Scattered Seed

by Maisie Mosco

  “They had no right to exact it from you. Christians wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.”

  “They don’t have Jewish reasons to,” Marianne retorted. “Nobody’s hounded them from place to place. There’s nothing like suffering shared to make people stick together, uphold the laws that no amount of persecution has succeeded in breaking down. There are aspects of the Jewish way of life that I resent, Ralph; especially the one that’s currently affecting me, that’s turned my brother and my Uncle Joe into the next best thing to lepers. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the reasons for them; for the struggle that goes on in families between the elders and the more enlightened younger generation, to preserve the old ways. It takes the form of over-protectiveness, but it stems from something deeper. Even I, in my cool and collected moments – and this is one of them – have to admit that.”

  “Thanks for the lecture,” Ralph said brusquely.

  “I was wasting my breath, wasn’t I?” Marianne replied with a weary smile. “It was stupid of me to expect a Gentile to understand.” She went to the kitchen cubicle and drank some of her coffee. “Uggh, it’s gone stone-cold,” she grimaced, pouring it away. “And so have I.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Marianne turned to look at him. “That I don’t feel close to you anymore. The conversation we’ve just had makes me feel we’re fish and fowl.”

  “I’ve never heard of a haddock and a rooster copulating, but you could be right.”

  “It was you who put the thought into my head.”

  “Some thoughts are best left unspoken, Marianne. They lead to others.”

  “Like this one. Maybe we should call it a day.”

  Ralph got up and enfolded her in his arms. “Never, sweetheart.”

  “I’d have died if you’d agreed,” she said tremulously. “Why can’t you be like me and make the best of things?”

  “I’ll try.”

  The buzzer that meant Marianne had a caller downstairs at the front door pierced the air and they sprang apart.

  “Oh God! It might be Auntie Rebecca!” Marianne said.

  Ralph eyed her nervous expression. “Shall I hide in the clothes closet, or under the bed?”

  “You’d better lock yourself in the bathroom.”

  “I was joking,” he informed her.

  “Well, I wasn’t.”

  He watched her rush around the room removing the evidence of his presence. “Aren’t nice Jewish girls allowed male visitors?”

  “Nice Jewish girls aren’t supposed to be human.” Marianne thrust his pipe and tobacco pouch into his hands and his artwork into a cupboard. She dragged the armchair into the corner where his canvases were stacked and placed it where it would screen them from view. “Or that’s what it amounts to! Years ago, they had to let their husbands be chosen for them by their parents. And cut off all their hair when they got married, so no man but a devoted spouse would find them attractive.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true. They covered their heads, of course, but scarves and wigs’d be bound to slip off in bed, wouldn’t they? Can you imagine going to such lengths to ensure fidelity?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “Ultra-orthodox women still do it,” Marianne said as the buzzer sounded again. She hustled Ralph on to the landing, oblivious to his protestations and watched him reluctantly enter the bathroom. “You promised you’d try to make the best of things,” she reminded him.

  He stood in the doorway watching her clatter down the uncarpeted stairs. “I didn’t think it’d involve anything like this!”

  The caller was Marianne’s Uncle Joe Klein.

  “I’d have gone away if I hadn’t seen a light on in your room,” he said, kissing her cheek. “What took you so long, chick?”

  “Hiding Ralph and his things.”

  He sighed commiseratingly.

  “If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have had to. Come on up.”

  “I can’t, chick. I just got back from the Middle East and I’m off there again on Monday. I’ve promised Auntie Sally I’ll take her out this evening. Though all I feel fit for is a good shluff,” he added, stifling a yawn.

  Marianne smiled. “You still come out with Yiddish words, Uncle. Though you haven’t lived among Jews for years.”

  “What’s bred in childhood is there forever, Marianne. I just came over to invite you and Ralph to tea tomorrow. It’s a nuisance you are living in a place where there’s no phone.”

  “The landlord keeps talking about putting one in, but that’s as far as he gets. The same goes for replacing the chipped bath.”

  “Are you sorry you left the comfort and convenience of your parents’ home?”

  “No, Uncle. Some things make up for the lack of others.”

  Joe Klein patted her cheek affectionately. “You’ve learned to see things in perspective at an early age, chick. I’m proud of you. I found a letter from your Arnold when I got home, by the way. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that he keeps in touch with me. And that I see something of you now you’re in London. It’s nice to feel I’ve got some relations again.” He sighed and gave her a poignant smile. “Your dad’s not out of friends with me anymore. I think he forgave me that night I came to your house in Cheetham Hill when you were a little kid. But it isn’t the same, Marianne. How can it be when he’s never accepted my wife? Or suggested meeting her and my son.”

  Marianne leaned against the flaking, distempered wall, studying him. His face was criss-crossed with lines and browned by the sun from his frequent assignments in hot countries. But it wasn’t just that which made him appear older than his fifty-odd years. He seemed to be carrying an inner burden.

  “Is it Palestine you’ve just been to?” she asked, feeling instinctively that it was.

  He nodded, then groped in his coat pocket for his cigarettes and tapped one absently on the squashed packet. “And I’ll tell you something I wouldn’t admit to anyone else, Marianne.” He fumbled in his pocket again and found his lighter. “God knows why I’m telling you. I’m ashamed of it, but a person has to get things off his chest,” he said, lighting the cigarette. “When it came to writing my report for the paper, I had to work hard to be the objective journalist I’ve always been.”

  He blew out some smoke and watched it rise to the high, ornate ceiling and Marianne felt he was avoiding her eye.

  “It might have been better if they’d sent a non-Jewish reporter there,” she said quietly.

  Her uncle smiled. “One or two I could think of would have had the same struggle as me, only the other way around. And some don’t bother struggling, or if they do they’re letting their pro-British bias win. Don’t tell me you haven’t been reading the papers lately?”

  “Of course I have, Uncle. But when you haven’t seen things for yourself, you’re inclined to believe what you read.”

  “In your morning bible,” Joe Klein said cynically. “How many times have I heard people say, ‘It’s got to be true, I read it in the papers’?”

  “And what’s true in this case?” Marianne asked.

  Joe stared reflectively at the stained-glass fanlight above the front door. “There’s an old Jewish saying that the truth is like an onion. Many layered. I’ve had reason to remember it more times than I could count, in the years I’ve been a journalist I’ve also learned truth’s never black or white, it’s somewhere in the shades of grey that lie between.”

  “But how does that apply to the Palestine situation?” Marianne persisted.

  “Maybe you should think again about not wanting to be a reporter anymore,” her uncle said. “With your inquiring mind, you’d make a good one.”

  “No I wouldn’t,” she smiled. “My over-active imagination’d lead me astray from the facts.”

  “I could use a rest from nothing but facts myself,” Joe replied. “Especially the kind I’m confronted with in Palestine,” he added grimly.

  “Which you stil
l haven’t told me about. You’ve implied that the real picture’s being shown to the outside world through a distorted lens, Uncle; but the Irgun Zvai Leumi are terrorists, that’s a fact, isn’t it? Even the Jewish establishment condemns what they’re doing. How will there ever be peace there, while they’re blowing up railway lines and government offices? And that terrible incident last year, with all those casualties, at the King David Hotel –” Marianne said with a shudder.

  “Sure it was terrible. Loss of life and limb always is,” Joe answered. “But nobody appeared to think so when Hitler first began persecuting Jews. The whole world is outraged by what the freedom fighters are doing in Palestine, but where was the great outcry then? One theory I’ve heard expounded is that everyone’s accustomed to Jews being a scapegoat, it’s always been taken for granted. I think it’s true; that it’s been the case for so long, we take it for granted ourselves.”

  Marianne regarded him silently for a moment. “But that doesn’t excuse the terrorists, Uncle.”

  “Nothing excuses violence. But you and I can’t put ourselves in the position of men like the Irgun. Most of them were in concentration camps. And now their dream of a Jewish homeland is being snatched away from them. You’d think, in the name of common humanity, all the survivors of the camps would be allowed to settle there. But no. The British Government has always restricted entry and now Mr. Bevin is waving a conveniently written White Paper to restrict it still more.”

  Joe deadened the stub of his cigarette between a nicotine-stained finger and thumb and tossed it into the metal umbrella-stand. “What does a White Paper mean to a boatload of half-starved people turned back from the shores of salvation?” he said bitterly. “I’ve seen it happening, Marianne. And I’ll never forget it. The bewilderment and disbelief on their faces. The hope in their eyes flickering out. And the silence when they know they must accept it. That there’s no tomorrow for them; just an endlessly hopeless today.”

  He saw Marianne’s distressed expression. “But my job is to report the facts, not load them with my own feelings,” he said, pulling himself together. “That’s what I meant about remaining objective and now you can understand how difficult it is. I felt like punching the soldiers who were stopping the refugees from landing. I almost did get into a scuffle with one of them.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Another journalist held me back. ‘Forget you’re a Jew, or ask to be taken off this assignment,’ he said. I asked him where his heart was, and he said it was bleeding, but not just for the refugees. Then I looked at the soldiers’ faces, which I hadn’t even noticed, and saw it was hell for them, too.”

  “I don’t know how they can do it,” Marianne declared hotly.

  “Troops have to obey orders. They’re just pawns in the political game that’s being played out right now. Like the refugees are. And it’s turned into one with no holds barred. Between Menachem Begin’s Irgun guerrillas, who, like you said, at present don’t even have the support of the Jewish establishment, and the British Government. Who’ve reached the stage where they’ll do anything to save face; even make use of the gallows to prove to the world who’s boss in Palestine.”

  “I read the United Nations might be going to intercede.”

  Joe buttoned his coat and pulled his shapeless trilby down on his forehead before opening the door to leave. “Someone’d better. Before any more men whose only sin is to fight for their cause get hung, like those poor devils it happened to last month.”

  He stepped outside into the cool night air and gazed pensively at the sliver of moon emerging from behind a cloud. “I talked with some of their comrades, off the record, and it struck me they were the same calibre of man as their counterparts in Spain, when I was covering the Civil War. Wherever there’s injustice, there’ll always be freedom fighters, Marianne. The kind of people who won’t knuckle under, who’d rather die than lose their vision. I can’t condone Begin’s tactics, but posterity will be the judge and I have the feeling he’ll be remembered as one of them.”

  Marianne walked with him to where he had parked his car. “You’ve made me think, Uncle.”

  “So it’ll take your mind off your personal problem. Hadn’t you better go and tell him it’s all right to come out of hiding,” Joe said with a smile.

  Marianne glanced up at the bathroom window and saw her lover’s burly silhouette against the frosted glass. “I forgot he was there!”

  Joe laughed. “Auntie Sally’s bought us some strudel to have for tea tomorrow, to remind us we’re Jewish,” he said as she fled back to the house.

  “Who needs reminding?” she called over her shoulder.

  “That was supposed to be a joke, chick.”

  Some joke! she thought, tearing up the stairs two at a time. But maybe when you’d exiled yourself irrevocably to the no man's-land that people who married-out lived in, a sense of humour about it helped to ease the loneliness. That her uncle sometimes got lonely for his own people she didn’t doubt, and she was sure her brother did, too. Each of them had a family of his own, but it was an isolated unit, part of nothing.

  What a day this had been! First the letter from home to prod her conscience anew. Then Ralph’s revelation that he couldn’t paint because she wouldn’t marry him. And, finally, the things Uncle Joe had told her about the trouble in Palestine.

  She arrived on the top landing puffing and panting and banged on the bathroom door. If there was one person who didn’t need reminding what they were, it was Marianne Klein. What with one thing and another, she had never felt more Jewish in her life.

  Chapter 4

  Shirley’s second child was overdue, and Sarah was concerned to hear from Bessie that the baby was lying the wrong way around.

  “You’re only her grandmother, so how do you think I feel?” Bessie moaned before ending their telephone conversation. She had rung up to tell Sarah that Peter had taken his wife to the nursing home and had imparted the information about labour pains and a probable breach delivery in the same breath.

  Only her grandmother indeed! Sarah thought. She could already feel an ache in her own back.

  It was Sunday and Abraham was there to keep her company. “Sit down, you dusted the room this morning,” he said to her.

  But Sarah had to keep herself busy. It helped to pass the time. By mid-afternoon, she had washed all the laundry she usually tackled on Monday. It was a hot June day and the kitchen seemed airless. She began her ironing in front of the open window and could see Abraham sunning himself in the back garden.

  “If men had to give birth to children, instead of women, it would be the end of the human race,” she told her pregnant cat. “And the same would go for pussies,” she added, espying Mrs. Evans’s lusty torn sprawled beside her husband. “If they just got one labour pain, they’d stop taking what females have to suffer for granted.”

  The telephone rang, and she hastened to pick up the receiver. Abraham heard it and came in to hover at her side.

  “So what has Shirley had? A boy or a girl?” he demanded, listening to Sarah’s enigmatic hums and hahs into the mouth-piece.

  “It isn’t Peter, it’s Harry. He’s just taken Ann into the nursing home.”

  “Three weeks early?”

  But Sarah was not surprised. She had said all along that Shirley looked too small and Ann too big, but nobody had heeded her. In her day, babies were born when they were expected. It had been the old wives, who’d had many children themselves, who worked out the dates and attended the deliveries. Nowadays, everything was done by the book and despite their education, doctors, when it came to this most natural of functions, were often wrong.

  “Didn’t I say Ann looked pinched around the nostrils yesterday at the tea party,” she said to Harry when he allowed her to get a word in. “According to old Mrs. Katz, who delivered your mother and two of your uncles, in Dvinsk, that’s always a sure sign.”

  “I thought of it when Ann’s waters suddenly broke all over the lounge ca
rpet, Bobbie,” Harry replied.

  “If you’d taken notice of your grandmother, you’d have had a towel handy. So her wealthy father will buy her a new carpet. The while, how is she?”

  “Uncle Nat’s with Shirley. I had to fetch Uncle Lou and he said it won’t be long. Get the whisky out! I’ll bring you the news in person.”

  After Harry had rung off, Sarah sat down in the rocking chair.

  Abraham glanced at the ironing board. It was not like his wife to desert her chores. “You’re feeling all right, Sorrel?”

  “Sure,” she smiled. “But two great-grandchildren you don’t expect every day.” It made you think of the years you’d put behind you. Which when you looked back on them seemed like a dream. Good times and bad viewed through a mist over your shoulder as you journeyed along life’s road.

  But that was how God arranged things, she thought, returning herself to the present. And who could fathom His ways? That He had seen fit to put two young women in her family in labour at the same time and given her a double dose of worry was just one of His small perversities. But why had He arranged for her first great-grandson to be born to Arnold’s wife? To be a goy.

  She brushed the final painful thought aside and got up to make some tea. Whilst they were drinking it, Harry arrived to tell them he had a son and had named him Howard, after one of Ann’s cousins who had died in the war.

  Shirley’s son was born that evening.

  “You’re calling him Rudolph, after your poor father?” Sarah asked when Peter telephoned to give them the news.

  “Shirley isn’t keen on the name, so he can have it for his second one. She wants to call him Mark,” Peter replied.

  And her own way Shirley always gets, Sarah thought with a sigh. But one day her husband, who was no weakling, might emerge from the spell she’d cast over him and the sparks would fly in that household.

  Abraham was beaming with satisfaction. “So now we’ve got two great-grandsons, Sorrel,” he declared rapturously.