Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  Everyone had fallen silent; waiting for the child’s return was always a strain for the women, though they knew he was unlikely to feel the surgery because the mohel would dope him with kosher wine dropped onto his tongue from a bit of cotton which had been soaked in it.

  “My dad says the baby sometimes gets shikker,” Bessie said giggling again. Drunken babies were the light-hearted side of every brith. Her eye roved to the cakes on the table. “When can we have something to eat, Mrs. Sandberg?”

  Sarah was too preoccupied to reply.

  Miriam did it for her. “It’s no wonder you’re fat, Bessie. You can’t have anything till the baby comes back, you greedy thing!”

  Bessie made a dive for the dish of Sachertorte Rachel had brought as Sigmund entered with his godson.

  “Mazeltov!” he beamed depositing Nathan in Sarah’s arms. “May you only have joy from him!”

  Abraham and the mohel joined them with the rest of the men and the well-worn words were echoed over and over again. It was a weekday and friends like Moishe Lipkin and Yossel Lensky, whom Abraham would have liked to be there, were at work. But Rabbi Lensky had brought along some of his unemployed congregants to make up the necessary minyan. Now, they would drink wine with Abraham and join in the celebration of a new member of the Tribe of Israel, which was important enough for Salaman to have given his presser and himself an hour or two off.

  “You want some wine, David?” Abraham smiled as he poured it into the collection of borrowed glasses.

  David shook his head.

  “So what can you do? My eldest son isn’t a shikkerer!” Abraham laughed to the others.

  Miriam watched David hovering restlessly in the scullery doorway and followed him out when he went to sit on the back doorstep. The day was fine and warm and they watched some sparrows hopping around in the sunshine. David did not turn to look at her when she squatted beside him. She’d hoped he might notice her pretty, new dress, but he seemed not even to hear the rustle of the taffeta when she spread her skirt around her knees.

  How sad he looks, she thought and wished she could give him a hug to comfort him as she would’ve done when they were younger, but it wasn’t seemly for a girl of eleven to hug a boy of thirteen. “What’s the matter, David?” she asked gravely. “Since your Bar Mitzvah you’re not the same.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “You’re moody all the time and you don’t tell me things like you used to.” The only one he seemed to want to talk to these days was her father, but she was careful not to say this in case David might fly into a rage, which he’d been doing for no reason at all lately. She moved closer to him to let him know she sympathised, though she had no idea what was wrong. Then Bessie came out of the house, pushing her fat legs between them to enter the yard, and David got up and went back inside.

  Bessie stopped eating the piece of cake in her hand and watched him go.

  Miriam went to stand beside her, but Bessie did not seem to notice she was there. She’d like David for her sweetheart! Miriam thought with shock. The way she’s looking at him, though she knows very well he’s mine.

  They could see David through the kitchen window. His mother was holding out the baby for him to take, but he was shaking his head, refusing.

  “He’s frightened the baby’ll pee on him,” Bessie said.

  But there was something about the expression on David’s face which made Miriam think there was more to it than that.

  Sarah attributed David’s indifference to his age. And boys did not usually fuss over infants. But she had seen him gazing at Nathan with a tightness around his lips. Was he jealous? She didn’t neglect her other children, but the family’s routine inevitably revolved around the baby. Sammy didn’t seem to mind and Esther had learned to change his diapers and help bathe him. David resented every inconvenience he caused.

  That evening Nathan was fractious. David was sitting at the table trying to write an essay and threw down his pen when the wails grew louder.

  “What can you expect after what he’s had done to him?” Sarah said rocking the cradle.

  “Take the brat out of here!” David snapped. “I can’t do my homework with him squawking his head off!”

  “You’re leaving school soon, what does it matter?” Sarah picked up the baby and kissed him. “Such a sweet little dolly this is and his big brother behaves like he’s a thorn in his side.”

  Abraham got up from his chair and glared at her.

  “Enough of that talk already!” he said with uncharacteristic force. He had seen the desolate look in David’s eyes as he stared down at his books and now understood why.

  Part Two

  Realities

  Chapter 1

  David came out of the factory and slithered into the street. He could feel the slush seeping into his boots. His father and Sammy had left half-an-hour ago, but he had stayed behind as usual, sorting things out ready for tomorrow.

  “David!”

  He stopped and turned around.

  Bessie had chased after him and stood in the lamplight wiping her hands on her apron, which was no cleaner than the one she had worn for school. “Stay and have a bite with us.”

  “No thanks.”

  “We’re having meatballs.”

  For a moment he was tempted. Not many people had meat during the week, but the Salamans went short of nothing.

  “They’re your favourite,” Bessie said persuasively.

  She knew this because she was always embarrassing him by bringing him tasty morsels to eat in the factory, it had become a joke among the workers.

  David looked at his pocket watch, which had been his grandfather’s. His mother had given it to him when he started work. “I don’t want to be late at Miriam’s,” he said. He had promised to be there at eight-o’clock and it was now seven.

  “Saul’s going there, too. You can eat and go with him.”

  “Bessie, I have to go home to wash and change first,” he said impatiently. Then her dejected expression touched him, though he had no time for her. “Thanks, though,” he added with a smile and saw her face light up. Just because he’d said a kind word to her! He was conscious of her watching him as he continued down the street. She was still standing there when he looked over his shoulder, before turning into Bury New Road. Poor Bessie! Then the thought of all he had to do tomorrow crowded her out of his mind.

  In the three years he had worked at the factory, he had become Salaman’s righthand man. This had not been a conscious decision on his employer’s part; in his mind his son occupied that position. But Saul’s apathy and David’s natural ability had combined to produce the existing situation. Because David was Saul’s friend and Abraham’s boy, Salaman had offered to teach him the trade and had gradually come to depend on him.

  The business had grown and was no longer just a matter of cash deals with whoever came to buy a bundle of garments for resale. Retailers, both Jewish and Gentile, now sent in orders for goods to be delivered to their shops, which required organising. Records must be kept and transactions involved paperwork. Orders had to be honoured on time if they were to be repeated. David had instituted a system by which everything ran smoothly and efficiently, where previously Salaman had been out of his depth. It was not surprising that he relied upon David, though he was still only a lad of seventeen.

  When David arrived home, his little brother was playing in the lobby with some small wooden figures Sammy had carved for him.

  “How d’you like my soldiers, David?” he asked as David brushed past him. “I’m getting ready for the war.”

  David paused and looked down at him and the child’s handsome face broke into a smile. David rarely had a minute to spare for him.

  “Which war, Nat?” Nathan’s name had been cut down while he was still in his cradle.

  His smile faded as he saw David frown. “You’re not angry with me, are you?”

  “No. But who told you there’s going to be a war?”

  “I he
ard Uncle Sigmund talking about it. What will the war do?”

  “Never mind.”

  Hearing Nathan mention it chilled David to the marrow. His little brother had a razor-sharp mind and ears that went with it. It was time he was at school, where he wouldn’t hear adult gossip, but he was not yet old enough. Was it just gossip? The ominous clouds had been gathering in Europe for some time, but what had this to do with England? A small island on the other side of the Channel? David had not experienced a military war, but he had seen other examples of man’s inhumanity to man and hoped never to do so again. The family’s ordeal in Russia had long since faded from his mind, but now it came flooding back, as if he was still a little boy hiding from the pogromschiks in a barrel. He saw Nathan staring up at him and shook the feeling off, then patted the child’s head reassuringly.

  “You’ve never done that before, David.”

  “What?”

  “Stroked my head.”

  David smiled and went into the kitchen, where his mother had borscht and potatoes bubbling on the hob for him.

  “So, David?”

  She always greeted him that way, wanting to know about his day. As if any day was different from another, he thought wryly. The details sometimes varied, but the quality was always the same. “Bessie asked me to stay for supper.”

  Sarah said nothing, but thought a great deal. You could do worse, she wanted to say. Isaac Salaman’s daughter, no less. But her son was in love with Miriam Moritz, the way she herself had given her heart to Abraham.

  “Where’s Father?” David asked as he ate his meal.

  “Taking a rest. Where else?”

  Abraham now had two underpressers, but still had to work too hard. Father’s life’s nothing but work and sleep, David reflected. Surely a man had a right to something more than just that? But his father had accepted his lot.

  When he went upstairs to change, Sammy was in the bedroom, making something from a piece of wood as usual.

  “What is it this time, Sam?” David grinned. He took off his shoes and socks to dry his damp feet and had to be careful where he walked, the floor was littered with chippings.

  “A jewel box for Miriam.”

  David laughed. “She hasn’t any jewels.”

  “So she’ll keep it until she has.”

  One day I’ll give them to her, David thought. And pay for Sammy to have special boots made, so he doesn’t have to limp so badly. He couldn’t imagine his brother ever earning sufficient to pay for them himself. Sammy’s ineptitude at everything except wood-carving was well known, but David had managed to persuade Salaman to employ him. He could have coped with any of the tasks put before him, but, as always, would not apply himself to work he did not enjoy. He was now the odd-job lad, a position created by his presence, and just gave a hand where and when it was needed. Salaman’d fire him if he wasn’t my brother, David said to himself as he put on his best suit. Why won’t he buck his ideas up? It isn’t as if he’s a fool, what he lacks is backbone.

  Sammy was sitting on the bed, painstakingly chipping away at the wood, wearing two old cardigans because there was no heat in the room.

  “Why don’t you do that downstairs? You’ll freeze to death in here.”

  “You know what Mother’s like when I make a mess on the kitchen floor. Are you going somewhere nice to tonight?”

  David avoided his eye. “Dancing. I’d ask you to come with us otherwise.”

  “I wish every night was like this!” Miriam exclaimed rapturously as she fastened the bodice of her new dress.

  “It wouldn’t be a special occasion if we went too often,” Helga told her.

  Rachel was seated by the window in their bedroom, enjoying their pleasurable anticipation as they dressed for the dance, and reflected as she often did on their contrasting natures. Miriam had inherited Sigmund’s fiery impetuosity, but Helga was like herself, placid and practical.

  “Let me do that for you,” she said when Miriam found she had missed the top button and had to undo the others and begin again. “My fingers have more patience than yours,” she smiled as she completed the task in a trice. “Come Helga, now I’ll fix your sash. Very nice it looks, but I’ll make it look even nicer.”

  “Remember how Mother used to dress us up for shul, Miriam?” Helga reminisced. “We always had bigger bows in our hair than the other little girls.”

  “And being that kind of mother isn’t something I can turn off like a tap now you’re grown up.”

  “So we’ve noticed,” Miriam laughed.

  Rachel appraised her daughters proudly; the younger so tall and shapely and with the bloom of womanhood about her, though she was not yet sixteen; the elder reaching only to her sister’s shoulder, dainty as a china doll.

  “How do we look?” Miriam asked her, pirouetting on the rug.

  “Wunderbar!” she pronounced in the language of her youth, which such moments always evoked.

  Helga had made the satin dance-frocks on Sigmund’s sewing machine. Her own was lilac, Miriam’s eau-de-nil and their full overskirts shimmered in the gaslight as they moved about the room.

  “Like two jewels!” Rachel added extravagantly.

  The girls laughed and hugged her until she pushed them away in order to catch her breath. “Such an excitement! Your great-grandfather the rabbi would turn in his grave if he knew where you were going tonight.”

  Helga sat down before the mirror and pinched her cheeks to colour them. “You and Father don’t mind, do you?”

  “How can we mind? We’re living in different times now. But some people will never accept it.”

  Male and female dancing together was still frowned upon by the clergy and at weddings only the old Jewish folk dances were permitted. But it was 1914 and the immigrants’ grown-up children had acquired a taste for the Veleta and the Lancers. Gliding on the polished floor at a local dance hall, amid the rustle of silk and taffeta and the heady mixture of scents was a blissful experience for the ghetto boys and girls. Between dances, they flocked to one end of the ballroom and the Gentiles to the other, as if by tacit consent, but when the stout lady at the piano began playing again and all took the floor together, the feeling of difference disappeared and everyone would smile and nod to each other as they danced by.

  “Where did you and Father go when you were courting, Mother?” Miriam asked as she pulled on her long, white gloves.

  “Often we would just take a stroll. Or sit in a café and drink hot chocolate when the snow was on the ground. Like Strangeways it wasn’t.”

  “I remember a very wide street, with lots of trees,” Helga said. “Where you sometimes took us on Sunday afternoons in the summertime.”

  “The Ringstrasse,” Rachel sighed. “Your father’s favourite street in all Vienna. Such a beautiful city! Everywhere a person looks is something worth looking at.”

  The two girls exchanged a glance. There was a faraway look in their mother’s eyes which they could not recall seeing before. She had been an only child and her parents were dead, but perhaps it was the place where she had been born and brought up which still held her fast?

  Rachel emerged from her reverie briskly, she mustn’t be like Paula Frankl who still hankered after what she had left behind. “So in Strangeways nothing is beautiful, but there’s no need for a Jew to be afraid,” she said to her daughters.

  “There isn’t in Vienna, either, now. Uncle Kurt says everything’s fine every time he writes to us,” Helga reminded her.

  “Your father thinks now is not forever and he always knows best,” Rachel declared as her husband appeared in the doorway, panting from climbing the stairs.

  “You’re talking about my brother? That shlemiel has his head in the sand!” Sigmund said. “Come already, girls. Your young men are getting impatient. When I was courting your mother she never kept me waiting.”

  “I’m looking forward to the day my son will start courting,” Rachel sighed as they went downstairs. “Other young people go out sometime
s and enjoy themselves, but where is he every night? Lying on his bed reading!”

  Helga smiled at Saul, who was standing in the lobby with David waiting to help her on with her cloak. “Carl hasn’t met the right girl yet, Mother.”

  “If we hadn’t left Vienna, Helga and I wouldn’t’ve met Saul and David, imagine that,” Miriam said looking at David as if she could not imagine it.

  “Nicer boys you couldn’t find,” Sigmund chuckled, then his voice grew grave. “But I can think of more important reasons for leaving Vienna.” He took off his pince-nez and studied them reflectively. “I hope I’m wrong, but one day, God forbid, you’ll see.”

  “You’ve been saying that for years, Father,” Miriam chided him. “But things’ve got better, not worse. Why must you be such a gloom merchant?” At supper he and Carl had talked about the war they thought was coming and spoiled everyone’s appetites. She hurried David out of the house before her father had time to involve him in one of the lengthy discussions which sometimes made him forget she was there.

  The slush underfoot had hardened to ice in the crisp, night air and the four young people had to tread carefully as they made their way to the main road.

  Miriam slipped her hand into David’s and looked up at the crescent moon which had silvered the humble rooftops. “Even Strangeways is beautiful on an evening like this!” she exulted. “When you’re going somewhere special.”

  The hood of her green velvet cloak had fallen back onto her shoulders and David caught his breath as he gazed at her perfect profile, smooth as marble in the moonlight, and the soft cloud of hair which she refused to pin-up, cascading around it. How lovely she was and soon he’d be holding her in his arms on the dance floor. Then he thought of Sammy, to whom such joy was denied and his smile of happiness tinged with guilt. If he hadn’t taken him to play by the Dvina that day, how different his brother’s life would have been.

  “What’s the matter?” Miriam asked softly when she saw his expression change.

  “I was just thinking of our Sammy, sitting at home.”