by Bob Biderman
CHAPTER 13
KARAMELLI, THE INTERPRETER, was a stocky man with a bloated face, a walrus moustache and a tight fitting jacket that served as a corset to push his beer-inflated belly into his barrel-like chest giving him the appearance of an overfed and underpaid non-commissioned officer. He spoke German as well as English and pretended to know all the dialects including the one used by the Jews – which Karamelli translated with contempt. He had no patience with that linguistic abomination which he considered to be the lowest of low German spoken by illiterates producing truly horrible sounds that assaulted his senses. To his mind, it was as if the Jews had purposely taken that sweet language of Goethe and Schiller and had run it through a meat grinder simply to annoy him. In short, he had no patience with it. However, since he earned his living as a translator, hired by the court, and since he was registered as one of those who could interpret all dialects of German, and since ‘Jewish German’ (otherwise known as ‘Yiddish’) was one of the dialects listed, he translated it when called upon – but without any joy or happiness.
Z, on the other hand, loved the Yiddish language. He loved the words and he loved the sounds and he loved the expressions. That is to say, he currently did. When he went to the Jews Free School they had tried to beat it out of him – not physically, but through mental intimidation, attempting to convince him that this was the language of the uneducated immigrant masses and that if he ever hoped to become someone, anyone – a man of substance and respect – then he would have to come to understand that this pseudo-language, Yiddish, was nothing more than one of those pidgin dialects used by cargo cults to trade breadfruit for opiates. This, he was told, was part of the Anglicisation process – a process of re-education which meant that he would have to give up the tired and old in exchange for the new and the shiny; a process whereby he could, in time, become a credit to his father, his people and, most especially, his Queen, in whose reflected glory he would bask like a diamond in the sun (or quartz under street light in his case perhaps). But first he would have to stop using that horrid language – which came from neither God nor Caesar and which identified him with those long bearded men in scruffy black cossacks and oversized hats, the dress of the Polish peasantry – and only speak his mother tongue (not of his biological mother but that of her adopted land), the glorious and most perfect language of English (with, perhaps, a smattering of French, Latin and few other linguistic predecessors thrown in with it).
That aspect of Z which identified him as a modern man and a member of the new Jewish intelligentsia beginning to take root in the European capitals of London, Paris and Berlin, immersing itself in the values of the age of Enlightenment and looking upon the likes of Spinoza not as a heretic but as a model – that aspect of Z, perhaps, found Yiddish something of an embarrassment. But the other side of Z which established him as the ‘Poet of the Ghetto’, that side of him cherished Yiddish in the way one might treasure an aged ancestor whose face, wrinkled and worn as it may be, conveys in its multitude of lines a pathway back in time and thus becomes a precious artefact in which resides the crucible of self discovery.
Isaac Angel, the next witness called by the prosecution, gave his evidence in Yiddish, interpreted by Karamelli so that, while the simple facts came through hopefully unscathed, the subtleties of phrase, largely remained unknown except to that part of the gallery who understood his languid words without the questionable help of the accidental translator.
What information, then, did the prosecution ascertain? That Isaac Angel was the husband of the deceased; that he was a boot riveter by trade; that he had come from a village near Warsaw; that he had been in England for ten months at the time of the murder; that his wife was only twenty-two years of age; that he and his wife had moved into 16 Batty Street about a week before Whitsuntide, towards the end of May; that they occupied a furnished room there on the first floor at the front; that on the day of the murder he had left for his job at George Street, Spitalfields, at about a quarter past six in the morning; that up till the day of the murder he had never spoken to the prisoner nor, to his knowledge, had his wife.
Z made a note of this last statement. Could that really have been the case? 16 Batty Street was a tiny house with a communal kitchen. Is it possible that neither Angel nor his wife had met Lipski in all that time – not even bumping up against each other on the staircase?
On the evening before the morning of the murder, Isaac Angel testified that he returned home about nine o’clock. His wife was waiting for him at the door. They spent a few hours together, eating their meagre supper before going to bed around half past eleven. What did they speak about, Z wondered? What did they say? ‘This was their last meal together,’ he scribbled. ‘We never know when our final farewells are being said…’
Next morning at about six he awoke. It would take him about fifteen minutes to walk to his job at the boot making shop. He made her breakfast, as was his custom. What did they have? Some bread? A small pat of butter? Some jam? She didn’t eat with him. She was awake but stayed in bed. Her pregnancy, perhaps, had made her tired, lethargic. If she needed to rest, so be it. He would pick up their dinner on his way home. He asked her what she would prefer. What did she reply? He didn’t say. What was he going to pick up that day for the dinner they never had, for the child that was never to be? What had they planned for their dinner? It was questions like this that the prosecution never pursued. It was questions like this that Z would have asked. For these were the tiny details at the essence of who they were; details about a special moment that would never come. But the prosecution wasn’t interested and Karamelli couldn’t have translated it into the language of the court because it was an irrelevant fact and it meant nothing to them. But it meant everything to Z because it was a minuscule hook that would give him insight into an unfathomable mystery being haltingly articulated by a large, ponderous man, ill clothed, coarse and uncultured, who lived a brutal and impoverished life along with his wife he had brought here from Poland, happily pregnant, and now she was dead and he was alone with only her memory and that of an unborn child.
His wife was still in bed when he left the house that morning. She was awake. Did she go back to sleep? Probably. Who knows? Maybe she lay there, half asleep, half awake, a hand placed on her swollen belly, feeling the movements of the life within her. But she was well. Was she cheerful? That was a question the prosecution asked. Cheerful? Who was cheerful in that place? Cheerfulness is something only the middle classes might aspire to – and maybe children who know nothing yet about life. But is that a word for an impoverished immigrant – no matter how hopeful?
He was asked if he noticed the position of the table when he left. The table? It was at the window. Where else would it be? That is where he sat to say his daily prayers. Why would he move it? But if the table had been left there, could two bulky men have used the window as an exit?
And then the prosecution got to the crux of the matter, Z thought. It was the question Z was waiting for them to ask. Did Isaac Angel shut the door when he left the room that morning? Did he remember if the key was in the lock? Had he locked the door that night when he went to bed? Did he have to unlock the door in order to get out?
Yes, to all of those questions. Yes.
And was it a good lock? Did it work well?
Why not? It was a new lock, wasn’t it? He had complained about the door that was difficult to shut, so finally after having lived there for six weeks and eight days they put in a new one. For six weeks and eight days the door wouldn’t shut. Now, finally, it did. And, thought Z, after it was fixed she was murdered. Maybe they would have been better off with the broken one.
It was noon when he was called home. Mrs Levy, another of the boarders, had come to get him. What did she say? What did she tell him? What did he think when he saw her? Did he look up from his work, riveting, riveting, riveting, his boring, tedious work, riveting, riveting, riveting, boom-ka-boom-ka-boom-ka
-boom, hammer, hammer, hammer. Fingers thick and stubby but trained after years to be smart and quick. Rivet, rivet, rivet, again and again and again. From six thirty in the morning till nine at night. Rivet, rivet, rivet. And never look up, never look up, never look up. But when the rhythm took him over, boring as it was, sometimes he entered another world. His work was so automatic that he could dream. He could dream. He could dream of a day by a quiet stream when he would be fishing with his son. And it was so misty, so hazy, he could hardly make him out. But then once he did. He saw his face. He saw his face. He saw his face, and he smiled. And it was at that very instant, that very moment he heard his name. And he looked up. And he saw her. It was Mrs Levy. Mrs Levy? Mrs Levy from the Batty Street house. What was Mrs Levy doing there? What did she want? Their eyes met, thought Z. Maybe their eyes met. Or maybe not. Maybe she said simply that something has happened and he must come quick. Was it his child? His unborn child? That must have been what he had asked himself.
When he got home did he not find his wife was dead? That is the question the prosecution asked. It was a sad, brutal question and at first Isaac Angel just stared at Karamelli, as if it were the translator, himself, who had the temerity to ask him that.
Of course he found his wife was dead. But what did that mean? Did that have anything to do with what he felt on that terrible day – the 27th of June? He fought his way through the crowd, still in a daze, still hoping this was part of a dream, and those terrible faces that had surrounded the Batty Street house were just part of a grotesque, nightmare. He pushed his way up the stairs only to be stopped by a phalanx of police from going into his own room. They had sealed it shut. He couldn’t even touch the bed or the few possessions they had shared in their meagre life together. He couldn’t even say goodbye. All he could do was stand in that narrow corridor, hold his bulky head in his rough, calloused hands (the same hands that riveted shoes fourteen hours a day and would have cradled his new born son) – all he could do was stand there and weep and pray that he would soon wake up again.
The next to take the stand was Philip Lipski. He was the husband of Leah Lipski and held the lease on the Batty Street house, renting it from a Mr Peters, who was the real landlord. Z knew well how the brutal property market worked in the ghetto. An immigrant arrives in Whitechapel and rents a room. He works for a sweater for however long it takes to save enough to start his own workshop. Then, if he were lucky enough to save a bit of cash, he leases a house from another immigrant who is one step up on the ladder and has leased the house from someone else slightly above him who also has a lease on the very same building. And so the chain of leaseholders could be infinitely long, each creaming off a little profit from the series of sublets as they worked their way down to the poor, unlucky man who was at the bottom. Thus Whitechapel property, no matter how mean and grotty, was some of the dearest to be had in London.
Though Philip Lipski was just one step up from the bottom, he was working and settled and, if life was far from easy, at least he had a house with enough space to partition off into little rooms sufficient to give him a few shillings a week over and above expenses. What’s more, he spoke English well enough to dispense with Karamelli, to the relief of both the translator and the Yiddish speaking Jews in the crowded courtroom.
Z quickly sized him up, this bland, unhappy man, as someone he was quite familiar with, not personally, of course, but as a typical character of the ghetto. Stoic, sad, a man devoted to his family but fated never to achieve whatever minor dreams he might have had before being crushed in the heaviness of his brutish existence. In short, he was a nebbish – a word from the dialect that Karamelli so detested. But that word, like many others, could not have been properly translated into English even if Karamelli had been so inclined since it refers to a cultural entity that has no equivalent in the English mind. For a nebbish from the Jewish ghetto isn’t simply a failure, and thus reprehensible because he is without value in commercial terms; he is still a man and part of a community which understands life is hard but also unpredictable and that sometimes there are heroes and sometimes there are nebbishes but nebbishes can also be heroes and heroes can also be nebbishes.
What did the prosecution hope to gain by calling this nebbish to the stand, Z wondered? It was, of course, the lock. A new lock had indeed been put in after Angel had complained for six weeks and eight days. But not by Phillip Lipski, who, by the look of him, could hardly hammer in a nail let alone be trusted with the intricate fitting of such an important device as a lock. No, it was Mr Peters who had done the job. Mr Peters, the landlord of the landlord, who had grumpily put the new lock in after six long weeks and eight long days. And Mr Peters, was he a locksmith? Of course not. He was a tailor. You want a lock? I’ll give you a lock. But locks are not trousers and trousers are not locks. So what’s to worry? A door is a door. It opens and it closes. If it closes, then it’s shut. And why would anyone want to lock it anyway? What was there to steal – some rags in an egg crate?
So the prosecution ascertained that Mr Peters put in a lock. Whether it was a good lock or a bad lock, that was another question. But that the landlord’s landlord put in a lock, there was no debate. However, once on the stand, the defence, in the undemonstrative form of McIntyre, quietly established that, yes, the prisoner had been a well-behaved young man during the time he had lived at Batty Street and, yes, he had been steady, honest and industrious. Also, yes, he was engaged to marry a nice young woman. But, no, he was not a relative even though he was called by the same name.
All this information was verified by McIntyre without fuss, without bother and in a manner which was bound to make the jury forget about the nebbish with the same name as the prisoner. Especially since the next witness called to the stand was the one everybody had been waiting for – the very man Israel Lipski had accused of stitching him up: the man called Rosenbloom. For after Rosenbloom had testified, thought Z, who would remember what the nebbish had said?
To compare Rosenbloom and Lipski was to contrast brashness with diffidence. That’s what first popped into Z’s mind when he saw the self-possessed man neatly dressed in suit and tie take the witness stand. Rosenbloom had the slicked-back hair and thinly pencilled moustache of the classical roué. But his eyes had the bemused look of a man accused unjustly.
The prosecutor fixed him in his gaze. Did he live at 27 Philpot Street? A questioning look was thrown back. 27? A bad start, thought Z, as the prosecutor looked down at his notes. Did he live at 37 Philpot Street? Ah, yes. 37. And was he a native of Poland? Wasn’t everyone? Yes, yes… And had he been in England for eighteen months? Maybe, not quite. And had he been married for ten of those eighteen…?
Ah, so Rosenbloom was newly married. That did not bode well, thought Z. Slicked back hair and pencil moustache or not, it gave the impression of homely stability.
Did he work as a stickmaker for Mr Mark Katz of Watney Passage, Commercial Road? And during that time was the prisoner working in the same employment? Yes, yes, yes. Until the 20th of June. Till Jubilee Week.
Until Jubilee Week. And then they were laid off. All of them. The stickmaking business depended on being what it always had been, what it always was. And that was wet. For Katz’s sticks were made for the umbrella trade. And there was nothing that dampened the umbrella trade more than lack of rain and blazing sun.
Was that not ironic, thought Z. Two men sweating in the heat to make sticks for umbrellas and praying for rain. While the great celebration for the Empress, for the Queen, continued on and on and on, they prayed for rain. Not because they held her ill. Not at all. They prayed for rain so they would keep their jobs. And the organisers of the Jubilee? They prayed for sun. So two groups were inexorably vied one against another: the Royal retinue who prayed for sun and the umbrella makers who prayed for rain. And what of the Queen, herself? She probably had stopped praying long ago, thought Z. Whether it was rain or sun, she would be carted out – the only difference it would
have made to her was if the top of her carriage was down or up.