by Rose Zwi
And there, behind Leib who was singing like an angel, sat the Reverend Benjamin, back in town after a long absence. Yenta knew only part of the reason for Berka’s dislike for Benjamin. He never told her about Benjamin’s liaison with a Boer woman in the diggings which had resulted in a progeny of several daughters, all of whom Benjamin had finally abandoned. It would be disastrous, Benjamin had protested when Berka urged him to marry the woman, for a man of his religious calling to form a permanent association with a goya.
Benjamin had grown fatter and blinder since Hershl had last seen him. His short neck had disappeared behind several chins which trembled with piety as he sang a hymn to Queen Sabbath. He lifted his thick-lensed glasses in the direction of Heaven and prayed with abandon.
Hershl could not give himself to the service that evening. It took time to unwind. He had rushed home from work, climbed into the steaming bath which Faigel had prepared for him but had hardly begun to relax when she reappeared with his clean underwear and sabbath suit, urging him to get to shul on time. The transition from the working week to the sabbath had always been preceded by a rush, especially in the old country.
‘In Bod arein! In Bod arein! Yidden, in Bod arein!’ the shammas had called through the streets of his home town, summoning the Jews to the bathhouse before the sabbath. Thin men, fat men, young boys, old men, all rushed through the streets, trailing their clean clothing. Everyone slapped himself with brooms of supple aromatic twigs in the steamy atmosphere of the public bath, laughing, shouting, arguing. Privacy was an acquired taste, Hershl had decided in his bath earlier that evening, to which one finally became addicted. But he had loved the bathhouse atmosphere, the sense of community.
How different it was in his little bathroom where the steam fogged up the mirror and where the only sound was the drip, drip, drip of the leaking tap into a bathful of water. Here a man could think, plan or relax, according to his mood. There one had been caught up bodily, spiritually, into a swirl of naked humanity and was carried into the life of every other individual. Could one feel distant from a man when one knew he had a brown birthmark on his buttocks?
Pardon the vulgar expression, Hershl apologised to the domed ceiling.
He felt a keen sense of loss when he thought about the bathhouse. Privacy had its price. He understood what Dovid meant when he said that he felt out of joint in South Africa, as though he were hanging on the edge of a continent, at the end of the world. Everything was upside down. One celebrated Passover, a spring festival, in autumn, and Shavuoth, the harvest festival, in spring. In der heim the Ark had been built into the east wall of the synagogue, facing the Temple’s site in Jerusalem. Here it was built into the north wall. But the difference was not merely one of geography or of season. Something invaluable had been lost. It was only at shul these days or at a wedding or a barmitzvah that Hershl met with all his old friends and experienced this sense of community.
In Palestine it would be restored and there, please God, it would exist on a higher and more meaningful level.
‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ he prayed out of context.
The short Friday night service was over. Hershl shook hands with Rabbi Josselson and was walking out when he found himself behind the Reverend Benjamin and Uncle Feldman.
‘And how’s that wild Boer, my nephew?’ Uncle Feldman asked Benjamin.
‘Now, now, Reb Feldman,’ Benjamin said, ‘Berka’s not a bad chap. A little hasty perhaps, obstinate, a poor provider, an out-and-out atheist, but a bad chap he’s not. If he were he wouldn’t have produced such delightful children, the evil eye shouldn’t harm them. You’ve met them, of course?’
‘Once. When they were small,’ Uncle Feldman said brusquely.
‘The girl’s a beauty and the boy’s a chemist. Or nearly a chemist. He writes his final exams at the end of this year. Works all day and studies all night. So intelligent that he could turn his hand to anything. It’s a pity…’
‘Yes, yes, it’s a pity,’ Uncle Feldman said crossly. ‘It’s a pity he’s got an ox for a father. Ruined his chances and those of his children. Rich they could’ve been. Of course I’m interested in them. My trouble is that I’m too soft and forgiving. Listen Benjamin,’ he said drawing closer. ‘It’s difficult to find honest, intelligent employees. If the boy has more sense than his father, tell him to contact me. We’ve just bought a bankrupt drygoods firm. If he’s as intelligent as you say he is…’
Hershl turned away hastily. He had already heard too much. He prayed that for once in his life Benjamin would have the good sense to mind his own business and not pass the message on to Joel.
Hershl took Daniel’s hand while they waited for his two older sons, Joshua and Moshe. They had been among the noisy boys at the back of the shul and Hershl hoped that one or two of the shammas’s blows had landed on them. He himself never laid a hand on his sons, but there were times…
The noise and the heat had been oppressive. It was refreshing to stand in the cool evening breeze without a ceiling between himself and God. Hershl smiled up at the dark velvety sky. It was a reflection of life on earth: stars like sugar crystals, a moon like half a beigel.
‘Gut shabbes tatteh,’ the boys said as they shook hands with Hershl and kissed him on the cheek. Joshua or Jossie as he was called at home, was nine and Moshe eleven. Good boys. Hershl’s eyes filled with tears of gladness as he walked away from the synagogue. A little wild at times but independent, truthful and healthy, thank God.
Until recently Faigel had worked in the bakery all day. The boys, when they returned from school, took their lunch from the ice box or from the oven, changed out of school uniform, then ran off to cheder. Faigel had taken Daniel to kindergarten on her way to work and brought him to the bakery at lunch time. He was a lonely boy, Hershl thought giving his hand a warm squeeze. He spent the afternoons on the bakery floor, moulding horses and oxen out of pieces of dough. At school, Hershl hoped, he would make friends.
The smell of sabbath cooking drifted through the dimlylit streets and Hershl increased his pace. He neither loved nor hated Mayfontein as Berka and Dovid did. For him it was a place to live in. His family was there, his friends, his business. What did it matter that the mine machinery roared and crunched its way through the night; that the little verandas were always covered with mine dust; that the mosquitoes bred profusely in the smelly dam at the foot of the dumps? What was important was the environment that man created within himself. He would, of course, have preferred to nurture this inner environment in Palestine, but until he went there it mattered little to him where he lived. To Faigel, unfortunately, it mattered a great deal.
The local high school only went up to Standard Eight. This, he supposed, was sufficient for the miners’ sons who would follow their fathers into the mines. He, however, had other plans for his sons. They would study. The nearest high school to which both Joel and Raizel had gone, was two trams and forty minutes away from Mayfontein. ‘Either one of us travels, or three of us will have to,’ Faigel said pointedly.
It looked as though one of them would travel. But that was still in the future and Hershl refused to think about it. By the time the boys went to high school, God willing, he would buy a car and travelling would not be a problem.
He liked Mayfontein best at night when the outlines of the cramped little houses merged with the dark and when the dusty dumps on the edge of the suburb vanished from sight. Only a delicate row of lights was visible, running from the base to the top of the dump, outlining the course of the coco-pan rail. He loved to walk down the dark sand roads and look into the lit-up houses where each family lived with its own parcel of joy and sorrow.
Tonight the sabbath candles burned away in every Jewish home, even in Berka’s, despite his protests. All over the world they were burning. But not in Germany, not in Germany. Or if they were, they burned in secrecy and in fear. God alone knew what was happening there.
Rebainu Shelailem, he appealed to the sugar-frosted sky, take care of your ch
ildren. Shield them from the Nazi horror.
He entered his house in a chastened mood. He hung his hat on the hallstand, washed his hands and went into the dining-room. Above the sideboard was a picture of a man with a dark bushy beard and fine prophetic eyes. After God, Theodore Herzl. Berka disputed the order but then neither God nor the father of Zionism figured in Berka’s pantheon of gods, if he had one. Hershl lowered his eyes before the picture, put on his yarmulka and said a blessing over a goblet of wine. Silver candlesticks stood in the centre of the table, and the melting wax dripped down the sides of the candles like molten tears. Even a stone would cry for the misfortunes of his people.
‘The sabbath is a time for rejoicing,’ Hershl said shaking off his dark mood. ‘Faigel, the fish is excellent.’
‘Too much saffron, too little salt,’ she replied reluctant as ever to accept a compliment.
But try not giving one, Hershl thought. She would bristle with farible, with a grievance, for a week. A fine woman, Faigel, but as sensitive as a hair in the wind. Such, he supposed, were the ways of women although he did not consider himself an authority on the subject. An excellent wife and mother to be sure, but as much a mystery today as she had been when he first met her.
She was a baker’s daughter, a quiet, dark-haired girl to whom he had become increasingly attached when he visited their home during his lonely years as a Torah student in Vilna. He had originally been attracted to her vivacious younger sister but before he realised what was happening he had proposed to Faigel. He suspected some quiet campaigning in the background but so subtle had it been, if it had in fact been, that he was never sure of it.
When they arrived in South Africa it was she who suggested opening a bakery. He could not support a family on his earnings as a Hebrew teacher. She performed tasks both menial and delicate, from kneading dough and stoking the ovens to decorating cakes. If she was a little tight with money today, one could forgive her: she had worked hard to earn it.
‘The lokshen pudding melts in the mouth,’ he said, returning his plate for a second helping.
‘Too crisp at the corners,’ she replied. ‘Eat, Moishala, eat. It’s all bones,’ she said piling another helping of boiled chicken onto his plate. Daniel was still toying with his first helping.
‘Who, in der heim,’ Hershl said pushing away his empty plate, ‘was sure of having a chicken for the sabbath? Do you know, children, when a poor man ate chicken? Either when he was sick or when the chicken was. We are very fortunate to be so well off and healthy. But we must never forget others who are less fortunate.’
‘You don’t,’ Faigel said sharply. ‘You give away half your earnings.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, Faigala. I give away only a small portion. I wish I had more to give.’
‘Tatteh,’ Daniel said. ‘When you say we must think of others, do you mean the shocherdikke as well?’
‘Kaffirs, my child, kaffirs. Schocherdikke isn’t a nice word,’ Hershl corrected gently. ‘Of course. They’re men, not beasts. Why do you ask?’
‘Because today a shoch…a kaffir fell off his bicycle near the bakery and he lay on the ground bleeding and nobody helped him until the ambulance came. They said he was drunk.’
‘Oy vey, talk of happier things,’ Faigel interrupted. ‘Blood and schocherdikke. It’s enough to make one’s meal curdle in the stomach. Come. Let’s have our tea on the veranda.’
‘Leave the lights off,’ Hershl said as Faigel reached for the switch. ‘If the mosquitoes want a meal let them look for it in the dark. For that alone I wish the summer was over already.’
On his darkened veranda Hershl felt as though he was in a theatre. The stage, the street; the setting, the lit-up verandas; the performers, his neighbours; the play, plotless, nameless, changing with circumstance but retaining the repetitive rhythm of a religious ritual. On Friday nights children gathered from all over the neighbourhood to play bok-bok, kicking the milk tin, and other queerly-named games. His own sons watched enviously as the others leapt onto one another’s backs or ran through the streets kicking a tin with stones in it. On Fridays the goyim had the run of the street. The Jewish boys, against their inclination, were restrained from running wild. It was sabbath.
Tomorrow night they would join in the games.
Dovid and Sheinka sat in silence on their veranda, he with his ‘Forwerts’, the Jewish labour paper from America, and she staring mournfully into the dark sky, her head to one side as though she was listening to music. Leib was sitting on his chair with his legs raised onto the ledge, his hands linked behind his head, humming the melodies from the Friday night service.
Gittel walked up to Yenta’s house and stood talking to her and Benjamin, an occasional performer who played the villain’s role. It was a pity that Benjamin’s presence on the stage precluded Berka’s, by far Hershl’s favourite character.
Hershl leaned back and closed his eyes. He was drowsy. The play would continue without him; he needed a nap.
From the date palms and olive trees he knew that he was in Palestine, but instead of Arabs on camels, he saw a column of black-coated men goose-stepping over the sand dunes, shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’ He himself was standing next to a well and although he knew that he should hide, run away or wake up, he could not act. As they drew nearer he roused himself and tried to run but his legs would not move.
He tore himself out of the dream to find his face pouring with sweat. Everything looked strange and distant. He looked over at the divided house which Berka shared with Burger and a shudder ran through him. Both verandas were lit up. Burger sat on one with his son and Berka was on the other, talking to Raizel. A strange heaviness weighed on Hershl’s heart.
‘I’m tired,’ he said to Faigel, ‘and have been haunted by strange thoughts all evening. Perhaps I ate too much of your excellent kugel. What I really need is a good sleep.’
He kissed her on the forehead as he went inside, unable to shake off his dark thoughts.
6
After Sheinka switched off the light Ruth lay stiffly in bed, waiting anxiously for the heavy black forms around her to take on their natural shapes again: the high-backed bed in which her grandmother slept; the chest of drawers; the table in the centre of the room surrounded by wooden chairs. The curtains were drawn but as the breeze blew them gently inwards, Ruth saw a strip of star-lit sky.
Her grandmother had gone to visit Uncle Benjamin, and her parents were in the lounge, arguing in muted tones.
‘I tell you the child’s asleep. With that mangy dog at her feet. I’ll get rid of him one day, that filthy beast. Besides, she doesn’t understand,’ Sheinka was saying.
Ruth sat up and clasped Zutzke protectively to her chest.
‘It’s enough already,’ she heard her father say wearily. ‘I’ve heard it all before and I tell you it’s nonsense.’
‘It’s true! It’s true! I’ve seen how you look at her. She’s always hanging around our house.’
‘Doing things for you,’ Dovid said angrily. ‘You send her around like a servant girl.’
‘She offers. Not to help me; to impress you. And she has. You’ve always had a soft spot for teachers. First Russian teachers, now English teachers. But I’ll kick her out, I’ll make a row, I’ll shout it from the rooftops…’ Sheinka’s voice rose hysterically.
‘Quiet, quiet!’ Dovid commanded in a tone Ruth had never heard from him. There was a shuffling of feet.
‘You hit me!’ Sheinka cried out.
Ruth put her hands over her ears.
‘Make them stop, God,’ she appealed to the strips of sky through the curtains. ‘Please make them stop.’
She took her hands away from her ears and heard only the roar of the stamp mills, the chugging of a train in the distance, and the crickets in the veld. Zutzke snored contentedly at her feet. When she shut her eyes she saw men on horses, blood in snowy streets and houses burning. She opened them wide and stared into the dark until the images dissolved. Then she thought of the gold
en mine dumps and the faces in the photo album. Her mother had held her close as she turned the pages and Ruth felt the baby’s jerky movements in her belly.
‘He wants to come out,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t breathe in there.’
Ruth turned restlessly in her bed. Kkrr-um, kkrrr-um, the crushers roared. She began to breathe in unison with the thunderous crashes, heavily, unevenly. What would happen if she stopped breathing, just for minute? She was tired of breathing. Would she die? A feeling of panic rose up from her stomach towards her throat, constricting it with fear. If the crushers stopped working, would she stop breathing? As she breathed more rapidly, her hands and legs went into a cramp. How did the baby breathe in the stomach? How could the miners breathe inside the earth? A black mask moved towards her in the dark and an unseen hand clamped it over her nose and mouth. She leapt from bed crying:
‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’
Dovid ran into the room. He lifted her out of bed and took her to the open window, pulling apart the curtains. He stood there until her breathing slowed down, then put her back to bed. Zutzke was whining in a corner.
‘Sing me a song, tatteh,’ she said holding on to his hand.
‘Not tonight, child. Sleep now.’
He waited until she had settled down, then tiptoed out of the room. She turned over onto her back and moved her hand slowly over her flat stomach, down towards her thighs. As she glided over the soft rises and slipped into dark, petalled crevices, visions of golden sand floated through her mind. She reached the innermost core, smoothed it gently towards the warm silky sands, into it, through it, around it, until she was submerged in a rush of warmth and delight which left her limp and tranquil.
When Dovid returned to the lounge, Sheinka had gone. Never before had he raised a hand to her. He held it away from his body as though it were a filthy thing. He found her in the bedroom, packing.
‘Call a taxi,’ she said heavily. ‘The pains have started.’
The Matron did not allow him to remain at the maternity home. She promised to phone when the baby was born. Dovid spent the night in the lounge, drinking the coffee which Gittel urged on him from time to time. She herself lay awake on her soft feather bed while Ruth tossed about restlessly, moaning in her sleep. The night noises of Mayfontein did not disturb Gittel. They were muted by the perpetual buzzing in her ears which Brown the pharmacist had diagnosed as high blood pressure. He gave her a strong peppermint-flavoured mixture which upset her gallstones but did not alleviate the buzzing.