“I suppose it is,” he said.
“The lads at the depot call this place ‘Jerusalem’.” The lamplighter pushed his cap further back off his forehead and chuckled. “Must be off, lad.” He patted Avram’s shoulder as he passed. “It’s good to win. But savour it right, because ye could lose the next time.”
Avram walked on, thinking that if he couldn’t be a footballer, he wanted to be a lampie. He would like to join them where they congregated around their depot near Tolcross, bantering and smoking, with their poles stacked against the storehouse wall, ready to fend off the darkness around Jerusalem.
“You look like the cat that got the herring,” Celia said as he entered the kitchen.
Her sleeves were rolled up and she had one hand deep in a blackened pot on the stove. He saw the skin of her forearms raw and reddened like Mary’s.
“We’re through to the final. At Hampden Park. Scouts from Celtic will come to see me play. To see me. Avram Escovitz. An immigrant boy from Russia.”
He wanted to pick her up, twirl her around in his excitement. But instead he told her all about the game and as he spoke, she stopped her scrubbing, took a seat by the kitchen table. With elbows on the surface, she clamped her chin between the palms of her hands and listened. He warmed to her interest. By the time he had personally triumphed over Ginger Dodds and scored the winning goal her eyes were lit up in a shine he hadn’t seen for a long time.
“You are my hero, Avram Escovitz,” she said smiling. “Now can this immigrant boy from Russia get cleaned up before Papa gets home?”
He wanted to tell her more. He wanted to tell her that this sitting here now, talking like this in the kitchen, was like a time before. Before the War, before Madame Kahn had been taken away, before Celia had become different, before he was a nothing. But suddenly Mary strode into the room.
“Nathan needs attending to,” she told Celia.
“I’m in the middle of cleaning the pots. You do it.”
“You’ll do what I say. I’m in charge. I’m yer mam now.”
“No, you’re not,” Celia snapped back at her. “My mother’s not dead. She’ll be back.”
“That may well be, young lady. But she isnae here to look after you now.”
“She’ll be back. Then you’ll be back too. In your proper place.”
“I dinnae want to hear none of yer nonsense,” Mary snarled. “Nathan needs attending to. Leave the pots and go see to him. And when yer finished, wring out the washing and hang it up on the pulley. Go on. Go on.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Celia shouted, as she got to her feet. “You’re only a servant.”
“That’s where yer wrong, child,” Mary spat back. “With Madame away, yer faither put me in charge. I’m no a servant. I am the housekeeper. So you does what I tell you. You can ask yer faither when he gets home. You can ask him if I’m lying.”
“I will.” Celia stamped her feet as she spoke. “I will.”
“Yer brother needs seeing to. Like I said.”
“I’m going. But I’m going because I want to. Not because you told me. You bloody servant.”
Mary raised her arm quick, sent a slap sharp across Celia’s face, the sound of flesh upon flesh snapping across the room. Celia stood frozen in the shock of what had occurred. Mary stared curiously at her own palm still inches away from Celia’s reddening cheek. Eventually Celia lifted her hand to her face as if to check she had really been hit. She dabbed her fingers against the tender marks on her flesh in confirmation, then pushed Mary’s hand aside and fled from the room.
Avram had been numbed by the shock of the slap as much as Celia. Now he felt his own anger rising but Mary turned on him quick with her green eyes blazing. “Now see you. You listen to me. There are no bleeding hairbrushes any more. Just me. In charge.”
She pushed him backwards, throwing the boots from his shoulder. He tried to fend her off with flailing fists but she still managed to grab the flesh of one cheek between two of her knuckles and twisted tight. “See! Mary’s in charge.”
“Get your hands off me,” he shouted, wrenching her hand from his face.
“So, we’re starting to fight back, are we? Well, I’m going to make yer life a bloody misery.”
“See if I care.”
“You’ll care.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You think yer so damn clever. You’ll care, all right.”
“There’s nothing you can do to hurt me.”
“Yer mighty wrong about that.”
“What then?”
“Football.”
“What … what about it?”
“There’s to be none of it.”
“You can’t forbid me to play.”
“Aye, I bloody well can. I’m in charge. No more football for you, d’you hear? From now on, you come straight home after school. There’s work to be done. Same on Sundays. No more football. The Master agrees.”
That evening was the first evening of Hanukkah. The Festival of Lights. The Festival of the Rededication of the Second Temple.
“We are here to celebrate the miracle of the oil,” Papa Kahn said to Avram and Celia. He had taken the menorah into Nathan’s bedroom so that his son could also witness the lighting of the first candle. “The miracle of the oil when Judah and his Jewish warriors, the Macabees, defeated the armies of King Antiochus and reclaimed their Temple. There, in the profaned Sanctuary, the Macabees found only one small jar of purified oil. It was enough to sustain the Ner Tamid, the Everlasting Light, for just one day. But the oil miraculously lasted for eight days until a fresh supply could be found. That is why …”
“… we celebrate Hanukkah,” interrupted Celia. “By lighting a candle for each day of the miracle.”
Papa Kahn smiled. “You know my speeches too well, daughter. Hanukkah. The festival of miracles and heroes.” Papa Kahn looked at the wasted figure of his son while Celia made the blessing and lit the first candle. “The festival of miracles and heroes.”
Avram stared at the solitary burning taper adorning the menorah like a lone sentry. He remembered the same ceremony being conducted back in his home in Russia when it was he that was given the privilege of lighting the first candle. Then, together with his mother he would sing the same Hanukkah songs as he sang now with Celia and Papa Kahn, melodies that seemed to possess no geographical boundaries, melodies that somehow had wandered intact through the Diaspora locked in the hearts of his people. Was it like this in other homes in countries to which Jews had fled throughout the world? Singing the same melodies, like some universal code? He even recalled, in some vaguer memory, his mother giving him a few coins, the Hanukkah gelt, to celebrate the festival, and he remembered the joy he felt at being entrusted with such a wonderful gift of adult currency.
He half-shut his eyes so that the flame before him fractured into shards of light that beamed back at him. Perhaps the light would bestow on him another miracle. Or turn him into a hero.
“Now let us go into my study,” Papa Kahn said.
Avram had not been in Papa Kahn’s study since the eve of his bar mitzvah. The room not only appeared smaller but it had become neglected. The shelves of books around the walls seemed to sag both from their extra layers of dust and from the weariness of their owner. Bolts of military cloth and boxes of military insignia now took precedence over everything else. It was here that Papa Kahn instigated the orders for the clothes that would turn ordinary men into soldiers. By the side of the desk, there lay a large opened box. He could see bars of soap stacked up neatly inside. The smell of lavender pervaded the room.
Papa Kahn slumped down into his leather chair behind the large desk. He flicked a hand back and forth across the top row of his abacus, following the rhythm of the beads until he was ready to speak.
“I put Mary in charge of the household,” he said eventually. “You must do as she says.”
“But, Papa, she hit me,” Celia protested.
“She said you swore at h
er. Is that true?”
“She said she was my mother.”
“Did you swear at her?”
Celia said nothing.
“Avram?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Very noble of you, Avram. Very noble. But your loyalty should be to me.” Papa Kahn turned his attention back to Celia. “I don’t know where you get this language from. Not from me or your mother. From the schoolyard, no doubt. From now on, you are to behave like a young lady, not some girl from the gutter.”
“But she provoked me.”
Papa Kahn sighed. “Until Mother comes back, I need Mary’s help. And I need you to cooperate. She has been with us many years.”
“Even if she strikes your daughter?”
“I will speak to her about that. It is an isolated incident and it will not happen again.” Papa Kahn looked at Avram. “Is there something you want to say about the matter?”
Avram tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke. “What … what about my football, sir?”
“What about your football?”
“Mary says I have to come home straight after school.”
“If she needs you for errands or housework, she is within her authority to make such reasonable requests.”
“But they are not …”
“Enough!” Papa Kahn slammed his fist on the desk. “Enough! Enough of your nonsense, both of you. Enough of this behaviour.”
“But Papa–” Celia interjected.
“I said it was enough. You must learn to get on with Mary. Much worse is going on in this world than your petty domestic squabbles.”
Celia turned away but Avram didn’t move. The Glasgow schoolboy’s final was only a fortnight away.
“Please, let me play football,” he pleaded. “Just two more weeks. Please.”
Papa Kahn looked up from his desk. “You will not question my decision. You will do as I say. No more football.”
“But …”
“Fertig! Enough of this selfish behaviour.”
Avram felt Celia pulling at his arm and he let her lead him away. At the doorway, he turned back to see Papa Kahn stoop to reach into the cardboard box by the side of his desk and pull out a bar of soap.
That night, he had a dream he had not dreamt for a long time. His mother was watching him from the quayside as he clung on to the mast of a raft that was lurching in the suck and heave of a wild ocean swell. But this time the raft was no longer roped to the harbour. It had been ripped free of its moorings and was being rocked out to sea. He looked around where he expected to see the figures of men who looked like the Prophets, men wrestling with ropes and winches, their feet slipping around on the bodies of silvery fish that had been washed up on to the deck. But there was no-one. The craft was empty. He shouted back to the shore. “What will happen to me, Mother? What will happen to me?” But his words were blasted back at him in the wind. He wiped the salt spray from his eyes and searched the horizon. His mother was nowhere to be seen.
He awoke to the sound of the ash-bins being emptied out of the back court. He got up and tiptoed over to the window from where he watched the glow from the distant foundry chimneys roast the night sky. He tried to imagine the colony of workers toiling in the heat. He saw the sweat on their skin and the strain in their muscles as they shovelled the ore, coal and limestone into the blast furnaces. Their lungs breathed shallow the air dense with coal dust and the sand from the moulds, their ears immune to the roar of the fans and the constant winching of the metal containers lurching under their load of molten ore. He saw their arms gloved in leather reaching up to ladle the scalding liquid into the moulds, each man bearing the marks of his carelessness where he had allowed the metal to spill and splash beneath his apron on to his skin. Out beyond the blast furnace rooms, tired workers crouched among the dull, lifeless shapes of their labour – the axles, the wheel hubs, the rail clamps, the engine blocks. They smoked their tobacco quietly, communicating the occasional vital word, grateful for the silence.
“The Devil’s work in the furnaces of Hell,” was what Madame Kahn called it. “That’s where you’ll go if you don’t do what you’re told,” she threatened. “To the fabriken.”
Ribbons of clouds cleared from across the moon and as he followed the shadows of men emptying the bins into the wagon on the street, he wondered what would be worse. Working in the fabriken or not playing football.
Sixteen
CELIA HAD ONCE TOLD AVRAM his footballing skills were a kiss on his feet from God. He chose to believe her. For where else could his talent have come from? He had not grown up with the game in Russia, he did not know that football even existed until that day on the streets outside the Kahns’ tenement close. But what God had given, He could also take away. He knew that. He knew that this God was ready to punish the slightest sin, just as He had done to Moses. Just as He would do to him for his sin of dealing with Mary in anger, threatening her with the hairbrush. Or trying to talk back to Papa Kahn. But there was one man whose wrath he prayed might be equal to that of the Almighty.
“What do you mean you can’t play football?” Roy Begg screamed. “Don’t stand there dumb, staring at your feet. Answer me, boy. Answer me.”
“I’m needed at home, sir.”
“Well, I need you at school. Our most important game is coming up. You have to play.”
He felt a droplet of sweat trickle from under his arm down the side of his ribcage. “I’m not allowed to play, sir.”
“No such thing, Escovitz. You’re mine. Remember what I told you, Jew boy. You’re mine. You play when I tell you.”
“There’s too much to do at home, sir.”
“Why is your home so bloody special?”
“Because Madame Kahn is an enemy alien.”
“Who’s this Madame Kahn?”
He explained.
“A German. A bloody German. Wouldn’t you know it?” Roy Begg’s face twisted into a scowl but he appeared to calm down. “I don’t think Mr Kahn understands what a talent you have. It’s a talent to be encouraged.”
“Mr Kahn doesn’t really know about my football, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never talk about it, sir.”
“Why not? It’s something to be proud of.”
“Maybe you could tell him that, sir.”
Begg scratched the back of his thick neck, shedding flecks of skin on to his sweater.
“You’ll play for Celtic one of these days. I’m sure of it. I’ve got my connections. I know the scouts. Don’t you want to play for Celtic?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You stick with Roy Begg and the colour of your jersey will be the green and white. Now you tell this Mr Kahn of yours that Roy Begg is coming to visit. Tomorrow evening. At eight o’clock.” And then the gym teacher added. “I’m coming privately, mind you. In a personal capacity. Not as a representative of the school. Make sure you say that. Personal capacity.”
It was not until the following morning that he found the courage to tell Papa Kahn about Roy Begg.
“Again with the football. What’s this with the football? If Mary needs you to help in the house, then that is the priority. What business is it of a gym teacher?”
“He says he wants to see you in a personal capacity.”
Papa Kahn rubbed his forehead. “All right, then. All right. But ask him to wait until Hanukkah has finished. I will see him next week. After Hanukkah.”
It was during Hanukkah that Rabbi Lieberman came to the flat. The visit was expected and the rooms were extra clean as if for Passover. Mary was asked to bake special cakes and Papa Kahn went to much effort to purchase a bottle of kosher wine for the occasion.
Avram was sitting by Nathan’s bedside reading the boy a story when Papa Kahn entered with the rabbi. The two of them were flushed in their cheeks. Crumbs of pastry adorned the rabbi’s beard.
“This is the boy,” Papa Kahn said, his voice louder than usual.
Rabbi Lieb
erman approached the bed. Nathan was propped up on his pillows, his head hanging loosely to the side on which Avram sat.
“He hears you when you read to him?” Rabbi Lieberman asked.
“I don’t know, rabbi.”
“No acknowledgement? No sign? No movement?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Rabbi Lieberman moved in closer. “Such a paleness and a thinness. Such dark circles around the eyes.” The rabbi placed the back of his hand on Nathan’s forehead. “And such a coldness. The doctor … what does the doctor say?”
“Nothing physically wrong,” Papa Kahn said. “A disease of the spirit. A melancholy.”
“He has always been like this?”
“In the last few years he has been worse. Before that, he was just a quiet child. Very sensitive to others around him. If they were happy, he was happy.”
“And if they were sad?”
Papa Kahn did not reply. Rabbi Lieberman put his hand on Papa Kahn’s arm. “I am just thinking, Herschel. Just thinking. But have you heard of the legend of the lamed vav?” The rabbi turned on Avram. “Lamed vav, boy. Quick, quick. What do the letters lamed vav stand for?”
“The number thirty-six.”
“Very good, Avram. I am glad you remember something of what I taught you. Now, Herschel, do you know of this mythology of the lamed vav? Of the thirty-six righteous men?”
Papa Kahn shook his head.
The rabbi continued. “Some Talmudists believe that at any given time in this world there are thirty-six men who take on all the suffering of humankind. The lamed vav. They bear the burden of our misery. Without them, our collective grief over the condition of humanity would be so great we would not be able to endure living. These righteous lamed vav represent a great paradox. They must be sensitive enough to absorb all of our suffering yet strong enough to endure it on our behalf. They are truly righteous men.”
“You are saying Nathan is one of them?”
The rabbi sighed. “Na, na, na, na. It is unlikely. He would have to be part of a tragic dynasty of suffering passed down from one generation to another. Although the boy may not at first be aware he himself is a lamed vav, someone of the previous generation would have had to bear the legacy before him. Is there anyone in your family like that?”
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