by Gay Courter
As Aaron stirred in his sleep, I patted his back, and my father asked, not unkindly, “Don't you think the child could be laid down now?”
“He prefers to be close to someone.”
“Babies need to learn to sleep alone.”
“I can't imagine why,” I replied sweetly. “Now, please tell us what is on your mind.”
“In one way your return is a blessing. I never cared to have you far away, and now I never want you to leave again.” He shot a glance at Edwin. “I know your ties are in Cochin. If your mother would consider moving to Calcutta, I would assist in the transition.”
“That is very kind, but—”
My father cut him off. “Let me explain my proposition. When my brother Jacob died, his wife, Sumra, was left without a husband and grieving for the loss of four of her children, all of whom had been living at home. As you might know, Dinah, the three eldest are married and on their own. The youngest one remaining, Yedid, is a shy boy who has not begun to recover from the trauma. However, his case is nothing compared to his mother's. Poor Sumra walks about as if she is in a trance. She rarely even speaks. Without a firm hand, the servants have allowed the house to deteriorate.”
While he spoke, I recalled Uncle Jacob's gloomy house in Free School Street, which always seemed filled with too many children and not enough light or air. It was not difficult to imagine why the plague had struck there.
“. . . Sumra wasn't much of a manager before the sickness, and the situation has worsened considerably since then. . . .”
Slowly an understanding of my father's intentions clarified. Flinching at the idea of living in that crowded older quarter, I exclaimed, “Are you suggesting that we move to Free School Street?”
“I am asking you to consider the possibility. Your aunt is incapable of making decisions. She would defer to you. There should be no quarrels on that score. Yedid needs a man like Edwin around. I realize the house—which Sumra inherited from her mother—is north of Park Street, but funds are available for a renovation. Many of the smaller bedrooms could be combined, new windows could be installed, the parlor refurbished to your tastes . . .”
Edwin, who had never seen the ghastly place and was probably as glad to leave his father-in-law's domain as I had been to leave his mother's, spoke up cheerfully. “Dinah does prefer to rule her own roost—doesn't any woman?—and I would do anything I could to help your family. Our Aaron might even bring some sunshine into those dark corners. Don't you agree, darling?”
“If I can be assured the house is a healthy place to live,” I replied hesitantly.
“There is no rush to leave Theatre Road, Dinah,” my father added to seal my cooperation. “The kitchen and pantries must be torn out so that the plumbing can be repaired. Sumra can live with her eldest son, Mir, until then.” He rubbed his hands to signal the matter was concluded to his satisfaction.
Aaron began to cry. Yali rushed into the room and offered to take him from me.
“No, he is fine now,” I said as I calmed him. “I'll bring him up in a short while.”
I thought a shadow of disapproval crossed my father's face, but he said nothing about my reluctance to let anyone else care for my child. “Yali and Hanif will go with you, of course,” he continued smoothly. “The household budget from Jacob's share should enable you to have at least four, possibly six servants, if you wish.”
Edwin shook his head. “I don't think that will be—”
My father waved for him to be quiet. “There is another matter. You will be wanting to make yourself useful,” he said, staring my husband in the eye. “I know you have been looking around and I realize you have not wanted to ask any more favors of me, but it makes no sense to have such a bright mind at the service of another company. Everyone makes mistakes, perhaps not of the magnitude you suffered, but let me say that I believe you thought you were making the correct decisions and those decisions might well have held you in good stead if a confluence of unfortunate events had not occurred.” My father went to stand behind the chair where I sat rocking Aaron. “We learn from our errors. We become more cautious. We mature. Thus, today you are more valuable than you might have been a year ago.”
“That is very kind of you, but—”
“No, let me finish. Now you are a family man. You can see what it means to want to do the best you can for your child, your wife. For better or for worse, you are also a member of the Sassoons, a clan that has been decimated by the loss of my two brothers Saul and Jacob. I am trying to fill the shoes of my eldest brother, but there is nobody groomed to fill Jacob's place. He was our link to the ryots in the Patna region.”
“That is not the place for Edwin,” I said, less gently than I could have.
My father's expression darkened. “I don't believe he has many options at the moment, Dinah.”
“There are always complications in a family business,” I added quickly, as if that, not the nature of the crop, had been my objection.
Sensing my discomfort, Edwin leapt in. “What I think she meant was that I know nothing about the cultivation of opium. Perhaps I could be more useful in Clive Street or . . .” He trailed off as he observed my father's disparaging expression. Avoiding my pleading gaze, he capitulated. “Well, I will help you in any way possible.”
“Then that settles it.” My father reached down and stroked Aaron's ruddy cheek, then turned on his heel and left the room abruptly.
The house in Free School Street was scrubbed from the inside out. The grimy exterior was painted a lemon yellow, and the hideous green shutters—so common in Calcutta—were painted a more tolerable shade of cream. The interior required white on every wall. Marble tiles replaced wormy wood floors. Dusty panels were removed. Unfortunately, along with the increased light, noise and dust from the busy intersection filtered in as well. I added more cleaning staff and punkah-wallahs and moved our bedroom to the back side of the house, giving Aunt Sumra the noisy front room. I did not mean to be unkind. I thought the commotion might stimulate her, and if it didn't, then at least she was used to it.
I would like to say that I worked as impressive a miracle with my aunt as I did with her house. At most, I managed to have her maintained, like a piece of the furniture. All the idealistic plans I had—which included having her tend Aaron—fell flat. She could not be trusted with the baby, for she had no sense of where his body began or stopped. Once she almost dropped him, so that ended that. Aaron learned first to crawl, then to walk around her. If she noticed him, or anything else for that matter, I never knew it. Her face never lost its flat, bleak stare. Thus our domestic life proceeded without her, although we hoped she was able to absorb a portion of our contentment, if only subconsciously.
Yedid, on the other hand, bloomed under Edwin's tutelage. “Every night when he goes to sleep, he must be afraid,” my husband had remarked perceptively when we first went to live in Free School Street.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because there was a period when every time he woke up, he found someone else had died in the night.”
He asked Hanif to sleep in the boy's room, and each evening he was home he would read the child to sleep. In less than a year Yedid's energy returned. He ran down the halls knocking lamps, furrowing runners, but was never chastised. Aaron toddled after the boy with worshiping eyes.
Against my wishes, Edwin went to work for the Sassoons. Was there no way I could disassociate myself from opium, or was it in my blood? For his part, Edwin shrugged off my aversion to the family trade much as Silas had done. And, given our reduced circumstances, I could hardly demand my husband refuse my father's offer.
I was troubled by another matter. I had always looked down at the positions that Aunt Bellore's husband, Samuel Lanyado, and Cousin Sultana's husband, Gabriel Judah, held, because their salaried status was that of poor relations compared to the brothers, who divided the vast profits. They lived well—Aunt Bellore at the Kyd Street mansion, Sultana and Gabriel in a much smaller house
in the fashionable section south of Park Street—but everybody knew they would never be partners in the firm. My brother Jonah, who was being groomed to work beside my father, would be Gabriel's superior in a year or two; and my father, who was younger than Samuel Lanyado by many years, was expected to take Uncle Saul's place as head of the family in Calcutta. If Edwin remained with the firm, he would never be more than a clerk, subservient to Uncle Samuel and even Gabriel.
Nevertheless, Edwin thought he could make his mark. “Your Uncle Jacob gave the ryots too much latitude. It won't take much to bring a finer grade to market, one that will raise prices in China without the competition at the auction being any the wiser. If I can make a difference in the balance sheet rapidly, I will have earned my position in the family. I might be able to make back fifty thousand rupees in less than two years—for the company, of course.”
I thought his predictions optimistic, but did not dispute him. Nor did I let him know there was no possible way he would ever end up with a share, no matter how deserving he was. Instead I concentrated on making a happy home and participating in the seasonal rounds of events that I had missed after leaving Calcutta.
Other mothers must look back on the infancy of their children and see the months and years as a blur as I do. Three years after Aaron's birth, I was again pregnant. This time I was uncomfortable almost from the first, and gained an enormous amount of weight. The worst part of my pregnancy came during the harvest in Patna, when Edwin was away for weeks at a time. I was pleased he could be spared my complaints, and yet I was so lonely, I was distraught without him. Zilpah thought I should come to Theatre Road, where it was cleaner and quieter, but I was loath to uproot Aaron and Yedid. When Edwin returned, my grossly swollen ankles, puffy face, and enormous belly shocked him. Within two hours of his arrival he had Dr. Hyam examine me.
“Twins,” he announced.
Edwin was ecstatic. I was frightened. Immediately we returned to Theatre Road. Saleh Arakie, who had assisted in Aaron's birth, was hired to attend me day and night. The doctors considered surgery. They checked my babies' heartbeats several times a day. They insisted I eat special foods. My task was to remain calm and to do as I was told until the babies could be born safely.
Edwin and I spent long hours contemplating the names of the twins, trying to make selections for every combination. He did not approve of the Middle Eastern custom of adding the child's name to that of its father and grandfather, with the last name in the series being dropped when the train of names became too cumbersome. Trying to keep track of relatives named David Joseph David and Moses David Joseph David and David Moses David (who were grandfather, father, and son, respectively) convinced us to search for less common names.
By the time I went into a long, drawn-out labor, we had not come to a final decision. The pains were intermittent and not especially acute, but they went on for days and days. I became irritable as fingers and hands and instruments prodded and poked incessantly. Trying to distract me, Edwin brought out our name list.
“Pick anything you want,” I said irritably at high noon in the hottest, dampest season of the year. All at once my water broke with an explosive splash, soaking the midwife. A curl of pain seemed to split my spine. The midwife banished Edwin from the room. Within minutes the first child tumbled from my loins.
“A boy,” the doctor told me.
“Is he all right?” I gasped.
“Listen to him crying. What a fighter!”
Ten minutes later another slid down, leaving a tremor in his wake.
“Another boy . . . smaller than the first,” the doctor said so softly I became frightened.
“He isn't crying.”
“Don't worry, he's breathing.”
“Yes,” the midwife added. “He's nice and pink. And delicate. More like a girl, but he's a boy . . . most definitely a boy!”
I squeezed the attendant's hand and closed my eyes as the prodding and wiping continued below my waist. The doctor gave me an injection and I fell into a rolling sea of sleep. When I awoke, I thought I was in the midst of a dream. Aaron sat at the foot of the bed. Two baby boys were wrapped in muslin, with only their hands and faces exposed. Aaron held the plumper one's fingers in one hand.
“That's Jeremiah,” Edwin said softly, glancing at me for confirmation, since that had been my preference for a boy's name. I nodded my approval. As Aaron bent over and touched the smaller one's cheeks, a long lock of black hair covered his right eye. In the last, complicated weeks of my confinement, I had neglected to have his thick hair trimmed.
“That’s Zachariah,” Edwin said as he selected the name that had been his favorite.
Aaron stumbled as he tried to pronounce the names. “Jeremeeah . . . Zachameeah . . .”
I laughed. “That's good enough.”
Aaron beamed up at me, and as he lifted his head, he used his fingers to comb back the errant hair in a gesture that perfectly mimicked his father's.
Other milestones marked the passage of those busy years. In 1894, when Ruby was fourteen, she married twenty-year-old Ariel Bassous, a true Talmudic scholar—in fact he was ill-suited to anything but a life of study. While my brother Jonah was trained in the opium business, Asher and Zilpah's two sons were sent away to school. Seti thrived in the Jewish Girls' School and enjoyed being the center of attention at Theatre Road.
These relatively pleasant years were marred by two deaths. Edwin went to Cochin twice to see his ailing mother. I admit I thought she was once again using her health as an excuse to bring him home, but two weeks after he came back from the second visit, she died. I refused to return to Cochin or the Malabar Coast, and after his mother's death, neither did Edwin. A short while later, Aunt Sumra passed away in her sleep. I felt as though she had been released from a living hell, and did not grieve for long, Even Yedid, who had just completed his bar mitzvah the month before, showed more relief than despair.
By the time he was sixteen, Yedid was almost ready to leave us. His eldest brother, who ran the godown inventory desk at the Sassoon company, offered to take him on as an apprentice. Yedid, who was impatient to leave a household where one child was always screaming in the night, welcomed the move to his elder brother's house.
Reminiscing on that period, I realize that I was too exhausted by the demands of the children to be aware of what was happening with the Sassoons. I had not seen a balance sheet in many years. The older sons of the brothers now formed a second tier of managers who competed for favors. There were rumors of Gabriel Judah's discontent, of Samuel Lanyado's clashes with my father, but Edwin assured me these were minor struggles. Indeed, the family seemed harmonious, at least on the occasions when I saw everyone: at synagogue, for parties, and at holidays. Edwin's responsibilities, which were limited to his supervision and reporting on the Patna fields, kept him out of the fray, or so I was led to believe. Later I would, berate myself for being too absorbed, by my growing family to notice the signs of dissatisfaction, but as long as my father was at the helm, nothing seemed amiss. However, his specialty was the Chinese trade, and it was during the last of his journeys—the first time Jonah accompanied him—that the equanimity in the Clive Street offices of Sassoon and Company was shattered forever.
42
Too many Sassoon children,” Edwin explained in an exasperated voice. “That's actually what Samuel said!” He strutted about our cramped sitting room clenching his fists. Rarely had I ever seen my husband so perturbed. “The words sounded as though that wife of his was putting them into his mouth.”
“After living for so long with Aunt Bellore, her nasty ways were bound to wear off on him.” I patted the double settee for him to sit beside me. “What was my uncle's point?”
Edwin plopped down for a second, but bounced up again. “The problem is who shall control the company. When Moses Sassoon began the trade, he held the reins. The business was rich enough to include generous shares for his five sons and to provide lucrative employment for his one son-in-law. What M
oses did not anticipate was that his daughter's husband would come to resent his position.”
I caught Hanif's eye as he passed by the half-closed door. “A brandy and soda for Mr. Salem,” I called. “Now, Edwin, we have less than an hour before we have to go to Theatre Road for dinner, and I still don't know what you are getting at.”
“Who is coming?”
“With Papa away, I expect it will be a quiet evening. Just Zilpah, Seti, Grandmother Helene, Ruby, and Ariel.”
“I hope they won't bring the baby.”
“Edwin, you are upset. It's not like you not to want; to see Sharon.”
Hanif presented Edwin's drink on a silver tray. “I can't help thinking that because she looks like her father, she must have the brains of her mother.” Edwin stared morosely into the glass of the amber liquid.
“Now, exactly which children are upsetting Samuel and Bellore?” I asked to bring him back to the point.
“All the offspring of the Sassoon dynasty. Ever since Saul and Jacob died, the balance has been distorted. As I understand it, when Saul was alive, he would render a final decision, and if that was unpopular, its effect could be leavened by Jacob.”
“What about Uncle Reuben and Uncle Ezra?” I asked for the sake of form, although I knew that both had weaknesses: Reuben was slow and obese, Ezra fancied himself above any sort of labor.
As Edwin sipped his drink, I noticed that the skin under his eyes was dark and his chin sagged. “Reuben spends his days translating to and from Chinese,” he replied glumly. “I can see why your father replaced him in China. Anyway, he seems happy enough to leave decisions to the others and take his considerable share.” He finished the brandy and looked desolately at the empty glass. “And Ezra is an odd one. He almost never comes into town, except when he is invited to visit Government House or to have lunch at the Great Eastern Hotel.”