by Maisie Mosco
“When I was very little, I used to think you looked funny like that, Father,” David confessed.
“But a big boy knows it’s a serious matter, that inside the boxes are holy texts. ‘And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes, as a sign that we are the sons of our Father in Heaven and members of the community of our great and holy people,’” Abraham quoted gravely. “We lay them opposite our brain and our heart so that our thoughts and desires will be subservient to God, David. After you are Bar Mitzvah, we’ll do this together in the mornings.”
“Can you get tephillin in England? I haven’t got mine yet, have I?” David said anxiously.
Abraham picked up his prayer book and moved nearer the candle so he could read the print, though he knew the words by heart. “Don’t worry, wherever Jews are tephillin are made and everything else required for our devotions. In Russia, they think if they burn down the shuls with the scrolls inside them, they’ll be able to wipe out our religion, but for every one they burn another will rise in its place.” He stared at the candle flame pensively for a moment, then bent over his prayer book.
Something in his father’s expression made David want to get up and hug him, but he controlled the impulse. “I hope you find a job soon, Father,” he said quietly instead.
Sarah was watching Malka roll the dumplings for the chicken soup when Abraham arrived back one Friday afternoon.
“You’re early today,” she said as he kissed her.
“The factories’ll be closed in an hour for Shabbos,” he said listlessly. “And in any case, none of them wants a machiner who’s never used a machine. Haven’t I proved it?”
Malka went on dropping the dumplings into a pot of boiling water. “Make Abie a glass of tea, Sarah,” she instructed. “I’d make it myself, but my hands’re sticky from the knedl mixture.” Her pink cheeks creased into a smile. “So you’ll owe me another slice of lemon!”
The remark was meant to be a joke, Malka’s shortcomings did not include meanness, but Abraham left the room without a word.
Malka shrugged. “He’s getting touchy.”
“Can you blame him?” Sarah followed on his heels and found him in the parlour, staring through the window.
It was not yet dusk, but the soft light which precedes it had muted the harsh brick of the houses opposite to a false mellowness and the streetlamp, to which the lamplighter had just applied his long pole, cast a friendly glow upon the pavement. Abraham watched a cat lope towards an open doorway and enter it. “Even a cat has its own home,” he said bitterly.
Sarah went to stand beside him and linked her arm through his.
“Don’t shmooze me,” he said in a gruff voice.
“Linking arms is sbmoozing?” She reached up and stroked his fiery hair, standing on tiptoe because he was so much taller than her. “Since when?”
“Since the day I first met you. When you sprained your ankle and asked me to walk you home.”
She laughed. They’d been skating on the frozen river the day they met, she with her sister and Abraham with a gang of lads. She had seen him before, through the cobbler’s shop window, and wished she could get to know him, but her father always took the family’s shoes to be mended. Once or twice she had caught sight of him in shul, too. The section where the women sat was screened off from the men’s seats according to religious ritual, but during the part of the service when everyone stood his height had made him visible over the top of the screen. „Without someone to lean on I couldn’t walk,” she reminded him.
“Seven boys were skating there that day and she has to choose me to lean on!” He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “She asks me to walk her home and now I’m living with landsleit in England.”
Sarah pulled away from him. Leaving Russia had been her decision, but what alternative had they had? Spending the rest of their lives like hunted animals? Never certain when they went to bed at night that they and their children would live to see the next morning? Life should be something better than existing from day to day, unable to plan for the future because you might not have one.
Abraham picked up his tallith and folded it. She watched him put it carefully into a blue velvet bag embroidered with the Star of David, to take it with him to shul. Their sons were already dressed in their Sabbath suits and soon he must change, too, and collect them from the Moritzes where they had taken to spending much of their time. After the men had gone to the synagogue, she and Malka would put on their best dresses and wait for them to return, as Jewish wives and mothers did everywhere on Friday evenings. These simple traditions were something solid to cling to and helped her keep her feet on the ground. Seeing her husband preparing for Shabbos helped her now. “You’ll talk to the men about a job, after the service tonight. Someone will advise you,” she said firmly. “Chaim’s a good person, but he doesn’t know everything.”
David always looked forward to walking back from shul on Friday nights. His father would take him and Sammy by the hand and talk to them earnestly about the sermon they’d heard, the way he debated the Talmud with his friends, which gave David a nice grown-up feeling. Other boys would be walking alongside their fathers, too, but Mr. Berkowitz, who had no sons, always walked with Rabbi Lensky who had none either.
It was a night when only males were seen on the streets. A pleasant stillness hung in the air and candles flickered behind lace curtains, signalling a Sabbath greeting to those abroad in the dark. Sometimes, when you passed a house a savoury fragrance drifting from under the door made you think of the meal waiting for you and his father would quicken his footsteps and smile.
On this Friday night, he was grim-faced and silent.
“What is it, Father?” David asked, but received no reply.
Abraham was not himself during supper, either. David saw him toying listlessly with the food on his plate and noticed that his mother was watching, too, though she made no comment. His father’s face had often worn a frown lately, especially when he arrived back in the evenings, only tonight it was not just his face which looked worried, but his whole body, as if he was hurting deep inside.
“Is Father ill?” he asked Sarah later, when she was tucking him up in the parlour.
“Such big eyes this child has! He sees everything! Your father’s tired, David, that’s all. He’s worn out from looking for a job.”
“Why can’t he find one?”
“Questions he asks, when he should be asleep! For people like us there aren’t enough jobs to go round.”
David wanted to ask her what she meant by “people like us,” but he knew she would not bother explaining because he was only a little boy. Perhaps Mr. Moritz would tell him? Mr. Moritz never minded explaining things.
Abraham was hunched by the stoked-up fire when Sarah returned from putting the boys to bed. Tomorrow, the Shabbos-Goy would call to pile on more coal; Jews were forbidden to do so themselves on the Sabbath and an elderly Gentile earned himself some coppers by knocking on doors in the ghetto and doing it for them. Cooking, too, was forbidden on the holy day, which necessitated meals being prepared in advance and left to simmer in the oven. Malka’s cholent accounted for the appetising aroma of butter beans cooking in a rich, meaty sauce which filled the room and reminded Sarah of Friday nights in Dvinsk when she and Abraham had sat quietly together by their cosy wood stove.
The only privacy they had here was the time they lay cuddled in their perineh and even then they must talk in whispers so as not to waken the children. But tonight the Berkowitzes had retired early and they had the kitchen to themselves. A clock Malka had brought from Russia chimed the hour, puncturing the contemplative silence.
“You talked to the men in shul about a job?” Sarah asked.
Abraham’s expression tightened. “They advised me to be a shmearer.”
“Maybe it’s a good idea, if they advised it.”
He looked at her for a moment, then bowed his head again, his hands clasp
ed tightly on his lap as if he was trying to contain himself. A picture of the birdlike fingers swooping into the reeking varnish flashed before his eyes. Was this how he was doomed to spend his days? “Once, I was a craftsman,” he said flatly.
“And once my father had money and my mother wore jewellery, but the Tsar thought they weren’t entitled to these things and now they’re both in their graves.” Sarah touched her brooch, which her parents had given to her when she was sixteen. In Dvinsk she had been afraid to wear it, in case it caught the eye of a roving pogromschik. “What’s the use of dwelling on the past?” she said simply. “The future is what counts and how you’ll feed and clothe your children now.”
“To dip my finger in varnish I left Russia!” Abraham exclaimed bitterly.
Sarah’s eyes blazed and a surge of colour stained her high cheekbones. “To live you left Russia!” she reminded him.
But looking for work as a shmearer proved futile, too.
“Why d’you think those know-alls advised you to be one?” Chaim, who had not advised it, scoffed one evening.
“Because it’s easier to learn than machining. But every unskilled person who arrives gets the same advice. It’s time for the brutal truth again and you might as well face up to it, the waterproof factories aren’t just waiting for Abie Sandberg.”
Abraham got up from his chair and stalked out of the room.
Malka was quartering an apple to share between the four of them. She exchanged a glance with Chaim. “Touchy he certainly is.”
“He’s got feelings,” Sarah apologised.
“You think my Chaim hasn’t?”
“It’s all right, I understand,” Chaim shrugged, but he had a hurt look on his face.
They sat crunching the apple. Abraham did not return to the kitchen and his quarter remained on the table turning browner by the minute, a pointed reminder of his absence and, to Sarah, of how the Berkowitzes shared everything with them. They were kindness itself and sometimes she wished they were a little less so. Living in someone else’s house wasn’t easy and the feeling of indebtedness made it even harder. She wanted to go and comfort Abraham, but forced herself to sit and chat with their hosts until bedtime. When she retired, her husband was sound asleep.
“If you disappear like that again, they’ll think you’re ungrateful,” she warned him the next morning. “You can’t just walk out of the room like you can in your own house.”
“In my own house I wouldn’t have to,” he replied. “Chaim’s a nice fellow, but in small doses.”
He should know how it is here for me all day, with Malka, she thought casting her mind back over the last four weeks.
After Chavah and Ezra left for Liverpool, she had set to with dusters and polishing wax taken from her own bundles, to clean the parlour.
“What’re you doing?” Malka had laughed. “It’ll be the same again when your children have put their fingers on everything. A quick sweep with the broom is enough.”
But Sarah had cleaned the room thoroughly, then gone to the kitchen to assist with the daily chores.
“Put down the duster,” Malka had ordered. “I told you I don’t let my guests work.”
“It’ll be a pleasure to help you. Look what you’re doing for me.”
“That you’ll please take for granted. And also, take the weight off your feet. If you won’t sit down I’ll have to get up from my chair and help you,” Malka gurgled in her happy-go-lucky fashion. “And I don’t feel like it. We’ll have a nice gossip, you’ve only just got here. I’ll clean and tidy tomorrow and you can watch me.”
It did not take Sarah long to realise that so far as cleaning was concerned, tomorrow rarely came in this house. Only once a week, before the Sabbath, did Malka make a desultory attempt to restore her home to order. But for Sarah, that was better than never and on the first Friday morning Malka found her about to scrub the scullery floor.
“A guest with a scrubbing brush in her hand? On her hands and knees?” She made Sarah rise and gave the floor a half-hearted tickle with a rag.
The same one used to wipe down the draining board where the vegetables were chopped for the stew, Sarah noted and tried not to remember this when she ate her meals. She could not help her nature, which was the very opposite of Malka’s.
Her offers to assist with the cooking are met with the same resistance.
“Let me at least bake you a sponge cake to have on Shabbos afternoon,” she pleaded. Saturday afternoons had been highlights of her childhood, with all the family gathering in her grandparents’ home for cakes and tea. Never would times like those come again, she reflected with pain. But a person had to try. “Give me the eggs and sugar, Malka.”
“In my home you’ll eat my cakes. Take a rest! When you have your own household to look after, you’ll wish you could have one,” Malka had told her.
That happy day could not come soon enough for Sarah, but meanwhile time hung heavily on her hands. Mr. Moritz had taken David and Sammy to enrol at school and though she and Abraham had privately thought it too soon, they had felt unable to argue about educational matters with a man whose home was full of books. The boys’ absence left her with only little Esther to care for, which was far from a full-time occupation.
“You’re out of friends with me because I got a little huffy last night?” Abraham asked her.
She looked up and saw that he had dressed whilst she was standing daydreaming, feeling sorry for herself. “That I’ll never be,” she smiled shaking herself out of it. “But maybe we should both remember what Rabbi Lensky said in the cart on our first night here, about not being entitled to grumble. We’ve let ourselves forget already, haven’t we?”
After David and Sammy had gone to school she sat watching Esther play “house” with the Berkowitz twins, determined not to allow the inactivity to depress her.
The scullery door was open and Malka was scraping vegetables at the sink, chattering away as usual, but Sarah could not concentrate on what she was saying. She could hear the tap dripping and the rasp of the paring knife as Malka moved it back and forth. The low ceiling seemed to be pressing down upon her and the stuffy little room, with its heavy furniture, closing her in. For a moment she panicked, she had never experienced such a feeling before. She fixed her gaze on a shiny, green chaise longue and tried to pull herself together.
This hideous piece had been purchased at the local second-hand shop, prior to the Sandbergs’ arrival, and was destined for the parlour when they left. An emotion very like despair, but not quite, because hopelessness was not in her character, overwhelmed her. When, oh when, would that be? She became aware that Malka was standing beside her, wiping her hands on her apron.
“You’ve gone deaf all of a sudden, Sarah? I’ve been talking to you for five minutes! I’m out of onions just now would you believe?”
“So why don’t I go to the store and get you some?” Sarah rose from her chair quickly, the chance to escape from the house for a while seemed heaven sent.
Malka hesitated, but Sarah had already fetched her shawl from the lobby and was slipping it around her shoulders. “I’ve got to get used to marketing in England, you’d be doing me a favour,” she said persuasively.
“In that case,” Malka handed her a shopping basket. “But you’ll find it’s no different from how you did in Russia.”
Maybe not, but other things aren’t the same, Sarah thought as she walked slowly towards the main road. In Russia at this time in the morning everyone had their perinehs draped over the bedroom windowsills and it seemed strange to walk down a street and not see any. This had always been her first task after Abraham had gone to work, but Malka had said if she did it here, even when it wasn’t raining, the feather filling would get so damp it would never dry again. Her house in Dvinsk hadn’t been infested with mice either, so she had to keep a cat like everyone here had to and it was funny to see so many cats roaming the streets.
Malka’s neighbour Mrs. Lemberg was cleaning her front doorstep
and looked up to smile at Sarah as she approached. “So how’re you settling in? Like the old country it isn’t, eh?”
Sarah paused to speak to her. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Listen, you’ll be thinking it when you’ve been here two years, like me! Did I ever think I’d miss Bialystok after what they did to us there? There’s plenty I don’t miss and that’s what keeps me going.” Mrs. Lemberg wiped her steaming hands on her faded black apron and rubbed her knobbly back. “This donkey-stone they put on the steps here, oy vay, it breaks me in two rubbing it on!” She fished in her bucket of water for the yellow-brown slab and began applying it laboriously again. “But in England you have to do like the English. Some people use the white, but you need to do it more often, it shows the dirt quicker.”
Sarah decided she would use the white when she got her own house. “Why do they call it that?” she inquired.
“Who knows? Maybe because you get it from the rag-and-bone man who comes with a donkey and cart every week and gives it to you in exchange for whatever you want to get rid of.”
“Funny customs they have here!” Sarah laughed. Chatting with Mrs. Lemberg had done her good.
On Bury New Road, she paused to look at the shops which were always closed and shuttered when she passed on her way to shul on Saturdays. It was the first time she had been out on a weekday. Malka always asked her to mind the children and slipped out to do the marketing quickly, as if it was a bother to her, but Sarah had always enjoyed that part of a housewife’s duties. What could be more pleasurable than spending a little time selecting the food you gave your family to eat, making sure it was the best you could afford to buy?
She watched the butcher’s treble-chinned wife plucking a fowl in a cloud of feathers, balancing it on her stained apron and talking to the customers whilst her husband, who resembled a side of beef himself, cut one into small joints. Some huge garlic sausages hanging up in the window made Sarah’s mouth water. The aroma of fresh bread and cinnamon wafting through the open door of a bakery did, too, and she wished she could afford to buy one of the delicious-looking cheese cakes and take it back to Malka’s for a treat after supper. England’s going to my head, she smiled to herself. Wanting to buy cakes, when she’d always made her own!