Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  “It doesn’t seem real,” he mused to his old friend. “That I have to be a soldier.” A vision of the brutal Cossacks who had filled his early years with terror rose before him and he shuddered. Now he was to be cast in the role of killer himself, as if wearing a uniform made it all right.

  Sigmund raised his hands in a gesture which embraced the book-lined walls and a bowl of fruit on the table, the glowing fire and those he loved who were grouped around it. “Here is what is real, David,” he said eloquently. “The rest is a madness.”

  David looked at his friend’s widow, sitting beside her sister who would one day be his wife and knew that day might never come. He was no more immortal than Saul had been, but he would not waste the experience as Saul had done. He hated everything war stood for, but whatever faced him when he went overseas was, while he still breathed, living.

  He was up to his waist in mud in a trench in Flanders, wondering if he would see the morning, when the meaning of Saul’s words became clear to him. What he was fighting for was still a mystery; he obeyed orders blindly as the rest of the lads did, but what mattered to them all in the end was their own survival. The feeling of marking time which Saul had described suddenly engulfed him and he knew it was part of the hope which enabled a soldier to endure the madness until he could return to the reality he had left behind.

  In November 1917 Nathan gave his mother and two of her neighbours a terrible shock. “There’s been a revolution,” he announced when he came home from school.

  Sarah felt her legs turn to jelly and her mouth grow dry as she watched Zelda Cohen snatch her newest baby from the rug, hoist its one-year-old sister under her arm and flee home without a word.

  “Mrs. Cohen didn’t finish her tea,” Nathan noticed as he helped himself to bread and jam.

  Mrs. Plotkin sat wringing her hands. “Who thinks of tea at such a time? I suppose she’s gone to clear out her closet to make room for her girls inside it, with so many it’ll be a squeeze. Oy vay, how it takes me back!”

  “For just Nat, I won’t need to clear mine, I’ll put him underneath the linens and throw a perineh over him,” Sarah planned feverishly.

  Nathan stopped eating and looked upset. “Why’re you going to put me in the linen closet?”

  “Because I don’t have any pickle barrels big enough.”

  Mrs. Plotkin clasped him to her bosom and planted a protective kiss on his head. “Here we didn’t expect to need them.”

  Nathan removed himself from her embrace and the sour odour which reminded him a bit of lamb chops wafting from her armpits. He eyed Sarah reproachfully. “What’ve I done to deserve it?”

  “Oy, from the mouths of babes and sucklings come questions only God can answer,” Mrs. Plotkin declared before Sarah could reply. “A child of seven shouldn’t even have to know from revolutions.”

  “Teacher told us and we all clapped and cheered.”

  “You clapped and cheered when our people will be the scapegoats like always?”

  “And with the war on, where is there to run to?” Sarah said desperately. “Even the King will have no place to hide.”

  “You mean the Tsar,” Nathan corrected her.

  “The Tsar? What’re you saying, Nat?” Sarah clutched his hand.

  “Teacher told us they’ve got rid of him forever and the Jews in Russia’re going to be free from now on.”

  Sarah did not know whether to laugh for joy or cry with relief. Then she and Mrs. Plotkin did a little of both and she sent Nathan to tell Zelda the revolution was in Russia.

  “Mrs. Cohen kissed me!” he complained when he came back. “Why is everyone so sloppy today? And she said to tell you it’s a good job, because the pail she brought with her to England’s getting too old to travel. What’s all the fuss about? Where did you all think the revolution was?”

  Sarah was ashamed to tell him. Later, she saw the humorous side of the incident and shared it with her family over supper.

  Abraham was more taken aback than amused. “Mrs. Plotkin, she’s a scaremonger. But you, Sarah? How could you think it was here? You’ve lived in England for twelve years and you still know nothing about the English?”

  “Listen to the expert!” Esther teased him. “How many English people do you know, Father?”

  “Mr. Pickles and the rag-and-bone man,” Sammy joined in.

  “And me,” Nathan piped up.

  “You’re Jewish-English,” his mother informed him.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well for one thing, you eat kefulte fish,” Esther joked watching him tuck into it.

  “And for another,” Abraham declared, “no matter how English you are you’ve got a Jewish heart.”

  “Aren’t Jewish hearts the same as Christian ones?” Nathan felt his chest.

  “Sure. But they feel a little extra for our own people,” Sarah smiled giving him another fish ball to take his mind off it.

  Abraham got up and brought the kosher wine from the dresser. “Get some glasses, Esther. We have to celebrate the news from Russia and we won’t be the only ones rejoicing in Strangeways tonight!”

  They drank to the downfall of their old enemy and a few sips of the sweet, potent liquid sent Nathan straight to sleep.

  “It’s always the little ones you think of at times like that,” Sarah whispered to Abraham whilst he was carrying Nathan upstairs.

  “Times like what, Sorrel?” Abraham was pleasantly hazy himself.

  “This afternoon, when Mrs. Plotkin and Zelda and me were frightened we’d have to pack our bundles and run again. You asked me how I could believe it possible. I suppose because for most of my life it was possible and a feeling like that gets too deep inside you to really go away. You only think it has while nothing happens to bring it out.”

  Abraham put Nathan gently onto his bed and lit the gas mantle. They stood gazing down at the child’s peaceful face for a moment, then Sarah began to undress him.

  “Thank God our Nat will never know that feeling,” she said fervently. “For a whole ten minutes this afternoon I only thought of him, I stopped worrying about David.”

  Abraham smiled and kissed her cheek. “Even you, Sorrel, can only worry about your children one at a time!”

  Chapter 5

  “What is it, David?” Miriam asked softly when he had been home from the army for a month and the depression with which he had returned still persisted.

  It was Sunday afternoon and she had called at his house, because he had not come to hers with his parents as he had promised. She found him lying on the sofa in the parlour, with a rare fire burning in the grate.

  “Maybe you’d feel better if you talked about it,” she told him, but he did not reply.

  She knelt down beside him, spreading the skirt of her pleated dress in a fan around her. It was one David had not seen before and green, because he always said that was her colour, but he hadn’t complimented her on it, or remarked how pretty her hair looked as he used to. Instead, there was this unfamiliar feeling between them, as if they were suddenly strangers. She’d felt it when she met him at the railway station after he was demobbed and it was still there.

  “I saw Manny Kletz today,” he said staring into the fire. “Since they transferred him to that place in Manchester, his mother’s been taking him his meals, but she wasn’t feeling well and Mr. Kletz asked me to go today.”

  “Why didn’t he go himself?”

  David smiled grimly. “Maybe he can’t bear to see Manny. And what they’re bothering taking his food for beats me. As if it makes any difference whether he eats kosher or not! They probably think God punished him for eating trafe when he was in the army, that’s how our parents’ minds work. But poor Manny doesn’t even know what he’s eating, he just sits there with a glazed look in his eyes while the nurse shovels it in. The place gave me the creeps, Miriam. Half of them are neither dead nor alive and some of those who’ve still got their senses haven’t got arms or legs,” David tried to control the tic
in his eyelid. The last time he had felt it had been in the trenches when sometimes there had been a waiting silence and they’d known it couldn’t last. Seeing Manny and the others had brought back the horror full force.

  “The place is a great big house in a beautiful garden,” he told Miriam. “It was lovely and warm inside and the lads were surrounded by fruit and flowers from well-wishers. A lot of good it’ll do them! They’re finished. It made me think of Saul, and Berel Halpern, and the lads in my unit who aren’t here to tell the tale like I am, but they’re better off than those poor devils.”

  Miriam took his hand and stroked it comfortingly, but the contact brought them no closer.

  “Nothing’s any different because all those lads’re gone, is it?” David mused bitterly. “Things aren’t that bad in the garment trade, but the day after I got back to Manchester I had to go to Ancoats to see someone for Salaman and there was a long queue of men outside the Labour Exchange waiting for the dole.”

  “I missed you while you were away, David,” Miriam said simply. “And I know how you must feel. It’ll take you a long time to get over the dreadful things you had to see, all that useless dying.”

  David shivered and looked at her unseeingly for a moment. “Dying’s always useless, especially to the one who’s dead. I’ll never get over it.”

  “People always think that, but they do. Helga has.” Helga had continued working in a glove factory, her life seemingly unchanged by the tragedy which had befallen her. “Her father-in-law’d support her if she’d let him, but she doesn’t want to be idle, like Bessie,” Miriam added.

  David’s expression tightened. “It’s a pity he wasn’t kinder to his son, when he had one to be kind to, instead of trying to atone for his sins by giving money to Saul’s widow.”

  “I’m sorry I mentioned it if it makes you angry.”

  “Everything about Salaman makes me angry.”

  Miriam touched the lines on his forehead which had not been there when he went away. “I don’t want you to be angry and miserable, David. I want you the way you used to be.”

  “Some of the other lads’ girls married someone else while they were away. Are you sure you still want me at all?”

  “Don’t be silly, David,” she said the way she had when she was a little girl and he had asked a question needlessly.

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her lips gently. She was his and always would be, their love for each other was the one thing he need never doubt. She wound her arms around his neck and the kiss became warm and urgent, blazing like the fire in the hearth until David broke away and sprang to his feet.

  “Let’s go out!” he said running his fingers through his hair, which still had a shorn, military look about it.

  Miriam pointed to the white swirl outside the window. “It’s snowing!”

  “Who cares?” David lifted her from the rug and whirled her around.

  “Where shall we go to?” she laughed clinging to him. The old David was back with her, close and loving and sure of himself.

  “We’ll think of somewhere.”

  Sammy popped his head out of the kitchen doorway while they were putting on their coats and mufflers. “Where’re you off to, David?”

  “Come with us and you’ll find out.”

  “Can I come too?” Nathan called. “I’ve finished all my sums.”

  “So do the ones on the next page. Remember they’re entering you for Manchester Grammar,” David called back.

  “That isn’t till next year!” Nathan grumbled.

  “With the competition you’ll be up against, you can’t start preparing yourself a minute too soon.” David went into the kitchen to get his gloves which he had left on the dresser. He picked them up, then stood for a moment watching his little brother writing in an exercise book and saw himself as he had been before his golden future turned to dross. “We’re going for a train ride,” he told Miriam and Sammy impulsively as they left the house.

  In later years, David thought of the trip they made that day as a pilgrimage and remembered his voice sounding reverent when he pointed out Forrest Dene to the others.

  “Only one family lives in a house that size?” Sammy gasped.

  They were standing on a wooded rise, ankle deep in snow, looking at the house in the distance which made it seem more imposing than it was. David had not wanted to venture nearer and take the chance of encountering Jim, who had gone out of his life and whom for some reason he did not want to see.

  “I shouldn’t like to have to keep it clean!” Miriam exclaimed.

  “You won’t have to, love,” David replied. “When we live in Cheshire we’ll have a maid.”

  Miriam pealed with laughter.

  “What’s the joke?” David’s expression had stiffened. “You don’t believe it’ll happen, do you?”

  He was implying that she did not believe in him, which made the question difficult to answer. “How can it?” she shrugged.

  “It will if David wants it to,” Sammy declared staunchly.

  “You’re crackers, Sammy and so is he!” Miriam flashed before she could stop herself. Sammy still looked up to David the way he had as a child. As for David! “What does it matter where people live?” she said looking into his eyes. “It’s who you live with that counts.”

  “That’s only part of what counts,” he answered tersely. Where a person lives proves to the world what they are, he thought, but did not say so because he knew Miriam would not accept it. Her standards were different from his and her wants much simpler. All the Moritzes were the same, they set no store by material things.

  Miriam could feel the chasm widening between them. It was as if their brief closeness in the parlour had never happened. “My feet are freezing, let’s go home,” she said in a depressed voice.

  Sammy did what he could to lighten the atmosphere and on the train to Manchester made them laugh by pulling funny faces and recounting jokes he had heard in the factory. But the charm had gone out of the day and for Miriam and David it never came back.

  Esther Sandberg did not make her presence felt in the family until she was seventeen. As the only girl, she had helped with the housework from the time she was old enough to wield a broom and had always been amenable, if not exactly docile. It came as a shock to Sarah when her daughter emerged as a purposeful young woman with a mind of her own.

  “I’ve had enough of working in a factory,” Esther told her parents one evening. “I want to be a shop assistant, where there’s a bit of life.”

  “Like Miriam Moritz, selling millinery to stuck-up ladies all day and bringing home next to nothing at the end of the week,” Sarah said dismissively.

  “But she works in Cheetham Hill, doesn’t she? All I ever see is Strangeways!”

  “All of a sudden it isn’t good enough for you?”

  “Well you couldn’t call it paradise, could you, Mother? And I’m fed up with spending my days machining caps.”

  “When you find a husband you won’t have to,” Abraham said placatingly.

  “Maybe I won’t find one.”

  “P-p-p!” Sarah spat three times, which Jewish folklore guaranteed would ward off catastrophe. Her daughter having no boyfriend sometimes gave her sleepless nights.

  “Since your mother’s getting older, she’s starting to behave like the old grannies did in Russia,” Abraham chuckled to Esther.

  Esther laughed, too, though she was secretly as anxious about her lack of a suitor as her mother was. The childhood attachments which led other girls to the marriage canopy had somehow eluded her. Until recently, her friend Sophie Plotkin had been in the same position, but she and her elder sister had just got engaged to the Rosenthal brothers. Sophie had spent the entire day talking about how much Otto loved her, whilst she and Esther treadled their machines side by side, and Esther felt more of an outsider than ever and was determined to venture into fresh fields.

  No more was said that evening and Sarah thought it had just been idle t
alk. She did not know her daughter. By the end of the week Esther had found a job at a gown shop in town and was to start work there on Monday.

  Sarah had a chat with David as she often did about family problems. “Such a trouble your sister’s turned out to be.”

  “So let her try, Mother,” he advised remembering his own hopes which had come to nothing. “I don’t blame her for wanting a taste of something better.”

  “She’ll only earn buttons there. Can we afford it?”

  “Nobody’s earning that much anywhere these days. The war’s over!” David reminded her bitterly.

  “But even when things get better, what could she earn?”

  “They pay commission in those gown shops, on top of the wages.”

  Sarah had not known this. “Hm,” she said thoughtfully. “So maybe we’ll see.”

  Esther did not earn buttons, she proved to be an excellent saleswoman. Unlike the working class, for whom the end of the war meant a return to poverty, the smart women who patronised the gown shop still had money to spend and the sum Esther brought home at the end of the first week astounded the family. Sarah began to view her with respect, but this did not extend to her new appearance.

  Esther’s figure had not appeared overtly shapely in the garments she had worn previously, but the simple black dress her employer gave to her to wear for work hugged her waist so tightly that her bust seemed voluptuous above it and her hips curved fetchingly below. She was not a pretty girl, the combination of Abraham’s red hair and Sarah’s aquiline features was not a fortunate one, but she began to make the most of herself as the other salesgirls did, tinting her sallow complexion with peach-coloured powder and a touch of rouge, bought with the meagre pocket money her mother allowed her to keep from her wages.

  “You look like a shiksah!” Sarah exclaimed in horror the first time she saw her daughter’s transformed face. In her experience, only Gentile girls used cosmetics. “Your father will throw you out of the house!”

  But Abraham merely shrugged as he did about most things and Esther’s brothers thought she looked attractive. Sarah gave up and hoped nobody outside the family would notice.