by Maisie Mosco
There was only one greengrocery on the block, the one Rabbi Lensky had pointed out the night she arrived. It was also a fishmongery and Sarah had to push her way through the chattering women who were clustered around a box of plaice near the door, flipping them from side to side to examine them.
“Without enough red spots on the black, they don’t have the same flavour,” an angular lady wearing a man’s flat cap advised the woman beside her.
“She thinks I was born yesterday!”
Sarah saw them move to a counter where the hake and haddock were displayed and begin digging their nails into the silvery fish to test its freshness. It’s just like at home, she thought happily and went to where the fruit and vegetables were stacked, to press her thumb into the lemons, expertly, as she had at old Mr. Katz’s market stall in Dvinsk, even when she was not going to buy any. She watched a woman with wispy hair and a darned shawl brandish a bruised apple under the greengrocer’s snub nose.
“This I’ll take home, my husband will throw me out, like you should do with your fruit, you ganef!” the woman upbraided him.
“A thief Mrs. Kaplan’s calling me now,” the stocky little man said placidly. “If I give it to you for half-price, will your husband still throw you out?”
“Enough already. I’ll take it.”
“Your greengrocer in Russia gave you such good bargains?” Mr. Randinsky inquired with a twinkle in his eye.
“Better than you gave your customers in Poland, believe me,” Mrs. Kaplan retorted before she shuffled out of the shop.
Sarah had to smile as she sorted through the onions to find some nice big ones for Malka. How good it was, the way Yiddish spanned the gap between Jews of many different origins. And the way they did their marketing was universal! She took the onions to the counter where Mrs. Radinsky sat purple-lipped beside a ledger, the glistening colour deepening with every lick she gave to her indelible pencil.
Nobody paid cash and Sarah considered having the purchase charged to herself, but feared she would be refused because she wasn’t yet a householder. Malka had told her about some new arrivals who ran up bills with the local traders whilst living with landsleit, then disgraced their hosts by absconding to another town.
“Come again, we’re always happy to see new faces,” Mr. Radinsky said after he had weighed the onions and put them into her basket.
The warm words gave Sarah a pleasant feeling. One day she’d be a good customer here and pay her bills scrupulously. Meanwhile she must try to stem her impatience.
When she left the shop she met Rachel Moritz and was conscious of her shabby appearance beside the other woman’s attire. “That’s a nice coat you’ve got on, Mrs. Moritz,” she remarked as they walked home together. Her initial impression of Rachel was still with her and she could not think of anything else to say.
Rachel smoothed the soft brown pleats which flowed from her broad hips to her ankles. “It shouldn’t be?” she laughed. “With a tailor for a husband?”
“Mr. Moritz makes for ladies also?” Sarah said with surprise.
“Why not?”
“He measures them even?”
“What then?”
Sarah’s expression was shocked. “The bust and everything?”
Rachel pealed with laughter and Sarah had to laugh, too.
“If a woman let such a thing happen to her in Dvinsk, it wouldn’t be a laughing matter!”
“Vienna is more broadminded.”
“It sounds it.”
They turned the corner from the main road and Rachel held on to her hat as a gust of wind came scurrying to meet them. Sarah gathered her shawl closer around her. She could see the blue chenille curtains at Malka’s parlour window and wished she could delay her return to the house a little longer.
“How’re you getting on there with my next-door neighbours?” Rachel asked. Always sensitive to the feelings of others, she was aware that Sarah’s spirits had suddenly flagged.
“You lived with landsleit when you first came?” Sarah’s tone implied more than she had intended.
Rachel shook her head. “But I can imagine two women in one kitchen.”
Sarah found herself wanting to pour out all her frustrations, but managed to remain silent. It would seem like ingratitude to the Berkowitzes whom she could never repay for their generosity. “I haven’t had a cross word with Malka,” she said instead.
“That I can imagine also. You don’t seem the type for cross words. Listen, I always drink a cup of coffee when I get home from the marketing. You’d like to join me? Since the night you brought your boys to sleep with Carl you haven’t visited us. Here is an opportunity.”
Sarah drank only tea, but refrained from saying so. It was just one of the differences between Russians and Austrians she’d have to get used to if she was to have any Austrian friends. She was still far from sure she wanted any after that first encounter, but Rachel was certainly much nicer this time and the Moritz family was very kind to David and Sammy. “A cup of coffee would be very nice,” she smiled.
As she sat sipping the bitter black liquid, which she meant to swallow down even if it choked her, the Moritzes’ kitchen no longer seemed so austere. It was the same size as Malka’s, but appeared more spacious. Rachel had not deemed it necessary to supplement the built-in dresser under the window with an additional one, as Malka had; the dining set and Sigmund’s wing chair were the only furniture in the room. There was no clock on the mantelpiece to point out the time and Sarah felt unusually relaxed.
“Well,” Rachel smiled. She was perfectly at ease, her elbow resting on the table, the leg o’mutton sleeve of her crisp white blouse ballooning out as she cupped her cheek in her hand.
She looks as if she never lifts a finger, Sarah could not help thinking. But her immaculate home said otherwise.
Rachel rose to bring something from the dresser, her movements quiet and unhurried. She’s beautiful, Sarah thought. Why didn’t I notice it before? It wasn’t the kind of beauty a person would see immediately, ripe and blooming like Malka’s, but the kind that grew on you. She was above average height for a woman and shapely without being heavy. Nondescript brown hair and a pale complexion did nothing to enhance her irregular features, but the eyes, dark and shining, illuminated her face. It’s happiness that makes eyes shine that way, Sarah said to herself. But I’m happy with Abraham and mine’re not like that. Happiness didn’t always mean contentment, though.
Rachel returned to the table carrying a cake tin and sat down to open it, a smile hovering gently around her lips. Watching her, Sarah knew what it was that made her beautiful. Rachel Moritz was a contented woman.
“You must taste my Sachertorte,” she said taking some dark and sticky wedges from the tin and putting them on a plate.
Chocolate cake is chocolate cake, Sarah thought. Until she bit into it. The rich confection, tangy with an unexpected filling of apricot jam melted in her mouth, a culinary delight quite different from any she had experienced before. She wished Abraham could share it and felt a pang of guilt that she was enjoying herself whilst he was out looking for work.
“In Vienna we don’t eat it in the morning. Usually with our afternoon coffee. You like it, Mrs. Sandberg?”
“An ecstasy it is, Mrs. Moritz. My name is Sarah.”
“And mine is Rachel.”
They smiled warmly at each other.
How could I have thought this woman stuck-up? Sarah thought. It’ll teach me not to trust first impressions!
“With tea Sachertorte doesn’t go so well,” Rachel told her.
“So here I’ll drink coffee and you’ll have tea with sponge cake, light as a feather, when you visit my house.”
The promise reminded her that she had no house and her expression clouded. Rachel noticed, but made no comment and they fell silent. The quiet room, the wintry sunlight burnishing a yellow tureen on the dresser to gold, the singing of the metal coffee pot on the hob, and Rachel’s undemanding presence had a soothing effe
ct upon Sarah. Troubles she had, but for a little while she had been able to forget them.
Rachel surveyed her over the rim of her cup and saw a tiny woman, thin as a reed and yet with an undeniable strength about her. David, from whom the Moritzes had learned much about the Sandberg family, had said his mother was twenty-five, which was five years younger than herself, but Sarah looked older. Anxiety had etched premature lines on her forehead and a furrow had already begun to form above the bridge of her nose. The black hair, parted in the centre and dragged back severely into a bun at the nape of her neck, was winged with silver at the temples, giving her a striking appearance. Rachel had thought at first it was a sheitel, the wig which ultra-orthodox Jewesses wore after marriage, and wondered why she had chosen such an unusual one. Now, she saw it was her own hair. Rachel’s mother had wanted her to wear a wig after her marriage to Sigmund, but she had refused and Sarah had evidently done the same, as others of their generation had.
Sarah sat quietly in her chair and her careworn appearance tugged at Rachel’s heart strings. Thank God we left Vienna when we did, she thought. Carl’s broken glasses and a brick tossed through Sigmund’s workshop window were nothing compared with what the Sandbergs must have endured. There had not been pogroms in Austria and many people thought the current Jew-baiting would peter out. Sigmund had not disagreed, but one day it would erupt like a volcano, he had warned those who thought him foolish to flee. “Why wait until your life depends on it?” he had asked them. As always with him, it was a considered decision and Rachel was now quite certain he had been right.
“Any coffee for me?” he said from the doorway. The parlour was his workroom, which was why the bookshelves were in the kitchen. “How nice to see you,” he greeted Sarah and stood smiling at her, a thickset little man with pins jabbed hither and thither in his waistcoat, his tape measure festooned around his neck, the tools of his trade making him much less awe-inspiring than she had hitherto found him. “Your sons we’re already getting to know very well,” he chuckled. “And let me tell you something. That David of yours has a head which will take him a long way. The questions he asks!”
“I hope he isn’t being a bother to you,” Sarah apologised.
“There’s nothing I enjoy more than a clever child.”
Sarah had always known David was clever, but in Russia it had not been important. Jews who received an education in anything other than Hebrew were few and far between there and she had never met anyone who had. Sigmund’s pronouncement opened up a new avenue of thought.
“He’ll be something, take my word for it,” Sigmund declared sitting down to drink the coffee Rachel had poured for him.
“Maybe,” Sarah smiled. Then she pushed the idea away. For David to be something would cost money.
Sigmund took a book from a shelf he could reach without rising from the table, opened it at random and was immediately absorbed in it, but Sarah did not feel insulted.
“What can you do with him? He likes to read,” Rachel said. She sat watching him with the gentle smile about her lips again. She had taken no part in the conversation, almost as if her own presence ceased to matter the moment he entered the room, but her eyes had rarely left him. He seemed unaware of her, but Sarah felt he was not.
“What’s the book he’s reading this time?” Sarah asked her.
“Listen, with him it doesn’t matter. Half of them he knows by heart anyway.”
In Vienna, Sigmund had used the workroom which had once been his father’s. Here, his earnings were not sufficient for him to rent separate premises, but he had begun to like the improvised arrangements which allowed him to put down his needle and lose himself in his books whenever he had a moment to spare.
“Sometimes, I’m not sure if it’s a tailor’s shop we’ve got here, or a meeting place for professors, you should see what goes on with some of his customers,” Rachel chuckled to Sarah. Some of them were other Viennese of his ilk, armchair philosophers inclined to launch into intellectual discussions while he fitted their suits and working at home enabled him to dive into the kitchen and emerge with a volume which would prove his point and allow him to win the argument.
Sarah rose and picked up her shopping basket. “Malka will think I’ve run away with the onions!” she laughed. “Also I’ve stayed too long, taking up your time.”
“What’s a bit of time between friends?” Rachel replied and Sigmund raised his head from the book to nod his agreement.
“A nice little woman, not a chatterbox,” he said after she had left. But Rachel had the feeling there was more to Sarah Sandberg than that.
Chapter 4
The Chevrah Habimah was one of the many small congregations which flourished in Strangeways and, like the shuls in the old shtetlachs, it was not just a building where prayers were said, but also a meeting place.
It was here that Shloime Lipkin had taken Abraham on the day they trekked round the factories together and since then he had often enjoyed a midday chat with Rabbi Lensky and others like himself who welcomed a brief respite from their search for work.
“The price of a glass of tea is a smile,” the little minister told newcomers to the circle. “If you’re going to be miserable, why bother to come in out of the rain?” Rabbi Lensky was a Hassid, one of the humanitarian sect who believe that sadness hinders devotion and that life is meant to be lived, rather than pondered upon. “My personal bonus is you’ll stay with your cheerful faces to say the afternoon prayer with me,” he always added.
Synagogue services required a minimum congregation of ten men and sometimes it was necessary to fetch some passers-by from the street to complete the number. However pressing a man’s business might be, he would not refuse to make up a minyan for prayer. But these occasions were rare at the Chevrah Habimah, where the walls were more often than not lined with men leaning against them because all the chairs were occupied.
At midday, the rabbi served tea in the kitchen at the back of the dilapidated house. The front room was the shul. Upstairs was uninhabitable.
“Why don’t you tell us how to keep cheerful, Rabbi?” Shloime said wryly one day. “Without a penny in our pockets and sponging off landsleit.”
“When they throw you out you’ll have something to cry about. A man can always find a reason to rejoice which tells him God hasn’t deserted him.”
But sometimes you have to look hard to find it and you can’t help feeling maybe He has, Abraham thought.
The minister refilled the kettle and put it on to boil again when Yankel Cohen came in with Yossel Lensky. “No luck this morning, my friends?”
They warmed their hands by the fire and managed to grin as they shook their heads.
A lad with a craggy face and burning eyes, whom Abraham had not met before, took his glass to the sink to rinse it. They had to take turns to drink their tea because there were not enough glasses. “If God hasn’t deserted us, why can’t we find work?” he asked bitterly.
Everyone fell silent. There was not one among them who had not asked himself that question.
Rabbi Lensky glanced compassionately at the weary-faced men for whom this brief interlude in God’s house was the only comfort in their fruitless daily round. Some had taken off their coats and steam was rising from their coarse wool shirts as they crouched by the fire to dry off. “God wants to be sure you’ll value it when you get it, Simon,” he said to the lad with conviction. “What other reason could there be for the merciful Lord to prolong such misery?”
“How could He possibly think we won’t?” Shloime exclaimed.
Talking about God as if He were a flesh and blood person was not unusual among members of this congregation. Another Hassidic concept is that even the commonest man can find Him in his everyday life and many Hassidim told Him their problems as they would to a trusted friend.
“He’s had plenty of experience with people who don’t,” the rabbi replied slicing up another lemon for the next lot of tea. He picked up a whole one and looked at it. �
��Not everyone is like Mr. Radinsky the greengrocer who gives my young congregant Menachem a bagful of these to bring to me for these gatherings. Mr. Radinsky isn’t even a member of my shul, but he hasn’t forgotten when he too tramped his feet off looking for work.”
“Are you saying God wants us to suffer so we’ll appreciate His help when we get it?” Simon demanded.
“How long have you been in England, young man?”
“Six months.”
“And already you’ve forgotten what suffering is?”
Simon’s face flushed with shame.
“Listen, it’s easy to do, my boy. The present is always more important that the past. I also have my lapses of memory,” Rabbi Lensky confessed. “Who doesn’t?” He chuckled as he handed glasses of tea to the late arrivals. “Shall I tell you why I called this shul Habimah?”
Abraham laughed. “When we came here the first Friday night and I saw just the rows of chairs before the Ark, with no bimah for you to stand upon, I and my sons wondered.”
“That’s the reason for the name, Abie.”
Abraham exchanged a puzzled glance with the other men. "The shul is called after something it hasn’t got?”
Everyone laughed.
Shloime raised his eyes to the cracked ceiling. “You think He also sees the joke, Rabbi?”
“Why not? It isn’t on Him, it’s on me and it isn’t really a joke, it’s a reminder. In my little shul in Rostov, where my Cousin Yossel here was married to Hannah, a carpenter friend of mine built me a beautiful bimah. You remember, Yossel?”
“Three steps it had leading up to it, with a banister to hold onto and a railing all the way round, of polished wood,” Yossel recalled. “I also remember how those barbarians chopped it to pieces.”