.
Sarah followed her hosts into the little scullery which adjoined the kitchen and tried not to notice the disorder. A bucket overflowing with garbage stood on the floor beside a cabbage and a can of milk; carrots, onions and bread lay side by side on the same shelf and the draining board was littered with unwashed cooking utensils. But the tap was an unexpected luxury, in Dvinsk there had just been a pump in the back yard.
Chaim shovelled a mound of potato peelings out of the sink and dumped them on the drainer. “You’ve brought your erineh to England, Sarah?”
“Which Jewish wife would leave the main item in her lowry behind?” she smiled.
“So tonight you and Abie can roll yourselves inside it in the kitchen,” Chaim said as he filled an enormous soot-grimed vessel with water. His jowls shook with mirth. “Beds we can’t supply, but with all those goose feathers to pad your behinds, who needs one?”
“And the boys?” Sarah asked. The kitchen was so full of furniture, there would hardly be space for herself and Abraham to lie full length on the floor.
“Don’t worry,” Malka said comfortably. “The Moritzes next door have a son. David and Sammy can share his bed. Wouldn’t we do the same for their landsleit?”
After her sons had been put to bed, Sarah followed Rachel Moritz downstairs, her legs aching with weariness. If only she could lie down and rest, but the bath water wouldn’t be hot yet and even if it were, she and Abraham couldn’t retire for the night until the Berkowitzes and their cousins had vacated the kitchen. Meanwhile, they must stay here and chat with the people who were accommodating David and Sammy, it was only polite to do so. She went with Rachel into the living room and found her husband perched awkwardly on the edge of a chair.
Sigmund Moritz was standing with his back to the fire, an amused look on his chubby face. He took off his pince-nez and pointed them playfully at Abraham. “Rabbi Akiba and the laughing fishes this gentleman’s quizzing me about. Since my Bar Mitzvah I didn’t give it a thought, I told him. And this evening my mind is occupied with Goethe.”
It was evident from the Sandbergs’ expressions that they had no idea who, or what, Goethe was. Sigmund replaced his pince-nez on his nose, picked up a book from the table and offered it to Abraham. “You’ll read him, I promise you’ll never be the same again.”
“It’s written in Yiddish?” Abraham asked and shrugged regretfully when Sigmund shook his head.
Such Philistines these people are, Sigmund thought contemptuously. A handful of intellectuals and a few brilliant writers didn’t make up for the narrow ignorance of the mass of Russian and Polish Jewry. He opened the book, became immersed in it and forgot the Sandbergs were there.
Sarah could not recall ever experiencing such rudeness and would have left there and then, had her sons not been receiving the Moritzes’ hospitality. She was aware of Abraham fidgeting with his moustache and knew he was hoping she would find an excuse to leave, but she avoided his eye and allowed her own to wander discreetly around the room.
Apart from the brass candlesticks used for the Sabbath lights, and the gleaming mortar and pestle with which apples and nuts were pounded for the Passover, not an ornament was in sight. Sarah had brought from Russia all the familiar objects she could cram into her bundles and boxes, unable to make herself abandon them; vases and trinkets; some wax fruit which had decorated her sideboard; a pen stand and inkwell never used, but they were part of the bric-a-brac of her life. The Moritzes appeared to have brought nothing but the barest essentials from their native Austria. And books. The walls were lined with shelves and shelves of them.
Rachel sat with her hands folded on her lap, perfectly relaxed, as if conversation with these strangers was not expected of her and Sarah thought her snobbish. She was wearing a black dress with a white lace stock and the way her creamy neck rose in a proud column above it enhanced this impression. Housewives in Dvinsk kept their good black dresses for special occasions and always wore an apron at home.
“You’d like something hot to drink, maybe?” Rachel inquired, but her voice lacked the persuasiveness with which a Russian woman would have asked.
Sarah rose to leave. She had stayed for the length of time politeness required. “We’re putting you to enough trouble, you don’t have to give us drinks also,” she replied with a stiff smile.
“It’s no trouble,” Rachel assured them.
Sigmund did not raise his head from the book when they left the room.
“You had to sit there so long?!” Abraham exploded whilst they waited for the Berkowitzes to let them in. “A man like that I’ve never met.”
“If we’d left any sooner, our manners would be as bad as his,” Sarah retorted. “What’ve they got to give themselves airs about? They’re refugees, like us.”
It was their first encounter with Jews of a different culture from their own and what Sarah had judged snobbishness was a certain sophistication the Moritzes had acquired from living in Vienna, which she was not equipped to recognise. “For my part you can keep the Viennese,” she muttered as Chaim opened the door.
“You should’ve told me they were leaving. I didn’t wish them good night,” Sigmund was at that moment saying to his wife. “What will they think of me?”
“If I’d told you, would you’ve been listening?” Rachel smiled. “They’ll think like everyone else, that you live in a world of your own. And since when do you care what the Russians think of you?” she added lightly though his intolerance sometimes upset her.
Sigmund snapped his book shut impatiently. “Goethe
they’ve never heard of! Men with the brains to memorise the Talmud should extend themselves to other things also.”
The Moritzes had been in England for a year and it had not taken Sigmund long to become contemptuous of his Russian and Polish brethren. He had yet to learn the reason for their insularity, that the ghettos in which they had lived placed restrictions as insurmountable as barbed wire around the mind, as well as the body.
“That doesn’t mean they’re not nice people,” Rachel said quietly.
“Did I say it does?” Sigmund sat down in his wing chair and crossed his stumpy legs, as he always did when about to hold forth. “Only two things we share with them, Rachel. Anti-Semitism and being Jewish. Would we have crossed each other’s paths otherwise? Or had anything in common?” A heavy sigh escaped him. “So now we have Strangeways in common. Life has set us down together side by side.” He opened his book again, but stared at the page without seeing it. “Different we are, who could deny it? But it’s right we should do what we can for each other. A Jew is a Jew.”
Chapter 2
David awoke in the strange room and was momentarily afraid, then he saw Sammy’s ginger head on the pillow beside him and the fear receded. He lay still, the perineh tucked high beneath his chin, his face exposed to the frigid air, breathing it in, tasting it. He was used to the cold, in Russia it had been much colder than this; crisp and clear, dry and biting. But the chill he felt now was different, moist and muggy, unclean. It was his first experience of a typical winter morning in Manchester, except that the rain had not yet begun to fall. He buried his face in the pillow to escape from it and from the general strangeness of which it was a part.
Last night, he had dreamed about Sammy and the Cossack again. It was three years since the dreadful thing had happened, but when he dreamed about it, it was as if it was happening all over again. Himself and his little brother sitting on the thick, green grass on the river bank throwing pebbles into the water. His own legs crossed, like Mr. Seretsky, the tailor, when he sewed in his shop, and Sammy with one of his tucked under him and the other stretched out. They were a few yards back from the river because their mother had told them never to go there alone and when they went with her she always warned them to stay away from the edge. When the horses began to clip-clop past in front of them they had to stop tossing the pebbles and the one in his hand felt lovely and smooth when he stroked it. Even the flock of white birds overhead was there in the dream and the gleam of the horses’ coats. And silver braid glinting in the sunlight as one of the tall, uniformed riders reached down and snatched Sammy’s yamulke off his head and threw it into the river. Sammy’s cars were real in the dream, too, plopping onto the pile of pebbles as they had that day; he’d known it was a sin for a Jewish boy not to have his head covered, though he was only two. Then the weeping changed to screams of pain as the Cossack turned back and rode the horse over his leg before he cantered away laughing.