Reparation

by Gaby Koppel

  There’s a lump in my throat which doesn’t clear when I cough, and a burning pain in my stomach. It takes me a moment to realise that I’m angry. Angry with my mother, of course. But most of all, I’m angry with my Dad for dumping me like this. He should be there in the hospital with her right now. And of course then I feel guilty for missing him in the wrong way. I drive back to Dave’s needing the comfort of another body next to me. Past midnight I clamber into bed where he’s fast asleep in crumpled sheets, and the heat off his body is like balm. I roll the edge of the duvet around me and fall asleep with my head on his shoulder.

  Chapter 20

  In the morning, I check with Red Dragon taxis that Mutti has been picked up from the hospital and dropped off at home as per. She’s still cross with me, but lets slip the fact that she’s already been on the phone to Auntie Miriam. Word of my “promotion” is spreading round South Wales. By the time it gets to Freddie and Frances in Cyncoed, I’ll be chief executive and director general rolled into one.

  I’ve kept that paperback I found at her house, and carry it around in my bag, growing more and more dog-eared. I read it surreptitiously over coffee. At home, I worry away at it, reading and re-reading about the shootings by the river, the hiding, starvation and constant fear.

  Just after noon on Saturday, sun is warming the streets of Stamford Hill, and the men are out in their fur hats. Big brimmed ones like hairy frisbees, others towering up like chocolate Swiss rolls balanced on their ends. I hate to think how much sweat is being produced under those things. But they just carry on, like it’s totally normal to be wearing a massive furry hat on a midsummer’s day. Hot, me? Don’t be silly. Family groups are strolling in both directions on the road, each set of kids dressed in matching outfits, like strange Sound of Music tribute bands. And yet again, the girls are all wearing thick navy tights and cardigans over their summer frocks. They must be so itchy in all that knit.

  We pass St Kilda’s where the Friedmann family live. A police patrol car is still parked discreetly at the end of the road, and the remnants of crime scene tape flutters from the garden gate looking forlorn. A For Sale board has now been planted in the front garden of the family’s house. Though it’s secured against the fence, it’s listing in the gentle breeze.

  A couple of streets along, we find the house and knock on the door. A boy answers the door. There’s nothing to suggest that he’s expecting us. I stand there for a moment transfixed by his perfectly curled earlocks and wondering whether they are permed.

  He doesn’t even say anything to us, just stands there staring.

  “Mrs Schlesinger?” I ask.

  He just walks away leaving the door open, and allowing us to find our own way into the kitchen. On the way, we pass two teenage girls carrying dishes of food. Neither of them acknowledges us. Through the orderly hallway, Dave takes my hand and pulls me into the kitchen, where we find a cheerful Leah chopping pickled cucumbers into slices and putting them into small bowls.

  “Hello, hello!” she cries. “Welcome. The others aren’t back from shul yet. It’s very hot, isn’t it? Do you want a cold drink?” She’s wearing one of those long house-coat garments, with a turquoisestretch turban covering her head.

  As she opens the fridge, I say, “I thought the community didn’t go in for estate agents.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your sister’s house – it’s for sale.” A frown. She pours some red coloured cordial into a jug, and fills it with water. The whooshing sound of the tap fills the room.

  “She’s moving to be near our other sister’s in Gateshead.” Her eyes flicker away from my gaze, and there’s a moment’s uncertainty on her face. But she pushes it aside, just as there’s a loud rat-a-tat knock, a man and two boys arrive. They fill the house with noise and energy, slamming doors and shouting Good Shabbes.

  Leah’s husband Moshe introduces himself, pronouncing it ‘Moishy’, and before I know it is greeting Dave like an old friend. It’s all hearty handshakes and backslapping, real familiar stuff. And of course, I’m wondering what on earth is going on.

  “Hi,” says Moshe. “Nice to see you again. I didn’t recognise you without the camera.”

  “Do you two know each other?”

  “I came down to take some photos. You know, the portraits. You gave me Reb Stern’s number.” Of course, that’s why he looks familiar. I’ve seen him hanging in Dave’s studio.

  The older boys join the little ones, who are playing on the floor with some building blocks. Leah disappears upstairs, and while she’s gone a man comes into the room, ignoring us. He has a sallow complexion behind the beard.

  “My brother Nachmann,” explains Moshe. Nachmann nods nervously, avoiding eye contact, as though he’s afraid he could catch something nasty from meeting our gaze. He sits down in the corner, opens a pocket-sized prayer book, and reads it with intent concentration, moving his lips as he goes and rocking. Everybody else seems to just ignore him – they carry on playing or laying the table.

  Leah sweeps into the room. She’s changed into a dress and replaced the turban with a wig. It’s brilliant, you really would never know that those gorgeous tresses were anything other than her own hair. It’s impossible to stop myself staring.

  “It’s late, let’s eat,” she says, leading us to the dining room where a long table has been laid out with a starched white table cloth. That is pretty much what I expected, but the surprise is that the table is covered with a large plastic decorator’s dust sheet. There’s no sign of the best china, all the plates and cutlery are plastic disposables. My idea of the Jewish Sabbath table has been trashed. Moshe picks up the one real piece of tableware, a silver goblet full of wine, and starts intoning a blessing.

  Then it’s all out to the kitchen, where the children line up at the sink. There’s a big mug with two handles. I watch the children fill it with cold water then wash each hand alternately, muttering a prayer under their breath as they do so, then turn to pass the towel along the row. Looks like I’m expected to do the same.

  Dave’s in front of me. There’s a look of intense concentration on his face as he mutters something under his breath while washing his hands alternately, just as the boys did. Then he takes the towel from Leah, and as I’m about to ask him what’s going on, he puts his finger to his lips meaningfully. I stare at him, a questions swirling round in my head. Since when has he been an expert in Jewish prayer?

  Now it’s my turn, I’m still not sure what is going on. It’s like some strange game and I’m the only one who doesn’t know the rules. “Do you want to say the prayer for washing hands?” Asks Leah. There’s no other way round it. I nod. “I’ll say it, you copy me.”

  “Baruch ata …” I feel myself going red. Two of the children are peeping round the door, giggling, and I can see why.

  It may be the hottest day in the year so far, but the lunch menu makes no concessions to a heatwave. It starts with chicken soup, and goes on and on. Gefilte fish, bowls heaving with salads, heavy stew with beans. I think wistfully of the gym and its juice bar, where I’d normally be hanging out on a Saturday.

  By the time a platter of cold meats comes round, I’ve lost track of whether this is the third or fourth course. As I’m helping myself to the smallest piece of chicken I can find, one of the older girls pipes up, “Do you work for television?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “I work on a programme about crime. We made the film about the attack on your cousin.” The room goes quiet. The children stare into their laps, their parents look uneasy. Nachmann gets up with a jerk, spilling a beaker of drink onto the table, and leaves the room without even trying to clear it up. In the silence, the pink liquid starts pooling on the plastic decorator’s sheet that’s doing service as a table cloth. The juice runs towards the edge of the table, and is about to drip onto the carpet.

  “Have you ever met anybody famous?” One of the girls is looking at me with big eyes and a cheeky grin.

  “Yes, have you ever met anybody famous?�
�� chimes in one of the younger girls, and a row of faces is turned towards me. At least I’ve got the right answer to this one.

  “Let me see,” I roll my eyes dramatically. “I’ve met Charlton Heston and Tony Blair.” A row of blank faces is staring back at me. “You know, Tony Blair the Prime Minister of Great Britain? Our prime minister, now the leader of our country.” They shake their heads.

  “Charlton Heston, legendary movie star?” They shake their heads again. “You know, Ben Hur?” Then, with fresh inspiration, “The Ten Commandments?” Surely you know there’s a film about the ten commandments – Charlton Heston as Moses! No. Maybe it was a long time ago. Perhaps politicians and aging Hollywood stars aren’t the best way to engage young children. So I try again.

  “Nelson Mandela?” No. Maybe not.

  Disappointment is beginning to creep in. I’m a let-down. I sift through my CV very quickly.

  “The Spice Girls?” Blank faces.

  “Paul McCartney?” No.

  “Paul McCartney is the biggest name in popular music. You must have heard of Paul McCartney? The Beatles? ‘She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’?” There’s a glimmer. They look at each other, quizzical. Then shake their heads.

  Leah is laughing at my desperation. “Our kids don’t know about any of your celebrities.” She says something to them in Yiddish. The children look at me, excited.

  “The Rebbe, you’ve really met Rebbe Avrahamson?” asks the oldest.

  “Good try,” I say to Leah. “No, I have to admit I have never, ever met the Rebbe. I’ve never even heard of him.”

  “You’ve never heard of the Rebbe?” Chaye-Sorah is aghast. In her world he’s Charlton Heston. He’s bigger than Charlton Heston. After all, Charlton Heston was only pretending to be Moses.

  “Where exactly does he hang out?” I ask.

  “Crown Heights, New York,” says Leah.

  “I’ll remember to drop in on him next time I’m there,” I say, grinning. The children exchange giggling glances, as though I’ve said something very funny. There’s a rustling and bumbling that suggests a certain amount of kicking under the table.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Well that sort of rules him out, then.” I say. While they’re laughing, I sneak a sideways glance at Dave, who seems surprisingly at home and relaxed in what should be an alien environment. Something about that annoys me. And how come he knew the words of the prayer?

  “I tell you what,” I say to the children, “I have got one you’ll know. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. Oldest son of Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “You’ve met the Queen?”

  “Not quite. Her son.”

  “A real prince. You’ve met a real prince?”

  “Yes,” I say, triumphant. At last, the children are almost impressed. “I have met a real, genuine prince.” There’s a lot of nodding and smiling, then one of the children says something in Yiddish, and Moshe shakes his head as he replies. He turns to me.

  “Chaim wants to know whether, when you met the prince, you said the blessing for meeting a member of the royal family.”

  “If I had known there was such a blessing, I would most certainly have said it,” I say. “And I will definitely say it next time.” I try to imagine the expression on the royal household flunkeys as I am introduced to His Royal Highness and just as I am about to drop the standard curtsey, I start declaiming “Baruch ata…”

  I’m trying to catch Dave’s eye. I want to tell him it’s time to go. I’m desperate. But he’s involved in a long conversation about arranged marriages. Moshe and Leah met just once before they got engaged. It hardly seems decent to mention that Dave and I have been dithering around for the best part of three years.

  “What about your brother Nachmann,” I ask. “Is he married – or has he been?” Leah sighs.

  “His parents tried. But he is a bit – different.” I nod.

  “When you have people who are a bit – unusual – isn’t that where arranged marriage is supposed to come into its own?”

  “In theory,” says Leah. “It’s not always that easy.” I’m waiting for her to explain what she means, but from her silence I understand that’s as far as she’s willing to go.

  It’s late afternoon by the time we manage to escape. I wait until the house is receding behind us before I peel off my clammy cardigan. We don’t speak, but our hands find each other as the heat of the day sweats itself out. We’re approaching the tube when I break the silence.

  “That went on a bit.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Thanks for coming. Sorry it took so long.” He shrugs.

  “It’s cool,” he says. “She’s an amazing woman.”

  “Really? I suppose if you think having trillions of kids and the perfect wig is the thing to aim for.” Gathering momentum at the stairs down into the station, we separate on either side of the handrail.

  “Why do you always have to sneer at things that go beyond your narrow world view?”

  “I’m sorry?” We push through the ticket barriers. Dave gets on to the escalator first. As we descend, he turns to face me.

  “You see something that’s different. Values you don’t aspire to, a lifestyle that’s not quite the same as yours, and your response is to say it’s crap.”

  “But it’s creepy. You never know what’s really going on. Why are you so keen to defend it?”

  “I’m not defending anybody. I’m just saying, be a bit more broad-minded.”

  “Why should we be broad-minded about them when they aren’t about us? They wouldn’t put on jeans to come for dinner at our place.” Dave glares at me. I get it. “You like it.”

  “What?”

  “The Hasidic thing. Big families, rigid lifestyle. That’s not you at all.”

  “We’re all allowed to change our minds, aren’t we?” He looks at me with an intensity I’ve never noticed before. “I wouldn’t even say I’ve changed my mind – it’s not something I’ve ever really thought about. It’s not as though you run into Hasidic families every day of the week.”

  “I’m surprised, that’s all, it’s just…” and I peter out before I finish the sentence because what I want to say is Where is the cool guy I thought you were? But then, I don’t suppose we’ve ever really discussed child rearing. Maybe I just didn’t know him as well as I thought.

  “You can call it rigid, or just structured,” he says. “They offer the children firm boundaries, give a clear message about what’s right and wrong. That’s surely what kids need. We are always being told lack of structure is at the root of youth crime and all the other ills of society. Yet here is a social group who do offer their kids a warm, loving, strong family, and the rest of the world can’t wait to have a go at them – you included!”

  “But it’s deeply odd that they don’t want to discuss Bruchi. Didn’t you see how they all clammed up at the merest mention of her name? What are they hiding?”

  “That is hardly surprising. Elizabeth, for Christ’s sake have a little bit more sensitivity. I worry about you sometimes. And don’t expect grief to come in neat little parcels. You’re so distracted by your own agenda that you forget the most important thing. You were born with this amazing heritage, and you dismiss it all the time. At your father’s funeral, you were obsessing about your mother and her behaviour, which to be frank was perfectly understandable.”

  “She abused me all the way to the crematorium.”

  “She had good reason to be upset.”

  “I thought you were on my side.”

  “It’s not about sides. By obsessing about your poor mother, you totally missed the fact that the service itself was very moving. You undervalue the most important thing your parents have given you.”

  “Next you’ll be telling me next that the Torah is the word of God, given to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai, every word written by him and handed down the generations unchanged. Get real.”

  The train arrives. We sit next to each other, staring straight
ahead in red hot silence. I get off the tube at Caledonian Road. Alone. Well, at least I’ve found out one thing anyway. They are permed. The earlocks.

  I get home to find the answering machine flashing like a Belisha beacon. Back to normal, then. Mutti uses the telephone like it’s some kind of therapeutic device, freely associating into it even if there’s nobody on the other end. I wipe all her messages and call her to find out if there’s anything critical to tell. It rings for a long time. I count seven, eight, nine.

  “Hallo?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure, why not?” You’d think she’d just got back from a spot of over-energetic shopping instead of coming out of hospital after a near fatal overdose. She’s reluctant to speak, probably because I’m dragging her away from an unmissable re-run of Columbo. So I ring off. But sure enough, later that night she calls back. I don’t trust myself to answer. At night I screen my calls, listening to the machine click on and trot out my message. Then her voice cuts in, slurring and stumbling away. Something about the claim, her father’s factory, her mother’s jewels. None of it makes much sense.

  My hand hovers over the phone. Then falters. If I speak to her in this state I’ll just get an earful, she’ll just end up abusing me. I’ve tried sympathy in the past, I’ve tried being stern. I’ve spent hours on the phone with her at night, trying to unravel her incomprehensible anger about some encounter with a bureaucrat or something a neighbour said to her. But she’s never, ever allowed me anywhere near what’s underneath, and if I try to find out she doesn’t listen. Instead, she turns her anger on me and the random alcoholic meanderings morph into blame. She knows how to scent out my weaknesses. I wonder where she learnt to do that.