Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  “And now I’m here, in a shul with no bimah,” the rabbi said quietly. “But one day, with your help my friends, we’ll move to a better building and there’ll be a bimah in the centre for me to stand upon. Maybe it’ll be the finest shul in Manchester, but I, its minister, will not get too big for my boots, I’ll have the name, like a piece of thread tied around my finger, to remind me from whence I came.”

  A few days later, Abraham found a job and began work immediately. Sarah was overjoyed when he arrived back in the evening and told her.

  “Have we got any money left?” he asked her urgently.

  She looked in her purse and found a shilling, the change after they had bought their railway tickets.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Our last shilling? What do you want it for?”

  Abraham took the coin from her. “To buy a little tea and sugar for Rabbi Lensky and I’m going to buy him some every week for the rest of my life.”

  Sarah looked bewildered. Abraham had not told her about the rabbi’s midday gatherings and she was not the only wife in Strangeways who believed her husband’s days were unrelieved gloom. “You’re going to buy tea and sugar for Rabbi Lensky every week for the rest of your life? Why?”

  She was no less bewildered by Abraham’s reply.

  “Because he’s not short of lemons.”

  David could not remember when his father had last looked so happy. “Will we be able to have our own house now Father’s working?” he asked with a note of longing in his voice he did not know was there.

  Sarah brushed a stray lock from his forehead and thought, absently, that it was odd how his sidelocks curled but the rest of his hair was as straight as her own. “We’ll see,” she said softly, though in her imagination she was already hanging curtains at the windows of her new home.

  “Your mother won’t stay here a day longer than she has to, David, she’s had enough of us!” Malka joked.

  Sarah smiled and felt guilty because it was the truth, but Abraham’s finding work lightened the atmosphere in the house and there was an air of festivity when they all sat down for supper, as if the frugal fare was a celebratory meal. Esther and Bella and Lakie were allowed to stay up late to eat with the others and Chaim was even more boisterous than usual.

  “A toast to the new presser!” he bellowed raising his bowl of soup and quaffing some down.

  “You’ll burn your tongue!” Malka screeched.

  “Then he won’t be able to talk anymore,” Abraham laughed.

  “You look nice when you laugh, Mr. Sandberg,” one of the little Berkowitz twins piped up.

  “It’s nice to have something to laugh about, Lakie.”

  “I’m Bella.”

  “So who could tell the difference?”

  “Lakie’s got a spot on her chin,” Sammy said eyeing the rosy face opposite him.

  “Only when she’s eating black bread with caraway seed,” Malka chuckled.

  “When I get my wages, you’ll let Sarah buy a bone from the butcher Malka, to help the soup,” Abraham said tasting the thin liquid.

  “Why not, now you’re earning? Independent I am, but not that independent!”

  “Shloime Lipkin’s working now, also,” Abraham told Sarah. “Yesterday his landsleit ran to fetch him when someone dropped dead at the shmearing bench where he works and Shloime ran back with him without even putting on his coat and got taken on in the man’s place. I’m sorry for him.”

  “It’s the man who dropped dead you should be sorry for.”

  Abraham put down his spoon contemplatively. “When it comes to being a shmearer I’m not so sure. Pressing’s not what I’m used to, but at least it’s a pleasure to make a garment look neat and nice.”

  Sarah eyed the heaped basket of laundry awaiting her attention. “So I’ll let you do the ironing in future,” she said slyly.

  “That much of a pleasure it isn’t!”

  “Listen, a trade’s a trade,” Chaim declared. And getting into one’s the hardest part. Thank God Abie’s managed to do it.”

  Abraham steeled himself to receive the clap on the back he knew was coming.

  “You’re a fortunate fellow, Abie!” Chaim pronounced as he delivered it.

  “I know.” But sometimes before your luck can be good, someone else’s has to be bad, Abraham thought. Like with me and Shloime.

  When they went to bed Sarah fell asleep immediately, as if her worries were over. Abraham lay tossing and turning. He had not wanted to upset her by telling her his job might only be temporary. Nor had he mentioned the circumstances which led to him getting it, which try as he would he could not put from his mind.

  That morning, he had wandered up Southall Street, a byway he had so far avoided because it was beside the jail. Someone had told him that murderers were hung at Strangeways and once he had seen a man with a black leather valise heading in that direction and wondered if he was the executioner carrying his rope. Who wants to be reminded of that every morning on their way to work? A nice start to the day! he had said to himself. But there were factories nearby and this morning he had forced himself to go there.

  One of them had seemed busier than the others. Some men were unloading lumps of cloth from a cart and carrying them inside and the rattle of many sewing machines was loud enough to be heard in the street. When he entered there was no smell of varnish, which meant it was not a waterproof factory. Maybe I’m not fated to be a shmearer, he had thought hopefully.

  The place was bigger than most of the others at which he had called. Please God, let them need me, he had prayed as he made for the stairs. Then a scene he could not help witnessing through the open doorway at the far end of the long lobby stopped him in his tracks.

  A woman lay shivering on a sofa, though she was covered with many blankets. She looked extremely ill and a fat little girl stood beside her, holding her hand. A boy of about David’s age was bathing her brow, soaking a rag in a bowl of water and wringing it out carefully before applying it.

  “The noise of the machines is like an engine in my head,” the woman moaned. “I never have a minute’s peace from it.”

  Gaslight from a wall bracket above their heads cast an opalescent haze onto the trio and Abraham had the feeling he was looking at a picture. It was one he would remember all his life.

  The woman raised herself and peered in his direction. “Always people in the house. Close the door, Bessie!” she shrieked feverishly and the little girl slammed it shut.

  The clatter of the sewing machines grew louder as Abraham mounted the stairs. A hot mist greeted him when he reached the landing, and the acrid smell of singeing cloth, drifting from the pressing room. Above the noise, shouts of rage could be heard and a choice selection of Yiddish curses. Abraham’s instinct was to retreat downstairs, but he stood rooted when a portly man confronted him.

  “Just today she has to take bad!” the man ranted as if it was Abraham’s fault. “When the underpresser has gone somewhere else to work, for more money. The pox take him!” He glared at Abraham from beneath hooded eyelids, the cigarette in his mouth dripping ash onto his well-stained waistcoat. “I ask you what can you do with someone like that?”

  Abraham spread his hands for want of an answer.

  “So this morning I let a boy do the pressing. Holes he burns in the garments! You’re maybe a presser, I should be so lucky?”

  Abraham thought quickly, an unusual exercise for him, but urgency spurred him on. “I can do better than a boy who burns holes in garments.” He was sure this was not a lie, though what it implied certainly was.

  “So come inside!”

  He found himself being steered through the clouds of steam into the pressing room and thus it was that he entered his life’s work. Years of cobbling had made his fingers nimble and his hands deft. He had no difficulty in manipulating the heavy flat iron and soon became adept at exerting just the correct amount of pressure where it was required. The steamy atmosphere was not pleasant, but compared
with the shmearing he had feared would be his lot, it was paradise.

  “He’s a treasure! A find!” the excitable man exulted examining his work. “So nu! Press the next coat already, there’s plenty more where that came from.” He stemmed his enthusiasm shrewdly. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll keep you on. Half-a-crown a week I’ll pay you, piece work I’m not interested in here.”

  How many hours a week’s work comprised he forbore to mention, but Abraham learned from one of the machiners that it sometimes meant all the hours God sends.

  “Here, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth,” the machiner shrugged.

  “Listen, plenty of people would be glad of the opportunity,” Abraham replied.

  “That’s why he gets away with it. But at least with Isaac Salaman you know you’ve got a steady job and you’ll find out his bark is worse than his bite. Also, in the places where they pay piecework rates they take home more than we do when business is good, but when it’s bad they get next to nothing and we still get the same as usual. When things’re very bad the whole trade is laid off, but our jobs’re waiting for us when business picks up. With the pieceworkers it’s different, the job they had before the lay-off could be given to someone else when it’s over. My name’s Issie, by the way. I just popped in here to tell you it’s dinnertime.”

  “I’m much obliged.”

  Issie grinned at him from behind horn-rimmed spectacles and adjusted the yamulke on his prematurely bald head. “With my hairstyle you need glue to keep this on? So welcome to the madhouse. Bring your food to eat it with us in the workroom if you like,” he said as he left.

  Abraham continued pressing the garment on the ironing board and tried to ignore the hunger pangs in his stomach.

  “A worker who works in the dinner break?” Salaman said from the doorway. “Didn’t I say he was a find? You don’t feel like eating, Abie?”

  “I didn’t bring anything with me, Mr. Salaman.”

  “So today you’ll share mine, or where will you get the strength from to press all the garments I’m going to bring in here this afternoon?”

  Salaman hustled him into the workroom. Though he lived on the premises, he always ate with the workers at midday, to ensure the break did not last too long.

  The workroom was as chaotic as all the others Abraham had seen, but larger than most of them and with more staff. The machiners were eating at their machines.

  “Mind you don’t drip anything onto that garment!” Salaman barked to a lad who was biting into a pickled cucumber. “Brine stains as well as holes burned in the coats is all I need. This is Abie Sandberg, everybody, who’s helping us out in the pressing room,” he announced turning on a smile.

  Abraham’s heart sank because it did not sound very permanent. He sat down with Salaman beside the cutting bench and accepted the bagel and cheese the employer offered him. Eli the cutter had gone to chat with Issie and Salaman gave Abraham his undivided attention.

  “What would I’ve done if you hadn’t turned up when you did?” he said in a voice which made Abraham feel like a delivering angel. “You look like an understanding man, who else’ve I got to talk to? Everyone’s wrapped up in themselves, they don’t care what trouble I’ve got. My wife, she’s full of imaginary ailments but never before did she stay away from the factory. If she keeps on doing it, where will I be? She’s my head presser who I’ve always relied on, Abie.”

  Abraham recalled the ghastly pallor of the woman he’d seen lying on the sofa downstairs, and her feverish shrieks. “She’s seen the doctor?” he asked.

  Salaman smiled disparagingly. “Every other week she sees the doctor, he never finds anything wrong with her.”

  “All the same, maybe you should call him.”

  “And make a fool of myself?” Salaman wolfed down the last of his food and rose from the stool which creaked under his weight. “All right already!” he bellowed to his staff. “Back to work!”

  How can a man who’s kind enough to share his dinner with me also be the sort who shouts at his workers like dogs? Abraham asked himself as he followed Salaman out of the workroom chewing a bit of bagel. The machiners were still chewing, too, but their feet had begun treadling before their boss made his exit.

  In many respects, Salaman was a harsh employer, but he would listen sympathetically to a worker’s domestic problems, his pasty face solemn, and had even been known to buy a bunch of grapes for somebody’s dying mother. Sharing his meal with Abraham was one of those spasmodic generosities.

  During the afternoon, when he was carrying a pile of garments into the pressing room, his little girl began screaming that her mother had fainted. He dropped the coats and rushed downstairs, but not without noticing the reproachful glance Abraham could not help giving him. This time his wife was really ill, but he had not believed her.

  She was taken to the Jewish Hospital and Salaman accompanied her. He had not returned yet when the factory closed for the night and Abraham went home.

  Supposing she dies? Abraham tortured himself as he lay awake thinking about it. I wouldn’t want Mr. Salaman’s children to have no mother, just so I can have her job. “Do me a favour, God,” he whispered to the ceiling before he fell asleep. “And don’t think I’m not grateful for the one you’ve already done me. Let Mrs. Salaman get better and be her husband’s head presser again. And if you could also arrange for me to be her assistant I’ll be very obliged.”

  When he went to work the next morning, Eli the cutter told him that Salaman was still at the hospital.

  Abraham raised his eyes to the ceiling reproachfully. He did so frequently as three days passed by and his employer had not come back.

  Eli, who had been with Salaman longer than anyone else, was doing his best to keep things going. “There’s something wrong with your neck, Abie?” he inquired on the fourth morning when he brought some garments and the news that the boss was still absent and Abraham raised his eyes to the ceiling again. “A nervous twitch maybe?”

  Abraham let the question pass and pressed a lapel so Eli would not see the guilt on his face. “I keep hoping you’ll bring good news.”

  Eli dumped a pile of creased coats on the floor. “The while I’m bringing you these, we don’t want him to think we’ve taken advantage of his trouble, when he gets back.” He scratched his bulbous nose which looked like a large pink cherry on his long face. “Mr. Salaman’s sister’s taken the kids to her house. But an auntie isn’t a mother,” he added ominously.

  Abraham’s gaze jerked upwards again.

  “I’d get that seen to if I were you, it gives a person the creeps,” the cutter told him as he hurried from the room.

  Salaman returned that afternoon and seemed unable to believe his factory had functioned without him. His wife was dead and he could not believe that either. “It’s God’s will,” he said heavily to his hushed employees.

  Rabbi Blasberg from his shul was with him and nodded gravely. “God’s ways are mysterious. We mustn’t question them.”

  Mysterious is right, Abraham thought with mixed feelings. He would never question them again.

  During the ritual week of mourning which followed his wife’s funeral, Salaman sat on a low stool as custom demanded, receiving the condolences of his visitors, his son and daughter on either side of him. Little Bessie clung to his arm as if she would never release it, but Saul was seen to shrug off his father’s hand when the grieving man placed it on his shoulder.

  “So Saul doesn’t want to be treated like a baby,” Sarah interpreted this when Abraham told her about it. But to Abraham, the boy’s behaviour did not seem natural.

  He visited Salaman every evening and joined in the prayers for Mrs. Salaman’s departed soul, which he felt was the least he could do under all the circumstances. His employer always clutched his hand, gratefully, before he left and looked at him with eyes that seemed to be trying to say something.

  When Salaman returned to the factory, nothing was mentioned about Abraham’s job being temp
orary and a few days later a youth was engaged to assist him. God and events had made him the head presser and his wage was raised to five shillings.

  Chapter 5

  Sarah began looking for a house, though Abraham had no immediate prospect of increasing his earnings. But once under their own roof, they would manage somehow. Years afterwards, she wondered how she had had the nerve and her grandchildren thought she had made the story up.

  She decided on one with three bedrooms, which cost six-pence a week more than those with two. This would leave only two shillings with which to feed and clothe the family, but she was not daunted. She wanted a home in which her children could grow up. Eventually, little Esther would require her own room, it would not be seemly for her to share with her brothers. Meanwhile, the spare bedroom would be an investment. She would take a lodger, whose payment for bed and board would help out. By the time the room was needed for Esther, David would be earning and the lodger’s contribution would not be missed. Her mind ticked away busily, planning for the future, which left her no time to brood about the present.

  She found a house in Moreton Street. It would not become vacant until next month, but the Berkowitzes were now accepting payment for their hospitality and she felt better about receiving it. Malka’s slothfulness ceased to depress her once she knew she would soon be leaving it, but the day she moved out was one of the happiest of her life.

  “I can’t bear you to go, it’s been so lovely having you for company all day,” Malka said tearfully.

  “They’re only going a stone’s throw from our street,” Chaim comforted her. “We’ll be able to run round and borrow things.”

  “For you two we’d give our last,” Abraham said gruffly.

  Sarah looked at the slapdash, noisy couple who were as different from herself and Abraham as oil from water and was ashamed of how she had sometimes felt about them. “There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you,” she told them sincerely.

  “So let’s get you moved into your house already!” Chaim bellowed to cover what was an emotional moment for all of them.