Almonds and Raisins

by Maisie Mosco

  He had a gramophone by the window and worked with a record playing. Sarah shut the door and they stood silently for a moment, listening to the haunting strains of Tales From The Vienna Woods, then Sigmund looked at his watch elaborately.

  “I’m expecting a customer for a try-on soon, Sarah.”

  “You don’t start with try-ons till ten-o’clock,” Sarah replied. “Me you can’t kid.” It was why she had come at nine. She moved a pile of canvas interlining from a stool and sat down. “So, Sigmund.”

  “You’ve come to say something, so say it,” he muttered resignedly.

  Sarah picked up a piece of chalk from his bench and studied it. “I’ve come to interfere, Sigmund. Like you once did with me, also early in the morning.”

  Sigmund recalled the time he had called at her house in Moreton Street to tell her David wanted to be a solicitor. She had been putting her washing to dry, but had let him talk. “It was a waste of time me interfering,” he said. “And look what the boy has done with his life!”

  Sarah averted her gaze. “It wasn’t my fault, you know that very well. And he could have a worse life than the one he’s got.” She paused, then looked at him gravely. “But what I’ve come to talk about is death.”

  Sigmund put his hand on the back of a chair and managed to lower himself into it. The years of watching his wife suffer had taken their toll of him. His hair was now yellowish-white and dull, like the eyes behind the pince-nez, which had once sparkled. He knew why Sarah was here, but what she was going to confront him with he was not prepared to face. “Who is dying?” he asked, avoiding her eye.

  “We both know who is dying,” she said bluntly. The pain of saying it was excruciating, but it had to be said.

  Sigmund’s shoulders began to shake slowly, then faster as if what was causing them to do so was gradually increasing in momentum, but he did not shed any tears.

  Sarah laid her hand gently on his and the tremors subsided. “After she’s gone we’ll cry together. In between now and then you’ll help her and I’ll help you.”

  “How can I help her when God doesn’t want her to live?” The question sounded torn out of him.

  “You can’t argue with the Almighty. He’s up there and we are down here, with her. You think Rachel doesn’t know she’s going to leave us soon? So she has to have the worry of how you’re behaving, too! Perhaps she’d like to lie with her hand in yours sometimes, you could give her strength to go. Instead she has to pretend there’s no reason to.”

  Sigmund gazed at her dumbly, then got up to stare out of the window. The autumn sun cast its pale glow upon his stooped frame, but he felt no warmth. “When she isn’t here anymore the sun will still be shining,” he whispered.

  “Isn’t it so for all of us?”

  “But she’s only fifty-five, she could have twenty more years.”

  “You’re arguing with God again. Listen, maybe what He takes in one way He gives back in another,” Sarah said quietly.

  Sigmund turned to look at her.

  “What is the length of a life compared with the quality?” she asked recalling the contented half-smile which had always made her friend seem beautiful. “Our dear Rachel has been happier than most, believe me.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “With a husband like me? Stubborn. Argumentative. His head in a book all the time.”

  “Who can deny it? But a husband she loves all the same.”

  A faraway expression entered Sigmund’s eyes as he sat down on the chair again. “It’s October now and it was October when we met,” he said softly. “She came with her father to my father’s workshop in Eisenstadt and the sun was shining, just like today. ‘In such weather two young people should be out in the fresh air,’ my father said.” He sat listening to the music for a moment, as though the sound of the violins carried him back to Vienna. “I put on my coat and we went together to the Ringstrasse to walk beneath the trees. She was sixteen and wearing a beige hat with a feather. Later we walked in St. Stephen’s Square to look at the latest fashions in the windows of Rothberger’s store, but all I saw was Rachel standing beside me. Every evening we were together afterwards. Such a romantic my father was! He gave me money to take her to the Opera, Mahler was the director then. It was there I first held her hand. She had on a white silk dress, flowers in her hair. Oh how lovely she looked! It was an evening to remember.”

  “Perhaps she’d like to remember it with you.”

  “We’ve never been sentimental with each other.”

  “Except in the beginning, when you held her hand at the Opera,” Sarah said gently. “You had children together and came to a new country. With your daughters you stood side by side beneath the chupah and now you have a grandchild. You’ve put the milestones of a lifetime behind you and it’s time to be how you were in the beginning again.”

  Sigmund knew she was telling him his life with Rachel had turned full circle. “So what can you do?” he said heavily as acceptance mingled with the sudden emptiness within him.

  “For you nothing.” Sarah rose from the stool to leave. “This afternoon I’ll bring Nat and he’ll help Carl move Rachel to the bedroom.”

  Knowing his wife would not return downstairs until she was in her coffin brought a cry of anguished protest from Sigmund.

  Sarah ignored it. “A woman is entitled to lie dying in her own bed, with her husband beside her to share the long nights,” she said firmly. “The kitchen sofa is not the place.” She wanted to comfort him, but knew it was not within her power, that all she could do was be with him to help him endure what lay ahead.

  The whole clan rallied around him as Rachel’s life drew to a close and for the first time Miriam recognized her mother-in-law’s dominating character as one which demanded respect.

  Sarah returned that afternoon with Nathan as she had promised. Miriam came too and Rachel’s transfer upstairs took place without fuss. Sarah had Sigmund’s gramophone carried to the bedroom, so he and Rachel could listen to music together in the evenings and saw her friend place her hand in his when Carl put a record on to play.

  During the day, Rachel was never left alone for a moment. The women took turns to sit with her and Martin and Marianne always visited her on their way home from school. Their mothers were initially reluctant to allow them to witness the approach of death, but Sarah spat three times and said it would not harm them. She did not believe in protecting children from the pain which living inevitably brought and thought they must experience the bitter along with the sweet, or why would the best loved of all Jewish lullabies, sung to them in the cradle, be a song about both almonds and raisins?

  The matchmaker’s offer remained in abeyance during the family crisis, but the photograph of the beautiful rich girl stayed propped up against a vase on the kitchen dresser and Nathan knew his mother would not allow him to forget.

  Prior to this, being with Mary had brought him happiness and he had hoped to postpone the day of reckoning until his studies were over. Now, the day loomed nearer and its imminence hovered like an ominous cloud over the time he spent with her. He knew he would have to make a decision soon.

  One day he found himself alighting from the tram at a street which led through to Strangeways, instead of travelling all the way home. It was mid-afternoon, David would be at the factory and the impulse to talk to him was strong.

  “What’s wrong?” David said in alarm when Nathan entered the workroom.

  Sammy stopped folding some coats and looked apprehensive too. Their brother had not been to the factory since he was a boy.

  “I just wanted to see you, David.”

  David was showing Eli some designs for a new line and the cutter put down the sheaf of drawings and smiled at Nathan. “So how’s the future doctor keeping?” he asked with respect. “Your Nat’s grown into a fine young man, eh, David?”

  The machiners had stopped work and were looking at Nathan with the same respect Eli had shown. Most of them
had known him since his childhood and pride, too, was in the smiles they gave him.

  “I remember when his mother used to bring him to Radinsky’s wrapped in a shawl on a Sunday morning,” Issie reminisced. “So who would’ve thought he could be looking down my throat some day?”

  Nathan forced a grin as he followed David into the office. The aura his future profession carried with it never ceased to surprise and embarrass him.

  “I didn’t know you could draw,” he remarked noticing the sketches on the desk.

  “I can’t,” David shrugged. “But they serve the purpose.” He smiled paternally. “Shirley’s the artist in our family. That kid’s never without a pencil in her hand.”

  Nathan was not very close to David’s children, though he saw a good deal of Esther’s and Sammy’s. David let him know he was aware of this. “You should come round on a Sunday sometime, Nat. You only see kids on a Shabbos and in Mother’s house on Shabbos kids aren’t allowed to draw.” He laughed. “In some ways she’s still living in the dark ages!”

  “I agree,” Nathan said quietly.

  Something was wrong, David could feel it in his bones. “So what brings you here? Got no work to do?”

  Nathan saw the flicker of anxiety in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I haven’t come to tell you I’m packing medicine in. Now I’ve got this far a doctor I’ll be.” He paused and turned his back on the glass panel which made the office seem less private.

  “So?” David said playing with his pencil.

  Nathan thought he sounded just like their mother, but did not let this prevent him from continuing. “Do I have to have my personal life mapped out for me as well?” He knew he was skating on thin ice and felt it cracking beneath him in the silence which followed.

  David put the pencil down and lit a cigarette. “Not if you don’t want to, Nat. Me marrying Bessie was my own decision and who you marry’s got to be yours. Mother didn’t drag me screaming and protesting to shul, she just gave me her advice and then it was up to me.” He picked up an India-rubber and erased a thumbprint from the sketch he had been showing to Eli. “If you can find another way of setting yourself up in practice, go ahead. But the way things are with the business I won’t be able to help you.”

  “I don’t want you to help me. Why does everything always boil down to pounds, shillings and pence!”

  “Would you be where you are without money?”

  “I never wanted to be where I am, did I? And now I’m caught up in this bleddy vicious circle!”

  “A lot of people’d be happy to be in your place.” David gestured through the glass at the machiners treadling monotonously. “Instead of where they’re sitting. That’s what your family’s saved you from and don’t you ever forget it!” He softened his tone. “Romantic notions are all very well, Nat, but nobody can have everything and you’ve got more than most. If you don’t like the idea of an arranged marriage, and I don’t blame you, see if you can find the right girl yourself. There’s plenty of time before you qualify.”

  “What if I’ve already found her?”

  “Have you?”

  “Maybe.”

  David felt the colour draining from his face. This could only mean one thing, or Nat would’ve brought the girl home. But he wouldn’t make an issue of it, better to turn a blind eye and hope his brother’s common sense and respect for the family would prevail. “She’s got to be right in every way,” was all he allowed himself to say and it was ambiguous enough to appear as a proviso about money.

  “Right for me,” Nathan said and left abruptly, before David could reply.

  After he had gone David could not work. Moishe Lipkin came in to collect some samples for a trip he was making to the Midlands and found him sitting pale and drawn at his desk, his ashtray overflowing.

  “Has someone cancelled an order?” Moishe asked.

  David shook his head and told him about the confrontation with Nathan. The little salesman had become his trusted friend.

  “Listen, the lads today aren’t like we were, with don’t touch engraved on our brains,” Moishe commiserated. “They don’t think of God when they look at the sky, only how big the world is. They’ve come a long way from the old days in Strangeways. Would you or me’ve even looked at a shiksah? We’d’ve been frightened the Almighty would strike our eyes from our head!”

  David thought of Joe Klein who had not been afraid to do more than look. But Joe and Ben had had no home life after their parents died, no family anchor, he comforted himself. From the age of sixteen Joe had been adrift in London.

  “All right, so your Nat’s looking, maybe he’s also touching,” Moishe shrugged. “A boy with his education wants to experiment. Don’t worry, that’s all it is.”

  David lit another cigarette and tried to look cheerful. There was nothing he could do except hope that Moishe was right.

  Chapter 9

  Rachel died a few days later, with the lilt of a Viennese waltz carrying her softly through to the other life and her husband and children beside her.

  It was early in the morning and Sarah had shared the night vigil with the family, but left them alone in the room as the end drew near. Abraham and Sammy were with her in the kitchen when the others came downstairs and the emptiness Sigmund had felt in his heart when he finally accepted the inevitable echoed through the house.

  “Fetch David,” Sarah instructed Sammy. “Esther, too.” She put the kettle on to boil and busied herself getting teacups out of the cupboard. “David will make the arrangements with the shul.” She took a loaf of bread from the enamel bin and began to slice it for breakfast. “We must also think of the living,” she sighed. “It will be a long day.”

  The funeral was arranged for that afternoon, in accordance with the Jewish tradition of burying their dead immediately, and all the children were told to go to Bessie’s house after school, where Lizzie would give them their meal. It was not customary for children to be present.

  Nathan had left for the university when his father went home to tell him the news and at lunchtime David was sent to fetch him. He had never had cause to go there before and entered the quadrangle with mixed feelings.

  The ambience of learning and carefree undergraduate life, which rarefies such establishments for those not privileged to attend them, was all about him and he stood for a moment gazing up at the archway through which he had once hoped to pass as a student.

  Lads with scarves slung around their necks and books tucked beneath their arms were standing in groups talking together. They were all wearing blazers and he smiled wryly, remembering how he had wondered naively if his Bar Mitzvah suit would still fit him when the time came for him to start college. But for him the time had not come and the full realisation of what he had missed now struck him forcibly. The pleasure of sharpening his intellect against others just as sharp. The exchange of ideas and carefully acquired knowledge. The chance to extend his mind and personality, which bore no relation to becoming a solicitor and lining his pocket. All this had been snatched away from him, relegating him to the bread and butter echelon which was now his lot.

  “What’re you doing here?” Lou’s surprised voice issued from across the quadrangle emphasising that this was not David’s world.

  “Looking for Nat,” he replied collecting himself as Lou ambled to his side with Reuben and a Gentile boy.

  “Reuben you know. This is Paul Latimer, a friend of ours. Meet Nat’s brother, Paul.”

  David shook hands with the burly youth, who looked like a rugby player, but somehow reminded him of Jim Forrest. The same subtle quality emanated from him and David recalled wanting to acquire it when he had been at school with Jim. He had not known then that it was something a person had to be born with, the product of their breeding.

  “Why’re you looking for Nat?” Lou asked. “Your father’s not ill I hope?” Abraham’s persistent cough was by now chronic bronchitis and everyone was accustomed to seeing him spitting into his handkerchief.

 
“It’s Mrs. Moritz,” David said and needed to say no more. “So where is Nat?”

  Lou and Reuben exchanged a surreptitious glance.

  “He usually eats his sandwiches in Whitworth Park on fine days,” Paul told David.

  “Oh I don’t think he’ll be there today,” Lou said hastily.

  “Nor do I,” Reuben echoed, his reddish complexion suddenly more so.

  “Perhaps you’d help me to look for him in the college, then?”

  “He won’t be there, Mr. Sandberg,” Paul smiled, but stopped smiling when he felt Lou’s foot on his toe.

  “We’ll find him for you, David, and tell him to go home right away,” Lou offered eagerly.

  “Yes, leave it to us,” Reuben urged.

  “Unless I take him in the car he won’t get there in time. I’ll chance him being in the park.”

  Why had Lou and Reuben behaved so oddly? David pondered. As if they didn’t want him to go to the park, though Paul had seemed certain Nat would be there. A sense of foreboding overtook him as he parked the car and entered the quiet enclosure. He had already surmised that Nathan’s Gentile girlfriend was probably a nurse and the Royal Infirmary was not far away. He steeled himself for the encounter.

  He cut across the grass to save time and heard Mary’s laughter before he came upon them. The bench on which they were seated was shielded from his view by a clump of bushes and he did not see his brother until he stepped onto the path.

  Mary’s laughter petered out as she turned around to see what had arrested Nathan’s attention. David had halted abruptly and seemed to be riveting Nathan with a frigid stare.

  “Who is it?” she asked apprehensively. The expression on her lover’s face was a mixture of rebellion and fear.