Rose of Jericho

by Rosemary Friedman

  Norman had raised his head from Sandra’s lap as she sat on his mother’s bed, looking up into her face, golden framed in its diaphanous hair.

  “Not in here!” Norman was aghast.

  “In here!”

  Norman could see Dolly, in the dressing-gown she had worn during her last illness, standing, reprovingly at the end of the bed.

  Sandra, her flesh polished, cool to the touch, seemed unaware of the disparaging presence.

  Norman’s girl friends had, when Dolly was alive, been pronounced ‘common’, ‘plain’, ‘no better than they should be’ (Della). He did not want Dolly to see Sandra.

  “Come into my room!” He tried to pull her.

  Sandra lay down on Dolly’s bed – where he had found her, morning-cold – in his mother’s hollow.

  “Norman I can’t go on like this.”

  He heard the ultimatum in her voice. Their love, in this house, in his mother’s house, had been troubled. Troubled, Norman looked at her. Her breasts, despite Hilton and Milton, were firm, when she walked they trembled, and were fruit heavy when he held them in his hands. Her belly undulated from its button, its down shimmering in the light that was operated by a string from above his mother’s bed. Her legs were not long, but athletic, useful, their toenails painted red. Norman recognised his Armageddon. That it had come. And that he must not lose Sandra as he had lost Della, sacrificing her upon the altar of his filial loyalty. He removed his clothes, slowly, putting them on the chair where as a baby Dolly had nursed him – how proud she had been of keeping that chair – and where at night she had lain the underwear which had embraced and supported her.

  The bed – in protest Norman thought at the unaccustomed weight – creaked as he lay down next to Sandra. Cowardly, he reached for the light, but Sandra was there before him.

  “No.” Her voice, in its velvet glove, was iron. Norman put out a hand and was surprised, when it made contact with Sandra’s flesh, that its fingertips were not singed. His touch was tentative. The voice in his ears, ‘Norman!’ – hurt, shocked, surprised, grieved – insistent. To silence it he buried his head in Sandra’s perfumed hair.

  “Norman.” Tender, loving, it was another voice. “It’s all right Norman.” It charmed him with its reassurance, superimposing itself upon the other.

  “It’s not that I don’t love you…” Norman’s fingers grew braver, his hands stronger. “I love you.” He wanted to prove it to her and their bodies drew close, making passionate silhouettes, coming together and parting, a magic show on the rose-trellised walls. They were a symphony; a single voice. Over the months they had learned the notes together, perfected them. Lately, Sandra’s performance had grown in strength, while Norman’s had faded away almost to extinction. Now his andante matched her rallentando, his melody her plainsong. The bedroom receded, as did their forms, whose inner core produced agitations and disturbances, impressions and sensations, depths and understandings, comprehended only by those who in their wanderings had found a mate for their souls. Ridge responded to hollow, places to pressure, secrets were given up. Then downstairs – caught by the wind which blew through the letter-box into the privacy of the hall – a door slammed.

  ‘Norman! Is that you?’

  His mother’s voice, clear, unmistakable, sent Norman, from his space mission, back to earth. He raised his head from Sandra’s body.

  “It was only a door,” Sandra said.

  ‘Norman, what on earth are you doing?’

  His mother’s mouth was open, scandalised. He wondered, sometimes, how she had conceived him. He grew limp before her gaze, the room, which had been warmed by the sun of his passion, cold. Sandra was waiting. He could feel the suspension. Waiting for Norman. Disentangling his limbs from hers, he got up and moved to where Dolly was standing, followed her to the bed, on which she lay down to escape from him. With a grim determination Norman gathered Sandra up with arms so strong, so firm, she cried out as their grasp caressed her body then ravaged it, besieged it like a conqueror, made with it a solemn covenant on which he could not renege. With his heart he avowed, with his manhood he swore, with his passion he underwrote his love for her which was paramount and which he would not relinquish. Later, apologetically, in a spun web of silence, he reiterated it more gently, tears blinding his view of her, christening their happiness, baptising it. Weightless, they lay entwined in the womb of their world, until it was time for Sandra to leave. When she had gone Norman moved his possessions into his mother’s room.

  Twenty-two

  Shavuoth, ‘Feast of Weeks’ (seven weeks from the time of the barley harvest at Passover), ‘The Day of the First Ripe Fruits’ (when the Israelite was to bring a thanksgiving offering to God for the produce of his fields), ‘The Season of the Giving of the Torah’ (relating to the revelation of God to the assembly of Israel at Mount Sinai and the declaration of the Ten Commandments) and the yahrzeit for Sydney fell on the same day. It was hard to credit that he had been dead for two years. Last night, on the anniversary of his death, Kitty had lit the 24-hour memorial candle – ‘the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord’ – which still flickered in its glass beside her late husband’s photograph on her mantelpiece. Today, in synagogue, with Sarah by her side, she would spend the morning in prayer and meditation. Tomorrow, the second day of the Festival, Josh would recite the Kaddish for his father. ‘May the Lord comfort and sustain you among the other mourners for Zion and Jerusalem.’ Thus had the pious spoken to her during the seven days of mourning immediately following Sydney’s death, when Kitty had sat on the low hard chair with her friends and family around her. She had been both comforted and sustained.

  She had persisted. Without Sydney. She had not thought it possible that she could, that she would discover within herself untapped sources of strength, reserves of whose existence she had not dreamed. Two years. Sometimes she felt ashamed to find, more recently in particular, that for days on end she did not think of him, that there were nights when he did not enter her dreams. She tried to cling on, but recognized that it was salutary to let him go, to let him rest in the hinterland of her memory where his place was undisputed.

  Poor Sydney. How he had suffered. How – before her impotent eyes – he had changed from a strong and loving husband, a caring and upright human being, to an ailing shadow of a man, whose ultimate release from the shambles of his life was blessed. How he had loved his Festivals. With what devotion he had observed them. The legacy of his religious commitment, together with her own more tempered attitudes, led to Kitty’s continued participation in the celebratory services of the synagogue which, in addition to the regular Sabbaths, appeared at variegated intervals in the calendar of the Jewish year. There was another reason for her faithfulness, her adherence to the ritual which without Sydney’s firmness of purpose might well have become more tenuous. Sarah. It was appropriate that on this festival of Pentecost, this Feast of Weeks – when the Book of Ruth with its moving story of the Moabite girl whose conversion to Judaism due to her marriage, was read in synagogue – Sarah was by her side. In her white beret, her hair flowing over the shoulders of her white dress, she was engrossed in the service.

  In instructing her daughter-in-law in the ways of her household, Kitty, a practical adjunct to Mrs Halberstadt, felt that she was the instrument of Sydney and spoke with his voice. Because of Sarah’s determination to become Jewish, Kitty was never alone on Sabbaths and on Festivals. It was a blessing for which she was grateful. Josh was ambivalent about his synagogue attendances and Rachel did not put in an appearance at all. Kitty’s friends in the Ladies’ Gallery had long ago accepted the presence of Sarah, and Kitty herself, for long periods of time, forgot that Sarah, like Ruth, was a stranger in the land.

  Today, the synagogue – the early summer sun enriching the colours of the stained glass – was made beautiful with flowers. Kitty had helped to decorate it, as a reminder of Mount Sinai, which was covered with vegetation in honour of the great event of the Revelation. The synag
ogue decorations for Rachel’s wedding had already been decided upon – white and green – and the preparations had now entered a calm. Standing up simultaneously with Sarah, before the treasure house of the Ark was opened and the Ten Commandments recited, Kitty was glad that the bones of contention concerning the preparations – including her own and Hettie’s dress – had for the most part been removed, the differences ironed out. Although in the beginning Kitty had seen Herbert Klopman as an over-bearing man, unused to being thwarted, she had learned that his bellicose exterior camouflaged a well-placed heart whose tentacles had reached out to her last night on the eve of Shavuoth. Hettie had telephoned her early in the week, but it was not, unusually, about the wedding.

  “Rachel tells me you have yahrzeit for your husband,” Hetty said. “Would you like us to come over?”

  Touched by the suggestion, Kitty had invited her mechutanim to dinner, to eat the traditional dairy foods associated with Shavuoth. Josh had sat at the head of the table in Sydney’s place – where first he had been taken ill – and Sarah next to Sydney’s sister Mirrie, opposite the Klopmans. Kitty had invited Norman, who was busy with Sandra, and Beatty, who was spending the evening – as she did every evening – at the hospital with Leon, and Freda – who refused to go anywhere lately, seemingly almost to have become a recluse – and Harry, and Rachel, who was in the final throes of her exams and was reluctant to spare the time, and Patrick, who was on duty at the hospital. She was grateful to Herbert and Hettie who had arrived with the biggest basket of fruit she had ever seen, glad even of the distraction of Herbert’s stories, which prevented her from dwelling on the summer’s day when Sydney – with no farewell – had collapsed and died, and from being morbid. Kitty did not resent Herbert’s humour, misinterpreting it as uncaring, had laughed even, over the Shavuoth cheesecake for which she was renowned, at his story – à propros of weddings – of the woman who rushed excitedly into her neighbour and said: ‘Zelda, Zelda, guess what? I’m having an affair!’

  ‘Mazelov!’ was the response, ‘who’s catering?’

  After the dinner, at which Josh had recited the Grace after Meals with a demeanour which, Kitty thought, looking at her only son through half-closed eyes, could have been Sydney’s, they adjourned to the sitting-room where Herbert’s stories – he was now in full flood – kept Sydney’s shade at bay. He told them the one about the young Irish priest who went into a Dublin shop whose sign read: ‘Cohen and O’Grady’, to be greeted by an old man with a beard and a skull-cap. The priest smiled. ‘I just wanted to come in and tell you how wonderful it is to see that your people and mine have become such good friends – even partners. That’s a surprise!’ ‘I’ve got a bigger surprise,’ said the old man. ‘I’m O’Grady!’ and recited Abraham Ibn Ezra’s apt description of the shlimazl’s lot: ‘If I sold lamps, the sun, In spite, Would shine at night.’

  Despite Herbert’s well-meaning attempts to keep her from her memories, Kitty was not sorry when he took Hettie home and she was left alone – she would not let Sarah and Mirrie stay behind to help with the dishes. She stood on the hearth, facing the guttering candle’s leaping shadow, and tried, like Aladdin from his lamp, to summon Sydney. She found it not incongruous that when he did not appear she sat down in the light that flickered beside the rose of Jericho – now opened wide – that she had transported from the desert, to re-read Maurice’s letter.

  Dear Kitty

  Better yes, but weak as a kitten. Your letter was my best medicine. Of course, of course I’ll come to Rachel’s wedding – I have already put a tuxedo in hand, midnight blue – I haven’t had one since I graduated from medical school and found myself in the middle of New York, starting a practice with no money, no connections and up to my ears in debt. The day smallpox arrived in the United States – everybody had to be vaccinated – was the first time my office filled with patients. From that – was someone looking after me, Kitty? – the practice grew, and little by little – I couldn’t afford a car for the first four years – I paid off my debts, even the payments on the cardiograph!

  I cannot give Rachel a painting. Don’t misunderstand me, Kitty – I would give her all my paintings – but I don’t paint a jug, a sunflower, I paint the truth, my truth, in which everything is gray – gray barracks, gray sky, and the gray mass of miserable humanity – which has no place at a wedding nor any simcha. (I saw a woman wrap a shivering child in a gray blanket. The guard told her not to worry, it would be very warm where she was going!) I started painting in Frankfurt when I was no longer allowed to continue with my medical studies. My Aunt Lottie, (she was a teacher at the Städel School) taught me everything she knew – pencil, crayon, watercolor, Indian ink and pastels as well as oils – she had plenty of spare time! Painting to me is living. The pleasure I derive from it is more powerful even than that from music. I paint from the depths of my personality which was affected by, not created by, my experiences. The canvas and the oils are my therapists, they keep me in daily analysis which will never end. I didn’t paint in the camps, except in the hospital where I drew medical diagrams and charts. Others did, on scraps of paper with stubs of pencil for which they exchanged their bread. The Nazi’s found themselves with some of the world’s finest artists as their prisoners and could not resist using them for their own purpose (German soldiers, SS men and policemen liked to have their portraits painted), consigning them to the museum, where they painted on glass (as slowly as they dared), or made small wood sculptures, until they were transferred to work in the crematorium, to be beaten (broken jaws and feet) or to cleaning Nazi quarters and streets.

  I died there, Kitty. I could not do a thing. Who can paint a million gassed children, the scourging of Europe, six million ghosts? Who can commit to paper the fears and agonies of being deported, shot, burned to death, or thrown alive into a pit? Are there not extreme situations beyond the reach of art? Should art not be aware of its own limitations and keep a certain distance from the unspeakable? Only now, after forty years, can I face the fact that every piece of testimony, every recollection by the victims (both those who survived and those who did not) is precious, that there are values which supersede aesthetic ones, that the more you lost, the greater the obligation to remember, and that silence is the real crime of humanity. Only now can I raise the question, (although there are no answers) so that people should know. Know what? The canvases are stacked deep around my studio walls. ‘Wagons’ – loaded with stones and pulled uphill, where men are the horses; ‘Roll Call’ – one thousand racially inferior products standing nineteen hours in the cold; ‘Little Orphans’ – abandoned on the face of the earth. I would like to be remembered Kitty, not as a physician (although I had many grateful patients) nor as an artist, but as a man sounding an alarm. (They ring night and day in the city but no one heeds them.)

  Enough of MM. How gratifying it must be to feel needed (by Carol and Rachel). I can picture Carol’s Queen Anne house (in New York there is nothing old) and her delight (how proud you must be) at getting into print. Mazel Tov on her pregnancy (another grandchild!) Something to look forward to. The wedding feast sounds splendid (I won’t have the tuxedo too close fitting and will try to lose a few pounds) and the details of it always cheer me up no matter how black my mood. I too now have something to which I can look forward. (I have your photo on my high-boy but it’s not the same.) I have made my reservations (Pan Am) and have started whistling while I paint. I just noticed it. I didn’t think happiness was on the agenda of the life of your affectionate correspondent, MM.

  PS. I would like to give Rachel a silver wine becher although I guess Patrick will not be making kiddush right now on Friday nights! People change.

  PPS. About the choir music. Why don’t you have ‘O Isis und Osiris’ from Die Zauberflöte? (It is a prayer.)

  Standing next to her mother-in-law, for whom she felt a deep attachment, Sarah watched as the Sefer Torah – the five books inscribed on parchment in one unbroken scroll – with its breast-plate of silver top
ped by its pomegranate of tinkling bells, was taken with great ceremony out of the Ark. The further she progressed in her sessions with Mrs Halberstadt, the more intriguing she found the instruction in Judaism, whose object was to encourage man to perform ethical and moral deeds based upon a recognition of his link with God. Her stumbling progress with the Hebrew characters was rapidly improving, her knowledge of Jewish history widening. She had learned to accept the ritualistic requirements which governed the daily life of the Jew, from the moment he awakened in the morning until he came to rest at night, rather as techniques – or visual aids – to reach goals, and not as an end in themselves. Every action throughout the day – ablutions, prayers, the type of food he was allowed to eat – was linked in one way or another to Judaism, which had a special prayer for all eventualities in life, from birth to death. Sarah found this comforting, as she did the principle that every individual must assume personal responsibility for his actions. She accepted that no one had died to save her, that salvation would not come through faith in a mystery, that no holy trinity of spirits would protect her, but that she was on her own before God.

  It had not been easy. From her first application to the Beth Din, where the reception had been chilly, all manner of difficulties had been put in the way of her determination to embrace her husband’s faith. Rabbi Magnus, once a close friend of Josh’s father, had explained to her, in simple terms, the reason for this seeming indifference. Judaism, like parents, must accept its natural children, healthy or crippled, upright or delinquent. But in adopting a child it is free to choose, entitled to take all reasonable precautions, to ensure that he will be a source of pride and joy to them. Sarah was not deflected by the intransigence of those on high. She had always been determined. Her staying power had kept her from being diverted from her school work in her peripatetic childhood, and she would not be diverted now.