Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  Abraham spat on his finger and dabbed the iron to test the heat. “She can cook also?”

  “Last night I had potato latkes at her house to melt in the mouth,” Salaman drooled ecstatically.

  “I’m very pleased for you.”

  “There’s only one thing, Abie.”

  Abraham knew what it was without being told.

  “My Bessie, bless her, she doesn’t like her.” Salaman sighed heavily and lit one of the cigarettes he chain-smoked to pacify himself.

  Ladies of all shapes and sizes had been presented for his selection since the death of his wife. Several had taken his fancy, but none had taken Bessie’s. Everyone but Salaman himself was aware that Bessie had no intention of having a stepmother. Her father introduced each new candidate to her with hope in his heart, but she found fault with all of them.

  “If a man doesn’t listen to his own flesh and blood, Abie, there’d only be trouble afterwards.” Salaman heaved himself off the stool and began pacing restlessly, weaving his way between the piles of unpressed garments which littered the floor, as if the movement might help him get whatever was ailing him out of his system.

  “It’s me my daughter’s thinking of!” he declaimed halting by the ironing board, his fierce gaze challenging Abraham to deny this.

  The underpresser had been sent on an errand, which always meant Salaman wanted to talk to Abraham alone. After he had unburdened himself, he would waddle back to the workroom with his feelings temporarily relieved, but would return to repeat the process a few days later, when his inner turmoil was ready to erupt again.

  Abraham would not have dreamed of denying his employer’s interpretation of Bessie’s motives, though he was sure it was incorrect. Salaman must be allowed to believe somebody loved him.

  “Like her brother she isn’t,” the unhappy man said sourly. “I could get run over by a tram and Saul wouldn’t care.” He blew his nose as emotions overcame him. “Such a life I’ve got, Abie. So what can you do?”

  Abraham thought there was plenty he could do about Bessie, who was now eleven and not a pleasant girl. Spoiled children were hard to find in Strangeways, but Bessie was a notable exception. He recalled how after her mother’s death she had been petted by everybody, but had been quick to take advantage of the kindness showered upon her. Sympathy does not last forever and people came to realise she had been over-indulged all her life. How could a man as shrewd as Salaman be putty in her hands? Abraham had often asked himself when Bessie flounced into the factory as if she, not he, owned it and was rude to the workers. But Salaman would just pat her pudgy cheeks and beam with pride. And his meanness did not extend to her, there was nothing she could not have if she sat on his lap and asked for it, Abraham had seen her do this many times.

  God help him when she grows up, he thought. As yet her wants were limited to having more of everything than her schoolmates had. The other little girls only had one Sabbath outfit and were glad to have that, but Bessie had two.

  “You’ve seen my little princess in her new coat, Abie?” Salaman asked. “She fancied one like Miriam Moritz’s so I asked your friend the tailor to make it for her.”

  Abraham started guiltily. It was as though Salaman had been reading his thoughts! “Sigmund told me, he said it fitted her like a glove.”

  “It shouldn’t? With what I paid him for it?”

  Abraham had not seen Bessie in the coat, but his children had told him she looked dreadful in it, because it was green, like Miriam’s, and made her skin look the same colour. He tried to discourage them from disliking Bessie, but could well understand why they did. She never offered her sweets, though she was the only one who ever had money to buy any and he had once seen her wave a liquorice stick, tauntingly, under Esther’s envious nose.

  “Saul? He could stand on his head and I wouldn’t have a new coat made for him,” Salaman suddenly flared. “The old raincoat he has from the factory is more than he deserves, the way he treats me!” he added as he went back to the workroom.

  But Abraham knew that Saul never asked his father for anything. He was the direct opposite of Bessie and would have given his last farthing to anyone in need. Eli the cutter had once told him Mrs. Salaman had been like that and it had made trouble for her with her husband.

  Saul had left school recently and was working in the factory, but spent his days watching the clock until he could go to see Helga. When his father returned from talking with Abraham, he treadled his sewing machine faster. Salaman had that effect on everyone.

  “Remember, a boy who will one day own a business must be able to do every job properly himself,” Salaman said inspecting the garment in Saul’s machine and frowning at a crooked seam. “If I let you do the cutting, the garments would only be fit for humpbacks!” he exclaimed wrathfully.

  Saul was to be taught every aspect of the trade, but his apathy was plain to see. If only he was like David Sandberg, Salaman thought as his son returned his gaze sullenly. A boy with a head on him. Ambitious. Who respects his father. The last thought was like gall in his throat. He was wealthier than anyone realised and it might seem strange that a man in his position should envy a presser earning a pittance. But Salaman did.

  David rose on the morning of his Bar Mitzvah with all a young boy’s excitement at the dawning of a great day. A January frost had powdered the rooftops and the pavements whilst he slept and he scraped the soles of his new shoes with Sammy’s penknife so he would not slip whilst walking to shul, hoping God would forgive him for doing this on Shabbos.

  His mother had laid out the blue serge suit and the pristine white shirt he was to wear with it in the parlour. He tiptoed downstairs and dressed there, in the biting cold, before anyone else was up.

  The kitchen clock said 6:30 and the service would not begin until eight. How was he to pass the hour and a half which stretched between? He took down the mirror from the wall and balanced it against a chair, to admire his long trousers. Having his legs covered meant nobody would notice his knees knocking when he got up to read his portion of the Torah. Perhaps that was why boys had their first pair of long trousers for their Bar Mitzvah? Would the suit still fit him in five years’ time, so he could wear it for university when he went there to study law? When Jim had first told him about his father’s offer to article him, he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Now, it was just the goal he must aim for. Sometimes, he daydreamed about sitting at a big desk opposite Jim, with legal documents spread all around them. But most of the time he kept his mind on his studies, which was the way to make the dream come true. He had to pass his matriculation exam, but did not doubt he would do so.

  He was still gazing at his trousers in the mirror, deliberately thinking of everything but his Bar Mitzvah, when the rest of the family trooped in and roared with laughter. His mother served breakfast, when Mrs. Moritz arrived to help her prepare the food for those who would come home with them after the service.

  Cakes and wine for the congregation had been taken to the synagogue yesterday. Everything was under control, except David’s nerves. His teeth began to chatter when they left the house and he said it was because he was cold, but nobody believed him.

  Sitting on his hard, wooden chair, with his father and Sammy on one side of him and Sigmund on the other, he calmed down. The shul was full of men and being Bar Mitzvah had happened to all of them. He wished he could see his mother and Miriam, but they were hidden behind the brown-cloth screen. Isaac Salaman arrived with Saul and shook his hand solemnly. Then Rabbi Lensky took his place in the pulpit and he knew nothing could stop it from happening. Soon, Mr. Rubens the beadle would beckon to him and he would have to stand up before the congregation.

  When the moment came, he was not scared at all. His father was already standing beside the rabbi, waiting to receive him. The scrolls on which the Torah was inscribed had been taken from the holy Ark and their rich, velvet and gold covers removed. The one from which he was to read was open on the lectern, ready for him to begin. />
  At first, hearing his own voice chanting in the thick silence unnerved him, but he kept his eyes glued to the rabbi’s silver pointer moving swiftly along the lines of Hebrew words and soon was conscious of nothing but being a Jewish boy on his Bar Mitzvah day, as the timelessness of the occasion washed over him.

  His mother’s face glowed with pride when she kissed him after the service. But first his hand was wrung by so many people it ached and the word Mazeltov! deafened his ears. The party at home was the happiest time he could remember. Except that Bessie Salaman was there and kept gazing at him like a sick cow, which embarrassed him.

  Because it was Shabbos, the Berkowitzes had not been able to travel from Leeds, but had sent David a beautiful tallith bag. Isaac Salaman had given him a tie-pin and Mr. Moritz’s present was two books instead of the usual one, to mark the special occasion; Treasure Island and Kidnapped, which he couldn’t wait to read. Most of the other guests had bought him prayer books, he had enough to fill a whole shelf of his orange-box bookcase. But the most significant gift was from his parents, a grown-up tallith, and a set of tephillin to lay upon his arm and his head every morning except the Sabbath and Holy Days for the rest of his life.

  His mother had invited the three families who had travelled to England with them, which meant his friend Lazar Lensky was there as well as Saul. If only Jim could be here, too, he thought, but he had not dared suggest it to his parents. “A goy in shul?” They would have said in shocked voices. And perhaps Jim wouldn’t have been comfortable in a cramped little house, at a party where all the adults spoke a mixture of English and Yiddish. His Gentile friend’s absence emphasised the difference between their two worlds, but he brushed his regret aside and enjoyed himself.

  “So, David!” his mother said with satisfaction that night.

  They were alone in the kitchen and she had just finished clearing up. It had taken her a long time, today they had used the parlour, too. The rest of the family were in bed, but David was too elated to feel tired.

  “I don’t have to worry about my Bar Mitzvah anymore,” he laughed contentedly.

  “Before it you don’t have other worries,” she said stirring the dying coals into a last blaze. “But now you’re not a child anymore.”

  David knew the Bar Mitzvah ceremony traditionally admits a boy to manhood, but he did not feel any different from how he had felt before it and smiled at his mother’s literal interpretation.

  “How is the school work going?” she asked him.

  “How’s yours going?” he joked. “I still can’t believe you’re going to night school, even though you are!”

  “I know my ABC already,” she said proudly.

  David grinned.

  “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  He told her he was doing well. But she knew this, he always got good reports. Why was she asking?

  “I wish it would be possible for you to stay there longer, David.”

  He felt his stomach lurch. What did she mean?

  “Next year you’ll be fourteen. It’s necessary for a boy of that age to be an earner, with people like us.”

  People like us. The words reverberated in the room. His mother had spoken them once before, when they first came to England and he asked her why his father couldn’t find work. Mr. Moritz had said by the time David grew up he would have learned what she meant, that it was best to find out for himself. And now he understood. She meant people who weren’t like the Forrests. Who had to try harder than others to achieve exactly the same thing and ought not to expect to achieve it. “You want me to leave school,” he said flatly.

  “It’s not what I want, David, but the way it has to be.”

  His mother looked pale and drawn and her knuckles gleamed white as she gripped the brass rail on the fireguard.

  “Why?” he flung at her. “So we’re not wealthy, but I work, don’t I? All the fruit and veg we have I bring home from Mr. Radinsky’s!”

  “But this is not enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  She gazed into the fire for a moment, then turned to look at him again. “For a family where there’s going to be another mouth to feed. I’m expecting a baby, David.”

  He had not noticed her thickened waistline, but now he did. He brushed the shock aside. Sigmund Moritz had advised him to say nothing about Mr. Forrest’s offer for the present. But if he told her it might change her mind. It did not occur to him that she already knew.

  “What’s so special you want to be a solicitor?” she asked after she had listened to him enthuse about it.

  “A professional man’s somebody. You should see how the Forrests live, Mother, then you wouldn’t have to ask. If I don’t get a good education, I’ll end up like Father.”

  “Your father is a bad person to end up like?”

  “It isn’t the sort of person he is, it’s what he’s done with his life.”

  “To bring up a boy to be Bar Mitzvah is nothing? Going without many a time, so he should have!”

  “Achievement isn’t just what you do for your family.”

  “For your father and me nothing is more important.”

  “Then why’re you making me leave school?”

  “I am not doing it. Life is doing it.”

  The dream of himself and Jim together at the big desk crumbled to dust. He felt the hope ebb out of him and buried his face in his hands. When he looked up his mother was fingering her brooch and gazing at him pleadingly.

  “So you’ll be something else,” she told him.

  “What for instance?” he asked dully.

  “Who knows? You’ll still have your brains even without an education. Maybe you’ll be a businessman one day, like Salaman.”

  David thought of how Salaman spent his days and felt suddenly sick.

  “When the time comes for the new baby’s education, if God gives me another son, perhaps the family will be able to afford it,” his mother said quietly. “But for you such big ideas are too soon. Didn’t I warn you, David.”

  Chapter 10

  Nathan Edward Sandberg came into the world on 16th May 1910 and was welcomed joyously by every member of his family except one.

  Because she had initially not wanted him, Sarah had been haunted during her pregnancy by fear that God would punish her by marring the child. When he was placed in her arms by the midwife and pronounced perfect, relief and gratitude mingled with the tenderness she instinctively felt for him. He was smaller than her other babies had been and strikingly beautiful. His features were regular like Abraham’s, but his colouring was hers and even at birth he had a mane of silky black hair.

  Her labour had been long and Abraham paced the house like a man demented, waiting for it to end. Sigmund, who kept him company, had not thought him capable of such powerful feeling. When he heard the child cry, he raced upstairs and burst into the room. At first, he only had eyes for Sarah, who lay back on the pillows exhausted.

  “We’ve got an Englishman in the family now,” she whispered happily.

  Abraham looked at his son and was moved to tears.

  The children were spending the night at the Moritzes’ and did not see their new brother until the next morning. Sammy and Esther stroked him gently and said how pretty he was. David barely glanced at him.

  The baby arrived just ten days after the King’s death and because he was the first English-born Sandberg was given Edward as one of his names, which accorded with the Jewish custom of calling children after the departed. Sarah’s father had been called Nathan.

  At his brith, when Rabbi Silverstein the mohel came to perform the ritual circumcision, the house in Moreton Street was again the scene of a celebration, but this time it was David’s baby brother who was the centre of attention.

  The circumcision was to take place in the parlour, but first the baby must be dressed in his finery and Rachel, who was to be his godmother, helped Sarah put the finishing touches to it. They were in the kitchen with their daughters and
some women neighbours.

  “So give him to me already!” Rachel chuckled when the child was ready and Sarah still clutched him to her breast. “The men are waiting to begin.”

  Sigmund was godfather and nervous about the responsibility. He popped his head round the door. “Come on already, Rachel!”

  Rachel lifted the infant from Sarah’s arms. “Hold the pillow for me, someone. You’ve forgotten that’s how I have to carry him in?”

  Esther and Miriam and Bessie Salaman, whose father had brought her along, reached for the pillow together, but Helga took it and held it aloft for her mother to place the baby upon its snowy softness.

  Rachel smoothed down her brown bombazine dress, everyone was in their best for the occasion, and carried the pillow, with its precious burden, to hand it over to Sigmund. She was glad that Isaac Salaman and not her husband had been given the honour of holding the baby’s legs whilst he was circumcised, Sigmund had even less stomach than most men for such things.

  “So tiny he is,” Sarah whispered as the darling of her heart was borne away to his ancient Hebrew fate. His robe and hat were those worn by David and Sammy at their brith, sewn by her mother who had held her hand both times until the ordeal was over.

  Zelda Cohen, who had just moved into the house next-door-but-one, looked at her enviously. “God should only give me a son. My Yankel would like another man in the family.” She emitted one of her nervy hee-haws and folded her arms on her pregnant stomach. So far, God had given her four more daughters to keep Naomi, born on the boat, company, but Yankel kept on trying.

  “You think the baby’s all right?” Sarah asked Rachel anxiously when she returned to her side.

  Rachel took her hand, as her mother had done, and pressed it comfortingly. “The first to have a brith he isn’t, and he won’t be the last either.”

  Bessie began to giggle, but Miriam prodded her into silence. Only a stupid thing like Bessie Salaman would laugh when a little baby was having that dreadful thing done to him, Miriam thought contemptuously.