Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  Abraham admired her tiny waist for a moment and let his eyes wander lustfully to her small breasts and the neat curve of her hips which did not look as if she had borne three children. A man was only human. “So what can you do?” he sighed watching her brush her hair to remove the night time tangles. “I don’t work for Mr. Chernik the cobbler anymore who didn’t mind if I sometimes got to the shop late in the mornings. Did I ever tell you when you stand in the candlelight your skin looks like silk and your hair like satin?”

  “Sure, but I don’t mind hearing it again,” she laughed pinning up her long tresses. “Meanwhile you don’t work for anyone anymore and you never will if you don’t get up and start looking.”

  “I’ve never been a lazy man, Sarah.”

  “Don’t I know it?”

  “But it’s like going out into a wilderness.”

  Sarah kept her tone light. “With all those two-storey trains and the rest of the busy traffic?”

  “I mean what I’ve got to do. Be something I’m not and first find someone who’ll give me the chance to be it.”

  “You’ll find the someone and you’ll be what you have to be. I know you. You’ll do it.”

  They heard Malka and Chaim clatter downstairs.

  “Get up already!” Sarah glanced at her sleeping children and removed Esther’s thumb from her mouth, then she dropped another kiss on Abraham’s head. “I’m going to the kitchen now.”

  “But not to the scullery!” he joked as she was leaving the room.

  “I wouldn’t put a foot in there to wash my hands and face until Chaim’s been in with the shovel first!”

  Abraham and Chaim left the house at 5:30. Nicholas was encouraged by Malka’s foot to leave with them and went to join a group of feline friends in the middle of the street. People in Strangeways kept their cats in at night to serve their functional purpose and put them out during the day to get them from under their feet.

  Some of Chaim’s neighbours were also leaving for work. “Good morning, Shmuel!” he called. “How’s by you today, Nocham? Your head cold’s better, Mendy?”

  “Tell me what’s good about it.”

  “How can a person be when they have to leave their warm bed and go out in weather like this?”

  “My head cold is permanent in such a climate.”

  Chaim watched them hurry away and laughed. “Those three miseries say the same every morning, it never varies.”

  Abraham glanced at the sullen sky and tucked his muffler into his coat to protect it from the drizzle. “Neither has the weather since I’ve been here. A person can get fed up with it.”

  “In Russia we got fed up with the snow, didn’t we? Remember how we had to dig our way out of the house sometimes? It isn’t that long since you were doing it. And when were we ever without chilblains? The reek of that stuff everyone put on them used to knock me over.”

  “Nobody suffers from chilblains in England?”

  “All right, so they do. But you can get a block of something nice and scented from the chemist, to rub on them.”

  “Last night he tells me the brutal truth and this morning he’s kidding to me!” Abraham snapped as they trudged along. “What is it with you?”

  “Listen, there’s a time for the truth and another when people need cheering up, so this morning I’m cheering you up. Shoot me!”

  When they reached the street corner, Bury New Road was seething with hurrying men in flat caps and long, floppy coats, darting between the trams and carts before disappearing into the side streets like ants on their way to the ant hill. Abraham had not ventured out this early before and the scene had a depressing greyness which chilled his heart. “There must be a lot of factories, to make work for so many people,” he said to Chaim while they were crossing the road.

  “Sure, but you’d be surprised how many workers will fit into one small room. You’ll walk with me to Uncle Mottel’s. We don’t need any extra help right now, I wish we did, but there’re plenty more places near there.”

  “This is a factory?” Abraham said when Chaim halted outside a small, terraced house. “It’s got curtains at the windows, what kind of workplace is that?”

  “The same as many others round here, also a home. My uncle and aunt live downstairs. Upstairs has got sewing machines. You want to see for yourself? Come, I’ll show you, Uncle won’t mind.”

  Abraham followed Chaim into the dismal little place. They had to squeeze past some bales of dun-coloured fabric and almost tripped over a couple of underfed cats as they climbed the stairs.

  “Uncle keeps two since the mice started nibbling the cloth,” Chaim explained.

  He opened a door in the middle of the landing and Abraham caught his breath at the foetid atmosphere which came at him in a sickening wave. At first he thought the room was windowless. Harsh gaslight hollowed the workers’ faces as they bent over sewing machines crammed into every inch of the limited space. The noise of the treadles was deafening and he was sure he could never learn to move his feet as fast as these people were doing.

  Women were employed here, too, and a lad who could not have been more than twelve was crouched in a corner with a heap of coats beside him, sewing on buttons. The workers were talking to each other, shouting above the clatter and wiping beads of sweat off their brows with the backs of their hands without pausing in their work, as if it was a mechanical gesture and they were not aware they were doing it.

  Chaim had taken off his coat and cap and was straightening his yamulke on his wiry dark hair. “So what do you think of it, Abie?”

  Abraham thought of the cobbler’s shop in Dvinsk, where he had worked with just one other person beside a window overlooking the marketplace which had trees in it, leafy in summer, glittering with frost in winter. This room was not windowless he saw now, but the grime-blackened glass was like a shutter between the people who toiled here and the sky, denying the existence of any other world but this. He looked at Chaim and shrugged wordlessly.

  “Listen, you’ll get used to it, like I did. You should only be lucky enough to find a job.”

  Uncle Mottel was standing at the cutting bench snipping away with his shears. Cutters had to be paid more than machiners, which was why he had never employed one. “You’ve got time for social callers?” he rasped to his nephew without removing the cigar clamped between his yellow teeth. “And also you’re late. So who’s your friend?”

  “You don’t remember Abie Sandberg from home, Uncle? Like I told you, he’s staying with me.”

  Uncle Mottle’s codfish eyes surveyed Abraham. “Now I remember him. It’s ten years since I left the old country, but how many redhaired Jews do you meet? I wish you luck, Abie, but I’m not short of staff. Come back next week and who knows? You’re a trained machiner?”

  Abraham shook his head.

  “In that case don’t bother. You’re going to stand there all day, Chaim? Plenty of people would like to be promoted to my righthand man.”

  “Go to it!” Chaim said encouragingly as Abraham opened the door to leave and clapped him on the back to help him on his way.

  Abraham hurried down the narrow staircase and stumbled outside, gulping in air greedily. Even the smell of smoke and horse dung was a pleasure after Uncle Mottel’s workroom. He eyed the other houses uncertainly. How was he to tell which of them were also factories? The only way was to knock and find out. He tried a house across the street.

  A young woman in a rusty-looking black dress opened the door, dabbing at her swollen eyes. “The funeral’s not till this afternoon,” she sobbed. “But you can come in if you like, all my brother’s friends who aren’t working are here already.”

  Abraham was momentarily tongue-tied. What did you say when you’d intruded on someone’s grief? “You’ve lost your brother?” he stammered. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “You’d like me to lose him also? His friends are here to comfort him, but Job’s comforters we can do without.”

  He walked away with the sound of
the slamming door echoing in his ears. It was not easy for him to knock on another one, but he made himself do so.

  “I’ll pay what I owe next week and if you don’t like it you can take the china cabinet, or the sofa, or whatever it is you’re too mean to wait for the money for, back to the store!” an irate female voice told him through a crack in the door. “Lousy debt-collectors!”

  He ran down the street to escape from the voice.

  “Where’s the fire?” a familiar voice called to him. Shloime Lipkin was standing on the corner watching him run.

  Abraham halted beside him and laughed. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Lipkin.”

  Shloime took off his wet cap, wrung it out and put it on again. “Oy, if only some of the factories I’ve called at since I got here would say that! You found anyone who needs a cobbler yet?”

  “Who needs a cobbler? Today I’m trying the garment places.”

  “I’ve got competition! So we’ll keep each other company, Mr. Sandberg, we’ll look together, why not?”

  They plodded along the road and turned into another side street. Shloime made straight for a door which was ajar.

  “How do we know it’s a workplace? Walking in like this, without knocking, we could get hit on the head with a frying pan,” Abraham said as they entered. “Two experiences I just had I wouldn’t want to repeat.”

  “When it’s a factory as well, they always leave the door open,” Shloime informed him. “To save the boss’s wife from letting in callers all day.”

  Some dejected-looking men were coming downstairs.

  “Why’re we bothering to go up, Mr. Lipkin?” Abraham said scanning their faces. “It’s a waste of time.”

  “Your friend’s right,” one of the men said to Shloime. “I’m an experienced machiner, I was a tailor’s assistant in Kiev, but here nobody wants to know.” He rubbed his bloodshot eyes wearily. “If I wasn’t living with landsleit I’d go home and put my head under the covers, the way I feel, but you can’t do that in someone else’s house.” He thrust his hands into his coat pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet for a moment. “So what can you do?” he sighed as he left.

  “There’s always the Benevolent Fund and the Board of Guardians,” another man called after him.

  “What’re they?” Shloime inquired.

  “People who’ve been here long enough to save a bit give what they can spare to them, to help folk like us.”

  “Charity?” Abraham said in a shocked voice.

  “The rabbi at our shul told me about it. I didn’t say I was going to ask them for anything, did I?” the man snapped. He took a soggy packet from his pocket and bit off some of the black bread which was protruding from it, then walked away.

  “So I’m wasting my time, but I promised Gittel I’d try,” Shloime shrugged.

  “Didn’t I promise my wife the same?” Abraham followed him upstairs.

  They spent the rest of the morning trudging around Strangeways, trailing up rickety staircases and down them again after men in shirtsleeves, or bulky cardigans, who reminded Abraham of Uncle Mottel, had shaken their heads and turned their backs on them.

  “Why don’t we try a real factory?” he said to Shloime desperately.

  “My landsleit Judah Mishnik said I shouldn’t bother. They pay better, so they get the pick of the workers. We don’t stand a chance,” Shloime led the way through yet another doorway. “Here, they make waterproofs, I can tell by the stink. It makes me want to throw up.”

  Abraham was trying not to breathe in. “Me also.”

  “It’s the varnish they glue the hems down with,” Shloime told him when they reached the workroom.

  “Judah’s a shmearer, that’s what they call those who do that job.”

  Abraham got a glimpse of the shmearers’ fingers swooping birdlike into cans of the malodorous substance, then flying lightning fast along the edges of garments amid the same clatter and confusion he had found everywhere.

  “I wouldn’t do that job for a fortune!” he declared when they were back on the street again.

  “For that job they don’t pay no fortune.”

  “Whatever they pay I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Me, I’d do anything,” Shloime said flatly. “Anything is better than nothing.”

  By now, they were soaked to the skin and calling each other by their first names. They sheltered in the doorway of a baker’s shop on the main road for a moment and stared in the window at the mouth-watering array.

  “What d’you fancy, Abie? An onion bun, maybe? A hot poppyseed roll, smothered in butter? Or just a nice piece of strudel?” Shloime drooled.

  “Let’s move away from here, Shloime. It’s giving me an appetite. You’re going home for a bite?”

  “It’s enough my landsleit have to feed me breakfast and supper.”

  “I feel the same. Malka wanted to give me a sandwich to bring, but I said I don’t get hungry.”

  “That’s what I told Becky Mishnik. A pair of liars we are,” Shloime said wryly. “But a little break would do us good. Come, I’ll take you where I always go at this time of day and we’ll get a glass of tea there with the rest of the boys.”

  Chapter 3

  “What’re those lads doing?” Sammy asked his classmate Otto Rosenthal.

  “What’re the little glass balls they’ve got there?” Moishe Lipkin inquired.

  They were in the playground at the Jews’ School watching some boys who were crouched on the ground around an upturned cap.

  “They’re playing marbles,” Otto explained. “That’s what you call the glass balls when you go to buy them, but we call them allies. What you have to do is flirt them.” He flicked the tip of his grubby forefinger against his thumb. “Like this, it makes them shoot away fast. You two don’t know anything, do you?”

  “I bet you didn’t when you first came to England and it’s only our first day at school,” Moishe said.

  “I was born here,” Otto informed them. “So was my big brother.”

  “So why’re you still speaking Yiddish?” Moishe demanded.

  The chubby five-year-old gave them a withering look. “You can’t speak English yet, can you?”

  “We know one word, don’t we, Sammy?” Moishe retorted.

  “Tram!” they said loudly in unison.

  “And my brother knows another word, the one that makes the trams go, he’s remembered it,” Sammy boasted.

  Moishe ran off to join some little boys who were kicking a ball and Otto chased after him.

  David saw his brother standing alone watching the other children caper around and felt the same pang he always did at such times. “Come over here, Sammy!” he shouted. He was leaning on a wall with some of the boys whose class he had joined that morning. One in particular, Saul Salaman, had been very friendly towards him.

  “How would you like a sister to look after? That’s worse than a brother!” Saul explained. A little dark-eyed dumpling in a dirty pinafore was tugging at his sleeve. “Go away, will you?”

  “I’ve got one, but she’s not old enough for school yet,” David grinned.

  “I’ve got two, haven’t I?” Carl Moritz said without raising his eyes from the book he was reading.

  “But they don’t drive you mad like our Bessie does,” Saul declared.

  “I don’t let them.”

  “Listen, brothers can drive you mad as well,” Leo Rosenthal put in as Otto came to show him a grazed knee.

  David noticed Saul and Leo looking at how Sammy jogged from side to side as he walked towards them. Lazar Lensky, who was also in their class, did not stare because he had seen Sammy before, but everyone did the first time they saw him and David wished they wouldn’t. “How d’you like school, Sam?” he said ruffling his brother’s hair affectionately.

  “I’ll be glad when it’s home time.”

  David laughed. “Have you learned anything yet?”

  “Why do I need to?”

  “My father says he could te
ach me all I need to know,” Saul Salaman confided. “He’d like me to help in his factory instead of coming to school.”

  “But you’re only eight!” David looked taken aback.

  “He taught me to sew buttons on when I was six,” Saul yawned and David noticed he had dark circles under his eyes. “I have to help him in the workroom every night.”

  “Has your father got a job yet, David?” Lazar Lensky asked.

  “No.”

  “Nor has mine,” Lazar’s moon face looked troubled. “Him and my mother keep having rows about it.”

  “My parents never have rows,” David replied as a teacher shook a big handbell to call them back to the classroom. Sammy glanced up at him, but he pretended not to notice. They had heard their mother and father whispering angrily to each other more than once recently, early in the morning when they thought David and Sammy were asleep.

  The next day, David awoke and heard Sarah and Abraham quarrelling again.

  “It’s no use you telling me you can’t find work,” his mother was hissing. Then she turned and saw David looking at her and went out of the room, hurriedly.

  Abraham was draping his prayer shawl around his shoulders. “What’re you looking at, David? You’ve never seen me put on my tallith before?” he snapped. He adjusted his yamulke which was inclined to slip off because his hair was so thick and took the phylacteries which must be worn to say the weekday morning prayer out of a little draw-string bag.

  David watched him flex his left arm and lay one of the small leather boxes on the upper muscle, opposite his heart like the Law instructed, then wind the long black strap attached to the box round and round, the required seven times, all the way down to his wrist.

  “You’ve never seen me laying my tephillin either?” his father said tetchily.

  “I like watching you do it.”

  “All right, so watch,” Abraham sighed. “I’m not angry with you, David,” he added though he ought not to be talking whilst preparing for the prayer. “It’s just the way I feel, why should I take it out on you?” He laid the second little box on the centre of his forehead and tightened its straps at the back of his head, to hold it in place. Finally, he wound the dangling end of the first strap around his fingers.