by Rose Zwi
‘Get some water from Bobbe Yenta’s kitchen,’ he said letting her into the gate. He remained on the other side of the fence.
Raizel put down her book.
‘I must speak to you,’ he said quietly, urgently. ‘I’m going to put Ruth to bed now. Come to the house in fifteen minutes.’
‘What of Mrs. Pinn?’ Raizel began but the mockery died on her lips. She dropped her eyes. ‘I’ll come,’ she said softly and went into the house.
Exhausted by the rapid walk, Ruth fell asleep almost immediately. Dovid turned off the veranda light and sat in a corner, hidden from the street by the potted geraniums. The sound of the crushers pounded through his chest until he felt his heart would burst, and the scent of honeysuckle, mixed with that of the acrid geraniums, induced in him a state of lightheaded ecstasy.’
When Raizel came onto the veranda he rose from his chair, feeling taller, stronger and more vital than he had ever felt in his life. He put his arm around her and led her into the darkened lounge.
His longings for Ragaza, his contempt for Africa, his rootlessness, anxieties and guilts melted in Raizel’s arms. She clothed his discontented spirit with flesh and he was conscious of his body as he had never been with Vera or with Sheinka. For years he believed that he had abdicated from the emotional life, that all that remained was the search for the correct way of life. Now he moved beyond this. To hold Raizel in his arms was to hold life itself. More surely than if he had read it in the most respected, most hallowed book he learned, as he probed her sweetness, that if he ever let her go, he would lose life itself. And yet he saw, with almost frightening clarity, that this kind of happiness was not for him, that he was part of another design which would inexorably draw him away from life.
‘Don’t ever let me go,’ Raizel cut across his forebodings. ‘Nothing is as strong as my love for you. I feel in some way, Dovid, that if we lose one another, we are both lost.’
‘I’m not real, Raizel. You’re in love with a refugee from another existence.’
‘I’m real, Dovid. Cling to me. I’m real enough for both of us. You say those things to frighten me, even if you half believe them yourself. Say rather that you’ve got real problems: Sheinka, the children. I won’t be a burden Dovid. I won’t make demands. We’ll find a way and until then I’ll wait. I just want to be part of your world.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he dismissed his hovering fears, ‘tomorrow we’ll talk sensibly. I’ve never felt like this before, Raizel. If there’s anything, anyone, that could’ve recalled me from my past it would have been you. But Raizel, it’s too late. My father should never have returned to Ragaza.’
When Gittel, Yenta and Berka walked onto the veranda they found Dovid sitting in a corner, gazing up at the stars. Gittel was ebullient. She even forgot her self-imposed reticence in Dovid’s presence.
‘Such a love story,’ she told him. ‘So tender, so pure. It was wonderful. I cried all the way through. He loves her and she loves him but she’s married to an older man who is very good to her and in the end she gives up the lover. And they don’t talk to each other like ordinary people, Dovid: they sing! Can you believe it! I didn’t hear the buzzing in my ears right through the picture.’
‘Once she got Tom Mix’s dust out of her throat, she became a bioscope fan,’ Berka said to Dovid who smiled indulgently at his mother-in-law, stripped of all resentment.
He’d never before felt so warmly towards Gittel. Love indeed created strange paradoxes.
8
Dovid felt the soft pressure of light on his eyelids. Through half-closed eyes he watched the autumn woodland scene stir to life as the sun filtered through the cotton curtains. On the curtains it was perennially autumn. The red and gold leaves fell to the ground under the oaks and the birches, and the tunnel-like paths stretched away to an infinity of red, brown and yellow. He took Raizel’s hand and walked under the trees, feeling the crunch of dead leaves beneath his feet. I’m ten years older than you, he told her. You’ll grow younger, I’ll grow older, she replied. But in my soul, he said, it’s perennially autumn.
For a long moment the whole world was golden and glowing, then the scene faded behind his closed eyes and he turned his face from the early morning light.
Gittel hummed a song from the film as she prepared the Sunday lunch. Ruth, who stood nearby rolling a piece of dough in imitation of her grandmother, looked up in surprise. She rarely heard Gittel sing. Everything was different when her mother was away. She never allowed Ruth to participate in the baking or the cooking. You’re messing, she’d say crossly, wiping up the grains of flour from the kitchen floor.
‘My first bris by a grandchild,’ Gittel told Ruth. ‘Chaim Leib has three sons in America but does he ever send me a photograph of them? It’ll probably be my last bris as well,’ she sighed. ‘Your mother won’t have any more children. Her pregnancy seemed like nine years not nine months. Poor Sheinkala. She doesn’t know how to suffer. Anyway, we’ll make a nice bris. There’ll be plenty to eat and drink.’
‘Didn’t I have a bris?’ Ruth asked.
‘Oy vey, the questions she asks.’
When she had prepared the lunch, Gittel went into the backyard.
‘Dora!’ she called in the direction of the servant’s room. ‘Dora! Kum insite!’
A short black woman, dressed in one of Sheinka’s discarded summer frocks, came running barefoot out of her room and stood at the kitchen door, waiting for instructions.
‘Nu, kum shein insite, domkop!’ Gittel said. ‘Nem arop fun table, you chasershe shikshe, and vash die dishes.’
The girl looked at her, perplexed: Sheinka usually gave her instructions. In exasperation Gittel mimed the action of taking the dishes and cooking utensils off the table and washing them in the kitchen sink. The girl’s face brightened with understanding.
‘Stupid shikshe,’ Gittel said to Dovid when he came into the kitchen. ‘Doesn’t understand a word of English. And she was born in this country.’
Dovid took his coffee and Sunday paper into the lounge. The room was permeated with Raizel’s presence. He opened the paper but none of the words registered. Like a sleepwalker suddenly awakened to his nocturnal wanderings, he was reluctant to accept his aberrant behaviour. He had dreamed it; he had imagined it, as indeed he had many times before. He had not really held this yielding loving girl in his arms and poured into her ears the accumulated feelings of many years.
But as surely as he felt Sheinka’s presence in the odour of Vicks which pervaded the house, so he was now aware of the perfume of Raizel’s hair against the sofa on which he was sitting.
He stared up at the moulded iron ceiling, following the lines of intricate flowers and vines. How could he face Berka, Gittel, Sheinka, even Raizel? How could he expect this young vital girl to wait for him, in vain? Last night they had not spoken about the future. They had only decided that the English lessons were to stop.
If Sheinka was really as ill as she had always claimed…
Self-hatred brought on a rush of guilt feelings which he accepted with relief.
In the afternoon Dovid went to visit Sheinka. Ruth wandered about the house, lonely and listless. She stood on the veranda and watched the neighbourhood children walking towards the swimming bath which was at the edge of the plantation. The boys swaggered past with their towels around their necks, swinging their swimming trunks by the cord, and the girls carried neatly rolled towels under their arms. Moshe, Joshua and Daniel joined them, followed by the Burger children. Only Annatjie looked back at Ruth. She hesitated for a moment, then joined her brothers and sisters. Ruth had only been to the baths once last summer with Raizel, but had been too afraid to go into the water where the children splashed and threw one another around. With Annatjie, perhaps, it would have been different.
The adults were having their Sunday nap and the street was deserted except for Ruth and a few black servants who were sitting on the pavement in their Sunday clothes. From across the veld, beyond the plantation, c
ame the sound of singing and drumming. The mine workers were having their Sunday dance. Ruth had seen them once, dressed in beads and feathers with rattles tied to their ankles. They stamped their feet wildly as they raised their assegais above their heads in a mock battle dance.
‘It’s only a dance,’ Zeide Berchik had reassured Ruth when she shrank from the wild-looking men.
As the drumming started up, some of the servants rose from the pavement, dusted the red sand off their clothes and moved slowly towards the compound. Only Dora and her sister remained on the street corner.
‘Sister, schmister,’ Gittel said as she went into the kitchen to read her paper. ‘They’re all sisters and brothers. Like the beasts of the field they live. Their fathers they don’t know but their sisters they know. No go avek,’ she called out to Dora. ‘Make fire in stoff in havanaver.’ It had taken Dora months to find out that havanaver was thirty minutes.
Dora had an old black gramophone on the pavement on which she was playing a few scratched records over and over again. She and her sister stood near it, moving slowly to the repetitive rhythm. They began a slow mesmerising movement towards one another, retreated, came together again, whirling faster and faster in time to the music. Finally they sank onto the pavement, wiping the sweat from their faces.
‘Too hot,’ Dora’s sister said reaching for a piece of sugar cane. She took it between her teeth, tore off the hard outer fibre and bit into the succulent centre, chewing it in time to the music. When she had sucked out the sweetness, she spat the pulp into the gutter.
‘You want?’ she offered Ruth who was watching her.
Ruth shook her head. She was afraid of black people. Her mother had told her stories about children in Lithuania who had been carried off by the gypsies. The schocherdikke, her mother warned, did the same.
‘Shut up, you blerry kaffirs!’ Mr. Burger shouted in Afrikaans from his veranda. ‘A person can’t sleep with all that blerry row going on. Voetsek! What do you think this is? A blerry location?’
They clucked agitatedly, picked up the gramophone and ran into the backyard. Ruth watched Mr. Burger pull at his braces in annoyance and shake a fist at the retreating servants. If she did become friendly with Annatjie, she decided, they would play in the veld.
Later in the afternoon, Gittel took Ruth with her to Yenta’s house. In addition to the usual crowd of visitors who dropped in on a Sunday afternoon, Aaron Blecher and his wife were expected for tea. Today they were the guests of honour. Aaron had recently bought a Nash and he was coming all the way from Greenside to show them the car. He was the first of the landsleit to own one.
Zutzke and the other neighbourhood dogs barked wildly as the large black car came down First Avenue, hooting at non-existent obstacles. Aaron was a small man and one could barely see his head above the steering wheel.
‘A real circus,’ Berka muttered. If Aaron hadn’t played such a good game of bloff and if Berka hadn’t known him for so many years, he would have cut relations with him. Yet in spite of that orange-brick house in Greenside and this hearse-like car, Aaron was a good man. The outer trappings of wealth, Berka decided as he watched Mrs. Blecher wipe the dust off the bonnet with a yellow duster, were his wife’s doing.
After a lavish tea, the women gathered on the veranda and the men went into the dining-room for their game of poker.
‘We’ve got a minyan,’ Berka told Benjamin who was hovering about expectantly as the players took their seats. ‘Holy men shouldn’t gamble, especially if they haven’t got with what.’
Benjamin shrugged and walked around the table slowly, saying grace after tea.
‘Baruch ata Adonai…throw out the queen,’ he whispered to Leib Schwartzman in passing, ‘eloheinu melech…’
‘Perhaps you’ve got a prayer for four aces?’ Leib asked him.
‘Ahah! A gambler’s den, a poker school,’ Sam the barber said, walking into the room.
‘School!’ Aaron said scornfully, shuffling the cards. ‘What school? A kindergarten. Come join us. Show these kailikes how it’s done in the higher institutions of learning.’
‘What’s your limit? I may not be able to afford it.’
‘Four bob.’
‘Too high,’ Sam laughed standing behind Berka. ‘So, Berrala, playing bloff. Der rebbe meg, eh? Don’t in future, throw me one of your pained looks as you pass by my barbershop with honest beads of sweat on your brow. Greyhound racing is as honourable as poker.’
‘Tell me, Sam, what are the ethics of your poker school?’ Leib asked. ‘You know, some declare penalties, others don’t. How’s it by you?’
‘No ethics, no limit,’ Sam replied moving over behind Aaron. ‘Poker isn’t a game; it’s a way of life. And all’s fair in the rotten game of life. Like in love.’
Dovid came into the room and was greeted warmly by all the players.
‘Dovidke!’ Raizel heard the chorus of voices from the kitchen. ‘Mazeltov, mazeltov! Have lots of nachas from your son. How’s Sheinka?’
Raizel clattered the cups in the sink in an effort to drown their voices. Only the birth of a son was important enough to interrupt a game of poker. She gave Ruth a dishcloth to dry the dishes.
‘That’s a good husband. Instead of playing bloff on a Sunday afternoon, he goes off to visit his wife. What? He doesn’t gamble? Ever? Dovidke, what you need is a few interesting vices. You’re going to be very lonely in Heaven without your friends. You should sin occasionally…’
Raizel did not hear Dovid’s reply. Play was resumed. ‘Double…ahaha, he’s got a pair of twos already so he doubles… I’ll see you… So, a bloff, eh? A Yiddishe forest he’s got, tree trees…’
‘Hello,’ Dovid said at the kitchen door. Ruth dropped the dishcloth and ran up to him.
‘Can he speak yet?’ she asked.
‘You’ll teach him when he comes home, my love. Hello Raizel.’
She looked at him and smiled wanly.
‘Hello Dovid. How’s everyone?’
‘All right. Sheinka’s reconciled to the loss of her Vicks. In an emergency they can give her oxygen. The baby looks less red and crumpled than he did yesterday. How are you?’
‘Fine.’ She took a side of pickled beef out of the ice box and began to slice it. ‘But it’s going to be harder than I thought. Ruthie, please take these plates into the dining room for me.’
Ruth looked at them both, then walked slowly out of the kitchen with the plates.
‘What is it?’ Dovid asked.
‘Guilts, anger, jealousy. I didn’t count on that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m not.’
‘You’ll stay for supper, Dovid,’ Yenta said coming into the kitchen. ‘And do me a favour. Run across and call in Hershl and Faigel. They should bring the children also. I’ve got enough to feed the whole of First Avenue.’
‘It’s the last hand, it’s the last hand,’ the players protested when Yenta eventually placed the large plate of meat in the centre of the table. ‘Yentala, have mercy. I’ve got my losses to make up. I’m three shillings down. The last hand, we promise. Deal, Jankala, deal.’
Aaron sighed contentedly when supper was over, and sipping his lemon tea loudly said:
‘It’s good to be back in Mayfontein again, among friends. In Greenside everyone has a quarter acre with his house facing north and you don’t see a soul. Here there’s still a feeling of landsmanschaft. Everyone on his veranda each concerned for the other…’
‘Especially Mrs. Pinn,’ Berka growled.
‘It’s strange you should say so, Aaron,’ Hershl said. ‘Only on Friday I was lamenting the lack of community feeling. But I suppose we’ve little to complain of.’
‘It won’t last,’ Aaron shook his head sadly. ‘Already the old landsmanschaft is disintegrating. At the Workers’ Club which used to be my second home, I’m becoming an outcast, an anomaly. After all, I’m an employer of labour, an exploiter. As one becomes richer one becomes lonelier, I’m telli
ng you. Before we travelled in trams like everyone else; today we travel alone, in a hearse as Berka calls it.’
‘It should happen to me,’ Leib said wistfully looking at the Nash around which the neighbourhood children had gathered. ‘I undertake to travel in a hearse like yours, Aaron, for as long as I live.’
‘You can have it,’ Berka said knocking out his pipe against his shoe. ‘I’m not for the new way of living. In Mayfontein we eat in the house and shit in the yard, like normal human beings. In Greenside they eat in the garden and shit in the house. The rich acquire very dirty habits.’
‘The ladies, the ladies!’ Hershl protested.
‘What’s the matter, Reb Hershl, don’t ladies defecate?’
‘Vey, vey, such vulgarity,’ Yenta said rising from her chair. ‘Come, ladies. Let’s go inside and leave the men to their elevated talk.’
Dovid sat for a while listening to the usual arguments and discussions. He was bored. How could he have participated in it all these years?
‘No English tonight?’ Berka asked him. ‘It’s quiet in the kitchen. No one will disturb you.’
‘I’ve graduated,’ Dovid said quietly. ‘It’s just practice that I need now. Besides, Ruthie starts school tomorrow and I want to put her to bed early. It’s going to be a long hard day for her.’
Dovid went past the lounge where the women were sitting, into the kitchen where Raizel was washing the dishes.
‘Raizel,’ he said in a trembling voice that brought an apprehensive look into her eyes. ‘I want you to know that whatever happens I’ll never stop Joving you.’
He turned away and walked quickly out of the kitchen, leaving her to stare after him in dismay.
9
It had rained during the night and the tall veld grass was wet and shiny in the early morning sun.
‘Mind the puddle!’ Raizel called out to Ruth who dawdled along behind her on the school path.